Part 14

The Englishman, like his American brother, though unlike the Scotch, is not thrifty by instinct. He regards thrift as a vice. He prefers to let the tax gatherer do his saving for him. He believes with his great compatriot Gladstone that "it is more difficult to save a shilling than to spend a million."

Contrasting the Englishman and the Frenchman in the matter of economy, you find this interesting parallel: With the Frenchman the first question that attends income is "How much can I save?" Saving is the supreme thing. With the Briton, however, it becomes a matter of "How much can I spend?" Saving is incidental.

To associate thrift with the British workingman is to conceive a miracle. To be sure, he seldom had anything to save before the war. But with the speeding-up of industry to meet the insatiate hunger for munitions and the corresponding increase of from thirty to fifty per cent, even more, in wages, he suddenly began to revel in a wealth that he never dreamed was possible. The more he made the more he spent. He squandered his financial substance on fine cigars, expensive clothes, and excessive drinks, while his wife bedecked herself in gaudy finery and installed pianos or phonographs in her house. No one thought of To-morrow.

Just as it took the shock of a long succession of military reverses to rouse the English mind to the consciousness that the war would be long and bitter, so did the abuse of all this temporary and inflated war time prosperity bring to far-seeing men throughout England the realisation that the British people, and more especially those who worked with their hands, were booked for serious social and economic trouble when peace came, unless they saw the error of their wasteful ways.

"What can we do to stem this tide of extravagance and at the same time plant the seed of permanent thrift," asked these men who ranged from Premier to Prelate. No one knew better than they the difficulties of the task before them. In England, as in America, thrift is more regarded as a vice than a virtue. Like the taste for olives it is an acquired thing. To spend, not to save, is the instinct of the race.

But there were other and equally serious reasons why all England should buck up financially and make every penny do more than its duty. First and foremost was the terrific cost of the war that every day took its toll of $25,000,000; second was the enormous increase in imports and the diminished flow of exports, a reversal of pre-war conditions that meant that England each day was buying $5,000,000 worth of goods more than other countries were purchasing from her; third was the human shrinkage due to the incessant demand of battlefield and factory. Everywhere was colossal expenditure of men and money: nowhere existed check or restraint. Something had to be done.

It was generally admitted that the first thing for everybody to do was to spend less on themselves than in times of peace. When, where and how to save became the great question. To save money at the cost of efficiency for essential and urgent work was not true economy. "But," said the thrift promoters, "waste is possible even in the process of attaining efficiency. For example, people may eat too much as well as too little, they may buy more clothes than they actually need, ride when they could walk, employ a servant when they could do their own work, use their motors when they could travel in a tram."

Thus every class came within the range of the lightning that was about to strike at the root of an ancient evil.

The start was interesting. Before the war was a year old definite order emerged of what was at the beginning a scattered protest against reckless spending. But long before the first organised message of saving went to the home and purse of the worker, the rich began to economise. Here is where you encounter the first of the many ironies and contrasts that mark this whole campaign. The people who could most afford to be extravagant were the first to draw in their horns. This, of course, was not particularly surprising because the rich are naturally thrifty. It is one reason why they get and stay rich.

Among the pioneer organisations was the Women's War Economy League founded and developed by a group of titled women who got hundreds of their sisters to pledge themselves to give up unnecessary entertaining, not to employ men servants unless ineligible for military service, to buy no new motor cars and use their old ones for public or charitable work, to buy as few expensive articles of clothing as possible, to reduce in every way their expenditures on imported goods, and to limit the buying of everything that came under the category of luxuries. Champagne was banned from the dinner table, decollete gowns disappeared: men substituted black for white waistcoats in the evening.

The rich really needed no organised stimulus to retrench. The great target for attack was the mass of the population who did not know what it meant to save and who required just the sort of constructive lesson that an organised thrift movement could teach.

Much of the increase in wages among the workers was going for food and drink. Hence the opening assault was made on the market bill. Fortunately, an agency was already in operation. At the outbreak of the war a National Food Fund was started to feed the hungry Belgians. That work had become more or less automatic (the Belgians' appetite is a pretty regular clock), so its machinery was now trained to the twin conservation of British stomachs and savings.

"Save the Food of the Nation," was the appeal that went forth on every side. "No One is too Rich or Poor to Help. Every man, woman and child in the country who wants to serve the state and help win the war can do so by giving thought to the question of conserving food. Since the great bulk of our food comes from abroad, it takes toll in men, ships and money. Every scrap of food wasted means a dead loss to the Nation in men, ships and money. If all the food that is now being wasted could be saved and properly used it would spare more money, more ships, more men for the National defence."

Now began a notable campaign of education which was carried straight into the kitchen. Food demonstrators whose work ranged from showing the economy of cooking potatoes in their skins to making fire-less cookers out of a soap box and a bundle of straw, went up and down the Kingdom holding classes. In town halls, schools, village centres and drawing-rooms, mistress and maid sat side by side. "Waste nothing," was the new watchword.

Backing up the uttered word was a perfect deluge of literature that included "Hand Books for House Wives," "Notes on Cooking," "Hints for Saving Fuel," "Economy in Food," in fact, dozens of pamphlets all showing how to make one scrap of food or a single stick of wood do the work of two.

The people behind this movement knew that with waste of food was the kindred waste of money. They realised, too, that even the most effective preachment for food economy must inevitably be met by the cry, "Everybody must eat." With money, on the other hand, there seemed a better opportunity to drive home a permanent thrift lesson. So the forces that had built the bulwark around the English stomach now set to work to rear a rampart about the English pocketbook.

Circumstances played into their hand. The Great War Loan of $3,000,000,000 had just been authorised. "Why not make this loan the text of a great National thrift lesson and give every working man and woman a chance to become a financial partner of the Empire," said the saving mentors. It was decided to put part of this loan within the range of everybody, that is, to issue it in denominations from five shilling scrip pieces up, to sell it through the post office and thus bring the new savings bank to the very doors of the people.

Again a machine was needed, and once more as in the case of the food campaign one was well oiled and accessible. It was the organisation that had raised, by eloquent word and equally stimulating poster and pamphlet, the great volunteer army of 3,000,000 men. Just as it had drawn soldiers to the fighting colours, so did it now seek to lure the savings of the people to the financial standard of the nation.

The Parliamentary Recruiting Committee became the Parliamentary War Savings Committee and it loosed a campaign of exploitation such as England had never seen before. From newspapers, bill boards and rostrums was hurled the injunction to buy the War Loan and help mould the Silver Bullet that would crush the Germans. It was literally a "popular loan" in that the five shilling short-term vouchers, bought at the post office, and which paid 5 per cent, could be exchanged when they had grown to five pounds for a share of long-term War Stock paying 41/2 per cent. The higher rate of interest was the inducement to begin saving and it worked like a charm.

Tribute to the efficacy of this programme is the fact that more than 1,000,000 English workers purchased the War Loan. Through this procedure they learned, what most of them did not know before, that when you put money out to work it earns more money. It meant that they had become investors and were starting on the road to independence.

But this campaign, admirable as it was in scope and execution, failed in its larger purpose of reaching the great mass of the people. While more than 1,000,000 workers participated in the loan their holdings really comprised but a small percentage of the immense total. The bulk of the buying was by banks, corporations, trustees, and wealthy individuals. The message, therefore, of permanent thrift combined with a more or less continuous investment opportunity for every man still had to be delivered. All the while the Empire hungered for money as well as for men.

Such was the state of affairs when the Chancellor of the Exchequer appointed the Committee on War Loans for the Small Investor. It had two definite functions: to raise funds for the national defence and to provide through the medium selected some simple and accessible means for the employment of the average man's money.

This Committee recommended that an issue be made of Five Per Cent Exchequer Bonds in denominations of five, twenty and fifty pounds to be sold at all post offices. It was an excellent idea and was immediately authorised by the Treasury. The Exchequer Bond became part of the swelling flood of British war securities and might have had a distinction all its own but for the enterprise and sagacity of one man who happened to be a member of this Committee.

That man was Sir Hedley Le Bas. You must know his story before you can go into the part that he played in the great drama of British investment that is now to be unfolded. A generation ago he was the lustiest lad in Jersey, his birthplace. His feats as swimmer were the talk of a race inured to the hardships of the sea. After seven years in the Army he came to London to make his fortune. From an humble clerical position he rose to be head of one of the great book publishing houses in Great Britain, employing over 400 salesmen, spending over a quarter of a million dollars a year in advertising alone.

Sir Hedley is big of bone, dynamic of personality, more like the alert, wideawake American business man than almost any other individual I have ever met in England. One day he gave the British publishing business the jolt of its long and dignified life by taking a whole page in the Daily Mail to advertise a single book. His colleagues said it was "unprofessional," that it violated all precedent. Sir Hedley thought to the contrary and in vindication of his judgment the book developed into a "best seller." That pioneer page in the Mail was the first of many.

Prior to the outbreak of the present war, Sir Hedley had been consulted by the then Minister of War as to the most advisable means of getting recruits.

"Why don't you advertise?" he asked.

"It's never been done before," replied the Minister.