CALL ON SAVINGS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 24 June 1943, Page 3

CALL ON SAVINGS

(Continued from page 2.)

IN FINANCING THE WAR.

NEED OF AVERTING INFLATION

(“Times-Age” Special.)

WELLINGTON, This Day

“The objective of the Third Liberty Loan is equal to an investment of £25 per head from every man, woman and child in the Dominion,’ states the National War Loan Committee. “We cannot expect our fighting men to pay as well as fight, nor will babies in arms become subscribers. If these classes are eliminated, it means a call for £75 per head from those living safely, though working hard, on the home front.

“This is the war’s fourth year, and as modern war is highly mechanised and highly expensive, much of our cash has gone into previous loans. Now we are at the point when we must save from week to week, and sacrifice to save, to finance the high pace of warfare.

“ ‘But there are millions on deposit in the banks!’ someone can retort, and that is quite true. Some of these millions are ‘resting balances’ —an enforced resting because business people with almost empty shelves must be ready to stock up when the seas are safer, imports can arrive in larger quantities and the great output of our own workers in industry can be turned from the present consuming channel, which runs right into the firing line. “The Liberty Loan will make a heavy call on the credits of bank depositors, but this source must not be the only one to answer the patriotic call. The weekly release of purchasing power cannot find a full outlet today because goods are scarce. Plunge any part of those ‘resting balances,’ as well as current wages, into the shopping competition and prices would get completely out of hand. Inflation, cruellest in its effect on the wageearner, would be rampant. In defiance yOf stabilisation schemes, the economic 7 dam would burst, causing a train of misery. So it is vitally necessary to the wage-earners’ economic security that surplus purchasing power should be put into the reservoir of the Third Liberty Loan and the money used when women can again shop with pleasure.”

SLOWLY MOUNTING DOMINION TOTAL. OVER £14,000,000 SUBSCRIBED 1 j (By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, This Day. Yesterday’s . New Zealand subscriptions to the Third Liberty Loan at £686,095, making a grand total of £14,272,455, were well below the £1,250,000 average required in the re-

maining 17 days of the campaign to make the loan a success. Though there is usually a rush of subscribers in the closing stages, the present indications are that considerably more support is required. The total number of subscribers is 26,335 (yesterday 2413). Small investors are apparently coming in more freely, but it takes large numbers of these to make an aggregate sum that will appreciably increase the grand total.