The Midland Journal

U. S. FINANCE IN WAR TIME

THE DISASTROUS INFLATION that ruined Germany financially in the early 1920s was caused by the government issuing vast quantities of paper money with which to pay the government's internal debts. It was what we know as "printing press" money.

The American government must finance not alone our participation in the present war, but must also help our Allies. To do that it is costing many billions of dollars. The government can get the needed dollars by people of the nation buying war stamps and war bonds--the safest investment the individual can make. Or the government can get the dollars by the comparatively simple process of increasing bank credits, but that amounts only to the issuing of "printing press" money, and that way leads to the condition which caused inflation in Germany.

For purely selfish reasons, if for no other, the American people should buy war stamps and war bonds. When we invest our money in these securities--every dollar we do not actually need for living necessities--the dollars come back to us in the form of wages or for the things we produce. It is much like spending a dollar in our home town instead of sending it away to a mail order house. The dollar keeps rotating and works for us over and over again. If we force the government to finance the war by issuing any form of "printing press" money, whether it be called bank credits or greenbacks, we are but forcing ourselves into that degree of inflation where our dollars will be worthless.

We must, and will, win this war. We can do that with greater safety to ourselves as individuals and to that institution we know as America by financing the cost out of our pockets, rather than by the inflationary process of "printing press" money. By buying war stamps and war bonds, we are but financing ourselves.