Tuesday, April 23, 2019

Victory Loans Are Good Investment, April 23, 1919

From The University of North Carolina News Letter, April 23, 1919

Side-Stepping the Sheriff

I’m going to put into Victory Loan certificates every dollar I can rake and scrape together, said a stranger on the train the other day.

Why? we asked; because it is always interesting to know how men’s minds work on big propositions.

Well, said he, they are tax-free and that by itself makes them worth a full three percent to me. My taxes last year all put together were exactly three percent of the property I had on the tax books. I’ll get at least four percent on those certificates and I’ll save three percent in taxes. That makes a clear 7 percent, and I’m not getting much more than a clear 5 percent on anything I’ve got invested now. I’ll be two percent ahead of the game. See?

Besides—he went on to say—this new tax law in North Carolina is going to put my property on the tax books at its full value, and I don’t want to tell any lies about it like I’ve been doing all my life.

Not much sentiment in this fore-handed chap, but plenty of shrewd business sense. He represents just about one-tenth of the people of every community the world around—as we seem to have learned in fairly definite way of late years.

The other nine-tenths of us are producers and spenders or wasters of what we produce day by day down to the last penny—or worse. We are patriotic enough but our minds are war-weary and both sense and sentiment in us are collapsed these days like a child’s toy balloon, or apparently so. We are even silly enough to think that the costs of war stopped when the armistice was signed. And so on and on.

Our prediction is that the Victory Loan will be taken in the main by the rich and well-to-do, as a shrewd business proposition. The success of the Victory Loan depends, we fear, on the hard horse-sense of a very small group in every community.

People who are laying up treasure on earth beyond the reach of tax gatherers will see the point; no doubt about that.

They can own Liberty Bonds, War Stamps and Victory Certificates free of all taxes up to $180,000 each.

The chances are they will never have another chance in all their lives to side-step the sheriff.
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