WAR RISK INSURANCE.

The vanguard of the German Army had hardly appeared upon the borders of Belgium when William G. McAdoo, then Secretary of the Treasury, asked Congress for authority to establish a bureau in the Treasury Department to insure against war risks, cargoes, and bottoms of American vessels plying the high seas. His proposal was enacted into law on September 2, 1914. The Bureau of War Risk Insurance began its existence the following day in the sub-basement of the Treasury Building with an oflice force of five persons. June 12, 1917, shortly after the United States entered the world war, the act was amended to include insurance on the lives of the masters and seamen of merchant vessels, and by the act of October 6, 1917, the Division of Military and Naval Insurance was established as a part of the bureau for the purpose of affording protection to our soldiers and sailors and their dependents.

The bureau has four distinct functions:

1. It has provided Government insurance on cargoes, hulls, and the lives of masters and seamen of merchant vessels. The Division of Marine and Seamen's Insurance, charged with the execution of this feature of the war risk insurance law, will suspend upon the conclusion of peace.

2. It provides Government insurance for men in the military and naval service of the United States at peace-time rates. Plans have been perfected for the conversion of this war insurance into permanent peace forms, including all of the usual kinds of insurance policies.

3. It pays the Government allowance to the dependents of soldiers and sailors, and through it are paid the compulsory allotments made by enlisted men to their wives and children and all allotments which carry the Government allowance.

4. It provides compensation, for disabilities incurred by officers and enlisted men in the line of duty, to them and to their dependents. It is also responsible for providing medical treatment for all disabled soldiers and sailors.

From the humble beginning of a small war risk insurance concern the bureau has expanded until it is without parallel among humanitarian enterprises of civilized governments.

It is estimated that 95 per cent of the men in the Army and Navy of the United States have taken out insurance for 87 per cent of the maximum amount, which is $10,000. This means that from October 6, 1917, to November, 1918, 4,000,000 men took advantage of this Government insurance, and an aggregate amount of nearly forty billions of dollars of insurance has been written.

To enable the burean to carry out its diverse activities there has been maintained a force of over 14,000 employees working in night and day shifts. No single building in Washington was found large enough to accommodate the bureau in war time, and it was necessary to scatter its different divisions in 14 separate buildings, occupying a total of nearly 460,000 square feet of building space.

The bureau recently moved nearly all its divisions into a building specially constructed for it at Vermont Avenue and H Street, in Washington. This building occupies the site of the historic Arlington Hotel.

The bureau has received and handled over 4,000,000 applications for insurance, 4,000,000 applications for allotments and allowances, and has answered more than 3,000,000 letters. In 16 months it has issued a total of 13,768,000 checks, aggregating $432,255,845.

Government insurance was initiated primarily as a war measure, but it is more than that. It will not stop because the war is over. Under the war risk insurance act war-time term insurance can be retained in that form for five years after peace is signed, and at any time in that period can be converted into permanent life and disability insurance in all its usual forms.

WAR LOAN ORGANIZATION.

Through this organization the Liberty loan campaigns have been conducted. With the Secretary of the Treasury as the directing head, the twelve Federal reserve banks, as fiscal agents of the Government, have acted as centers of the organization in their respective districts, operating through Liberty loan committees which were created in every part of the country. Banks and bankers, business men, associations and societies, newspapers, press associations, and thousands of men and women throughout the country patriotically cooperated with the Treasury Department, the Federal reserve banks, and the Liberty loan committees in assuring the great success of these loans. They unstintedly gave of their services and talent in the interest of the Government and it has been estimated that not less than 2,000,000 men and women patriotically devoted themselves to the work.

In order that the efforts of the Federal reserve banks and Liberty loan committees might be properly directed and brought into harmony with the Treasury, the war loan organization was created in the department. This organization had general supervision of all the activities directed toward the sale of Liberty bonds, notes, and war-saving certificates.

A part of the war loan organization is the bureau of publicity, which had charge of the preparation and distribution of posters, buttons, honor flags, and other material, the preparation of advertising copy, and the dissemination of news relative to the loans. This bureau has conducted a great nation-wide campaign of education in connection with each loan, pointing out the urgent needs of the Government in the prosecution of the war, the great value of Government securities as investments, and endeavoring to inculcate thrift and saving among all the people of the country. Every avenue of publicity was availed of and the Treasury received the patriotic cooperation of all.

Through the cooperation of the War and Navy Departments, exhibits of captured war material, soldiers' and sailors' equipment, ordnance, and ammunition were assembled and transported throughout the country, enabling the people, particularly of the more remote districts, to inspect some of the things for which part of the money raised by the loans was spent. Veteran soldiers and sailors and civilian speakers accompanied the trains and urged the people to subscribe for bonds. Much of the material had been captured by American soldiers in France, and no other single method of arousing enthusiasm met with greater success.

The speakers' bureau, which is also a part of the war loan organization, furnished speakers throughout the country to arouse interest in the loans and also had charge of the soldiers and sailors who assisted in the campaigns.

THE NATIONAL WOMAN'S LIBERTY LOAN COMMITTEE.

One of the notable factors in the success of the Liberty loans was the work of the women of the United States. It was with the belief that the women of the Nation would constitute a powerful moral force in war finance that the National Woman's Liberty Loan Committee was appointed by the Secretary of the Treasury in May, 1917. That they, working through the organization effected by this agency, not only accomplished this purpose but also became an essential element in the actual labors of promoting the loans constitutes one of the most interesting chapters in the financing of the war. There was probably no war service in which so many women took more active part than in the raising of money to pay our war burden. To their energy, their enthusiasm, their zeal, and their vision is due a great part of the success of the Liberty loans.

When the United States went into war with Germany the business of bond selling was a field so new to women that all work within it was genuine pioneering. The organization of women for the task was the work of the National Women's Liberty Loan Committee, which served in cooperation with the Treasury's war-loan organization. The members of this committee, serving as volunteers, performed the work of enlisting more than a half million women as sellers of Liberty bonds.

The first labors of the members of the committee, after the closing of the first Liberty loan where their work had been general publicity of war finance among women, were concerned with the adjustment of established organizations of women throughout the country to the established machinery for the raising of the loans. Where organization existed, the women of the Nation were organized by States, while the Treasury's loan organization was based upon the twelve fiscal divisions of the United States. It was the problem of the committee to correlate the two schemes of organization. They solved it by the appointment of both State and Federal reserve chairmen, the former responsible for actual organization of women in their respective States, the latter serving as the representatives of the women in dealing with the Liberty loan committees of the respective Federal reserve districts. Liberty loan committees elected the women Federal reserve chairman members of their executive committees.

In this organization during the second Liberty loan 60,000 women became sellers of bonds. In the third loan 500,000 women were enrolled as members of the organization, which had a woman chairman in almost every county of the United States and township officers in almost every township. In the fourth loan and also the fifth or Victory liberty loan between 700,000 and 800,000 women served.

No mere recital of results achieved can show the extent of the service which women gave to the Nation through their participation in war finance. That hundreds of thousands of women assumed the

burden of a new kind of labor, not for themselves but for their country, is one of the most striking and characteristic facts in relation to the women of America that the war developed. The Liberty loans afforded a new proving ground where the women of the Nation accepted the opportunity to demonstrate again their patriotism, their ability, their consciousness of the obligations of citizenship, and their steadfastness of soul in the great and terrible crisis which our country met.

THE SAVINGS DIVISION.

The Savings Division, War Loan Organization of the Treasury Department, as organized for after-the-war service, is a combination of a directing staff of specialists and executives in Washington, with similar district organizations in reserve-bank districts. In addition there is a vast number of volunteer workers serving through the readjustment period on a less than a dollar-a-year basis, local county and State savings directors and secretaries of war savings societies. As a branch of the Treasury Department, the Savings Division is a national service bureau for the savings campaign, the actual conduct of which is decentralized into the twelve reserve bank districts. The staff of the savings division in Washington is engaged upon problems of organization, sales, thrift education, preparation of basic pamphlets and publicity material and of securing the cooperation and active service of national organizations and movements. The savings division has stated as the first objective in the campaign: "To make thrift in all its forms, a permanent national practice. The purpose of the first objective is to persuade the people— 1. To put aside as their first obligation, and before they spend at all, part of their incomes for future use.

2. To invest the money they save out of their incomes in some security which pays a reasonable rate of interest and is absolutely safe.

3. To use the rest of their incomes so as to make every penny they spend buy something they really need and which has a full penny's value.

4. To use what they buy with as much care as if it were money itself.

The second objective in the campaign is to provide a safe investment for small savings through thrift stamps and war-savings stamps, not merely to raise money for the Government, but more especially to provide a safe security for small savings.

The active management of the campaign centers in a group of savings directors, one in every Federal reserve district, with headquarters, respectively, at Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Richmond, Atlanta, Chicago, St. Louis, Minneapolis, Kansas City, Dallas, and San Francisco. Correspondence may be addressed to the District Savings Director, War Loan Organization, in any of these cities.

These district directors are held responsible for the success of the campaign in their territories. Many of the district directors are assisted by State directors. All seek the cooperation of directors in every county and again in towns and cities, so far as may be practicable.

Township, neighborhood, and occupational group committees have been formed in large numbers, and all kinds of local societies and other organizations are invited to form cooperating committees. Savings societies are encouraged wherever people are grouped by their day's work, and to a large extent in schools and colleges.

The savings stamps are on sale by secretaries of savings societies and at post offices, banks, schools, stores, and other sales agencies.

The millions of savers are reached chiefly through the various agencies enlisted by the district savings directors, the savings division at Washington distributing its services largely through the district offices.

Cooperation in the multitudinous activities of this vast machinery is both patriotic service and social service. The economic welfare of the Nation calls for wise saving. The future welfare of millions. of our citizens will be furthered by the practice of thrift.

The practical goal of the campaign that every individual and family shall save regularly a portion of income, that savings should be set aside before spending begins, and that everyone should have a growing fund safely invested in Government securities-seems not impossible of accomplishment.

Librarians who wish to receive the literature issued by the savings division or by district or State directors should address the savings director of their districts who will welcome cooperation in placing information before library patrons and in distributing numerous pamphlets and leaflets.

THE FEDERAL RESERVE SYSTEM.

The Federal reserve act, approved December 23, 1913, was intended to provide for the establishment of new institutions to be entitled "Federal reserve banks," to furnish an elastic currency, to afford a means of rediscounting commercial paper and to establish a more effective supervision of banking in the United States.

The new banks were officially opened for business on November 16, 1914, and the system has accordingly been in operation about four and a half years. The period of almost one year intervening between the passage of the Federal reserve act and the organization of the banks was occupied in dividing the country into districts, studying its banking and credit needs, securing the appointment of the members of the Federal Reserve Board and perfecting preliminary arrangements for organization, including the naming of local boards of directors and the selection of officers for Federal reserve banks. As a part of this preliminary work the Board was called upon to share in financial adjustments, which were made necessary by disturbances growing out of the European war.

The organization of the system during the preliminary period in question had been placed, under the act, in the hands of the Secretary of the Treasury, the Comptroller of the Currency, and the Secretary of Agriculture, who had been designated by the law as the reserve bank organization committee. It was their function to divide the continental United States into Federal reserve districts and to desig nate a city in each as the seat of the district Federal reserve bank.