But if thirty-one people each save
sixpence a week, they can buy a Certificate at once and keep on buying
one every week. Thus their savings begin to earn interest immediately.
Thus every War Savings Association became a co-operative saving and
investment syndicate--a pool of profit.
How are the Certificates distributed? The usual procedure is to draw
lots. In a small Association no member is ordinarily permitted to win
more than one Certificate in a period of thirty-one weeks, except by
special arrangement. Each Association, however, can make its own
allotment rules. The value of winning a Certificate the first week is
that the winner's 15/6 will have grown to one pound in four years and a
half instead of five. This is broadly the financial advantage gained by
being a member of an Association, although the larger reason is that it
is more or less compulsory as well as co-operative saving.
Britain is buzzing with these War Savings Associations. You find them in
the mobilisation camps, on the training ships, on the grim grey fighters
of the Grand Fleet, even in the trenches up against the battle line. The
London telephone girls have their own organisation: sales forces of
large commercial houses are grouped in thrift units: there are saving
battalions in most of the munition works, and so it goes. In many of
the big mercantile establishments that have Associations, the weekly
drawings of Certificates with all their elements of chance and profits
are exciting events.
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