THE GOLD DEBENTURE PATRIOT
Mayer, Milton
The Gold Debenture Patriot By MILTON MAYER YOU will be interested to learn that your friend Mayer, the old radical, received a dividend check last week; two, in fact. The first was from the United...
...I was drawing down $35 a week at the time in that romantic profession known as journalism, so I suggested that the old man furnish a little apartment for me and my bride...
...Mor-genthau puts it, four dollars for three, and what did I do to earn it...
...And how did my old man get to be a capitalist...
...At least its anthem doesn't end, "Great God, our King...
...Nothing, your reverences...
...Three dollars now, and four dollars 10 years from now...
...Morgenthau's boys assure us that that isn't so...
...I have got a long way to go on that one before I get my four dollars for three, but the $6.15 came in mighty handy, because the furniture, after 15 years, is beginning to give at the seams...
...That stuff," said the old man, "will wear out...
...Its sole purpose is, as I say, four dollars for three...
...I J2>£JaH5e~a capitalist by having a father who was a capitalist...
...If my memory doesn't fail me, the $6.15 check I got the other day is the first fruit of my Gold Debenture...
...I want to give you something durable...
...You should, and you will...
...The Middle West Corporation is also running a crusade for the same sort of American Way, but at least the Middle West Corporation doesn't pretend to be dedicated to freedom's holy light...
...absolutely nothing...
...Within a month of the wedding, little Milton was one of the widows and orphans who had been gulled, sacked, deflowered, and betrayed by Sam Insull...
...The stiffs on the Normandy beach are just being patriotic...
...A Long Way To Go It must have been six or seveii-J*?gfs later when I approached my favoriteJftfestment counsellor for a $5 toucl^JJe^d^chave the fin...
...So he thought it over and examined the various offerings that were being offered and gave me a $1,000 Gold Debenture of the Middle West Utilities Corp...
...32.50, then to $30, then to $27.50, and then the romantic newspaper folded, and little Milton slept under the bridges wrapped up in his Gold Debenture...
...I didn't give...
...How did I get tobeagapftanst ? By hard work, initiative^ntej^gj^.'imagination, honesty, courage, and pej£ft»grance...
...But permit me first to reflect on the dividend paid by the U. S. of A. I went to the movies the other night and got another load of Mr...
...Middle West's 'Crusade' Well, that's where my $15 dividend came from, folks...
...The first was from the United States of America, for something like 15 bucks...
...By exercising the aforementioned virtues...
...My old man exercised the virtues all right, but he didn't get to be a capitalist that way...
...not for a wedding present for his little boy Milton...
...Not on your tin-type...
...I'm making money on the war...
...The common stock of this interesting organization had gone from something like 2% to 525 in a couple of years, but the old man wasn't taking any chances with common stock...
...I got...
...It doesn't even have anything as a by-product...
...The Gold Debenture I'm a capitalist...
...When I got married—in September of 1929—the old man began figuring out a wedding present...
...He did so* and I have the furniture still...
...The first thing I found was my Gold Debenture, and -my broker, while he could not get a fin for it on the open market, succeeded in trading it in for some shares in the new Middle West Corporation of Wilmington, Del., not to be confused with the old Middle West Utilities Corporation of the same city...
...At least it doesn't confuse us as to its purpose...
...He went back on the street selling paper boxes by dint of hard work, enterprise, imagination, etc...
...The second was from the Middle West Corporation, for $6.15...
...Three dollars now, and four dollars 10 years from now...
...And Time magazine this week discovers that the war is not a crusade at all...
...But Mr...
...In America, for^very^iiPggruollars vou put in now, you get four dojl»**no years from now...
...Not a ripple came out of the audience...
...You have heard of the United States of America, but not of the Middle West Corporation...
...That's the American Way— 'you don't GIVE, you GET...
...I'm being patriotic—and making money...
...it's a crusade for The American Way...
...So here I am with my $6.15 dividend, or, as Mr...
...He got to be a capitalist by getting a hot tip on Middle West Utilities, and he put his few hard-earned bucks into it, and the next thing he knew, as a result of exercising the brand-new virtue of sitting in a big leather chair in a broker's office, he was carrying the stuff out by the bucketful...
...A man on the screen made a speech, and this was the end of it: "In Germany_jaii4^Spah you would be forced to saCTifice.,^ffjptn^America...
...Whatever rot it distributes about service is everywhere and immediately recognized as rot...
...The old man was so bewildered by what was happening in the broker's office by that time that he wasn't satisfied with giving the happy pair a set of furniture...
...It's a holding company, and you will be interested to learn— I was fascinated, myself—that among its holdings are holding companies...
...Not in a pig's ear...
...Milton got a Gold Debenture...
...It didn't sit so good—not right on top of the pictures of men giving everything and getting nothing...
...But," he said, "why dojJ^tT'you look in your desk drawer and see if you have got any stocks or bonds...
...Morgenthau's sales talk for war bonds...
...The old man was another...
...They may be worth a little something...
...The sole purpose of Middle West is three dollars now, and four dollars 10 years from now...
...Maybe it was because they had just seen the first newsreels of the invasion, pictures of men, maybe of their own kids, going down with a belly full of lead on the Normandy beach...
...Little Milton's salary declined to...
Vol. 8 • July 1944 • No. 27
