Gifts for Uncle Sam

Now that Americans had something to work for and give for, they worked and gave as they had in pioneer days when the wilderness tried to swallow them up, in Civil War days when the Union would have fallen apart without them. Thousands rushed to enlist (see p. 8). Other thousands helped in other ways: > At the Treasury in Washington so many gifts of money arrived that clerks worked overtime to acknowledge them, had no time left to tot them up. One man sent $100 he had won at a movie bank night. A hairdresser sent an entire day's receipts: $200. Most frequent message: "Merry Christmas to Uncle Sam." > Defense-bond sales jumped as much as 8,691% in one city, soon forced some post offices and banks to turn customers away until more bonds could be printed (see p.53).

> The "Torpedo" game, started by a Buffalo aircraft engineer, caught on quickly. Its rules: for every enemy battleship sunk by the U.S., the player buys $5 worth of defense stamps, for an airplane carrier $4, cruiser $3, destroyer $2, submarine $1, any other ship 50-c-.

> The Marshall (Tex.) Penny-a-Plane Club,* whose 447 members pledged a penny for every Axis plane destroyed by U.S. forces, promptly sent $183,27 to Washington for the 41 Japanese planes downed at Pearl Harbor.

> In Winsted, Conn., citizens started a fund to replace the sunken battleship Arizona.

> In Charleston, W.Va., the United Mine Workers contributed $2,282 collected as fines from members who called an unauthorized coal strike last April.

> In Bradley, Ill., 1,100 A.F. of L. workers at the David Bradley Manufacturing Works voted to work an extra day every week during the war, give the day's pay to the Government.

> Almost too many to count were the factory forces which worked last Sunday and sent their pay checks to Washington.

One of the biggest: the Wright Aeronautical Corp. at Cincinnati, whose payroll for the day (8,500 employes at double time) was more than $100,000.

* Patterned after the Argentine Fellowship of the Bellows, which has bought planes for the R.A.F., and a New York City Penny-a-Plane group formed to send relief to R.A.F. families.

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