Attack!

Treasury Secretary Morgenthau and his staff sprang the greatest assault in history on the U.S. pocketbook. The objective: $13 billion in War Bonds in three weeks.

The attack got off to a good start. In the opening days the huge subscriptions rolled in: from insurance companies (Prudential Life, $400 million), savings banks (Manhattan's Bowery Savings Bank, $60 million) and states (Illinois, $15 million).

> From Cleveland came word of the big gest individual bond buyer of World War II: a ruddy, superquiet stock speculator named Harry William Hosford, who had cleaned up in both the bull market of the early '20s and the bear market of the early '30s. Once a cabin boy on Great Lakes steamers, Harry Hosford now unostentatiously bought in one whack $21,-000,000 worth of bonds. (Later he disclosed he had bought $11,000,000 in bonds last fall.) Cleveland newspapers had never before printed Harry Hosford's picture, had not mentioned his name in 10 years.

> In Manhattan, ruddy, quiet, cigar-smoking Julius Klorfein, who had already bought $2,735,000 in bonds, including $1,000,000 worth for Jack Benny's old violin (TIME, March 8), bought at auction the autographed galley proofs of Wendell Willkie's new book, One World, for $100,000. A Detroit policeman, making house-to-house calls, came away from one home with a $100,000 subscription. The home owner: Speedboat Manufacturer Gar Wood.

> In Hartford, insurance companies subscribed $200,000,000 for 150 tickets to Information, Please. Plain citizens brought in an additional $2,300,000.

> In Miami, at a street auction, the scarf of a sailor rescued after an Atlantic torpedoing brought $2,000. At a Chicago auction, a bag of dog food brought $5,000.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.