The loans, drive by drive: First, Second, Third and Victory

1917–1919 · COUNTY FIGURES DUG WHOLE · MISHAWAKA SEPARATION NAMED AS GAP

How to read this article: the official state record of the loans — Walter S. Greenough's The War Purse of Indiana (Indiana Historical Commission, 1922) — tabulates by county, not by city. St. Joseph County's quota and result are dug whole below for each drive, with each drive's county chairman and its conflicts printed whole. Mishawaka's own separated quota and result appear in that record for the Fourth Loan only, which stands in the founding fragment. For the other four drives the Mishawaka separation is printed, drive by drive, as a named gap with the same settling source: the Mishawaka Enterprise's drive-week reporting, the only record that kept the city's canvass apart from the county's.

First Liberty Loan (campaign May 14–June 15, 1917): county chairman Rome C. Stephenson. The final state-headquarters bank report, as Greenough prints it, gives St. Joseph County a quota of $1,959,000 and subscriptions of $4,669,300. The contemporary press tells it differently, and the conflict stands whole: the Indianapolis Star's South Bend dispatch of June 15, 1917 reported the county over its quota by June 9, at the top of the percentage column on June 14 with 204 per cent subscribed, or $4,000,000, and claiming $4,250,000 on June 15 — "$2,391,000 more than its quota," which implies a quota of $1,859,000, not $1,959,000. Greenough himself warns that the First Loan's figures for Indiana's northern counties "must be considered as general in the extreme, rather than as specific": the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago's figures for the 68 northern counties (quota $36,000,000; subscriptions $33,366,100; allotments $23,344,100) and the state headquarters' corrected state totals (quota $40,709,000; subscriptions $42,024,550) were never reconciled county by county. Mishawaka separation: named gap — the Enterprise run, May–June 1917, is the settler.

Second Liberty Loan (October 1–27, 1917): county chairman Charles L. Zigler. The state committee's summary — minimum quota set at ten per cent of banking resources — gives St. Joseph County a quota of $2,600,000 and credited subscriptions of $2,320,050, a drive that on its face fell short. Zigler's own letter of April 20, 1922, from the First National Bank of South Bend, printed by Greenough, contests the face: bonds amounting to more than $1,000,000, subscribed by St. Joseph County citizens through the Federal Reserve Bank and Chicago banks, were never credited to the county, and the county's true total subscription was $3,653,400 — over quota. Both figures stand: the credited $2,320,050 of record and the chairman's $3,653,400 by his own accounting. Mishawaka separation: named gap — the Enterprise run, October 1917, is the settler.

Third Liberty Loan (April 1918): county chairman Arthur D. Baker. Greenough's table gives St. Joseph County a quota of $2,500,000 and subscriptions of $2,688,000 — 107 per cent. The narrative behind the table is a near thing: a week before the close the county had subscribed only 48 per cent of its allotment and was "causing the state officials not a little worry," until a big Liberty Loan meeting of the South Bend Rotary Club on May 1, 1918 put it among the "white" counties on the state map. The women's organization of the drive is in the record at county size: under county women's chairman Mrs. Victor F. Jones, the women's committee held a quota of $625,000 and returned subscriptions of $341,900 (report of Mrs. Alice Foster McCulloch, printed in Greenough). Mishawaka separation: named gap — the Enterprise run, April–May 1918, is the settler.

Fourth Liberty Loan (October 1918) — pointer only: Mishawaka's own drive stands whole in the founding fragment — Mishawaka and Penn Township quota $800,000, the manufacturers' committee under chairman George H. Williams, a canvass of "a million dollars and better" (South Bend News-Times, October 6, 1918) — and is not re-entered here. One county arrangement from Greenough touches the city by name and is entered for completeness: at a South Bend conference of September 13, 1918 on Mennonite and Amish scruples against buying bonds, it was arranged that members could instead place ten-year four per cent certificates of deposit at banks in South Bend, Mishawaka, Goshen and Elkhart, the depositaries in turn investing in Liberty bonds — Mishawaka's banks among the named depositaries of that accommodation.

Victory Loan (April 21–May 10, 1919): county chairman W. L. Chandler. The Seventh Federal Reserve District's final results (July 1919), as Greenough prints them, give St. Joseph County a quota of $3,900,000 and subscriptions of $4,416,550. The county finished late and knew it: St. Joseph was still among the large-population counties standing "black" on the loan map at the close of May 7, 1919 — Indiana's Welcome Home Day in Indianapolis — and reported completion of its allotment only on the afternoon of May 9, 1919. Mishawaka separation: named gap — the Enterprise run, April–May 1919, is the settler.

Sources:

1. Walter S. Greenough, The War Purse of Indiana; the Five Liberty Loans and War Savings and Thrift Campaigns in Indiana during the World War (Indiana Historical Commission, Indianapolis, 1922) — county tables and narratives for the First (ch. on the First Loan, incl. the Indianapolis Star dispatch of June 15, 1917), Second (incl. Charles L. Zigler's letter of April 20, 1922), Third (incl. Mrs. Alice Foster McCulloch's women's-committee report), Fourth (incl. the September 13, 1918 conference arrangement) and Victory loans.
2. Wars, Unrest & Disasters, founding fragment (Fourth Liberty Loan at Mishawaka size: quota $800,000; George H. Williams; South Bend News-Times, October 6, 1918) — pointer.