Any Bonds Today?

Transcribed for the Treasury Department

Uncle Sam had to take out a loan in order to be able pay for the Second World War. Several Loans in fact.

The Treasury Department used the technique of Bond Drives on different occasions during the War, with each drive having a certain goal of money to be raised, and each time the goal was surpassed. Eventually $185.7 billion dollars were raised from 85 million Americans.

The Bond drives themselves were very successful, but the call for investment was constant, on all mass media platforms. Workers were encouraged to invest 10% of their earnings in bonds. For those with lower incomes and children there were War Stamps available; the Stamps could be purchased for as little as 10 cents apiece and collected in a special album, when the album was full it could be traded for a Series E Bond.

The entertainment industry was a large part of the bond Drives. The Treasury Department sponsored several high quality radio programs to promote the bonds.

Any Bonds Today? featured a short Patriotic sketch along with a Patriotic Song on each 15 minute program. The sketches could be comedy buying her first War Stamps; or movingly dramatic, like the ghostly Henry Fonda in "The Man from Cemetery Ridge" or Fay Wray as the Goddess of Liberty in "The Last Boat".

For more WWII-era bond-sales related shows, see also: Any Bonds Today?, Crisis in War Town, Four for the Fifth, Guest Star Radio, Keep Em Rollin, Music for Millions, New World A-Coming, Over Here, These are Our Men, Treasury Salute, and Treasury Star Parade.

See also: More Patriotic Old Time Radio Collections