INTERNATIONAL THRIFT DAY

Press, Volume LXXIX, Issue 24093, 1 November 1943, Page 6

INTERNATIONAL THRIFT DAY

APPEAL TO CURB SPENDING “By the end of the financial year it is hoped to pass the £20,000,000 mark with national savings,” said Mr T. N. Smallwood, chairman of the New Zealand National War Savings Committee, in a broadcast address last evening on World Thrift Day. These savings, said Mr Smallwood, are doing a double job, the first a national one. the second a personal one, a practical method of winning the peace after we have won the war. World Thrift Day taken with its full significance should be a reminder that a, life of thrift not only lays the foundation for human happiness, but makes for personal, national, and international brotherhood. The “squanderbug,”. continued Mr Smallwood, was a devastating creature that could be killed only by a regular spraying of thrift. The recognition that no man has ever achieve, success without thrift led to the establishment in 1924 of the institute representing 30 different countries, which has continued to associate the idea of personal thrift with that of international co-operation. These principles had been followed by New Zealanders who had supported the troops on the fighting fronts by never failing to oversubscribe its war loans, but this support would be nullified if New Zealanders continued their needless spending. In the Dominion’s war savings campaign 339,000 accounts had been opened, with deposits amounting to £11,400.000, which, with sales of national savings bonds of £7.500.000, gave a combined total of £18,900,000 to the end of September. The curbing of spending was one of the purposes of the activities of the New Zealand National War Savings Committee, and the 200 local committees associated with it.