"Conditions being pressing, Hamilton, in raising the necessary money, at first did not wait even for the approval of Congress, but went to the Bank of New York, which he had helped to found in 1784--the second bank in the United States and the first in New York City--to raise the first necessary money. At a meeting of the board of directors the new secretary of the treasury asked for a loan of $200,000. It was promptly and unanimously granted, the money to be advanced in five installments of $20,000 each and ten of $10,000 each, at 6 percent. On the following day Hamilton sent to the bank the first bond ever issued by the United States Treasury--a bond of $20,000--on receipt of which the money was paid over, so that the United States Treasury could show $20,000 cash on hand. In _The Investor's Magazine_, where these facts were recently brought to light, we are further told that the bond then issued is still carefully preserved by the bank which bought it. Quite unlike the now familiar Liberty Bonds of 1917 and 1918, it was executed with an ordinary quill pen, such as was in use in those times, and signed in ink by the secretary. With its seal somewhat yellow with age, the bond is still in an excellent state of preservation." [Illustration: Richards in the Phila. _North American_ Dropping the First Bomb] POPULARITY OF THE LIBERTY LOANS America's financial reputation stood at a fairly high level after the close of the Civil War. An era of unexampled production ensued for more than five decades, yet there were many timorous souls who were frightened at the thought of the United States being called upon to bear the burden of the colossal loans. The surprising feature of the Liberty Loans was the elasticity of the subscriptions. The subscribers for the first three loans numbered respectively 4,500,000, 10,020,000, 17,000,000; in every case the records show over subscription. A graphic statement of the nation's riches was presented by S. L. Frazier in the _Northwestern Banker_, Des Moines, October, 1918: "Our resources are well up toward $300,000,000,000, or about equal to the combined resources of France, England, and Germany. Our annual production is close to $50,000,000,00, amounts that stagger the imagination. Why it would take ten thousand years to count the dollars representing out country's resources counting one each second, and working day and night and Sundays." The New York _Tribune_ remarked, "If any learned professor of economics had predicted that on top of ten billions of government loans in one year a fourth Liberty Loan would reach nearly seven billions we know what we all would have thought." HOW EUROPE WILL PAY US BACK