CURRENCY REFORM

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22114, 18 November 1933, Page 9

CURRENCY REFORM

TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —Pressed to specify the page of • Art of Central Banking " where Hawtrey is made to say that “ Money is created .out of nothing,” your correspondent “Truth," confessedly unable to verify what is undoubtedly a deliberately conceived 'concoction, quotes entirely different utterances ox Hawtrey’s, and at the same time applies fanciful interpretations’ to 'them. Whatever Hawtrey has •aid—and he has said much —he on no single occasion used the words attributed to him by “Truth," neither has he in *ny way, or at any time, given any indication of support to the policy of rapine known as Social Credit. Hawtrey in the debate with Douglas found certain statements of the latter with which he could agree, but these were cunningly culled by the gallant major from generally expressed opinion in all circles of economic thought, and malevolently used in order to make a stalking-horse of his opponent. The really important point about that debate is not Mr ■ Hawtrey’s unimportant generous concessions, but the stubborn rejection after hours of futile discussion of the weird phantasy conjured up by Major Douglas. Deducing support for Major-Douglas from utterances of recognised economists has long been an utterly unfair procedure .by sorcerers and sybils alike who have enrolled themselves under his banner, but it is surely strange that convulsive attempts to support should be drawn from a field in which, to quote the New Age, “ the economists’ ■pecial knowledge is worthless ” owing to the whole edifice of their knowledge being “erected on a foundation of financial principles, which, having been laid down bb-j, axioms, were never investigated.” Why, : then, continually quote them? Why •eek the living among the dead? Is it because there exists in Douglas circles an uncomfortable divination that, after all, there is much to be said for the teaching of our despised economists, who, whilst, failing complete agreement at times among themselves, are unanimously agreed on one point, and that is that the Douglas scheme is at once unsound and utterly impracticable, as it indeed is. In fact, Professor Murphy, of Wellington, truly portrays it as “ a tissue of lies and absurdities.", ft is quite obvious that the ©ne-time love-knit household of Social Credit is being undermined. The New Age is concerned at uninstructed followers attempting to explain the mystic A plus B theorem at street corners, and roundly condemns the settled policy hitherto of members of the cult to claim as supporters all and sundry who may venture reasonable criticism of our existing monetary system. Again, the New Age has written learnedly on " The A B C of Social Credit,” Which production the New Economics completely repudiates. Division of opinion is manifest between the New Era and New Economics, and in turn a Douglas supporter, engaged in a debate in Australia, practically repudiated the New Era and the major. He is slowly being forced to realise that his incoherent preed is faced by a public opinion that is determined, not by quantitative but qualitative forces, and stubbornly refuses to believe that at any moment every principle of life upon which we have placed our dependence in the past is apt to be proved untrue, and that an allegedly _ new principle yet undeveloped will magically take the place of tested truths. His tune therefore changes. “The people must be won emotionally," on undemonstrable pretensions and continuous hopes emanating from Major Douglas.—l am, etc., Dunedin, November 16. Critic.