MONETARY REFORM

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22723, 8 November 1935, Page 4

MONETARY REFORM

TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —I have read the long and earnest letter from Mr J. B. Birtles in your issue of the 7th inst., and am impressed with its obvious sincerity. Mr Birtles knows more about Douglas Social Credit than I do, and admits that the terms “Social Credit ” are misleading to those who think .of money or gold as the only standard of value. But were this so, he says, ‘ it is apparent to all who know that whereas the credit system of stock firms, to give it its due, was in earlier days useful in the settlement of the land . . . the competitive system has distorted the credit of stock firms.” Is it the competitive system of one firm with another for business, or is it the competitive system of one farmer with another for land to which Mr Birtles refers _ here? I have no right to interfere in any way with Mr Birtles or anyone else in presenting a case for obtaining credit from social credit, stock, or station agencies, or pawn shops commonly known as “ Mine Uncle.” I have been reared in a school with the maxim on its copy books that_ those that went borrowing went sorrowing, and I have learned to avoid credit which I could easily obtain, although I have had to borrow pretty largely in my time, and been lucky enough to keep the bailiffs out. I am one of that now almost obsolete class which thinks of money or gold as the only standard measure of value, and I am prepared to defend that .thought in the public press when it is challenged, but I have no talent foi; making a display of oratorical'fireworks on a public plat-, form. In measurement of length, volume, and capacity we have the metric system as well as the British system, but in the measure of value gold is the standard of value of present day civilisation, and the credit that is honestly based on that standard is. I think, more secure than any that could be based on Major Douglas, although I neither know him nor bis plans. I saw him once, but as he was not in his uniform he seemed to me to be just a plain man like myself—a few years younger, perhaps, and, I suppose, for that reason he knew more. —I am, etc., Measure of Value.