SOCIAL CREDIT

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 18503, 15 September 1934, Page 2

SOCIAL CREDIT

(To the Editor of the Herald.) pH-—Your correspondent “Onlooker” want ins; to have a gnaw at tin' above bone musr r»e careful, or lie will get it in his throat. _ It is diHictill to know -whether he is condemning our present paper currency or tlie proposed social credit. His reference to China really proves nothing. The fact that the conditions in .('••’linn diil not improve when the eurivnev was changed is proof that the disease was something far deeper rooted than currency. Social credit oxpiesses tlie facts oE industry, not conj ;ols them. If there is nothing to .distribute social credit cannot distribute it. It cannot make wealth out id famine, anarchy and civil war. On ,1:1m other hand, under the strong government of Kublai Khan, with an ".bas'd,unco of good things to distribute, l he social credit system of the Khan, according to Marco i’olo, apparently did distribute them and the people were .prosperous. Therefore, then, .social credit is not an untried theory, but a proven fact. “Onlooker” is more unfortunate when lie comes to deal with assignats. These have nothing to do with Law at all. 1 will quote from Mignct’s History of the Fiench Revolution, published in 1824, therefore he cannot be accused of having Douglas leanings. Mirabeau, speaking, before the assignats were' .issued, in favor of a tax, of a fourth of the revenue to bo paid at once, said: “Note this extraordinary subsidy, and may it prove sufficient. Vote it, for ,jc you have doubts respecting the means, you have none respecting the want, and our inability to supply it.” And ' fi na 11 y, “But now bankruptcy, hideous bankruptcy, is there. It threatens to consume you, your properties, your honor, and yet you deliberate.” Such was the condition of the .French finances. Regarding the assignats Mignet says “the invention was of great utility to the revolution,” .and again, after describing the origin, “such was the origin of this paper money issued under so much necessity, and with so much prudence, which enabled the revolution to accomplish such great things and which was 'brought into discredit by causes, that 'belonged loss to its nature than the subsequent, use made of it.” These assignats were practically the only internal currency in use in France dur'iag the revolutionary period, and despite the Hooding of France with faked ones, by England and the other Allied powers, with the object of bringing them into disrepute, they continued to function as currency. But to blame this money for the miseries of the Mine js about as 'sensible as to blame the .spots for the fever. I flunk some of the 400 families who are drawing relief rations from the depot would not turn their noses up at some currency of this description, which would enable them to enjoy some of the good things which are now going to waste all around them. This would be .social credit.—Yours, etc., • 0.P.11.