ALBERTA'S EXPERIMENT

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 18922, 25 January 1936, Page 15

ALBERTA'S EXPERIMENT

(To the Editor of the Herald.)

,Si r) —In your issue of Friday you quote Mr. i. T. Bell, lato manager in chief of Ontario branches of the Canadian Bank of Commerce, as saying :-

"Banking is a- matter of evolution ami changes are bound to come." We are in the fifth year of acute depression. May I ask what efforts to cure the evil of poverty amidst plenty the banking system has so far evolved? And let me remind the banking system that this power age of machinery to displace labour has been evolving with increasing rapidity for tlie past 20 years. Is it not time the banks endeavoured to evolve a plan to meet present needs? Further, Mr. Bell states: "I do not think that social credit is a practical measure. It is based on the wrong conception that everybody is entitled to share in the credit of a country whether lie has earned it or not." The fundamental basis of Douglas Social Credit is tliat no private institution should lTave the control of credit to its own persona! gain, but that this control must be in the hands of an economic board representative of farmers, industrialists, Parliament, bankers and labour, without political interference, just as our Supreme Court judges are. Naturally Mr. Bell, as the representative of the present monetary system, objects to Douglas Social Credit. Mr. Bell states that "Alberta has done nothing yet in the direction of paying) to every person over 21 years of age the sum of £5 per month."' The Alberta elections took place last August, just five months ago, and is having the very necessary and complete census taken to ascertain who, of the Alberta population, are entitled to the, national dividend. Obviously people who have crowded into Alberta since August and have in consequence done nothing to help build up Alberta's national assets cannot expect to be included. This census-taking usually, in any country, occupies several months before returns are published. Next Mr. Aberhart has engaged Mr. Magor, a Montreal actuary, to report upon the province's present financial position in order to have the fullest information ready for Major Douglas on his arrival this month :o prepare his scheme for Alberta. This data will enable the values of all the assets and debits of Alberta to be set forth in. order to show the preponderating value of assets over and above the debits and thus give the basis upon which the national dividend can be given. Mr. Bell and other supporters of the present monetary system surely must admit that the Alberta Government, less than six months old. is evolving! a new monetary system, while after five, years the present banking system has done nothing to improve the position of the mass of people—rich and poor —who are anxiously waiting for the reform in the monetary system that the world acknowledges to lie absolutely necessary. The present system in this power age will only condemn more and more millions of people to increasing poverty, and under present conditions, the support of the increasing numbers of poor people will become a heavily increasing tax upon the rapidly diminishing number of those who may still liave incomes and salaries. —Yours, etc., C. TILLKARD NATUSCH.