DOUGLAS CREDIT SCHEME

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 75, Issue 205, 31 August 1932, Page 6

DOUGLAS CREDIT SCHEME

Sir, —Your correspondent ‘ ‘ A.C.W. ’s ’ ’ suggestion to your readers to re-read your leaders of the 12th and 13th are of interest to all who seek to lay the foundations for a new era in world finance. In perusing yours of the 12th I was impressed with the suggestion of compensation being paid to those who are detrimentally affected by tariff reductions. For, if it were just and ethical for a community to pay a bounty to the captains of industry, as wc are now doing by our tariffs, surely it would be as just and ethical to give a bounty to the consumers, who have by their industry and machinery created a surplus of commodities. It becomes a question who shall receive the benefits of under consumption, the great consuming public or the privileged few captains of industry? If wc accept the statement of Dr. Barraclough that 80 per cent, of the children treated for disease under the service of the Auckland City Mission were suffering from malnutrition, then the consuming public and the citizens of to-morrow, our children, is the answer. In your leader of the 13th you deal in a very trenchant manner as to the effect of gold as a basis for currency. Your leader shows very plainly how wo would cut the ground from under our own feet if we raised prices by such a method, as competitors in other countries would secure the trade we sought. It would seem as if we are tied to conference after conference, upon which wc must step, with, up to the present, no definite ol) jeer as to a permanent solution. The Commonwealth of Australia and our Dominion has been looking to Ottawa for a lead in a reformed currency, only to have hope deferred with an outline of palliative measures. Is it any wonder that the thoughtful citizen is becoming mdro alert and grasps at. any straw floating upon the ocean of thought? We now have three systems in our Dominion that offers a solution and the one most easily grasped on account of its erudite literature is the Douglas Social Credit Sys tem. Many writers have declared their hopefulness unless some way -were found for the toiler, whether of brain or brawn, to share in the plenitude produced by machinery. , During any process of production the amount of consumer-purchasing power paid out in the form of wages, salaries, dividends and profits is always much loss than has to be charged jnto the price of the articles produced. All thus paid out will not buy back the whole of the product at the price which must be charged to save the manufacturer from bankruptcy. Hence the accumulation of surplus stock.

Appeals arc being made all round to find work for the starving unemployed, while we encourage, by protective laws, the invention of machines to displace labour, and so increase unemployment and further tax those in steady or casual work to support the workless, though if possible, to employ them in avenues of trade or manual labour that renders their lives a struggle to exist, while food and clothing is wait ing in amplitude for the consumer to use, who, in the best of times, finds his wage or salary is not equal to the price of the product. Hero wo become tangled up with authorities and the average mind becomes confused, for as the M.D.’a are said to disagree, we find experts, so called, who sit at in ternational chambers of commeree meetings, stating, like M. Duchemin in Paris. December 5. 1930: “World pro duction far exceeds the purchasing power of the consumers.” This d«le gate is followed by Sir Arthur Bal four, who was convinced that most countries would have to face a reduction in wages, i.e., purchasing power. Sir Arthur further states that a shortage of gold causes a disastrous fall in n rices. But Sir A. M. Samuel assorts that the fall in prices causes a gold shortage.” It is quite evident that the great, from whom wo expect groat things or‘wisdom, suffer from poverty of mind upon such subjects as econo mics. George Hickling. to whom 1 am indebted for th* r.bove quotations in

“The Coming Crisis,” states that Britain and everybody in it is in the hands of the money-lender and the credit-monger; we are all being crucified on the cross of bankers’ credit, and the ultimate issue will be between the bankers’ credit combine and the British people. The present financial system elevates debt as something more sacred than human life and is, therefore, anti-Christ and must be fought by every true man.’’ Not that any true man wouM repudiate a just debt, but why ask him to make bricks without straw, i.e.. pay his debts with reduced wages or s’linry or uneinnloyment ? The Douglas Social Credit System is the alternative. It offers a practical, scientific, plan of financing consumption without creating debt or levying taxation.” J.H.F