20 SEPTEMBER 1935, Page 18

THE ALBERTA EXPERIMENT

[To the Editor of Dm SPECTATOR.]

Slit,—Permit me to comment on your article in your issue of August 80th on the Alberta Experiment. You suggest that " monetary heresy " only manifests itself during depressions. This, in so far as it is true, is to be expected, but it is important to note ,that Major Douglas first published his analysis in 1919, not_a period of depression. But he, and he alone, accurately forecast the depression that followed. You seem to suggest some peculiarity on the part of farmers hi their search for remedies. Their anxiety is quite natural, as they, are the first to suffer, and often suffer most, .from a trade depression.

Though Bryan's remedy for the great depression of the 'nineties in the U.S.A. was not correct, his aim was correct in so far as he maintained that the crisis was financial, that is, due to a faulty monetary system. Bryan'spolitical failure proves nothing.

That " Social Credit " is a term applied to " a whole species of economic theories " is not true. Social Credit has never been applied to any monetary scheme but that of Major Douglas. It can be grasped by anyone with a modicum of economic knowledge. It is notorious that the public knows less about the complexities of our monetary system than they do about almost anything else. People with little or no knowledge of the present economic system obviously cannot be expected readily to grasp a scheme to remedy the faults in that system. :Social Credit in fact clainiS much more than what you state : it maintains that `the *publieis' not supplied with sufficient money to buy the "goods that

arc produced, apart entirely from what could be produced if industry were working to full capacity.

The question of where the money is to come from should be clear to .anyone who-has read Social Credit literature. It is fundamental to Social Credit not to incur debt. Whatever, the .total " cost " or amount of the National Dividend, it would be forthcoming under a Social Credit regime to the extent of the periodically estimated deficiency in purchasing power.

It is, of. course, most :natural that professional economists, should disapprove of anything coming to them as an un-: orthodox heresy, though a few of them have unwittingly admitted some of its claims. Your adumbration of the diffi- culties before the Alberta Provincial Government, of which Major Douglas has shown himself to be well aware, simply illustrates the resistance. to be expected from the present financial-political gOvernment. Of the world against any challenge to its 'inordinate power. No one imagines that any monetary reform In the' interests of consumers Will be introduced without the bitterest opposition' from • those quarters.—Yours faithfully, E. H: WILKINS, M.B., D.P.H.

Grafton; Vesey'llaad,10lde Green, Birmingham.

[On one qUestion of 'fact,: the term SOcial Credit is being. applied in Alberta to a. monetary scheme which, on Major Dniglas' adinisSion; not Major bouglas'.—En. The Spectator.]