| Subject: | [socialcredit] Messiah, Major, Money | | Date: | Wednesday, September 27, 2006 09:30:37 (-0700) | | From: | MODERATOR <socredus @.....com>
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F_A_I_R U_S_E C_L_A_I_M_E_D
Time, Monday, Sep. 2, 1935
http://jcgi.pathfinder.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,755018-1,00.html
Messiah, Major, Money
Canadians boast the greatest per capita wealth in the
world, $3,148. Even more blessed is the Province of
Alberta, with $3,518 per head. Yet Depression has hit
Alberta hard. For years its breezy, two-fisted,
hospitable citizens have been feeling poorer & poorer.
Galavanting to the polls last week, they raised merry
Empire hell by turning over their province to a
Bible-babbling high-school principal who promises to
crack open Alberta's frozen wealth and pay dividend"
of every at bona fide citizen a "monthly dividend" of
at least $25.
For 20 years pupils at the Crescent Heights High
School in Calgary have regarded bald,
square-shouldered Principal William Aberhart as a
good, inspiring man. They have seen his Prophetic
Bible Institute grow from milk & sandwich evenings at
his home into its present $65,000 plant & structure.
Seldom does Mr. Aberhart address Albertans without
first having them sing Our God, Our Help in Ages Past
and he always closes with a heartfelt prayer. To the
sturdy citizens of the Pioneer Province (with
Saskatchewan last to enter the Dominion of Canada) a
final seal of goodness was set on William Aberhart
last week by the fact that he himself did not stand
for election. "If the people want Social Credit," said
this studiously modest Messiah of $25 dividends,
"there will be room for me to fit in somewhere . . .
perhaps as Premier." To Canadians outside Alberta the
election seemed in advance a messy maze, with 240
candidates of four major and several minor parties
running for 63 seats and nothing certain except that
Premier Richard Gavin Reid of the United Farmers
Party, which came in on a landslide in 1921, would go
out into limbo as a victim of Depression. When returns
began to trickle in, when Montreal's rock-ribbed
conservative Place d'Armes — Canada's financial centre
— learned that 57 of the 63 seats in Alberta's
Legislature had been won by henchmen of Social
Crediteer Aberhart their astonishment was as vast as
their dismay. Only a very few Canadian tycoons took a
calmer off-the-record view. Sniffed one: "Social
credit is interesting and the sooner it fails in
Alberta the bigger the lesson to the world will be."
Social Credit Is What? Few Alberta voters seemed to
know much about Social Credit last week, merely having
faith in Messiah Aberhart's assurances that it is not
Communist, does not seek to abolish private property
or Capitalism and is a positive sock at "The Bankers."
That, plus the $25 monthly "dividend," would satisfy
most farmers, and Albertans are mostly farmers. On the
morning after election day they itched to know how
long it will take to set up Alberta's proposed "State
Credit House" and start paying dividends. Said William
Aberhart: "It will take at least 18 months."
What slim, ascetic Dr. Sigmund Freud is to
Psychoanalysis, bald, beefy Major Clifford Hugh
Douglas is to Social Credit. The Major, a Scottish
engineer, a graduate of Cambridge and a cousin of Lord
Weir, once worked for Westinghouse in India, now has
his swank abode in London and contrives to rent his
ideas for fat fees. In 1934 the Alberta Government
which was thrown out last week paid him $30,000 to go
to Calgary and expound views which they proceeded to
ignore but which fired High School Principal William
Aberhart and his Prophetic Bible Institute, spurred
them on to victory. Major Douglas last week was still
technically under contract to the Government of
Alberta and Messiah Aberhart has said, "Though we do
not see eye to eye in all respects, Major Douglas will
be invited to superintend in Alberta the inauguration
and administration of Social Credit with its three
basic principles."
One, Two, Three. Underlying Social Credit is the
attractive British doctrine that, after all, there is
nothing much wrong with the world. To blast
Depression, say Social Crediteers, is as simple as any
other sort of blasting once you know the trick. Major
Douglas supposedly knows it better than anyone else.
Possession of this Great Secret has somewhat oppressed
the Major, caused him to write : "We all know Mark
Twain's story of the man who was imprisoned for 20
years and then walked out, having just discovered the
door never had been locked, and some of us think it
funny. I consider it a somewhat boring statement of
fact. The world at large is in prison, shows many
symptoms of dying in prison, and there is nothing
whatever to prevent it from walking out."
The world, according to Major Douglas, is suffering
from the absurd delusion that it cannot buy and enjoy
all that it can make and wants to sell. Only lack of
money keeps people from buying all there is to sell,
and all that keeps people from having enough money (or
credit) is "The Bankers." A total solution, dazzling
in its drastic simplicity, is for the State to seize
control of money and credit from "The Bankers" and
diffuse purchasing power among all citizens. In
businesslike fashion Major Douglas starts by making a
survey to determine the total capital assets of any
area in which Social Credit is to be applied. To this
he adds the capital value of its citizens; he once
opined that an average U. S. citizen aged 25 might be
considered worth $50,000 to the community. The grand
total is the capital of the State. Against this prime
security, money is issued and credit established
without recourse to bankers. A sum is then paid each
year to every citizen by the State in cash or credit
and termed a dividend. Scotsmen have been assured by
Major Douglas that their dividend would amount to at
least $1,500 per family. As the people buy more &
more, the aggregate value of their purchases piles up,
thus increasing the State's total capital assets.
Major Douglas' followers make a great point of
insisting that the production of national wealth shall
at all times keep well ahead of dividend payments. To
spur such production, the State is to loan working
capital to industry without interest, this being easy
because bankers who would charge interest are to have
no finger in the pie. Their function will be to
receive deposits, keep them safely, charge a fee for
this service, pay no interest to depositors. To spur
production even more everything is to be sold at a
"just price." Under this proviso the buyer is to
obtain goods well below cost of production but the
seller is to make his usual profit because the State
will pay the difference in each transaction. This is
supposed to be to the State's advantage because it
keeps production of every sort humming with never a
let down, and therefore keeps adding to the State's
wealth against which money is constantly being issued.
Simple as one, two, three to Major Douglas are these
three basic elements of Social Credit: 1) "national
dividends for all"; 2) "socialization of money and
credit"; 3) "the just price." Christians Rejoice— In
the Empire no one was more glad at the results of
Alberta's election last week than the Very Rev.
Hewlett Johnson, Dean of Canterbury. He announced at
once that he will cross the Atlantic to see Social
Credit established and pray with Alberta's Aberhart
for its success. Threatening such success is mankind's
rooted conviction that money is good only so long as
everybody thinks it is. If sellers in Alberta prove
cheerfully ready to part with their goods in exchange
for what Messiah Aberhart and Major Douglas enable
Alberta buyers to offer, Social Credit will have
worked to that extent. The difficulty must remain of
putting other Canadians and finally the rest of the
world in the same frame of mind; otherwise Alberta
will be unable to buy necessities across her frontier
because outsiders will not take her money. Failing
this, Alberta will have to close her frontier as tight
as Russia's. Inside such an iron ring Social Credit
could at least be tested on a limited scale. In
Alberta it was freely predicted that Messiah Aberhart
will never be able to make Social Credit work unless
he makes himself a Dictator. Canadian jurists
meanwhile believed that Social Credit as proposed in
the Province of Alberta is "contrary to the North
America Act" which is the fundamental law of Canada's
Constitution. Being unconstitutional it should present
the Government of Alberta with insuperable problems
leading to a stalemate. Last week this thought kept
holders of Alberta bonds from dumping them overboard.
All Canada's great banks and nationally spread
industries held emergency directors' meetings. Rich
Albertans, as soon as election returns were known,
began rapidly transferring their funds from the
province to Montreal and Toronto.
After pious rejoicing at the Prophetic Bible Institute
and devout singing of Our God, Our Help in Ages Past,
Messiah Aberhart announced that he was ready to accept
the call to be Alberta's Premier, declared: "It has
been a revolution not of bullets but of ballots!"
Hoboes and roustabouts, who might think they can get
$25 in hard cash dividends per month by trekking into
Alberta, were served notice that the dividend will
only be paid to bona fide adult Albertans of some
years standing, and then not in cash but in credit.
Unemployed Albertans who refuse to work will receive
no dividends.
An economic pontiff, William Aberhart makes his
followers sign pledges that they accept Social Credit
"on faith," forbids them to debate or argue its
merits.
"They say what we propose to do is unconstitutional!"
he snorted. "Just because an old paper was signed in
the past doesn't say we can't do this. The British
North America Act is a fool act. We can do what we
want! . . . Social Credit is spreading like the
measles."
"Like Printing Money!" In Pasadena Novelist Upton
Sinclair was pained last week when asked if Social
Credit is not about the same as his "End Poverty in
California" on which he failed last year to get
himself elected Governor (TIME, Oct. 22).
"Social Credit fools many people," said onetime
Socialist Sinclair with a patient smirk. "Actually
it's just like printing money. When you give the
people more money to buy more products, as in the
Douglas plan, you are simply diluting money."
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Messiah, Major, Mo
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