By C.H.Douglas
A
Speech given at Oslo on February 14, 1935, to H. M. The King of
Norway, H.E. The British Minister,
The President, and Members of
the Oslo Merchants Club
Your
majesty, Mr. President, Members and Guests of the Handelsstands
Forening, Oslo : May I first of all thank you for your very kind
reception to-night and at the same time take this opportunity of
thanking Norway, so far as I have met it, for the exceptionally kind
reception which it has given me.
If anything could add to the
sense of responsibility which I have in speaking before so
distinguished an audience, it would be the necessity of repaying that
kindness by saying nothing to you which I, at any rate, do not
believe myself.
Now there is, of course, in the world a good deal
of discussion in regard to what we shall call the crisis, matters of
unemployment, the economic depression and other names we give to our
present state of affairs. I feel, myself, having been in close
contact with this matter for the past fourteen or fifteen years, that
a great deal of misunderstanding which surrounds the various
proposals made for dealing with this crisis arises from an
unfamiliarity with the actual system, and more particularly the
monetary system, under which we live at the present time.
I feel
confident that the objections put forward to certain remedial
proposals are honest objections, but that they are based, not so much
on anything which is contained in those proposals, as on an honest
misunderstanding of what really in the world at the present time.
Therefore I am going to ask you to bear with me while I go over
certain features of the existing state of affairs and the
misunderstandings which are connected with it.
It is said that
where six economists are gathered together there are seven opinions.
That is, to some extent, the situation, I think, all over the world.
The only alternative to agreeing that this is so would be to assume
that nine people out of ten are dishonest, an assumption which I
certainly am not willing to accept.
The situation is complicated
by a large number of phrases - I don't know whether you have them in
Norwegian but we have them in English - but they are misleading. For
instance, we hear, or we did hear in the happy days gone by, that,
let us say, Mr. Jones was "making money." Mr. Jones was a
bootmaker or a brewer, or something of that kind, or a manufacturer
of motor cars.
How
Money is Made
Now the first
thing I think that we have to recognise - a thing which is quite
incontestable - is that there are only three classes of people in the
world who make money, in any literal sense of the word.
In Great
Britain, for example, there is the Master of His Majesty's Mint, who
makes metal coinage, and, after a long and honourable career, he
generally gets a little bit of red ribbon - a Knight Commandership of
the Bath - and a good salary.
There is the gentleman who sets up
a little plant of his own and either makes counterfeit coins or
writes very delicately executed signatures on pieces of special
paper. He "makes" money, but he gets as a reward fifteen
years imprisonment.
There is the third who, in regard to this
matter, is much less advertised and much more retiring, and that is
the banker, and it is he, in the literal sense of the word, who makes
over 90 per cent. of the actual money that we use.
When I say
"makes it" I mean exactly what I am saying ; he makes it in
exactly the same sense that the brickmaker makes bricks, and not in
the sense that Mr. Jones makes money ; Mr. Jones only gets it from
somebody else, but the banker makes it.
The method by which the
banker makes money is ingenious, and consists very largely of
bookkeeping.
There is not, I think, in well-informed circles
really any discussion in regard to the matter itself.
Chairmen of
some of the big English banks still deny that bankers make money in
the sense that I mean, but I don't think anybody pays much attention
to them.
The "Encyclopedia Britannica" which most
people accept as a fairly sound and reputable authority, states
that
"bankers create the
means of payment out of nothing".
The Chairman of the Midland Bank, the Right Honourable Reginald
McKenna, put the matter as shortly as I think it can be put when he
said that every bank loan creates a
deposit , the repayment of every bank loan destroys a deposit; the
purchase of a security by a bank creates a deposit and the sale of a
security by a bank destroys a deposit.
There you have, in as short a compass as possible, a quite
undeniable statement of where money comes from.
All but 0.7 of
one per cent. (or over 99per cent.), in Great Britain at any rate, of
the money transactions - without which none of us under modern
conditions could exist - are in the form of "bank credit",
which is actually manufactured by the banking system and is claimed
by the banking system as its own property.
That is undeniably
because the banking system lends this money (it does not give it), a
condition of affairs which will be accepted by anybody as sufficient
proof of a claim to ownership.
(1) Over against that, you have the
manufacturer of real wealth, by which I mean things which money will
buy, clothes, houses, motor cars, the things that go to raise the
physical standard of living, and embroider our civilisation.
We
realise, I suppose, without having it emphasised too much, that the
possession of money is a claim upon real wealth : some of us who have
not gone into these matters for any length of time are still
hypnotised into thinking that money is real wealth.
I am sure, in
an audience of this calibre, it is not necessary to emphasise this :
money is not real wealth.
Now classical economics is based
unquestionably, in my opinion, on "barter" economics, and
this is where the classical economics parts with what we are
beginning to call the new and, in my opinion, the real economics.
Money
now as a Means of Distribution
The
classical economics works on the assumption that the nature of money
is that it is a medium of exchange. That idea proceeds from a state
of affairs which was, at any rate broadly speaking, true perhaps 200
years ago. It was the assumption that in some sense or other, from
the highest to the lowest, everybody worked, and that they exchanged
or bartered the fruits of their work with each other through the
medium of money, so far as it was used.
The idea was that you had
a constant exchange of goods and services between, let us say, A, B
and C; and the whole of the classical economics is really based upon
that idea, that we are all of us producers and consumers in the
economic sense, and that the function of money is to exchange between
ourselves the goods and services which each of us produces.
Whatever
may at one time have been the truth of this, it is, of course,
patently not true now.
The
modern economic production system is not a system of individual
production and exchange of production between individuals. It is more
and more the synthetic assembly, in a central pool, of wealth
consisting of goods and services which are preponderantly due to the
use of power, to modern scientific processes and all sorts of
organisations and other constituent contributions of each one of us
which will occur to you.
The problem is not to exchange the
constituent contributions of each one of us to that central pool,
because in fact our contribution to that central pool, in the
ordinary sense of tangible economic things, is becoming smaller and
smaller.
The correct picture - the incontestably exact picture of
the modern production system - is, to my mind, based upon a kind of
typewriter with a decreasing number of operators who are tapping the
keys, and, by tapping these keys, fewer and fewer operators can
produce all that we require.
Through
the power of the sun (oil power, steam power and so forth consist of
what is generalised as solar energy) the so-called curse of Adam is
being transferred from the backs of men to machines, so that a small
number of persons operating on this machine of industrial
"production", can produce all that is required for the use
of the population.
And the
problem is not to exchange between the number of the population, who
are less and less required to push keys, but it is to draw from this
central pool of wealth by means of what can be visualised as a ticket
system.
And the modern money system is in fact losing almost
daily its aspect, however much it may at one time have been true, of
a medium of exchange, and becoming more and more a ticket system by
which people, who are not exchanging their production, can draw from
that central pool of wealth.
That I believe at bottom to be the
fundamental cleavage between, let us say, my own view and those who
think with me, and the school of classical economics.
Price
System Not Self Regulating
Now
when it was true that money was a medium of exchange and that
everyone was more or less employed in a productive system, it was
quite obviously true that the price system was what is called
self-liquidating.
I must ask you to allow me to elaborate this a
little, as it is very vital.
It is perfectly obvious that if I
make a pair of shoes and charge Kr.10 for them, the amount which you
have given for those shoes has in a sense been distributed; it has
come to me as an individual and I am able to spend that Kr.10 on
buying ten kroners' worth of things, say five kroners' worth of
leather and five kroners' worth of bread.
The fact that the system
is self-liquidating, that it will go on working more or less
indefinitely is self-evident; and this is the assumption of the
classical economists, one to which they adhere strenuously for
reasons which I shall want to touch on.
It is not too much to say
that the whole economic and financial system in its present form
stands or falls by the contention that the present price system is
self-liquidating, that is to say, that no matter what price is
charged for an article, there is always sufficient money distributed
through the production of that or other articles to buy the article
and therefore there is nothing inherent in the system, so far as the
price system is concerned, to prevent the process going on
indefinitely.
Now I am not going into the analytical proofs of the
fact that this belief is not true, although rigid proofs to this
effect exist, but I will ask you to consider the quite indisputable
inductive proofs.
I will ask you to consider what you see in the
world, which leads you to assume that the price system is not
self-liquidating.
There is, of course, that somewhat overworked
phrase, the paradox of "Poverty amidst Plenty."
In his
lecture here in Oslo the other day, the Dean of Canterbury spoke of
the enormous quantities of valuable foodstuffs, production and so
forth, for which there is everywhere a great demand and for which
there is no purchasing power.
There are many instances of that
kind. Some of them are less obvious than the mere brutal destruction
of products.
The fact that half the factories are semi-employed
and that farms are decreasing their production, that in America the
supply of cotton on account of so-called over-production is being
restricted, would in itself suggest that there is not sufficient
purchasing power to buy the goods which are for sale, at the prices
at which the are for sale.
But what is said by the classical
economists, is that there are times in which such a state of affairs
exists, but that these times are only temporary.
There are times
which we call depression; but it is just as true, they say, that in
times of boom there is more money than is required for the purchase
of goods, as that in times of depression there is less money, and
that on the average the system is perfectly automatic and
self-liquidating.
The
Phenomenal Increase in Debt
Now
there is one proof I think - one inductive proof - which puts this
question beyond any discussion whatever and that is the question of
rise of debt.
It must, I think, be quite obvious to anybody that,
if the world as a whole is consistently getting further and further
into debt, it is not, as the ordinary business man would say, paying
its way, and if it is not paying its way it is quite obvious that the
price system demands of it more purchasing power than is available.
The public is paying all it can, and buying what it can of the
total production.
The failure to pay more is therefore forcing
the destruction of some of it and at the same time it is piling up
debt, which means that, to be self-liquidating, the purchasing public
ought to pay a great deal more than it is in fact paying.
If I as
an individual require, let us say, 10,000 kroners' worth of goods per
annum, and , while getting that 10,000 kroners' worth of goods per
annum, I get into debt to the extent of 10,000 kroner per annum, then
it is quite obvious that the real price which I ought to be paying -
in order that the system could go on for ever - is Kr.20,000 for what
I am getting for Kr. 10,000 and borrowing Kr. 10,000 to pay in
addition.
If you are running up a debt continuously you are not
paying your way.
The real price that you are being asked to pay
for the things you use in your daily life is what you do in fact pay,
plus 'What the system says you ought to pay'; and 'what you ought to
pay is the debt'.
In the year 1694 the Bank of England was formed
in Great Britain, and I am very sorry to say that there are grave
suspicions that the Bank of England has a great deal to do
fundamentally with the present state of affairs, and that the system
that was unfortunately inaugurated at the time of the founding of the
Bank of England has probably more to do with the present crisis than
any other single factor.
In the 17th.century, that is to say, in
the century in which the Bank of England was founded, the world debt
- and we have pretty accurate figures with regard to these matters -
increased 47%.
The bank of England was founded only at the end of
the 17th. century.
By the end of the 18th. century the world debt
had increased by 466 per cent., and by the end of the 19th.century
the world debt, public and private, had increased by 12,000 per
cent.; and, according to some very exact calculations which have been
carried out by a quite irreproachable professor of industrial
engineering of Columbia University, Professor Rautenstrauch, taking
the year 1800 as the origin and taking one hundred years as the unit,
the world debt is now increasing as the fourth power of time, that is
to say, not increasing directly as time goes on, not as the square of
time and not of the cube of time, but as the fourth power of time !
And that is in spite of the numerous repudiations of debt, the
writing down of debts which takes place with every bankruptcy, and
other methods used to write off debts and start again.
That to my
mind, and to anybody who will appreciate what its real meaning is, is
an indisputable proof that the present financial price system is not
merely not self-liquidating, but is decreasingly self-liquidating.
We also know that in fact, in those times of boom which are
referred to by economists as proving that it is self-liquidating, the
rate of increase of debt is greater than in times of depression.
So
that in reality, even in times of boom, there is no justification for
saying that at any time of the trade cycle, the price system is
self-liquidating.
Now that matter is very important indeed.
When
I was in Australia last year on a short visit to most of the
Australian States, you could go into any bank in Australia and they
would give you Kr.4 worth of very nicely bound books to prove that
anything I said on this subject was nonsense.
The arguments used
to emphasise the self-liquidating theory were, some of them, so
childish and absurd that they were rapidly withdrawn. Of course it
might be asked Why this resistance to the idea that the price system
is not self-liquidating ?
And if it can be proved, as it can be
proved, that it is not self-liquidating, why not accept the fact and
act upon it ?
The answer is twofold. The first reason is that, if
it is true that there is always extant sufficient purchasing power to
buy goods, then it must be true that the poor are poor because the
rich are rich, and it follows that the correct method of dealing with
the present situation is to tax the rich in order that the money be
given to the poor.
Now I am not familiar with, and I should not,
of course, presume to comment upon, the public finances of Norway,
but, so far as Great Britain is concerned - taxation is , I think,
twice as heavy as that in any other country in the world - more than
half of its taxation is in connection with what are called national
debts, war loans, consols and things of that kind.
If you
investigate the facts as to the ownership of these world debts and
war loans you will find them held preponderantly by large financial
institutions. You have at once a very good business reason for large
quantities of taxation it half of it goes to the service of national
loans which are held by large financial institutions.
That, as an
ordinary business proposition, is obvious. It is still more obvious
when you consider that these debts were actually created in the first
place by financial institutions, by lending of that money to
governments, and the receiving in return of large blocks of national
securities which the financial institutions receive for nothing.
How
the Bank pays for Gold
That may
seem to be a rather startling statement, but you can understand it
best if you consider the purchases of gold by the Bank of England.
The Bank of England goes into the bullion market and buys what is
called a million pounds worth of gold.
It takes the gold and
writes a cheque against itself.
That
cheque fundamentally, apart from the cost of keeping clerks, etc.,
costs exactly the paper and in with which it is written.
This
is accepted as payment by the persons who sell the gold, not because
it represents the value of the gold but because, when that cheque is
paid into another bank account in the country, it can be drawn upon
as payment for goods and services supplied by the rest of the country
so that, so far as the Bank of England is concerned, it is merely
equivalent to writing figures on a piece of paper.
That is true
also in regard to the creation of national debt, and the process is
not dissimilar.
The Bank of England gets the gold, but the
industrial system really makes the payments in goods and services.
In
the case of national debts, the banks get the securities and the
country produces the wealth on which they are a claim.
In
addition to that you have the fact that there is always a deficit of
available purchasing power.
This deficit has to be met to a
greater or less extent, so that the process may go on, and the making
up of the deficit by the creation of loans is, or course, the chief
business of the banking system.
It
is the business by which, ultimately, the whole of every country -
its industries, its loans, its institutions - (I am endeavouring to
use the most conservative phrases) - must mathematically go into the
control of the financial institutions.
This
is so, since they alone have the possibility of meeting these
deficits in purchasing power, which sooner or later must occur in
every business relationship.
The
Monopoly of Credit
That is the
position which exists at the present time - and I have dwelt on it to
some considerable extent, because if I have made it clear, and I
realise that the picture is not an easy one to draw and must be
particularly difficult to apprehend when you hear it in a foreign
language, you will realise that this situation has two sides.
And
it is very difficult indeed to say which is the more important.
It
has first the technical side, where you have a system which is
operating badly and which under present conditions must continue to
operate even more badly.
Then, secondly, you have an enormous
vested interest in possession of the most powerful monopoly that the
whole history of the world has ever known - the monopoly of
credit.
That is, the monopoly of the creation of, and dealing in
money - a monopoly against which any other monopoly pales into
insignificance - and it is determined to use every weapon to retain
this monopoly.
In the modern world it is possible to do without
almost any single material thing.
It is possible to do without
pepper; possible to do without a considerable number of things, but
it is practically impossible for any of us to go through twenty-four
hours without either money or "credit" which attaches to
the belief that we shall have money available sooner or later.
The
monopoly of the control of the money system is the great over-riding
monopoly of the world as it is worked at the present time. And, if
you just realise - as you will realise in dealing with this problem -
that it is not merely an economic or mathematical side, but is also a
side which penetrates into the very
highest politics.
I will at once
leave that political side, to which, however, I wanted merely to
refer.
May I take you to the obvious mathematical or mechanical
side? To put it very shortly, the core of the defect in this price
and money system under which we operate at the present time is that
it cannot, without the help of the banks, liquidate "costs"
as they are produced.
To put it another way, it is under an
inevitable necessity of piling up debt at an increasing rate.
The
perfectly simple cure for that situation is to create money at the
rate at which debt is created.
And taking the very simple
statement of Mr. McKenna, that every loan creates a deposit, it is
quite obvious that, if you create money even at the astronomical rate
at which debts are being created, you can apply the money so created
to the liquidation of the debt, and both money and the debt will go
out of existence at the same time.
In that way the process will,
as it has not for many hundreds of years past, become a
self-liquidating process which can be carried on indefinitely.
Definition
of Inflation
Now there are two
ways by which purchasing power can be increased. In Norway, not very
far from both Russia and Germany, I feel that the idea of what is
called inflation is one which could very easily have great terrors
for you.
This word inflation is one which is always raised by
bankers and those whose interests are with bankers, when any question
of modification to the system is raised. It is a kind of bogey-bogey,
which unfortunately at once frightens everybody, and there has been
good reason why they should be frightened.
The first thing to
realise is the true meaning of inflation.
Inflation is not an
increase of purchasing power, it is an increase in the number or
amount of money tokens, whether paper or otherwise, accompanied by an
increase in price, so that both the money-to-spend side is, in
figures, raised and the price side is also, in figures, raised. That
is true inflation.
It is simply a multiplication of figures
without altering the relation between money-to-spend and price, and
of course, is a tax on savings.
An increase of money-to-spend is
not inflation unless it raises prices.
On the other hand, with a
given amount of money-to-spend; a given total of money tokens and a
fall in prices there is an increase in purchasing power.
You can
get an increase of purchasing power by one of two methods.
You
can either keep prices constant and raise the quantity of money
tokens, assuming that is possible to do so, or you can keep the money
tokens constant and lower prices ; or, of course, you can do both of
them at the same time.
Now, broadly speaking, what we are aiming
at in the Social Credit Movement is, in the first place, simply an
increase in purchasing power so that the money system shall become
self-liquidating.
And, secondly, we are aiming to meet that
condition, at which I just hinted at the beginning of my talk, that
fewer, and fewer operators are required to tap the machines of
industrial production.
Here in Norway, as elsewhere, you are
familiar with the picture of the present crisis as a crisis of
unemployment.
Now that is a phrase of the same nature as that "Mr.
Jones is making money." It gives a delusive picture of what is
going on.
You have to recognise that some of the best brains
(scientists and others) have for 180 years or more been endeavouring
to put the world out of work - and they have succeeded.
Production,
industrial production, is in itself a misuse of terms: there is, to
be exact, no such thing as production.
The law of the
conservation of energy and matter prohibits the use of the word
production in any exact sense in that connection.
What you do is
change matter from a form in which it is not useful to human beings
into a form in which it is useful and that transformation always
requires power.
Until 150 years ago we provided that power by
eating as many meals as we could get and by employing the power of
the muscles of our arms.
When the first steam engine was made
that process became obsolete.
The power which is required for this
transformation of matter from one form into another is now supplied
from the sun more directly and in the form of water power, driving
water-turbines, dynamos, motors of workshops, and so on.
Let me
give you one instance in my own experience.
In 1921 the American
Buick car, with which you are quite familiar in Oslo, I think, took
1,100 man-hours to produce in the Buick works.
In 1931, ten years
later, a much better car with many great refinements took 90
man-hours to produce.
The fall in the man-hours of production in
ten years was over 80 per cent., and while that may be an extreme
instance, similar things are going on everywhere.
A friend of
mine, an airship builder, approaching this matter from a totally
different angle , said that if we continue in the same way in Great
Britain as we are doing, by 1940 we should have 8,000,000 unemployed.
There are said to be 12,000,000
employable people in Great Britain, yet all the goods required could
be produced by about 3,000,000 people.
That
state of affairs, the result of effort, which has everywhere the
result of effort by our best brains for fifty years, is always
referred to as an unemployment problem, as if it were a
catastrophe!
Whether it is a catastrophe or a magnificent
achievement depends purely on how we regard it, because so long as
people demand of us that we must solve the unemployment problem -
while or best brains are, in effect, endeavouring to increase the
unemployment problem - it is obvious that we shall get nowhere.
From
our point of view, the point of view of those who share my views, we
say this is a magnificent achievement.
The so-called unemployment
problem is really a problem of leisure, and the only thing, which
differentiates myself from the unemployed, is that I happen to be
fortunate enough to have a certain amount of purchasing power,
whereas the unfortunate unemployed has not.
The
problem really is a problem, first of the distribution of purchasing
power to those who are not required, and will decreasingly be
required, in the industrial system, and secondly, of ensuring that
the total purchasing distributed shall always be enough to pay for
the goods and services for sale.
To
meet these conditions we have put forward a number of tentative
proposals, none of which, at any rate so far as I have myself any
responsibility, is claimed to be final, rigid or unchangeable. They
are merely suggestions based upon an analysis of the point of view
which I have put to you tonight.
The
Issue of a National Dividend
We
believe that the most pressing needs of the moment could be met by
means of what we call a National Dividend.
This would be provided
by the creation of new money - by exactly the same methods as are now
used by the banking system to create new money - and its distribution
as purchasing power to the whole population.
Let me emphasise the
fact that this is not collection-by-taxation, because in my opinion
the reduction of taxation, the very rapid and drastic reduction of
taxation, is vitally important.
The distribution by way of
dividends of a certain amount of purchasing power, sufficient at any
rate to attain a certain standard of self-respect, of health and of
decency, is the first desideratum of the situation.
It is, of
course, not suggested that at first, and possibly for some time to
come, such a dividend should be so great that, if work was available,
the worker could refuse to work ; but the issue of a National
Dividend would be a recognition of the fact that, if work is not
available, he has the right to an income sufficient for self respect
and subsistence - as by right and not as a "dole."
That
is the first aspect of the matter.
It is of course, suggested, and
it may be true, that if you did that to any considerable extent
without taking further steps, there would be a rise in prices. At any
rate in those things which come within the buying range of the people
who would receive this dividend as their sole means of subsistence.
But we propose that a further issue of credit be made for the
purpose of lowering prices.
Now it is very often said that that
cannot be done; that although you can do anything with machines,
electricity and all the marvellous inventions of the modern world, a
ticket system defeats you!
Subsidies
to Reduce Prices
But, leaving
that aspect of the matter at the moment, I should myself retort, not
only that man can do it, but that it has been done and is being done
at the present time.
So far as Great Britain is concerned,
between 1920 and the present time, or to within a year or two ago,
practically every business in Great Britain was losing money. Very
large credit balances held by business concerns at the end of the war
were changed, by let us say 1930, to very heavy debit balances,
represented by large overdrafts with the bank, together with the
mortgaging of assets in various ways.
Now that meant that their
produce had been sold to the public below cost.
And the
differences between cost and the true production price had been met
by a creation of credit, first of all from the credit reserves of the
companies until they were exhausted, and then by the creation of
overdrafts upon the banks.
I am not suggesting for a moment that
the process can go on forever.
What I am stating is that it did
go on during that period, not only without raising prices but
continuously lowering prices : the price level dropped continuously,
and at the end precipitately, between 1920 and 1930.
At the same
time subsidies - which were distributed through the agency of wages
and salaries -in aid of price were being pushed into the production
system. This has been done and is being done at the present time.
In
a much more open and unashamed manner we are claiming in Great
Britain that practically every shipping company in the world is
subsidised, so that prices for passenger and freight services can be
made so low that we cannot compete, and that the only way in which we
can compete is to apply a subsidy in aid of the reduction of prices.
Now that is what we of the Social Credit Movement propose to do
if there is any question of its being difficult to keep prices down.
We propose to apply a certain proportion of the total created money
to a reduction of prices.
The public will thus pay a part of the
price out of their own pockets in the ordinary way, and a part of the
price will be paid by various means through the creation of national
credit.
The effect will be a drop in the price level, while at
the same time the producer and the business man will not be losing
money.
They will enjoy the dividends and the increase in trade
which comes from the ability to charge lower prices.
They will
not lose money as they would if they had to lower prices without the
aid of the creation of national credit.
In that way we believe
that it will be possible at one and the same time to increase
purchasing power and to lower prices while preventing anything in the
nature of what is called inflation.
That covers in principle
nearly all that we have to propose.
Any arithmetical, mechanical
or mathematical form is only a question of getting a number of
competent men around a table to hammer out the details.
The
great difficulty, of course, is that it is extraordinarily hard to
bring sufficient pressure to bear upon this world-wide monopoly of
credit. That is the practical difficulty.
If
it can be done I believe that nobody will lose.
I am not myself,
for instance, an advocate of the nationalisation of the banks.
I
believe this again to be one of those misapprehensions so common in
regard to these matters, for nationalisation of the banks is merely
an administrative change: it does not mean a change in policy, and
mere administrative change cannot be expected to produce any result
whatever in regard to this matter.
A change in monetary policy
can be made without interfering with the administration or ownership
of a single bank in the world ; and if it could be got into the heads
of the comparatively few people who control these enormous monetary
institutions that would lose nothing but power - and that they will
lose that power anyway - the thing would be achieved.
I am not
going to inflict upon you what is perhaps an even greater aspect of
the matter, because through the kindness of one of your organisations
in Norway, I am going to speak about that tomorrow; but in an
examination of that one phrase "the monopoly of credit,"
you will find at any rate the beginnings of the solution, not only of
the social problem, but of the greatest of all problems - which, if
not solved, will destroy society - and that, of course, is war.