DOUGLAS SOCIAL CREDIT MOVEMENT

Evening Star, Issue 21752, 21 June 1934, Page 2

DOUGLAS SOCIAL CREDIT MOVEMENT

DUNEDIN BRANCH There was a large attendance at the weekly meeting of the above branch in the Theosophical Hall, Dowling street, on Tuesday evening.. The subjects of discussion were first a proposal from the Wellington branch in pamphlet form, for direct economic action to bring about Social Credit in New Zealand. The proposal, which involves the formation within the community of New Zealand of a Social Credit group composed of voluntary members producing and trading among themselves on Social Credit lines and treating their relations with the rest of the population on the basis of exports and imports, was described by the lecturer. Miss M. H. M. King, M.A., as sound theoretically although the practical difficulties might prove great. Its feasibility would depend on how far tlie members of the group by the possession of land, tools, and skill could establish a foundation of “ real credit ” —i.e., could actually produce and deliver goods and services, and then on what arrangements they could make for their “ exchange ” with the outside world. The scheme offered a very interesting, and, if proved practicable in any degree, a very valuable stepping stone to the achievement of saner conditions in trie community at large. The lecturer went on to comment on the recently-published balance-sheet of the Bank of New Zealand, especially with regard to the matter of amount of loans and investments and of the “ concealed reserves ” in connection with the published bank valuation of landed property and premises in its possession. She also commented on the remarks of Sir Harold Beauchamp, pointing out that it was useless to-day for even a bank chairman to expect people to look upon any financial institution as comparable to a natural force, the effects of which could neither be altered nor evaded, nor to believe that the war made the world poorer in anything except in lives—which were not mentioned by bank chairmen. What it did become poorer in during the post-war period was only in money, the special commodity manufactured by banks, which for their own purposes, the central banks proceeded to withdraw into cancellation shortly after the war ended. . . , The apdience followed with interest various quotations from R. G. Hawtrey’s ‘ Art of Central Banking ’ and from the reports of the Loudon and Southampton Chambers of Commerce, applauding vigorously .the sentiment voiced by Sir James Martin at tire meeting of the Associated British Chambers of Commerce on April 19, that “ we are not going to take onr economics from the bankers any longer.” The Rev. P. Paris occupied the chair, and a vote of thanks was proposed by Mr Macdonald, of Portobello, who commented on the contrast between the advice offered to the dairy farmers two or three years ago by tire chairman of the Bank of New Zealand and that handed out to-day.