The Ely miner. [volume] (Ely, Minn.) 1895-1986, 1935-10-24
BY WILLIAM C. UTLEY
With pen sketches by the author

@ROMISED a dividend of $25
DmOnth for every citizen of the
province, Alberta, the political
wild mare of Canadian prov
inces, has elected as its premier Will
liam Aberhart, Calgary high school
principal, radio mogul and evangelist.
Premier Aberhart, with the advisory
aid of Maj. Clifford Hugh Douglas,
Scotch economist who has championed
the cause of his own Social Credit
scheme since early days of the World
war, will attempt to set in operation
In Alberta the first practical expert
menr with a government in the new
economics"
New only in actual practice, Social
Credit is based upon the economy of
plenty rather than our more familiar
economy of scarcity. Its premise is
that there is Plenty for All these days
in the world, or more specifically in
nation like the United States or like
Canada. We are capable of produc-
ing everything that everybody In the
country needs; the reason that some of
US are in want is that the purchas-
ing power-money-is not distributed
properly. Social Credit claims to have
a means Of distributing purchasing
power without appropriation of any
kind, without taking anything away
from him who already possesses it.
Social Credit abhors as evil:
1. The private control Control, not
ownership of money.
2. The basing of money on COM
modify (gold).
3. The automatic" shortage Of pur-
chasing power resulting from present
economic practices.
f. The theory that income should
only become by honestly through
wages and salaries for work done.
What They'd Do Instead.
For these abuses" Social Credit
would substitute:
1. Control of money by the nation
not the bankers.
g Money based upon the national
wealth, that is, the real wealth or the
ability of the nation to produce goods
and services where and when and as re-
Quired.
3. Creation of purchasing power
which will buy everything we want as
fast as we produce it.
4. The means to look upon release
from unnecessary work as a blessing
rather than a calamity as it is now.
I quote from 1.-THE ABC of Social
Credit" by E. S. Hotter:
Social Credit proposes to turn I'M
employment into leisure by the distri-
button of the national dividend"
This national dividend, which Is
explained as an expression in cash Of
"our common cultural inheritance"-
the cultural benefits handed down to
us by the inventions and ideas of our
ancestors and therefore necessarily
equal to rich and poor alike-is the
idea which Premier Aberhart used to
capture the imagination and the SYM
patty of Alberta voters.
The Cultural commonweal.
Alberta's common cultural inherit
ance is worth, in round numbers, say
about $50 a month, according to Mr..
Aberhart's platform, so within about
IS months everybody in Alberta (of
voting age, of course) is going to get
a monthly dividend book worth $50 in
any bank, bootery or barrel-house in
the inspired province.
That Mr.. Aberhart apparently is
going about raising the dough for so
handsome a stake in manner neither
exactly in line with Major Douglas
Social Credit economics nor even re-
sembling it like a first cousin, and
that Mr.. Aberhart and the major had
quite a little falling out a short time
ago, probably over that very fact, are
matters of little consequence to AL
pertains.
Most of them do not know what
Social Credit is.
All of them know what S25 is.
Schoolmaster Aberhart got the job.
Already the idea of Social Credit
as interpreted by Major Douglas, not
Premier Aberhart-has caught hold in
the United States. The formation of
a Social Credit party, which claims
membership of 10000 persons, mostly
in California and New York, is under
way in Detroit. Its platform contains
the stipulation of an annual income of
1900 for all persons over forty years
of age.
In Alberta, as Mr.. Aberhart has
stated. the dividend will be merely a
split of the governments take" from
a general sales tax. That is not the
way true Social Credit would create
such a dividend.
There is much more TO the Social
Credit scheme that merely the distri-