Louis Even presented Social Credit first in J.J. Harpell’s magazine The Instructor (and its French-language version Le Moniteur), in 1935-36, and then in the Cahiers du Crédit Social (Social Credit booklets), from 1936 to 1939. Finally, he founded the Vers Demain Journal in September, 1939 (and its English-language version in 1953). The two following articles are taken from the first issue of the “Cahiers du Crédit Social”, issued in October, 1936.
These two words are not new to anyone. No money for the public (expenditures). No money for the municipal treasury. The provinces don’t know anymore what to tax in order to raise funds. Even the Federal Government declares itself powerless to meet all of its needs.
At least six hundred thousand workers (in 1936) are on the streets of Canada. Others have work for only one half or one third of their regular time.
An age of enlightenment, an age of machines, an age of progress!
Sufferings, privation, worry, concern about the next day, discontent, and distrust are on the people’s faces. What is it? A war? A famine? Dearth? An earthquake?
Can not the soil produce anymore? Can not the factories obtain raw materials or energy sources any more? Are the mines exhausted? Are the hydraulic forces gone? Are the rivers dried up? Or is it the man power that is lacking? But there are six hundred thousand of them who knock on the doors of the heads of the industries and who are asking for the permission to earn their bread at “the sweat of their brows”! And the doors remain shut: We can not hire you because we can not sell our products; the consumer has no money. No money!
Who will dare say: “No products!” You, a mother of a family, if you have given the last half ration to your dear children this morning while you yourself remained fasting, is it because Canada is out of wheat, or that the miller finds no one to work, or because the baker refuses to work anymore? Such language would make one raise his shoulders or put his fists up! Or who, when seeing these children or adults go by with shoes more than worn down, with shabby clothes, will blame our stock breeders, our tanneries, our spinning mils, or our factories? Consider now the slums that stigmatize our cities: Where are the bricklayers, the carpenters, the painters? But they themselves live in these slums; their arms are tied’ not because of lack of cement, of wood, or of paint, but because of a lack of money!
We could go on to cover the whole line, going further than the mere domain of food and lodging, speaking of the sick who bear their sufferings while doctors, who are capable of healing, must themselves have recourse to public charity, because of a lack of clients; go into the field of education, where competent people, of both sexes, are ready to give teaching, where those who like to benefit from it are not lacking in numbers, but where teachers and students, as well as writers and book publishers, always face the same obstacle: no money!
Do we feed ourselves with money? Do we clothe ourselves with money? Does money preserve one from heat and cold? Do we treat patients with money? Is it money that teaches the unlearned and prepares the specialists? Is money real wealth?
If money is not the real wealth, but a simple means of distributing it, will one maintain that it is fulfilling its role today?
But, will those of our readers who have not as yet had a chance to study the monetary system say that there is nothing we can do about it? Is money a crop that we pick from the trees or that we harvest in the fields, that depends on sunshine, on rain, and on the forces of nature? Or is money a gift from Heaven, of which the quantity in no way depends on man’s wishes or desires? Oh, I know that the public was kept in absolute ignorance concerning money: It is some kind of mysterious thing that the profane must venerate, and keep others from penetrating their secrets. This is what makes up the strength of the Master of Finance. These sinister jokers tie the hands of the individuals and of the nations so well, that the civilized man moans, as a pauper, in the midst of the abundance; the goods for which he has an urgent need are within reach of his hand, he can multiply them even further. But he does not have the right to take them. He needs bread, shoes, clothes, shelter, medicine, services; but he does not have the right to produce shoes or clothes, to build houses, to give medical , professional, or social services, because the masters of money, the makers of money insist upon the rarity of this medium of exchange.
Do not conclude from this critic that Social Credit, which will be exposed in these Cahiers (booklets), proposes inflation. This word “inflation” is flung at Social Credit by the very ones who alternatively practice inflation and deflation at the detriment of the people and for their own personal profit. Social Credit is neither inflation or deflation, but a mathematical and automatic equilibrium. Those who say otherwise either ignore its principles or else are dishonest —often both!
Let us close this article with a short story. (Shark teeth.) A tale if you wish, but likely to orient you towards a new day, the ideas of those who have been lead to believe that the depression, which has lasted for more than six years, is an unavoidable phenomenon.
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