In its November 19 issue, The Western Producer, a weekly organ devoted to the interests of the Prairie farmers, wrote editorially:
“The spokesmen of big business have been sounding off in recent months and the burden of their song has been that there is no danger of a depression — not even if rearmament spending should be sharply cut or for that matter stopped altogether."
And the paper quoted re-assuring statements by Crawford H. Greenwalt, chairman of the huge Du Pont interests in the United States, and by the Canadian Chamber of Commerce in its annual submission. So far, so good. But it looks a bit differently for the Canadian farmers — and American as well — who cannot sell their products at a healthy price, and for the tens of thousands of wage-earners who, these last weeks, have been dismissed by industry.
There need be no depression, argues the Chamber of Commerce, when "there are so many desirable national projects and alternative civilian demands in Canada to absorb any economic re-adjustments that may be necessary.".
Of course. But were there no desirable public projects and no civilian demands in the 30's?
Depressions never arise from a lack of public or private demands. Depressions always, have a financial cause. They are never marked by a saturation of wants on the part of consumers, nor by inability to produce on the part of industry, but always by inability to pay.
And what radical change has been made in finance since the last depression? No change has been made. The very idea of a change in matters of finance has consistently been opposed by bankers, big business and politicians, who want us to believe that the same road will lead to different pastures.
The Western Producer's editor comments aptly:
“We are just as convinced as any businessman, big or little, that there need be no depression, even if every armament factory were closed down and the men and women in uniform returned to civilian life. But, have no doubt about it, a depression, on an unprecedented scale, is just what we will have if we listen and pay heed to the siren songs of the leaders of big business. For what these gentlemen desire above all else is that no radical changes shall be made in the economic system. "It is precisely because they fear that the warnings of a possible impending slump may induce many people to press for such changes in an attempt to ward it off, that they genuinely deplore any public hint that all may not be well. For it is the simple truth that the banker and big business would infinitely prefer all the agony of a depression, would themselves choose to go bankrupt in an orthodox fashion, rather than be saved by the application of unorthodox methods. “We take no pleasure in warning of possible difficulties ahead. But it would be madness not to recognize the fact — for it is a fact — that the most unreliable, most misinformed and untrustworthy prognosticators of future economic developments are these same bankers and businessmen They have been invariably wrong in the past....
“Despite all they say, the thing they most fear is what must be done if an ultimate disastrous slump is to be avoided... The thing which must be done is to face frankly the real dangers which lie ahead and introduce whatever fundamental changes in the economic system that may be necessary to meet and defeat them.”
The fundamental changes required to avoid disaster concern the financial part of the economic system, the only part which does not function, as it properly should, in relation to the facts of production and consumption.
Social Credit offers the solution.