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u During the winter of 1935-1936, all the employees ings and toured the region on the weekends. By Au-
at Garden City Press studied Douglas’ doctrine dur- gust 1939, a total of 16 issues were published.
ing the weekly courses on money and credit. Finally, in September, 1939, as Canada entered
In 1936, Louis Even launched a project he had World War II, he started VERS DEMAIN (literally, To-
considered for a long time: the publication of a peri- ward Tomorrow), which has been in continuous pub-
odical which he would call Cahiers du Crédit Social lication since that date. A periodical in English, now
(Social Credit Notebooks). The first issue was dated called MICHAEL, has been published since 1953. v
October 1936 and was published while Mr. Even was
working at Garden City Press. He wrote in the even- Louis Even

Who was Clifford Hugh Douglas? ality. Douglas’ ideas have
been called ‘Social Credit’
since then.
At the root of Social Credit was a man of
genius, a Scot, Clifford Hugh Douglas. Born in Douglas was not an economist, and it is likely
1879, he was the son of Hugh Douglas and Lou- he would have thought it an insult to make any
isa Hordern. He graduated from Cambridge Uni- such claim, given the monumental errors made
versity with an honours degree in mathematics. by the profession. University classes in econom-
Douglas had a fruitful career ics were certainly based on false understand-
in engineering. He worked on ings. We can, however, consider
projects in India, South Amer- Douglas to be greatest economist of
ica, and England. As an expert all times because of his diagnosis of
in cost-price accounting, in 1916 the major flaws in today’s economic
the British Government asked system and the proposals he formu-
him to go to Farnborough to sort lated to solve them..
out “a certain amount of mud- Douglas first published his con-
dle” in the Royal Aircraft Estab- clusions in an article in the English
lishments’ accounts. It was not Review in December of 1918 in an
long before he identified that, article titled, The Delusion of Super-
each week, the cost-prices of the Production, and then in a series of
goods produced were greater articles in A. R. Orage’s weekly re-
than the incomes distributed to view, The New Age. Those articles
workers in the forms of wages were reprinted in his first book, pub-
and salaries. He concluded that lished in 1920, Economic Democ-
prices were not in accordance racy. The same year, Credit–Power
with purchasing power. and Democracy was also published, and in 1923
His attention was captured. A study of the he wrote the book, Social Credit. Two more titles
ledgers of many companies showed him that were published in 1931: Control and Distribution
it was so in every case. Given this, how could of Production, and The Monopoly of Credit. Two
money distributed to consumers ever be suffi- final books were published in 1937: Warning
cient to buy the goods produced? Douglas also Democracy and The Alberta Experiment.
noted that when World War I started, there was Apart from writing, Douglas delivered lec-
no longer the dilemma of a lack of purchasing tures on Social Credit in Canada, Australia, New
power. Clearly, there was nothing sacred about Zealand, Japan, and Norway. In 1923, he gave
money. If money could appear all of a sudden, evidence before the Canadian Select Standing
as was the case during the war, then all that was Committee on Banking, and in 1930 before the
physically possible could be made financially MacMillan Committee on Finance and Industry,
possible. in England.
Douglas went from these initial observations Douglas died at his home in Fearnan, Scot-
to identify and enumerate the various defects of land on September 29, 1952, on the Feast day of
the financial system. He then sought to discov- Saint Michael the Archangel, at the age of 73. v
er the solution, formulating the principles that
would make the financial system conform to re- Louis Even

10 MICHAEL May/June/July 2019 www.michaeljournal.org