Wealth is the thing; money is the symbol.
The symbol should reflect the thing.

Those who control money and credit have become the masters
of our lives... No one dare breathe against their will. (Pius XI)

 The banker is the creator and destroyer of money. To create
money is an act of sovereignty which must not be linked to the bank.

 New money, coming into the world, belong to the citizens
themselves, to al citizens, and must be handed over to them
in the form of a discount on prices and a social dividend.

Goods and needs

Hunger, the need for clothing, shelter, heat, medical care and rest, are temporal needs from which no man can escape as long as he is on earth. It is the Creator Himself who gave us these needs. It is He also who put us here on earth. He therefore certainly put somewhere, on earth, the means of satisfying these needs.

The useful things which serve to satisfy these needs are goods, earthly goods. Food, clothing, firewood, blankets, kitchen utensils, medicines, are goods. It is with these earthly goods that man must fulfill his temporal needs.

The aim of man’s economic activities is precisely to make needs join goods. If an economic system does this, then it achieves its end. If it leaves goods on one side and needs on the other, it fails completely. The economic system fails completely in our country, since it leaves many to go hungry, in spite of its what; homeless and without heat, in spite of all its wood; without care, in spite of all its medicines. One must try to find out why.

What is lacking

Are we short of anything in our country to satisfy the temporal needs of the citizens? Are we short of food for everybody to eat one’s fill? Are we short of shoes, clothes? Can we not make as much as is required? Are we short of railroads and other means of transportation? Are we short of wood or stones to build good houses for all families? Are we short of builders, manufacturers, or other workers? Are we short of machines?

No, we have all these things, in plenty. Never do the retailers complain that they cannot find enough goods to meet the demand. Grain elevators are bulging. Numerous are the able-bodied men waiting for work. Numerous also are the machines which are at a standstill.

Yet, a great many people suffer! Goods are simply not finding their way into homes.

Of what use it is to tell people that their country is rich, that it exports a lot of goods, that it ranks third of fourth among the world’s exporting countries?

What goes out of the country does not go into the homes of the citizens. What sits idle in the stores does not appear on their tables.

A mother does not feed her children or provide them with shoes and garments, by going window-shopping, by reading the advertisements of goods in newspapers, by listening to the description of good products on the radio, or listening to the sales talk of countless salesmen of all kinds.

What is lacking is the effective means of laying hands on these goods. You cannot steal them. To get them, you must pay for them: you need money.

There are a lot of good things in our country, but many individuals and families who need these goods lack the right to have them, the permission to get them.

Is there anything lacking but money? What is lacking, apart from the purchasing power to make the products go from stores to homes?

Full warehouses, a calamity for the producers
Millions of human beings are starving to death
in front of these full warehouses.
The cause: a bad monetary system

Modern crises

Money and wealth

This does not mean that money itself is wealth. Money is not an earthly good capable of satisfying a temporal need.

You cannot keep yourself alive by eating money. To get dressed, you cannot sew together dollar bills to make a dress or a pair of stockings. You cannot rest by lying down on money. You cannot cure a sickness by putting money on the seat of the malady. You cannot educate yourself by crowning your head with money.

Money is not real wealth. Real wealth consists of all the useful things which satisfy human needs.

Bread, meat, fish, cotton, wood, coal, a car on a good road, a doctor visiting the sick, the knowledge of a science — these are real wealth.

But, in our modern world, each individual does not produce all the things. People must buy from one another. Money is the symbol or token that one gets in return for a thing sold; it is the symbol that one must give in return for a thing that one wants from another.

Wealth is the thing; money is the symbol of that thing. The symbol should reflect the thing.

If there are a lot of things for sale in a country, there must be a great deal of money to dispose of them. The more people and goods, the more money in circulation is required, otherwise everything stops.

It is precisely this balance that is lacking today. We have at our disposal almost as great a quantity of goods as we could possibly wish, thanks to applied science, to new discoveries, and to the perfecting of machinery. We even have a lot of people without occupations, who represent a potential source of goods. We have loads of useless, even pernicious, occupations. We have activities of which the sole end is destruction.

Money was created for the purpose of keeping goods moving. Why, then, does it not find its way into the hands of the people in the same measure as the flow of goods from the production line?

Money begins somewhere

Everything, except God, has a beginning. Money is not God, therefore it has a beginning. Money begins somewhere.

One knows the origin of such useful commodities as food, clothing, shoes, books. Workers, machines, plus the country’s natural resources, produce the wealth, the goods we need and which we do not lack.

But then where does money begin, the money that we lack in order to buy the goods that are not lacking?

The first idea that we keep alive in our minds, without really realizing it, is that there is one fixed quantity of money, and that it cannot be changed; as if it was the sun, or the rain, or the weather. This idea is utterly wrong; if there is money, it is because it was made somewhere. If there is not more, it is because those who made it did not make more.

Another prevalent belief about the origin of money is that the Government makes it. This is also incorrect. The Government today does not create money, and complains continuously about not having any. If the Government were the source of money, it would not have sat around idly for ten years in front of the lack of money. (And for example, in Canada, there would not be a $500-billion national debt.) The Government takes and borrows, but it does not create money.

Now, we will explain where money begins and ends. Those who control the birth and death of money also regulate its volume. If they make much money and destroy little, there is more. If the destruction of money goes faster than its creation, its quantity decreases.

Our standard of living, in a country where money is lacking, is not regulated by the volume of goods produced, but by the amount of money at our disposal to buy these goods. So those who control the volume of money, control our standard of living. “Those who control money and credit have become the masters of our lives... No one dare breathe against their will.” (Pope Pius XI, Encyclical Letter Quadragesimo Anno).

Two kinds of money

Money is whatever serves to pay, to buy; whatever is accepted in exchange for goods or services.

The material substance of which money is made is of no importance. In the past, money has at times been made of shells, leather, wood, iron, silver, gold, copper, paper, etc.

There are at present two kinds of money in Canada: one we call pocket money, made of metal or paper; and the other we shall call book money, made of figures in a ledger. Pocket money is the least important; book money is the most important.

Book money is the bank account. Business operates through bank accounts. Whether pocket money circulates or not depends on the state of business. But business does not depend upon pocket money; it is kept going by the bank accounts of businessmen.

With a bank account, one makes payments or purchases without using metal nor paper money. One buys with figures.

Let us suppose I have a bank account of $40,000. I buy a car worth $10,000. I make my payment by a cheque. The car dealer endorses the cheque, and deposits it at his bank.

The banker then makes changes in two accounts: first, that of the car dealer, which he increases by $10,000; then mine, which he decreases by $10,000. The car dealer had $500,000 — he now has $510,000 written in his bank account. I had $40,000 in mine — my bank account now shows $30,000.

Paper money did not move in the country because of this deal. I simply gave some figures to the car dealer. I paid with figures. More than nine-tenths of all business is done this way. It is book money, the money made of figures, which is modern money; it is the most abundant money; its volume is ten times that of paper or metal money. It is a superior type of money, since it gives wings to the other. It is the safest kind of money, the one that no one can steal.

More than nine-tenths of all business is done that way. It is book money, the money made of figures, which is modern money; it is the most abundant money, its volume is ten times that of paper or metal money. It is a superior type of money, since it gives wings to the other. It is the safest kind of money, the one that no one can steal.

Savings and borrowing

Book money, like the other type of money, has a beginning. Since book money is a bank account, it comes into existence when a bank account is opened without money decreasing anywhere, neither in another bank account nor in anyone's pocket.

The amount in a bank account can be increased in two ways: by saving and by borrowing. There are other ways, but they can be classified under borrowing.

The savings account is a transformation of money. I bring along some pocket money to the banker; he increases my account by this amount. I no longer have that pocket money; I have book money at my disposal. I can get back pocket money by decreasing the amount of book money in my account. It is a simple transformation of money.

But since we are trying to find out how money comes into existence, the savings account, being a simple transformation of money, is of no interest to us here.

The borrowing (or loan) account is the account lent by the banker to a borrower. Let us suppose I am a businessman. I want to set up a new factory. All I need is money. I go to a bank and borrow $100,000 under security. The banker makes me sign a promise to pay back the amount with interest. Then he lends me the $100,000.

Is he going to hand me the $100,000 in paper money? I do not want it. First, it is too risky. Furthermore, I am a businessman who buys things at different and widely separated places, through the medium of cheques. What I want is a bank account of $100,000 which will make it easier for me to carry on business.

The banker will therefore lend me an account of $100,000. He will credit my account with $100,000, just as if I had brought that amount to the bank. But I did not bring it; I came to get it.

Is it a savings account, set up by me? No, it is a borrowing account made by the banker himself, for me.

Money creators

This account of $100,000 was made, not by me, but by the banker. How did he make it? Did the amount of money in the bank decrease when the banker lent me $100,000? Well, let us ask the banker:

— Mr. Banker, have you any less money in your vault after having lent me $100,000?

— I haven't gone into my vault.

— Have other people's accounts been reduced?

— They remain exactly as they were.

— Then what was decreased in the bank?

— Nothing was decreased.

— Yet my account has been increased. From where did the money you lent me come?

— It didn't come from anywhere.

— Where was it when I came into the bank?

— It didn't exist.

— And now that it is in my account, it exists. So we can say that it was created.

— Certainly.

— Who created it, and how?

— I did, with my pen and a drop of ink when I inscribed $100,000 to your credit, at your request.

— Then you create money?

— The banks create book money, the money of figures. That's the modern money that puts into circulation the other type of money by keeping business on the move.

The banker manufactures money, ledger money, when he lends accounts to borrowers, individuals, or governments. When I leave the bank, there will exist in this country a new source of cheques, one that did not exist before. The total amount of all accounts in the country was increased by $100,000. With this new money, I will pay the workers, buy materials and machinery — in short, build my new factory. Who, then, creates money? — The bankers!

Money destroyers

The bankers, and the bankers alone, make this kind of money: script or bank money, the money that keeps business moving. But they do not give away the money they create. They lend it. They lend it for a certain period of time, after which it must be returned to them. The bankers must be repaid.

The bankers claim interest on this money that they have created. In my case, the banker will probably demand $10,000 from me in interest, at once. He will withhold it from the loan, and I will leave the bank with $90,000 in my account, having signed a promise to repay $100,000 in one year's time.

In building my factory, I will pay my men, buy things, and thus spread my bank account of $90,000 throughout the country.

But within a year, I must, through the profits I make selling my goods for more than they cost me, build my account up to not less than $100,000.

At the end of the year, I will pay back the loan by making out a cheque for $100,000 on my account. The banker will then debit my account by $100,000, therefore taking from me this $100,000 I have drawn from the country by selling my goods. He will not put this money into the account of anyone. No one will be able to draw cheques on this $100,000. It is dead money.

Borrowing gives birth to money. Repayment brings about its extinction. The bankers bring money into existence when they make a loan. The bankers send money to the grave when they are repaid. The bankers are therefore also destroyers of money.

And the system so operates that the repayment must be greater than the original loan; the death figures must exceed the birth figures; the destruction must exceed the creation.

This seems impossible, and collectively, it is impossible. If I succeed, someone else must go bankrupt, because, all together, we are not able to repay more money than has been made. The bankers create nothing but the capital sum. No one creates what is necessary to make up the interest, because no one else creates money. And yet, the bankers demand both capital and interest. Such a system cannot hold out except for a continuous and ever-increasing flow of loans. Hence the system of debts, and the strengthening of the dominating power of the banks.

The national debt

The Government does not create money. When the Government can no longer tax nor borrow from individuals, due to the scarcity of money, it borrows from the banks.

The operation takes place exactly like mine. As a guarantee, it pledges the whole country. The promise to pay back is the debenture. The loan of the money is an account made by a pen and some ink.

Thus, in October, 1939, the federal government, in order to cover the initial expenses of the war, asked some $80,000,000 from the banks. The banks lent the government an account of $80 million without taking a cent from anyone, thus giving the government a new base for cheques of $80 million.

But, in October, 1941, the government had to repay $83,200,000 to the banks, including both capital and the interest.

Through taxes, the government had to remove from the country as much money as it had spent, $80 million. But in addition, it had to draw from the country a further $3 million, money it had not put into the country, which had neither been made by the bankers nor anyone else.

Even conceding at the most that the government can find the money that exists, how can it find the money that has never been created?

The plain fact is, the government does not find it. It is simply added to the national debt. This explains why the national debt increases in the same measure as the country’s development requires more money. All new money comes into existence as a debt, through the banker, who claims more money than he has actually issued.

And the country's population finds itself collectively indebted for a production that, collectively, it made itself! It is the case for war production. It is the case also for peacetime production: roads, bridges, waterworks, schools, churches, etc.

The monetary defect

The situation comes down to this inconceivable thing: all the money in circulation comes only from the banks. Even metal and paper money comes into circulation only if it has been released by the banks.

Now the banks put money into circulation only by lending it out at interest. This means that all the money in circulation comes from the banks, and must someday be returned to the banks, increased with the interest.

The banks remain the owners of the money. We are only the borrowers. If some manage to hang on to their money for a long period of time, or even permanently, others are necessarily incapable of fulfilling their financial commitments.

A multiplicity of bankruptcies, both for individuals and companies, mortgage upon mortgage, and an ever-increasing public debt, are the natural fruits of such a system.

Claiming an interest on money as it comes into existence is both illegitimate and absurd, antisocial and contrary to good arithmetic. The monetary defect is therefore as much a technical defect as a social defect.

As the country is developed, in production as well as in population, more money is needed. But it is impossible to get new money without contracting a debt which, collectively, cannot be paid.

So we are left with the alternatives of either stopping developments or getting into debt; of either plunging into mass unemployment or into an unrepayable debt. And it is precisely this dilemma that is being debated in every country.

Aristotle, and after him, Saint Thomas Aquinas, wrote that money does not breed more money. But the banker brings money into existence only on the condition that it breeds more money. Since neither governments nor individuals create money, no one creates the interest claimed by the banker. Even legalized, this form of issue remains vicious and insulting.

Decline and degradation

This way of making the country's money, by forcing governments and individuals into debt, establishes a real dictatorship over governments and individuals alike.

The sovereign Government has become a signatory of debts to a small group of profiteers. A minister, who represents millions of men, women and children, signs unpayable debts. The bankers, who represent a clique interested only in profit and power, manufacture the country's money.

This is one striking aspect of the degeneration of power of which Pope Pius XI spoke: governments have surrendered their noble functions, and have become the servants of private interests.

The government, instead of guiding the State, has become a mere tax collector; and a great slice from tax revenues, the most sacred slice, removed from any discussion, is precisely for the interest on the national debt.

Furthermore, the legislation consists, above all, in taxing people and erecting, everywhere, restrictions to freedom.

There are laws to ensure that the money creators are repaid. There are no laws to prevent a human being from dying of extreme poverty.

As for individuals, the scarcity of money develops a mentality of wolves. In front of plenty, only those who have money — the too scarce symbol of goods — have the right to draw on that plenty. Hence the competition, the tyranny of the “boss”, domestic strife, etc.

A small number preys on all the others. The great mass of the people groans, many in the most degrading poverty.

The sick remain without care; children are poorly or insufficiently nourished; talents go undeveloped; youths can neither find a job nor start a home and family; farmers lose their farms; industrialists go bankrupt; families struggle along with difficulty — all this without any other justification than the lack of money. The banker’s pen imposes privations on the people, servitude on the governments.

The social control of money

It is Saint Louis, King of France, who said: “The first duty of a king is to coin money when it is necessary for the sound economic life of his subjects.”

It is not at all necessary, nor to be recommended, that banks be abolished or nationalized. The banker is an expert in accounting and investing; he may well continue to receive and invest savings with profit, taking is share of profits. But the creation of money is an act of sovereignty which should not be left in the hands of a bank. Sovereignty must be taken out of the hands of the banks and returned to the nation.

Book money is a good modern invention that should be retained. But instead of it proceeding from a private pen, in the form of a debt, those figures, which serve as money, should come from the pen of a national organism, in the form of money destined to serve the people.

Therefore nothing is to be turned upside down in the field of ownership or investment. There is no need to abolish the current money and replace it with other kinds of money. All that is needed is that a social monetary organism add enough of the same kind of money to the money that already exists, according to the country’s possibilities and the population’s needs.

One must stop suffering from privations when there is everything needed in the country to bring comfort into every home. The amount of money should be measured according to the demand of the consumers for possible and useful goods.

The amount of money should be measured according to the demand of the consumers for possible and useful goods.

It is therefore the producers and consumers as a whole, the whole of society, which, in producing goods in front of needs, should determine the amount of new money that an organism, acting in the name of society, should put into circulation from time to time, in accordance with the country's developments.

Thus the people would recover their right to live full lives, in accordance with the country's resources and the great possibilities of modern production.

Who owns the new money?

Money should therefore be put into circulation according to the rate of production and as the needs of distribution dictate.

But to whom does this new money belong when it comes into circulation in the country? — This money belongs to the citizens themselves. It does not belong to the Government, which is not the owner of the country, but only the protector of the common good; nor does it belong to the accountants of the national monetary organ- ism: like judges, they carry out a social function and are paid, according to law, by society for their services.

To which citizens? — To all. This money is not a salary. It is new money injected into the public, so that the people, as consumers, may obtain goods already made or easily realizable, which are awaiting only sufficient purchasing power for them to be produced.

One cannot imagine for one moment that the new money, which comes gratuitously from a social organism, only belongs to one or a few individuals in particular.

There is no other way, in all fairness, of putting this new money into circulation than by distributing it equally among all citizens without exception. Such a sharing also makes it possible to derive the maximum benefit from the money, since it reaches into every corner of the land.

Let us suppose that the accountant who acts in the name of the nation finds it necessary to issue another $1 million in order to meet the latest needs of the country. This issuance could take the form of book money, the inscription of figures in ledgers, as the banker does today.

Since there are 31 million Canadians and 1 billion dollars to share, each citizen will get $32.25. So the accountant will inscribe $32.25 in each citizen’s account. Such individual accounts could easily be looked after by the local post offices, or by branches or a bank owned by the nation.

This is the national dividend. Each citizen would have an extra $32.25 to his own credit, in an account bringing money into existence. This money would have been created and put into circulation by a national monetary organism, an institution especially established for this end by a law of Parliament.

To each the dividend

Whenever it might become necessary to increase the amount of money in a country, each man, woman and child, regardless of age, would thus get his or her share of the new stage of progress that makes the new money necessary.

This is not payment for a job done, but a dividend to each one for his share in a common capital. If there is private property, there is also community property that all possess in the same way.

Here is a man who has nothing but the rags he is covered with. Not a meal in front of him, not a penny in his pocket. I can say to him:

“My dear fellow, you think you are poor, but you are a capitalist who possesses a great deal of things in the same way I and the Prime Minister do. The province's waterfalls, the crown forests, are yours as well as mine, and they can easily bring you in an annual income.

“The social organization, which makes it possible for our community to produce a hundred times more and better than if we lived in isolation, is yours as well as mine, and must be worth something to you as it is to me.

“Science, which makes industry able to multiply production almost without human labour, is a heritage passed on to each generation, a heritage that is continuously growing; and you, who are a member of this generation just as I am, should have a share in this legacy, just as I do.

“If you are poor and naked, my friend, it is because your share has been stolen from you and put under lock and key. When you have no food, it is not because the rich eat all the grain in the land, it is because your share is still lying in the grain elevators. You have been deprived of the means of getting that grain. 

“The Social Credit dividend will ensure that you get your share, or at least a major portion of it. A better administration, freed from the financiers' influence and able to cope with these exploiters of men, will see to it that you get the rest.

“It is also this dividend that will recognize you as a member of the human species, in virtue of which you are entitled to a share of this world's goods, at least the necessary share to exercise your right to live.”

And they still hesitate to change the wheel!

Price regulation

The dividend, added to salaries and other sources of income, goes to make up purchasing power.

But there are people who do not need all their money for purchases, and prefer saving or investing some of it. This reduces the effective global purchasing power. Only the money used to buy makes up immediate and effective purchasing power.

For this reason and others, the balance between prices and purchasing power is not reached solely by giving a dividend to all. However, Social Credit provides for this bal­ance by a regulating mechanism which, while respecting the freedom of each one, makes the savings of the wealthy profitable to all, and at the same time prevents any inflation of prices.

This mechanism is the adjusted price (but by no means a fixed price); it is also called the compensated price, or the compensated retail discount. There is nothing artificial or arbitrary about it. It reflects exactly the facts about production and the consumption of real wealth.

If, for example, the national accounts show that in one year the country's total production has reached a value of 30 billion dollars, and that during that year, total consumption (depreciation included) has been 24 billion dollars, what can one conclude? One can conclude that, while the country has caused $24 billion of wealth to disappear through consumption and depreciation, it has produced $30 billion of wealth. So the production of $30 billion of wealth has actually cost collectively only $24 billion.

The real price is lower than the accounting price. For the population to fully reap the fruit of its work, it must be given a discount of $6 billion; that is, pay only 24 what is down in the books at 30.

To this end, the national monetary organism will decree a general discount of 20 per cent on all retail sales for the next period. If I buy an article marked at $10, I will pay only $8.

But, in order to stay in business, the retailer and the producer must still recover all their expenditures. For this reason, the same monetary organism will compensate the retailer, by creating the necessary amount of money. For the $10 article, I gave $8 to the retailer. Upon presentation of his sales vouchers to the local branch of the national organism, he will get the $2 which was discounted.

Thus the consumers get the products which, without this procedure, would have remained unsold. The retailers get their prices. And this creation of money in no way caused inflation since, on the contrary, it is linked to a lowering of all prices for the buyers.

Moreover, appropriated methods would attach this compensation, which favours the retailer as much as the buyer, to agreements fully respecting cost prices, but holding the profit margin in the limits of a percentage agreed upon as being adequate in each business sector.

Objection: gold

— But we must have gold as a basis for our money

— Money gets its value from production and mutual confidence. Empty Canada of all useful production : it becomes a real desert. Of what use would money be, even in gold? On the contrary, leave Canada just as it is, with all kinds of possible production, and suppose it to have a corresponding amount of money, in paper or merely as figures in a ledger, this money would certainly be accepted everywhere and serve to purchase any useful things.

— But then what about the gold standard?

— The gold standard is a definition of the monetary unit of each country, formulated to allow comparisons between the monies of dif­ferent countries. If you say that the Canadian dollar is worth 40 grains of gold, it means that you get, for a Canadian dollar, 40 grains of gold or the equivalent in merchandise. Even if the gold is not there, if the goods are there, you can still get them for your dollar.

— But money not backed by gold, will it be good abroad?

— Money is a national matter. The Canadian dollar does not circulate in France, nor does the French franc circulate in Canada. The French buyers or retailers do not ask them­selves if Canada has many or a few dollars in circulation. What interests them is how much one dollar can buy. If you double the Canadian production and double the amount of dollars in front of it at the same time, does not each dollar buy exactly the same thing as before? It is even the only way to preserve the stability in the purchasing power of the dollar, a factor so vital in international trade.

Since May 1, 1940, the Bank of Canada does not own any more gold to back up its notes: is the dollar less good than it was on April 30, 1940?

The gold myth is a fetish that the masters of money and credit keep alive so as to carry out their plans more easily. Isn't it rather silly to condition a man's right to eat by the amount of gold in existence rather than by the amount of food available? And similarly for the other goods.

Objection: laziness

— Social Credit will make people lazy.

— Why?

— Because it wants to increase the amount of money, and money makes people lazy.

— It is precisely when there is money in circulation that goods sell; and it is when goods sell that industry is able to supply work to employees. It is not work, but condemnation to inactivity, which tends to make a man lazy.

Moreover, laziness is a vice — one of the seven deadly sins. It is not through financial means that one corrects vices. It is not the role of finance to take the place of education, morals, prayers, the sacraments, religion.

— Yes, but this money for nothing, and guaranteed to everyone!

— It is not money for nothing. It is an income from a capital that belongs to every­one. And it is money to buy available goods.

The assurance of a minimum income, instead of making man lazy, places him in a position where he is able to select a line of work in accord with his taste and ability — which ultimately works to the greater good of the community.

There are no better workers than those who work at a job they like, a job of their own choosing; not hard labour, not a career imposed dictatorially, but a work freely chosen.

The dividend makes up purchasing power to buy products. Therefore it implies the work of men and machines to meet this demand. It is obvious that if production stops, no amount of money can be considered purchasing power, since there will be nothing to buy. The creation of money under such circumstances would not at all be the reflection of realities. Social Credit works according to realities.

The dividend to all would be, like the wages and salaries of the workers, a stimulant to production, since it would grow with production.

The dividend to all would not do away with the wages and salaries of those employed in production. There would still be the same difference in income between a man having only the dividend and a man having dividend-and-salary.

Objection: Communism

— Giving everyone the same amount of money will place everybody on an equal footing; that's Communism!

— The dividend will not even out fortunes. Peter has $100,000. Paul has $100. If I give each of them $40, will they be equally wealthy? Each is better off than he was before, but the poor man feels the improvement more.

— Something for nothing, that's Communism!

— Not at all. What does Communism want? When Communism demands an econ­omic lot equal for all, it is wrong. But when we ask for each human being the right to the basic necessities of life, because God created material goods for the whole of the human species, this is not Communism but Christian sociology. It is the law of "usus communis", stating the right of every human being to the use of temporal wealth. If the Communists recall it to a world which has forgotten it, they are right. The other law, that of private property, is also just, and the capitalists are right to hold on to it, just as the Communists are wrong to deny it.

Social Credit, like the Church, wants the observation of both laws. Social Credit, by its dividend to all, suggests a method to legally guarantee to each one a minimum share of the goods created for all men. By balancing global purchasing power with prices, it makes the selling of production easier and thus consolidates private property.

Communism wants to enslave everybody to the State. Social Credit, by guaranteeing a vital minimum to all, allows them to find jobs in accordance with their aptitudes; in making production profitable, it frees the citizens from continual recourse to the State's intervention and to its grants which make freedom waver.

Moreover, a committee of theologians, appointed by the Quebec bishops, studied Social Credit in 1939 and were unanimous in recognizing that there is neither Communism nor Socialism condemned by the Church in Social Credit. Its report even made interesting comparisons between Pope Pius XI's encyclical and the monetary propositions of Social Credit.

Opposition: where and why

Are there people opposed to Social Credit? Yes indeed, and here are some types of these adversaries.

The big shots at the head of the banks and the trust companies formed about the banks, are opposed to Social Credit. They see in it an end to their precious monopoly and their exploitation of the public.

Their political servants, who are more sen­sitive to the electoral funds than to the public's needs, support the bankers' opposition. The political parties have not yet made Social Credit an integral part of their programs, precisely because they listen only to the voices of those supplying them with money, and because the body of the citizens, insufficiently informed, has not yet made its voice heard.

The distributors of patronage are generally opposed to Social Credit; if the public has money, they will have no importance any more.

Certain of the newly rich are opposed to Social Credit because they like to stand out by eclipsing those who have nothing. They fear that once the public has no more the need to crawl for the right to live, it will begin to judge men by their moral qualities, and not by the size of their wallets.

Ignorant people of various types are opposed to Social Credit. Some know nothing at all about Social Credit, yet condemn it from stupidity or prejudice. Others interpret it wrong­ly and imagine that their fortunes will be confiscated. Others believe that people must be poor to behave properly; they acknowledge that they themselves are quite capable of making proper use of money, but they look upon their neighbours as professional sinners and find that the bankers help human beings in their salvation by keeping them poor! There are still others who are so married to their own pet beliefs that they refuse, either through pride or narrow-mindedness, to believe that these beliefs can have any merit.

Note that the opponents affirm or deny, but offer no proofs. Or they do so by distorting Social Credit so as to be able to attack it. One of them, the ex-Dominican Thomas Lamarche, went as far as to translate texts distortedly and give them arbitrary meanings : this is not ignorance any more, but dishonesty.

Result: order restored

What, according to us, would be the effect of Social Credit?

First of all, in a general way, order would be restored in the money sector, consequently in economics, with echoes in the political and social spheres.

Man, in the order of superiority among created things, comes immediately after God and His angels. Money, like any non-intelligent thing, comes after and must be subjected to man.

Today, money comes into existence in a ledger as a debt owed by man. Money, at its birth, is master. Man, on the other hand, is born indebted to finance. He comes into this world as a slave of money.

Under a Social Credit system, money would still originate from a ledger, but by serving each citizen. Each child would be born with a right to a dividend; money would serve him immediately.

Order restored in economics. It is the end, the goal, that would guide economic activities. Goods would be made to serve needs. The accumulation of money would stop being the commanding aim of industry.

The standard of living would be regulated by the amount of goods available, since the amount of money would be regulated by the amount of goods.

Money would become what it should be: an instrument to sell products, not a weapon to confer power on individuals.

Being considered just as a symbol to repre­sent wealth, and a claim on goods, money would be the exact reflection of wealth, of the available useful things. It would be, from that moment on, in an exact and constant relation with production that corresponds to needs. For production requiring human labour, money would come through wages and salaries; for easy production, easy money; abundant pro­duction, abundant money; automatic production, free money; for production increased by a common capital, through the factor of organized society, money issued by a social source and distributed to each and everyone.

The development of a country would no longer be represented by a debt, but by an increase of common prosperity, distributed to all.

Result : security

The first thing man looks for, on a tem­poral viewpoint, is security, the preservation of his life. It is to ensure himself a better protection against his enemies — wild beasts, hunger, cold — that he associates himself with his fellow men.

He is even ready to sacrifice a certain degree of his freedom in order to have at least a minimum of economic security.

What prevents economic security today? What inspires in a man that fear for tomorrow? for his old age? Consider Canada again. Is there a single Canadian who fears that tomorrow, or in several years, Canada will be unable to produce enough wheat, enough food to satisfy the hunger of all the country's inhabitants? Who fears that Canada will become unable to provide enough clothing, enough shoes, enough construction material, enough firewood, enough coal, etc.?

No, what prevents us from feeling secure about tomorrow is our fears of not having enough income, enough money to buy a sufficient share of these things. Nothing gives this security today.

If money were to keep in step with produc­tion, if it were sufficiently distributed as to guarantee by law that each had enough to ward off want, we should immediately witness the birth of economic security in a country that lacks nothing.

Well, it is this security for each and every­one, without exception, that the monetary sys­tem of Social Credit would guarantee.

There would be enough money to sell all the goods, a minimum income guaranteed to each one — any further revenue to be determined by a citizen's contribution to production. That minimum social income or share will increase as machinery, applied science, inventions and technological improvements decrease the amount of labour required to maintain production.

Result: freedom

From this very security ensues freedom, a freedom so precious to man that, once guaranteed the necessities of life, he will prefer to keep his freedom, his dignity, rather than crawl to get more comfort.

This freedom is nothing but a vain word if, in order to take advantage of it, a man must resign himself to starvation.

The physical slave has no freedom. The system of money slavery does not give any more freedom. Even those who become rich, "often through violence or the absence of scruples of conscience", cannot freely enjoy their success, because that peace of mind, so necessary to real freedom, is incompatible with the particular type of fratricide they practice. More than that, the free enjoyment of material goods is even incompatible with an honest success in a world where too many of our fellow men suffer unjustifiably.

For the first time, man will find himself freed from the bonds cast about him by other men who exercise their power through money. If this deliverance by itself does not give him true freedom, then he has only to regulate his own life himself in order to enjoy it.

There will be freedom to express one's thoughts, which freedom, though recognized in principle today, is reduced to nothing for a great number, because of their dependence on party governments or companies which use their power to intimidate their employees.

There will be freedom to choose one's career in a world where the doors will no longer be closed because of the lack of money.

A man will be free to get married, to start a home and family, when he has been ensured the necessities of life and the possibility of finding a job in a normal way.

There will be freedom to raise children when the ever-increasing expense of supporting a family finds a relative compensation in a regular dividend to each family member.

Man will be free to cultivate his faculties, to use his creative energies in a world where progress, instead of creating employment, breeds leisure with no curtailment of income.

Result: government

If governments today do not, in fact, govern, it is because they have become the servants of private interests. They obligate themselves for debts to bankers who manufacture money. Even the most capable men, when they take the reins of government, are helpless to resist these creators of debt.

Instead of governing the country according to the country's real possibilities, they have to govern by a regime based on the principle of the scarcity of money. The country's pilots stand before the helm handcuffed.

Those forms of government closest to the people, such as municipal governments, find themselves completely baffled by the problem of trying to find money where there is none. They can bring some into existence, for urgent matters, only by increasing the country's national debt and the burden of taxes, without corresponding services.

The governments at the very top should have no other task than to watch and coordinate the various organisms under them, those social bodies arranged one above the other in hierarchical order, forming in a most natural manner the true State. But, alas! all of these social bodies, these corporations, even the most fundamental of them all, have become lifeless ruins. So there remains only individuals, families, groups jostling and wrangling over the pennies the government is snatching from those who still have a few.

Social Credit would restore to the govern­ments their proper functions. It would put back into circulation money, "the lifeblood of economic life". Individuals would be free to form their own natural groupings. These groupings, these various corporations, would become financially capable of settling those problems lying within their jurisdiction, thus making easier the task of the higher governments.

Once freed from the unsolvable budgetary nightmares, and independent of the monetary powers, the government would be in a better position to intervene whenever the security of our social order were threatened by saboteurs, even wealthy ones.

The Social Credit Movement

Several great minds have criticized a monetary system which serves mankind so poorly. But it was Major Douglas, a Scottish engineer, who first, in 1918, formulated the system called Social Credit, the one more in keeping with modern progress; the most democratic, the only one which puts money directly at the service of man, of all men; the only one also which automatically increases the income of a family as the family itself increases.

The study of this system has begotten a movement to demand its enforcement. The Social Credit movement spread to all English-speaking countries, as far as Australia and New Zealand, but especially in Canada, and primarily in Alberta where it first took root; then, with a French habit and a Catholic philosophy, in the Province of Quebec, and from there in French Canada.

In the Province of Quebec and in all parts of French Canada, the Social Credit Movement, inaugurated in 1935, grew to imposing proportions, instilling in the popular masses the habit of studying.

The Social Credit Movement radiating from Quebec is led by the Pilgrims of Saint Michael. In 1953, to reach the English-speaking people, they founded an English-language periodical called "Social Credit". Since 1974, this periodical is called "Michael", and is published every two months. The Pilgrims of Saint Michael also publish and circulate the French-language "Vers Demain" Journal, as well as several Social Credit books and brochures in French and in English (plus, recently, a journal in Polish and one in Spanish). They form enlightened and vigilant citizens, and invite them to unite, their preferred formula to get results in politics.

We believe that the Province of Quebec, in particular, has a most important role to play to demand and, if it is necessary, institute itself the financial reform advocated by Social Credit. This province is largely endowed with natural resources and very well situated to carry on, regardless of any exterior intervention. It has the best-prepared population, through its Catholic education, to understand that money must serve the human being and to dare make a change in an economic system that the Pope denounces as making salvation difficult for a considerable number of Christians.

An apostolate of education

The way to obtain Social Credit is obviously to form a public opinion sufficiently enlightened and motivated to make a successful demand for it. So there is no question of an election campaign, but rather of an education campaign.

This is the best guarantee for the future of Social Credit. Only a well-informed citizenry can exercise that vigilance necessary to protect the common good against attempted sabotage on the part of unscrupulous or incompetent politicians.

Under a Social Credit system, there would be no financial problems, only problems of education, of orientation, of proper evaluation. You cannot discuss these matters with a people nailed down to the grim reality of material want or accustomed to a mentality of a herd of slaves. So it is that study and widespread propagation of the habit of study has become so necessary in order to get Social Credit: at the same time, it prepares the mentality necessary to meet and cope with new problems.

This propagation of study among the masses requires the devoted efforts of numerous apostles who are not afraid of self-abnegation and sacrifice. And it is still in order. The present disorder is the result of all kinds of selfishness, the degeneration of the social sense, pride and the pharisaism of the intellectual class, the listless apathy of the masses. All this must be expiated and corrected.

So, the surest and only way of advancing the cause of Social Credit is that method which develops study and devotion. Such is the method adopted by the Pilgrims of Saint Michael, with the "Vers Demain" and "Michael" Journals.

These journals popularize highly elevated notions in politics, economics, sociology, even philosophy. The Pilgrims of Saint Michael, by the devotion of their members, propagate their journals and other Social Credit writings into the families.

The Pilgrims of Saint Michael summon people to meetings, hold study-days opened to all, train the citizens to personal initiative, to personal responsibility, and to act together with others in the pursuit of the common good.

Note: These criticisms should not be taken as directed against bank employees; not even against bank managers and inspectors. They are but workers like you and me, from whom is required complex preci­sion, irreproachable integrity, proper dress, constant courtesy, and perfect obedience. It is the system that is at fault, and the bank employees are the first ones to suffer the consequences.