All governments are in bondage

During the federal election campaign of 1958, John Diefenbaker, who is today Prime Minister, said: Deficit or no deficit, the Conservative government will not allow one single Canadian to suffer because of unemployment.

The actual facts of the unemployment situation are common knowledge.

During the same campaign, Donald Fleming, today the federal Minister of Finance, publicly attacked the governor of the Bank of Canada, James Coyne, and his monetary policy. He promised to change this.

However, last December 20th (1960), in reply to Frank Cyr, a Crediter of Arvida, Mr. Fleming wrote:

"You are quite aware, I am sure, that Parliament has given exclusive control over money matters to the Bank of Canada, and that the government has no authority in these matters."

That is to say, the government has no authority in that which affects the complete economy of the country and the lives of each individual citizen in matters of finance. This has been set down in writing by our Minister of Finance. In financial matters, the government is, in effect, in a state of bondage.

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This is not a unique and solitary case. During the great depression of the 30's, Herbert Hoover was President of the United State. Hoover was a skilled engineer. He was a man accustomed to find the means to meet an end. He knew perfectly well that the great depression was due to a lack of money and that the whole affair could have been corrected by putting money into circulation.

Why did Hoover not do so? He gave the answer himself, when, after his retirement from the Presidential office, he was answering a like question. His answer, quite simply, was: "The financiers did not wish it."

Someone, one day, asked President Roosevelt (F. D.), who was at that time at the peak of this career, why he gave in to pressure from Wall Street. The President replied: "It is the business of governments to give in to pressure".

Yet Roosevelt was, above all, the choice of the people. They elected him to the highest office of the land four consecutive times. But, given great pressure by the financier, and no pressure whatsoever from the people, it is the first class which is going to decide the policy of the government. The remedy is not in changing governments. It lies in changing the mentality and habits of the people; changing them from passive followers to active policy makers who will express effectively their will to the government when this will conforms to the good of all.

Before Roosevelt, before Hoover, it was the American President, Woodrow Wilson, who admitted: "We have been dreading all along the time when the combined power of high finance would be greater than the power of government."

Mr. Lloyd George, when Prime Minister of Great Britain after the First World War, speaking of international conferences: "They (international bankers) swept statesmen, politicians, jurists and journalists all on one side, and issued their orders with the imperiousness of absolute monarchs who knew that there was no appeal from their ruthless decrees."

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The Honorable Louis St. Laurent, when he was Prime Minister of Canada, remarked one day, that under a democratic regime no government could long rest in power without taking into serious consideration the prevalent public opinion. Without the existence of a public will, of a public desire, firmly manifested, the status quo of finance must remain as it is.

One thing is sure. It is not insignificant ones, the non-entities, the would-be M.P.'s of third rate material, who will be able to accomplish what the great heads of State have been unable to do. For as long as the political activity of the people is limited to anonymous voting once every so many years, nothing can be accomplished in the face of the firmly-held position of high finance. Not even the naive attempts of those individuals who would form a new "Social Credit" party will result in anything other the sowing of confusion and despair in the minds of people of good will.

If a new order is to be established, a society in which the individual will have the maximum of security with the maximum of individual liberty, then the transformation of the people, individual by individual, must be achieved. There must be built up an elite, a cadre of enlightened and determined individuals who will make it their principal work to bring about this transformation of the people. And when this has been accomplished, then may we bid farewell to the dictatorship of finance which has for so long help sway.

Louis EVEN

It is a fact that never during the past few decades have we been free from an unemployment problem, and it is also a fact that never during the past fifty years has any industrial country been able to buy its own production with the wages, salaries and dividends available for that purpose, and in consequence, all industrial coun tries have been forced to find export markets for their goods.

From "Social Credit", by Major Douglas

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