Page:Bankers and Credit (1924).pdf/198

 was a new series of articles, and a new book, as already mentioned, in which Mr. Kitson, after recommending various minor means of credit increase, such as paying pensions and unemployment allowances, not by rates and taxes but by the issue of fresh currency (page 38), and the conversion of the floating debt (which in the early part of 1921 was not far off £1,000,000,000) into legal tender currency (page 43), finally decided that the system suggested by Major Douglas in his remarkable books entitled Economic Democracy and Credit Power and Democracy, would in his judgment "effectively solve the whole problem of unemployment, trade depression, and all their attendant evils, and if adopted universally remove the causes which have been so fruitful in provoking wars and which if not speedily removed must soon give rise to fresh and more desolating wars than any yet waged."

Everyone interested in currency matters had already heard much of Major Douglas and his scheme which was adopted and ventilated at length by the New Age, at that time the well written and interesting organ of the Guild Socialists, led by Mr. Orage. I had made an honest and determined effort to read one of Major Douglas's books, and having failed to understand how the scheme could work, had