Page:Bankers and Credit (1924).pdf/201

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output and maintain through some centuries an appearance of chequered but rather ample prosperity. However, "to meet the discrepancy," says Mr. Kitson (page 56), "between prices and purchasing power distributed, Major Douglas proposes that producers shall sell their products below cost at a price which shall bear the same ratio to cost as the total national consumption of all commodities does to the total national production of credit. The difference between such prices and cost of production is to be made good by a draft from the Treasury on the national credit account. Under this scheme, price, instead of being a function of money, becomes a function of production. Hence any over issue of money cannot affect prices and the evils resulting from inflation under our present system are therefore eliminated."

Well, all this must evidently be quite clear and simple to Mr. Kitson, but he surely might have told us what Major Douglas really meant when he said that products were to be sold below cost price at a price bearing the same ratio to cost as the total national consumption of commodities bears to the total national production of credit. For these remarks are not really simple at all except to very clever people, and what we want to know is how the total