Page:Bankers and Credit (1924).pdf/222

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is rather difficult to understand how Major Douglas's scheme, which was Mr. Kitson's final remedy, would be applied to foreign trade. In Mr. Kitson's explanation of its working in the coal industry he merely says that "the price of coal for export shall be fixed" (he does not say by whom) "from day to day in relation to the world market and in the general interest." Obviously the coal would have to be sold at a price that could compete in the world market, and presumably the difference between this price (if too low) and the cost of production would be made good, as in the case of coal sold at home, by a draft from the Treasury on the national credit account; and the final results of this system have already been exposed by the Labour Party Committee's analysis.

In Germany there was no cumbersome machinery of a Douglas scheme; it was just a question of straightforward printing; firstly because the Government (like most others then and at most times) found some difficulty in otherwise balancing its Budget, secondly because for some years after the war the general confidence in Germany's recuperative power caused an enormous demand all over the world for German marks as a speculative "lock up" that was certain some day to go back to its