Major Major (commandant in certain jurisdictions) is a military rank of commissioned officer status, with corresponding ranks existing in many military forces throughout the world. When used unhyphenated and in conjunction with no other indicators ...

Clifford Hugh Douglas, MIMechE, MIEE (20 January 1879 – 29 September 1952), was a British

engineer Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who invent, design, analyze, build and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while considering the l ...

economist An economist is a professional and practitioner in the social sciences, social science discipline of economics. The individual may also study, develop, and apply theories and concepts from economics and write about economic policy. Within this ...

and pioneer of the

social credit Social credit is a distributive philosophy of political economy developed by C. H. Douglas. Douglas attributed economic downturns to discrepancies between the cost of goods and the compensation of the workers who made them. To combat what he ...

economic reform movement.

Education and engineering career

C.H. Douglas was born in either

Edgeley Edgeley is a suburb of Stockport, Greater Manchester, England. Edgeley is characterised largely by Victorian terraced housing around Alexandra Park. The population in 2011 was 14,176. Edgeley Park is home to Stockport County F.C. History R ...

Manchester Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The t ...

,Martin-Nielsen, "An Engineer's View of an Ideal Society", p. 97 the son of Hugh Douglas and his wife Louisa (Hordern) Douglas. Few details are known about his early life and training; he probably served an

engineering apprentice An engineering apprenticeship in the United Kingdom is an apprenticeship in mechanical engineering or electrical engineering or aeronautical engineering to train craftsmen, technicians, senior technicians, Incorporated Engineers and Chartered Engine ...

ship before beginning an engineering career that brought him to locations throughout the

British Empire The British Empire was composed of the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates, and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom and its predecessor states. It began with the overseas possessions and trading posts esta ...

in the employ of electric companies, railways and other institutions. He taught at

Stockport Grammar School Stockport Grammar School is a co-educational independent day school in Stockport, England. Founded in 1487 by former Lord Mayor of London Sir Edmund Shaa, it is the second oldest in the North of England, after Lancaster Royal Grammar School, ...

. After a period in industry, he went up to

Pembroke College, Cambridge Pembroke College (officially "The Master, Fellows and Scholars of the College or Hall of Valence-Mary") is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England. The college is the third-oldest college of the university and has over 700 ...

at the age of 31 but stayed only four terms and left without graduating. He worked for the

Westinghouse Electric Corporation The Westinghouse Electric Corporation was an American manufacturing company founded in 1886 by George Westinghouse. It was originally named "Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company" and was renamed "Westinghouse Electric Corporation" in ...

of America and claimed to have been the Reconstruction Engineer for the British Westinghouse Company in India (the company has no record of him ever working there), Deputy Chief Engineer of the Buenos Aires and Pacific Railway Company, Railway Engineer of the London Post Office (Tube) Railway and Assistant Superintendent of the

Royal Aircraft Factory Royal may refer to: People * Royal (name), a list of people with either the surname or given name * A member of a royal family Places United States * Royal, Arkansas, an unincorporated community * Royal, Illinois, a village * Royal, Iowa, a cit ...

Farnborough Farnborough may refer to: Australia * Farnborough, Queensland, a locality in the Shire of Livingstone United Kingdom * Farnborough, Hampshire, a town in the Rushmoor district of Hampshire, England ** Farnborough (Main) railway station, a railw ...

during

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

, with a temporary commission as captain in the

Royal Flying Corps "Through Adversity to the Stars" , colors = , colours_label = , march = , mascot = , anniversaries = , decorations ...

. His second wife was Edith Mary Douglas, President of the Women's Engineering Society.

Social credit

While he was reorganising the work of the

Royal Aircraft Establishment The Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE) was a British research establishment, known by several different names during its history, that eventually came under the aegis of the Ministry of Defence (United Kingdom), UK Ministry of Defence (MoD), bef ...

during World War I, Douglas noticed that the weekly total costs of goods produced was greater than the sums paid to workers for

wage A wage is payment made by an employer to an employee for work done in a specific period of time. Some examples of wage payments include compensatory payments such as ''minimum wage'', ''prevailing wage'', and ''yearly bonuses,'' and remuner ...

salaries A salary is a form of periodic payment from an employer to an employee, which may be specified in an employment contract. It is contrasted with piece wages, where each job, hour or other unit is paid separately, rather than on a periodic basis. F ...

and

dividend A dividend is a distribution of profits by a corporation to its shareholders. When a corporation earns a profit or surplus, it is able to pay a portion of the profit as a dividend to shareholders. Any amount not distributed is taken to be re-in ...

s. This seemed to contradict the theory of classic

Ricardian economics Ricardian economics are the economic theories of David Ricardo, an English political economist born in 1772 who made a fortune as a stockbroker and loan broker.Henderson 826Fusfeld 325 At the age of 27, he read '' An Inquiry into the Nature and ...

, saying that all costs are distributed simultaneously as

purchasing power Purchasing power is the amount of goods and services that can be purchased with a unit of currency. For example, if one had taken one unit of currency to a store in the 1950s, it would have been possible to buy a greater number of items than would ...

. Troubled by the seeming difference between the way money flowed and the objectives of industry ("delivery of goods and services", in his view), Douglas set out to apply engineering methods to the economic system. Douglas collected data from more than 100 large British businesses and found that all except those becoming

bankrupt Bankruptcy is a legal process through which people or other entities who cannot repay debts to creditors may seek relief from some or all of their debts. In most jurisdictions, bankruptcy is imposed by a court order, often initiated by the debt ...

, paid less in

s and

s than the costs of goods and services produced each week: the workers were not paid enough to buy back what they had made. He published his observations and conclusions in an article in the magazine ''English Review'' where he suggested: "That we are living under a system of

accountancy Accounting, also known as accountancy, is the measurement, processing, and communication of financial and non financial information about economic entities such as businesses and corporations. Accounting, which has been called the "language ...

which renders the delivery of the nation's goods and services to itself a technical impossibility." The reason, Douglas concluded, was that the economic system was organized to maximize profits for those with economic power by creating unnecessary

scarcity In economics, scarcity "refers to the basic fact of life that there exists only a finite amount of human and nonhuman resources which the best technical knowledge is capable of using to produce only limited maximum amounts of each economic good. ...

. Between 1916 and 1920, he developed his economic ideas, publishing two books in 1920, ''Economic Democracy'' and ''Credit-Power and Democracy'', followed in 1924 by ''Social Credit''. The basis of Douglas's reform ideas was to free workers from this system by bringing

in line with production, which became known as

. His proposal had two main elements: a national dividend to distribute money (debt-free credit) equally to all citizens, over and above their earnings, to help bridge the gap between

and

price A price is the (usually not negative) quantity of payment or compensation given by one party to another in return for goods or services. In some situations, the price of production has a different name. If the product is a "good" in the c ...

s; also a price adjustment mechanism, called the "just price", to forestall

inflation In economics, inflation is an increase in the general price level of goods and services in an economy. When the general price level rises, each unit of currency buys fewer goods and services; consequently, inflation corresponds to a reductio ...

. The just price would effectively reduce retail prices by a percentage that reflected the physical efficiency of the production system. Douglas observed that the cost of production is

consumption Consumption may refer to: *Resource consumption *Tuberculosis, an infectious disease, historically * Consumption (ecology), receipt of energy by consuming other organisms * Consumption (economics), the purchasing of newly produced goods for curren ...

; meaning the exact physical cost of production is the total resources consumed in the production process. As the physical efficiency of production increases, the just price mechanism will reduce the price of products for the consumer. The consumers can then buy as much of what the producers produce that they want and automatically control what continues to be produced by their consumption of it. Individual freedom, primary economic freedom, was the central goal of Douglas's reform. At the end of

, Douglas retired from engineering to promote his reform ideas full-time, which he would do for the rest of his life. His ideas inspired the

Canadian social credit movement The Canadian social credit movement is a political movement originally based on the Social Credit theory of Major C. H. Douglas. Its supporters were colloquially known as Socreds in English and créditistes in French. It gained popularity and its ...

(which obtained control of Alberta's provincial government in 1935), the short-lived

Douglas Credit Party The Douglas Credit Party was an Australian political party based on the Social Credit theory of monetary reform, first set out by C. H. Douglas. It gained its strongest result in Queensland in 1935, when it gained 7.02% of first preferences under ...

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

and the longer-lasting Social Credit Political League in

New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...

. Douglas also lectured on social credit in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

, the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...

Ireland Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe, north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel (Grea ...

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical re ...

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

and

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and t ...

. In 1923, he appeared as a witness before the Canadian Banking Inquiry, and in 1930 before the

Macmillan Committee The Macmillan Committee, officially known as the Committee on Finance and Industry, was a committee, composed mostly of economists, formed by the British government after the 1929 stock market crash to determine the root causes of the depressed eco ...

. In 1929 he made a lecture tour of

, where his ideas were enthusiastically received by industry and government. His 1933 edition of ''Social Credit'' made a reference to the ''

Protocols of the Elders of Zion ''The Protocols of the Elders of Zion'' () or ''The Protocols of the Meetings of the Learned Elders of Zion'' is a fabricated antisemitic text purporting to describe a Jewish plan for global domination. The hoax was plagiarized from several ...

'', which, while noting its dubious authenticity, wrote that what "is interesting about it, is the fidelity with which the methods by which such enslavement might be brought about can be seen reflected in the facts of everyday experience."CHAPTER VI ''Taxation and Servitude''

Death and legacy

Douglas died in his home in

Fearnan Fearnan ( Gaelic ''Feàrnan'', 'Alders') is a small crofting village on the north shore of Loch Tay in Perthshire, Scotland. The village lies at the junction of the road to Glen Lyon and the road between Kenmore and Killin that runs along th ...

Scotland Scotland (, ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a border with England to the southeast and is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean to the ...

. Douglas and his theories are referred to several times (unsympathetically) in

Lewis Grassic Gibbon Lewis Grassic Gibbon was the pseudonym of James Leslie Mitchell (13 February 1901 – 7 February 1935), a Scottish writer. He was best known for ''A Scots Quair'', a trilogy set in the north-east of Scotland in the early 20th century, of which ...

's trilogy ''

A Scots Quair ''A Scots Quair'' is a trilogy by the Scottish writer Lewis Grassic Gibbon, describing the life of Chris Guthrie, a woman from the north-east of Scotland during the early 20th century. It consists of three novels: '' Sunset Song'' (1932), ''Clou ...

''. He is also mentioned, together with

Karl Marx Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 ...

and

Silvio Gesell Johann Silvio Gesell (; 17 March 1862 – 11 March 1930) was a German-Argentine economist, merchant, and the founder of Freiwirtschaft, an economic model for market socialism. In 1900 he founded the magazine ''Geld-und Bodenreform'' (''Monetar ...

, by

John Maynard Keynes John Maynard Keynes, 1st Baron Keynes, ( ; 5 June 1883 – 21 April 1946), was an English economist whose ideas fundamentally changed the theory and practice of macroeconomics and the economic policies of governments. Originally trained in ...

in ''The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money'' (1936, p. 32). Douglas's theories permeate the poetry and economic writings of

Ezra Pound Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972) was an expatriate American poet and critic, a major figure in the early modernist poetry movement, and a Fascism, fascist collaborator in Italy during World War II. His works ...

Robert Heinlein Robert Anson Heinlein (; July 7, 1907 – May 8, 1988) was an American science fiction author, aeronautical engineer, and naval officer. Sometimes called the "dean of science fiction writers", he was among the first to emphasize scientific accu ...

's first novel '' For Us, The Living: A Comedy of Customs'' describes a near future United States operating according to the principles of social credit.

Publications

*
Economic Democracy
' (1920) ''new edition'': December 1974; Bloomfield Books; *
Credit-Power and Democracy
' (1920) ''new edition'': August 2011; BiblioLife; *
The Control and Distribution of Production
' (1922) *
Social Credit
' (1924, Revised 1933) ''new edition'': December 1979; Institute of Economic Democracy, Canada; * '' Warning Democracy'', C M Grieve, London; (1931) * '' The Monopoly of Credit'' (1931) ''new edition'': 1979; Bloomfield Books; * '' The Use of Money'' (1935) * '' The Alberta Experiment: An Interim Survey'' (1937) * '' The Brief for the Prosecution'', Legion for the Survival of Freedom, Incorporated; (December 1986) * '' Whose Service is Perfect Freedom?'', Canada; Veritas Publishing Company; (June 1986) * ''The Big Idea'', Veritas Publishing Company, Canada; (June 1986) * '' The Grip of Death'', Jon Carpenter, UK; (May 1998)

Notes

References

* Janet Martin-Nielsen,
An Engineer’s View of an Ideal Society: The Economic Reforms of C.H. Douglas, 1916-1920
, ''Spontaneous Generations'', Vol. 1, No. 1 (2007), pp. 95–109 *

George Orwell Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950), better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English novelist, essayist, journalist, and critic. His work is characterised by lucid prose, social criticism, opposition to totalitar ...

, ''

The Road to Wigan Pier ''The Road to Wigan Pier'' is a book by the English writer George Orwell, first published in 1937. The first half of this work documents his sociological investigations of the bleak living conditions among the working class in Lancashire and Yor ...

'', Chapter VI

External links

* *
Social Credit Secretariat

Guido Giacomo Preparata – Major Douglas in the witness box
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