good things of life sufficient for his well-being, contentment and happiness. Every member might thus receive an income from the State instead of being taxed. By gradually replacing the wage system with a system of dividends, by giving a share to each and every member engaged in an industry in that particular undertaking, the evils now resulting from unemployment would disappear."
It was a mouth-watering prospect. Instead of paying taxes I should dun the Inland Revenue Department for emoluments due to me, and the wage earners would beat their tools, not into ploughshares but the more comfortable shares that have dividends attached. And then came the scheme. What may be described as Major Douglas's major premiss is a belief based on "a system of costings" that "the purchasing power distributed to the public by the industrial system in all countries could not possibly enable them to purchase more than a small proportion of the goods made, even if these were offered at the minimum price of bare costs." If this were so the inevitable results would appear to be a chronic and ever growing glut of unsold goods and the whole of industry in the hands of receivers; and yet somehow industry has managed, in spite of a system which is "inherently suicidal," to sell its
