and in the last resort, to spend them on buying goods. In the result, either prices must go up in face of the abundant purchasing power and limited supply of consumable goods, or if all prices could be rigidly controlled by law, the money demand would far outrun available supplies. Short of a bureaucratic rationing system, some parts of the country and some consumers would find themselves with no goods at all. In fact, we should be back in the worst experiences of the war, in soaring prices, inadequate supplies, queues and the rest of it—only very much more so."
Such are the terms, or some of them, in which the Douglas scheme is dismissed by the Labour Party. Those who think that the matter is worth study will find this critical examination useful and, though distinctly severe, quite fair on the whole. In one respect, however, I think that Mr. Webb and his colleagues scored what they thought was a bull's-eye, but was really a miss, because they had not appreciated the true beauty of Major Douglas's intentions. It was in discussing his proposal that a new and special banking company should be set up for each industry, and that this banking company should be given the right by law to furnish, in return for shares, a steady increasing proportion of the additional capital required from time to
