 be ignored, but I say quite seriously that this monetary convulsion has now reached a pitch where I am persuaded that the producers of new wealth will not tolerate indefinitely so hideous an oppression.
Are we really going to accept the position that the whole future development of science, our organizations, our increasing cooperation and the fruitful era of peace and goodwill among men and nations - are all these developments to be arbitrarily barred by the price of gold? Is the progress of the human race in this acre of almost terrifying expansion to be arbitrarily barred and regulated by fortuitous discoveries of gold mines here and there or by the extent to which we can persuade the existing cornerers and hoarders of gold to put their hoards again into the common stock? Are we to be told that human civilization and society would have been impossible if gold had not happened to be an element in the composition of the globe?
These are absurdities; but they are becoming dangers and deadly absurdities. They have only to be asserted long enough, they have only to be left ungrappled with long enough, to endanger that capitalist and credit system upon which the liberties and enjoyments and prosperity, in my belief, of the vast masses depend. I therefore point to this evil and to the search for the methods of remedying it as the first, second and the third of all the problems which should command and rivet our thoughts.
That was shortly after the last war. Mr. Lloyd George told the soldiers that the Government would make Great Britain a land fit for heroes to live in. We know that the possibilities were there, and that it was easy enough to do so, but the money authorities said, “ No, we are poor ; we have spent thousands of millions of pounds on this war, and we have to take our belts in”, so they called up overdrafts all over Great Britain, and did a number of other drastic things, including the closing of the great Yarrow shipyards. Honorable senators can realize what it would have meant to Great Britain in this war if those yards had been in commission at the outbreak of hostilities. A member of the House of Commons said that when he came back from the last war in 1918 he found that Great Britain had the greatest army, navy and air force in the world,and the potentialities to produce wealth in abundance ; yet for twenty years the British people lived in the direst poverty, and the soldiers who were to return to a land fit for heroes to live in tramped the streets of British cities in rags. This happened because money power is stronger than all governments, and governments are misled by the orthodox economists. Mr. Winston Churchill himself accepted what the experts said, because he thought that they were men of great ability, indisputable integrity and sincerity. Yet time proved that men can have all those qualifications and still be entirely wrong. I want this Government to ensure that that sort of thing does not happen here. A return to the gold standard is implied in the Atlantic Charter, which contains Mr.Roosevelt’s four freedoms, but the Atlantic Charter will turn out to-be nothing but a string of platitudes if we go back to the gold standard. Who holds the gold of the world? It is held by the Federal Reserve Bank of the United States of America. Many people believe that the gold is held by the American Government, but that is not so. It is in the hands of the Federal Reserve Bank, which is a private institution like the Bank of England.
Private financial institutions including the Federal Reserve Bank of the United States of America have succeeded in increasing the price of gold from approximately £4’ an ounce to more than £10 an ounce. When gold once more becomes the purchasing medium of the world, who will have ail the advantages? The whole world will be in pawn to the Federal Reserve Bank of the United States of America, and to other private financial institutions which hold large reserves of gold. The Federal Reserve Bank has already loaned £300,000,000 gold dollars to China, and is offering now to rehabilitate the conquered countries of Europe once they return to the gold standard after the war. This is a most serious matter that we cannot overlook. If we return to the gold standard, it will be impossible to implement any practical plan of reconstruction. Any attempt at post-war reconstruction without a full utilization of the national credit must fail. We cannot possibly hope to succeed in our post-war plans by borrowing money in the ordinary way from the private banks. Honorable senators opposite have expressed fears over and over again in this chamber in regard to the use of national credit, but I say, emphatically, that it will be impossible without the use of national credit to put into operation any post-war plan which <vill be of any use to the people of Australia. After the war, we shall have plenty of man-power available for reconstruction work. Already our national production has increased to an enormous degree, and after all, the only real wealth of a country is what its people can produce. Unfortunately, under the present financial system bankers have power to say how much money shall be in circulation. I remember well, concluding my first speech in this chamber - it was during the- depression - with these words, “ The present monetary system has brought the world to poverty and chaos and is rapidly edging us into a war which will destroy our civilization “. I was laughed at by many honorable senators opposite. One honorable senator said that mine was a voice crying in the wilderness, and I replied that so long as this chamber was a wilderness so far as knowledge of finance was concerned, my voice would be heard. All these years, I have been trying to hammer into the heads of honorable senators opposite the necessity to understand our present financial system, because it is the greatest racket in the world. Unfortunately, bankers are able to send representatives to Parliament to look after their interests. I am afraid that, due to the ignorance of many members of Parliament of financial matters, the present system will continue in perpetuity. If it does, I can see no hope of ‘permanent peace or of a new order. A new order will have to be brought about by the people themselves. I remember telling an audience of 3,000 people in the Melbourne Town Hall that if they thought that the politicians who got the world into this mess could get it out again without any effort on the part of the people themselves, they were due for sad disillusionment. The destiny of the people is in the hands of their governments. If we cannot charge world conditions, dreadful as they are, to world governments, to whom can these conditions be charged? We have the most responsible job of anybody on earth, and I am sorry indeed to see this chamber so empty at the present moment. Apparently honorable senators opposite are becoming tired of hearing the truth about finance. I am afraid that some members of the Opposition have been sent here to look after banking interests, which, as I have said on many occasions, are not the interests of the people.
Wall-street, but they were very soon fleeced. They agreed to send £67,000,000 worth of gold to the United States of America annually. The strongest supporters of American isolationism before this war were men who said, “ Great Britain has not paid us for the last war “. The fact is that the United States of America did not send us any gold at all during the last war. It merely supplied goods, but strong objection was taken to repayment in goods. American manufacturers were getting 34s. for rifles which cost only 14s. to produce, but they insisted in being paid in gold. American financial institutions completely drained the British Government of its gold, and still were not satisfied. We have been informed by the press that conferences have been held between the Governments of the United States of America and Great Britain in regard to post-war currency. That is not quite true. It is not the governments that have been conferring, but the private financiers of the two countries. They have decided that we shall return to the gold standard, despite the disastrous results which followed the last war, when our “ diggers “ overseas were paid in notes known as “ Bradbury’s “, named after the gentleman whose name appears on the pamphlet which I have read. When it became evident that Great Britain would be involved in the last war, there was a great rush on the Bank of England, ‘and in four days the depositors drew out £10,000,000 worth of gold, of a total of £13,000,000. Those were the days, of course, when any one could present a £1 note and demand a sovereign for it. Mr. Lloyd George states in his memoirs that the directors of the Bank of England came crying to the British Government to save the situation. The British Government took a statesman-like view of the situation, and closed every hank for four days. In the meantime, legislation was passed giving the Chancellor of the Exchequer authority to print fiduciary notes to an unlimited amount. In fact, he still has that power. This war could have been financed by the use of national credit, but the private banking institutions which had to be saved by government action on that occasion, stepped in and said, “ Leave this to us “. At the start of the last war Great Britain’s national debt amounted to £750,000,000 and, strangely enough, the national debt of this country with its population at that time of only 6,000,000, was also more than £700,000,000. When the war was over Britain’s national debt had risen to £7,000,000,000, and in the words of the then Lord Privy Seal, Mr. Thomas Johnston, it was the greatest racket ever imposed upon any nation. The private financiers made legal currency notes and cheques for £5,000,000,000, and have been drawing £300,000,000 a year