[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] Su4—The personal and individual
effect of a deflation policy imposed by raising the Bank Rate is emphasized by Mr. J. Skelton Williams, ex-Comptroller of the United States Currency. At Ottawa in May of this year he pointed out that if the policy of artificial deflation of credit had not been enforced, there would have been saved " many billions of dollars and thousands of human lives, the lives of men who were destroyed and ruined and committed suicide because they saw everything swept from them by what I describe as ruthless and heartless deflation." Mr. Williams backs his opinion by quotations from Mr. McKenna, the Governor of the Bank of France, Professor Gustave Cassel, Professor J. Lawrence Laughlin (Professor of Economics at Chicago University), Professor Irving Fisher (Professor of Economics at Yale University), the late A. Barton Hepburn (ex-Comptroller of the Currency), and from the report of the Joint Commission of Senators and Representatives on Agriculture in the States.
We, in this country, have been told over and over again that " our National Credit never stood higher, if the nation suf- fered." In other words, what benefits fmance is to the detriment of the individuals of the nation. • This is a confir- mation of the salient point of your article, " The Bankers' Threat," namely, that the interests of finance and of the people, both Capital and Labour together, are not in one and
the same straight line.—I am, Sir, &c., W. 0. FIELD. Blackdown Hill, Leamington.
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