Dr. Herbert Chatley Explains to Rotarians Members of the Shanghai Rotary Club at their usual weekly tiffin union in the Metropole Hotel on Thursday, were entertained to an interesting address by Dr. H. Chatley who took for his subject, "Techno-
Introduced by Mr. William Yin-son Lee, the chairman of the pro-famine committee, Dr. Chatley said the word "Technocracy' may be defined as "The rule of skill' and may bbe applied broadly to all the various schemes which have been proposed for adopting economic life to the tremendous possibilities that technical science has opened up. Its mi thesis is that government should be in the hands of those who under~ stand technology and should no longer remain in the control of the jugglers of debts. It points out that! the application of the enormous powers latent in coal, oil and clevated water has rendered the present price system anomalous and insists that the real value of things is re: presented mainly by the available energy required for their produe-
The Real Originators While the name is principally associated with the publicity work of Mr. Howard Scott in 1982 which was so heavily criticized as ballyhoo! by the American Press, it re ly owes its being to H. G. Wells, Professor Soddy, Thorstein Veblen and Bassett Jones. All these have pointed out the absurdities of the current practice of assuming paper credit to be a reality as distinguished from actual goods and concentrate! on the fundamental problem of putting into the hands of the consumer more purchasing power, the lack of which "has, since 1929, blocked the way to continued expansion, in spite of a potential abundance of raw! materials, plant, food and labour. In this sense Major Douglas' proposals: to feed flat money into the system to balance the growth of bank credit, proposal, although it is open to. severe eriticism as a form of inflation, "mechnocracy is as yet a scheme of study, rather than a programme, but it 1s clear that, if economic tionalism Is to be maintained, the absurdity of exporting fuels, of Tending credit abroad without "considering how the corresponding foods are to be received; of making Production of consumable goods Subordinate to the growth of new plant; of fooling with metallic stan~ dards irrespective of international exchange of goods, and of regarding capital values as immortal must brought to the notice of all men.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.