Munson, Gorham

Social Credit has been an economic theory, a social philosophy, an ideology, and a political party in England, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States since it was first advanced in 1920 by Major C. H. Douglas. He believed finance capitalism deprived individuals of sufficient purchasing power to buy otherwise available products. To overcome this Douglas proposed offering to every citizen dividend payments based on the community's real wealth. As monetary reform and as social theory Social Credit attracted intellectual support in England and the United States especially during the 1930s. Gorham Munson (Wesleyan class of 1917) was the most eloquent and durable Social Credit leader in the United States. In 1932, he became American correspondent for The New English Weekly, defended Social Credit in The Nation and helped form a key Social Credit organization, the New Economics Group of New York. In 1933 he initiated a vital Social Credit journal of the arts and public affairs, New Democracy, and was its chief editor during its three-year life.