Interwar Treasury officials directly linked monetary austerity to unemployment

Evidence

Th e Times, for example, published the reports in full. See “State Coal,” Th e Times, June 23, 1919, 19– 20. 38 Th e connection between monetary austerity and unemployment was clear in the minds of Treasury offi cials such as Ralph Hawtrey, who on multiple occasions affi rmed that “it was true that unemployment was due to a contraction of the supply of the means of payment.” — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 1670

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to chapter 6’s treatment of Hawtrey and the Treasury orthodoxy that contraction caused unemployment — reinforces the austerity-as-class-weapon causal chain. — connects to: Britain’s gold-standard austerity doubled unemployment from 10.4 to 22.1 percent — Mark Blyth, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous…, 514; Postwar IMF Keynesianism concealed classical liberal assumptions derived from 1920s Treasury logic — Mark Blyth, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous…, 443; The Treasury and Bank of England used monetary austerity to block the miners’ movement (+9 more)
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: how widely shared was Hawtrey’s view that unemployment stemmed from payment-supply contraction, and did it inform actual policy choices?

Broader Connections

• Pound revaluation in the 1920s forced down wages through mass unemployment #exemplifies (0.88) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 1683
• Monetary austerity deliberately induced recession to discipline workers. #expands (0.85) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 154
• Monetary austerity deliberately manufactures unemployment to compress wages. #expands (0.85) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 284
• Unemployment functioned as a deliberate political weapon to weaken labor #corroborates (0.80) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 994
• Monetary austerity deliberately aimed to rein in workers’ purchasing power #corroborates (0.80) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 757
• British monetary austerity after 1920 produced an unhealthy quasi-equilibrium for a full decade #expands (0.75) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 1731