Prosperity certificate
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In 1936, the Alberta Social Credit Party-led government of the Province of Alberta, Canada, introduced prosperity certificates in an attempt to alleviate the effects of the Great Depression. Social Credit Premier William Aberhart's government had won power in the 1935 provincial election partly on the scheme.
Although not technically money, each certificate was intended to circulate with a value of one dollar. Every week the holder of a note had to affix a one-cent stamp to the back to maintain its validity. The intended effect was to increase the velocity of circulation and discourage hoarding. As the end of each interval approached, the note holders spent their prosperity certificates in order to avoid having to purchase and affix the stamps. This obligation consequently often fell on the merchants.
The government injected the prosperity certificates into circulation by using them to pay part of the salaries of the provincial civil servants. The original intention was that the notes would be redeemed by the provincial treasurer after two years, by which time 104 stamps would have been attached, yielding the government a small profit on the issue.
However the prosperity certificate experiment lasted for only about one year. The necessity for affixing one-cent stamps was not popular, and to make matters worse the stamps kept falling off. The newspapers spearheaded a campaign to boycott the notes. Of the 357,680 prosperity certificates issued, all but 19,639 were redeemed.
Aberhart's successor as Social Credit leader and premier, Ernest Manning, twice honoured the 1935 promise to issue a prosperity certificate to Albertans. In 1957, his government announced a $20 Alberta Oil Royalty Dividend and issued a $17 dividend the next year. The policy was widely criticized and, the next year, Manning agreed to use oil royalties on public works and social programs instead.[1]
[edit] References
- ^ Donn Downey, "OBITUARY / Ernest Charles Manning History of former Alberta premier also history of Socreds," Globe and Mail, February 20, 1996
