1. The letter
to the president of the United States was actually written, and is
reproduced here as letter
329 . Preliminary contact with Kahn on this subject was taken
by Meade. From Kahn's reply (Kahn to Meade, 7 November 1933, in MP
2/4/64-65), it would seem that Harrod and Meade were originally
planning to organize a round robin. Kahn, having discussed the
matter with Joan Robinson (see note
3 to this letter), tried to dissuade Meade, but Harrod did not
abandon the idea.
No
letters from Meade to Kahn or Joan Robinson are preserved in the
relevant archives.
2.
On Keynes's position see note
2 to letter 328
.
3.
In his letter to Meade of 7 November, Kahn
wrote:
- I have talked to Joan, and we
agree that the idea of a round ro[b]in is absurd, it
will be impossible to get the pundits to sign, and we shall be
left with a ridiculous collection of ri[f]fraff. We are
not prepared to cooperate in preparing a letter like the ones
to The Times, and are very unlikely to sign such a letter.
4.
Reference is to Kahn's letter to Meade of 7
November, in which Kahn stressed that "whether or not the signers
are eminent will not be of much importance from Roosevelt point of
view".
5.
Kahn had expressed as follows his doubts in
his letter to Meade of 7 November:
- But my trouble is that I have a
sort of feeling--though there is not much in your letter to
bear it out--that we are in complete disagreement about the
kind of letter we should want to write. I am not prepared to
tell Roosevelt how splendid I think it all is. The difficulty
to my mind is <why> they have succeeded in keeping things
going for so long, and I expect a crash very soon. (It is only
fair to say that I have been prophesying a fairly immediate
slump for several months.) I should want to say that most of
the things they are doing are not calculated to do very much
good, and that they are refraining from adopting those measures
(e.g. public works) which might have been relied on to sustain
purchasing power relatively to costs (as opposed to
wage-increases, which merely raise costs as fast as purchasing
power). By implication I should want to suggest that his
advisers are hopeless. I should want to expose the fatuous
quantity theory outlook, and in doing that I should want to
criticise not only the fantastic notion of a relationship
between gold-value of dollar and its price-level, but also the
low exchange <policy> (particularly from the point of
view of its effect on other countries, in relation to the
insignificance of its effect at home). Finally, I should want
to urge immediate methods of spending money in order to avoid
disastrous failure (and I should want to point out that there
is no need to "use the printing press"--the money could be
borrowed from the public).
If,
after reading this, you feel that it is any good going on,
please let me know, together with some indication of your and
Roy's attitude.
Several of Kahn's suggestions were taken into account: see notes
10 ,
13 , 17 ,
22 and
26 to letter 329
.
- a. From
King's College, Cambridge # , ALS, two pages on one
leaf, in HP IV-586-668.