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Rutherford (Ernest, 1st Baron Rutherford of Nelson, 1871-1937). Typed letter signed Rutherford , Newnham Cottage, Queen's Road, Cambridge, 7th December, 1934. The letter is addressed to an unidentified woman and thanks her 'for your generosity in sending us a contribution to the funds of the Academic Assistance Council…'. continuing: 'Your letter has been sent to me, and also your enclosure with regard to the Douglas Social Credit Scheme. I have heard a good deal about the Douglas Scheme, but it is difficult for one like myself who's not an authority on economic affairs to form any clear opinion of the practicability of this very interesting and suggestive Scheme. I believe, however, that it is such a novel scheme that time will be required to educate both Government and public to its advantages'. The one-page letter is signed by Rutherford in black ink; embossed letterhead (Newnham Cottage, Queen s Road, Cambridge). The recipient has identified the date of receipt with the date in pen 9.12.34 to the upper left. A few minor spots and marks, with hinge remains to the letter verso from a previous mounting. Celebrated as the father of nuclear physics, New Zealand physicist Rutherford became Director of the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge in 1919. Under his leadership the neutron was discovered by James Chadwick in 1932 and in the same year the first experiment to split the nucleus in a fully controlled manner was performed by students working under his direction, John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton. The Academic Assistance Council was founded in May 1933 by Britain's foremost academics and scientists, in response to Hitler's decision to expel hundreds of leading scholars from German universities on racial grounds. It continues to this day as the Council for At-Risk Academics (Cara), helping those academics facing discrimination, persecution, suffering and violence around the world. Its founding statement appealed for 'means to prevent the waste of exceptional abilities exceptionally trained'. The Nobel Prize-winning chemist and physicist Ernest Rutherford was chosen as the first President. Major Clifford Hugh Douglas (1879-1952) was a British engineer and pioneer of the social credit economic reform movement. The basis of Douglas's reform ideas was to free workers from this system by bringing purchasing power in line with production, which became known as social credit. Douglas attributed economic downturns to discrepancies between the cost of goods and the compensation of the workers who made them. To combat what he saw as a chronic deficiency of purchasing power in the economy, Douglas prescribed government intervention in the form of the issuance of debt free money directly to consumers or producers in order to combat such discrepancy. Douglas is mentioned by John Maynard Keynes in The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (1936, p. 32), and his theories permeate the poetry and economic writings of Ezra Pound.
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