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Date: 1936-06-08
By: F.R. Scott
Citation: Letter from F.R. Scott to Harold E. Winch, Esq., M.L.A. (8 June 1936).
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Letter to Harold E. Winch. Esq

Harold E. Winch, Esq., M.L.A.,
3792 Knight Road,
Vancouver, B.C.

Dear Mr. Winch,

Attached to this letter is a draft programme for British Columbia, which Professor Marsh and I have worked out along the lines suggested in our talks with you in Ottawa. We are naturally somewhat hesistant in attempting to suggest ideas for British Columbia when we are necessarily out of touch with many recent developments in the province, but we hope that some of these suggestions will be useful to you. We have not attempted to make the programme exhaustive, and you may well feel that some additions must be mad. In particular I notice that we have omitted any reference to the savings banks, which we think would be a useful aid to the provincial government, though we do not believe that you will be able to use, or should attempt to use, savings certificates as a form of provincial currency. We feel that one your debt burden is reduced and taxes on wealth raised your financing should be fairly orthodox — The new ideas in your programme belong more to the socialisation of industry.

You will notice that we have not suggested any specific number of hours for the working week. We think it most dangerous to suggest that you should introduce the 30-hour week, as was suggested in the Burrard by-election manifesto. To shorten the working week as drastically as that would be to convert into immediate leisure all the savings and benefits which result from planning, and we do not think it is wise to cash

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in on these benefits as completely at the outset. The problem is not so much to put more men on the existing jobs as to create new jobs for those who are now unemployed. Some reduction in working hours of course will come, but it would be better to leave your hands free to do what the situation calls for.

I am sending a copy of this to Mr. Robinson, as I do a copy of opinion on the constitutional question.