Lawrence French.
Lawrence French was an economist at Burgoyne University in the late 1930s.
During the debate over Governor-General Douglas Watson's efforts to increase military spending, French wrote that in the event of war, "the world's economies would be totally destroyed, as would republicanism wherever it may be found. Munitions makers will insist on payment for their goods. To meet such payments, governments will print inflationary paper money. When the manufacturers demand gold instead, the gold supply will be exhausted within months, if not weeks. At this point, the governments will be forced to take over factories. When this happens, every nation in the world will become a dictatorship." French was opposed by British economist Bernard Morris, who argued that increased government spending was needed to stimulate demand, and that military spending was the most logical policy at the time.
When Councilman Bruce Hogg became Governor-General following the 1938 Grand Council elections, he chose French as his chief economic advisor. The economy of the Confederation of North America remained depressed two years after the Panic of 1936, and French advised Hogg that he needed to "put our finances in order" by running a budget surplus. Hogg responded by raising taxes and cutting government spending, including military spending, a national road building program, the subsidy to the merchant marine, and social services such as emigrant aid. However, French's austerity program proved unsuccessful; after a year and a half, the North American economy remained moribund, with no recovery in sight.
Hogg blamed the continued economic depression on the opposition Liberal Party, which had defeated his attempt to reduce military spending, so that the national budget remained in a deficit. Sobel does not record French's own explanation for the failure of his economic policies, assuming they differed from Hogg's.
Sobel's sources for Lawrence French are French's own memoirs, Economic Responsibility: The Early Years of the Hogg Administration (New York, 1948); and Howard Buley's Economists and the Global War (London, 1966).