Roger Sandilands wrote: "... as Mason indicates, before the General 
Theory and even after, this kind of fiscal intervention was widely 
regarded as both economically and politically dangerous, and it was even 
common to label New Dealers like Currie (as well as Keynes himself) as 
communists bent on debauching the currency."

This seems to be taking us back to the previous claim that, until 
Keynes's time, counter-cyclical fiscal policy as a means of affecting 
the quantity of money in order to deal with unemployment had not been 
well known.  Just for the record, the facts are to the contrary.  
Pigou's _Wealth and Welfare_ (1912), _Unemployment_ (1913), and 
_Industrial Fluctuations_ (1927) make this argument.  This is at least 
part of Pigou's basis for opposing the so-called "Treasury View" of 
fiscal policy.  R.G. Hawtrey, who was most known for arguing the 
Treasury View -- the crowding-out effect of government spending -- also 
pointed out that government spending is useful and appropriate when it 
is needed to substitute for the increased hoarding of cash by the 
public.  J. Ronnie Davis's _The New Economics and the Old Economics_  
(1971) has numerous citations of economists who argued for increased 
government spending, financed by new money (currency), as a remedy for 
the on-going Depression in the early 1930s.  The advocates include such 
well-known names as Irving Fisher, Frank Knight, Henry Schultz, Lloyd 
Mints, Henry Simons, and Charles Hardy.  In fact, at a conference in 
Chicago on July 1, 1931, it was Lloyd Mints (University of Chicago) who 
urged J.M. Keynes to recognize the greater efficacy of public works 
(financed with new money) to increase total spending and thus restore 
profitability of businesses rather than Keynes's desire to use money 
creation to reduce interest rates (Davis 1971, 121):  "As as matter of 
fact, won't public works bring about precisely the same results [as 
Keynes was hoping for], not through decreasing the rate of interest, but 
increasing the rate of return  for business firms, thereby increasing 
the rate of investment, even at current interest?"  Keynes agreed, but 
called for "an admixture of public works" and central bank interest rate 
reduction policy.  Davis also quotes Frank Knight as having argued that 
"economists are completely agreed that the Government should spend as 
much and tax as little as possible, at a time such as [the Depression] B 
using the expenditure in the way to do the most good in itself and also 
to point toward relieving the depression@ (Davis 1971, 16).  And William 
Leiserson of Antioch College (a much lesser known figure to many of us 
now) is also quoted to have argued in 1932 that  "economists of  every 
school for many years" had argued for countercyclical timing of public 
works to deal with unemployment, referring to his own 1911 report on 
unemployment for the Wainwright Commission of New York State (Davis 
1971, 17).

It seems to me that much too much is made of Lachlin Currie's 
contributions to knowledge of the efficacy of counter-cyclical fiscal 
policy than the evidence warrants.  (I'm yet to succeed in publishing my 
correction of that view of him.)

James Ahiakpor