The Postcard
A postcard that was published by the Art Publishing Company of Glasgow.
The card was posted in Fleetwood on Wednesday the 16th. August 1911 to:
Mr. Herbert Needham,
Manor View,
Westfield,
Horbury,
Wakefield.
The message on the divided back of the card was as follows:
"Fleetwood, 16.8.11.
We are having a good
time here. We went to
Barrow-in-Furness
yesterday by boat.
Hope all are well at
your end.
Kind regards,
Yours,
J. W. Street".
E. F. Schumacher
So what else happened on the day that the card was posted?
Well, the 16th. August 1911 marked the birth of E. F. Schumacher.
Ernst Friedrich Schumacher CBE was a German-British statistician and economist who is best known for his proposals for human-scale, decentralised and appropriate technologies.
He served as Chief Economic Advisor to the British National Coal Board from 1950 to 1970, and founded the Intermediate Technology Development Group (now known as Practical Action) in 1966.
In 1995, his 1973 book 'Small Is Beautiful: A Study of Economics As If People Mattered' was ranked by The Times Literary Supplement as one of the 100 most influential books published since World War II.
In 1977 he published 'A Guide for the Perplexed' as a critique of materialistic scientism and as an exploration of the nature and organisation of knowledge.
E. F. Schumacher - The Early Years
Schumacher was born in Bonn, Germany in 1911. His father was a professor of political economy. The younger Schumacher studied in Bonn and Berlin, then from 1930 in England as a Rhodes Scholar at New College, Oxford, and later at Columbia University in New York City, earning a diploma in economics.
He then worked in business, farming and journalism.
His sister, Elizabeth, was the wife of the physicist Werner Heisenberg.
Schumacher as a Protégé of Keynes
Schumacher moved back to England before World War II, as he had no intention of living under Nazism. For a period during the war, he was interned on an isolated English farm as an "enemy alien".
In these years, Schumacher captured the attention of John Maynard Keynes with a paper entitled "Multilateral Clearing" that he had written between sessions working in the fields of the internment camp.
Keynes recognised the young German's understanding and abilities, and he was able to have Schumacher released from internment. Schumacher helped the British government mobilise economically and financially during World War II, and Keynes found a position for him at Oxford University.
According to Leopold Kohr's obituary for Schumacher, when "Multilateral Clearing" "was published in the spring of 1943 in Economica, it caused some embarrassment to Keynes who, instead of arranging for its separate publication, had incorporated the text almost verbatim in his famous "Plan for an International Clearing Union", which the British government issued as a White Paper a few weeks later.
Schumacher as Adviser to the Coal Board
After the War, Schumacher worked as an economic advisor to, and later Chief Statistician for, the British Control Commission, which was charged with rebuilding the German economy.
From 1950 to 1970 he was Chief Economic Adviser to the National Coal Board, one of the world's largest organisations, with 800,000 employees.
In this position, he argued that coal, not petroleum, should be used to supply the energy needs of the world's population. He saw oil as a finite resource, fearing its depletion and eventually prohibitive price, and viewed with alarm the reality that:
"The richest and cheapest reserves
are located in some of the world's
most unstable countries".
His position on the Coal Board was often mentioned later by those introducing Schumacher or his ideas. It is generally thought that his farsighted planning contributed to Britain's post-war economic recovery. Schumacher predicted the rise of OPEC and many of the problems of nuclear power.
The Death of E. F. Schumacher
Schumacher died of a heart attack on the 4th. September 1977, on arrival at Billens hospital in Romont, Switzerland, after falling ill on a train in Zurich during a lecture tour.
