Who is Major Clifford Hugh Douglas from The Road to Wigan Pier and what is their importance?

Major Douglas (1879 - 1952) was a British engineer who proposed the Social Credit economic reform. Orwell provides no biographical data for Douglas, but notes that Douglas would doubtlessly find it pleasing that collieries could easily produce more coal than they routinely did produce. Douglas' contention was that the total costs of goods should roughly equate to the sums paid out to produce the goods—in other words, the collective worker salary should, in principle, be sufficient to buy back what the workers produced. Douglas concluded that inequity was caused because the economic system was organized to maximize profits for those making economically significant decisions.