CANADA: Social Credit Improved

Swarming into their provincial capital at Edmonton last week, breezy, homespun Alberta citizens witnessed a low-hat, soft-collared inauguration exactly to their taste. Some of the legislators present were in sweaters. None of their wives ventured evening dress. The King’s representative, Lieut.-Governor William Legh Walsh, who once grubbed for gold as a Yukon prospector, appeared in a grey suit and blue shirt to induct as Premier the mystically magnetic Calgary High School principal whose year-old Social Credit Party has just smashed all others in Alberta, winning 56 out of a possible 63 seats in the provincial Legislature.

The new leader, William Aberhart, whose ancestors were German, followed the tactic of Adolf Hitler in not standing for election to a legislative seat but devoting all his energies to boosting the Social Credit Party into power. This accomplished, plain Mr. Aberhart accepted from one of his Party henchmen last week the seat he had to have before he could be named Premier.

The outgoing United Farmers Cabinet of Premier Reid had been so utterly routed that their party failed to win a single seat, but these rustic Radicals departed with the satisfaction of knowing that they had presented Premier Aberhart, whom they consider still more radical, with a virtually bankrupt provincial treasury and a run on the provincial savings banks which had been ordered last week to pay nothing for the present to depositors.

“$18,000,000 Please!” Just where, Alberta wondered, was resourceful William Aberhart going to get the $25 he has promised to pay each bona fide citizen of Alberta every month after setting up the system known as Social Credit? Adolf Hitler’s first moves when he reached power were adroitly Conservative, and so last week were William Aberhart’s. The new Premier began by deprecating the hostility to King George of the previous Cabinet and Legislature which voted that His Majesty was not to appoint another Lieutenant Governor to Alberta. Mr. Aberhart will be glad to advise the King to send one when the Yukon prospector’s term expires.

Next Premier Aberhart delayed the installation of Social Credit by resorting to the mails instead of the cables in seeking aid from London Engineer-Economist Major Clifford Hugh Douglas, ”Father of Social Credit.” In about ten days or two weeks, said Premier Aberhart. he expects to get a letter from Major Douglas asking for information about conditions in Alberta, and after this has been supplied and cogitated the Major is expected to arrive at Edmonton.

Last and smartest move of Alberta Premier Aberhart was to take advantage of the fact that Dominion Premier Richard Bedford Bennett holds his own seat in the Dominion House of Commons from Calgary, Alberta and will certainly lose it in next month’s general election if opposed by the smashingly victorious Aberhart Social Credit Party. To rich, Conservative Mr. Bennett and his banker friends Social Credit is of the Devil, but Canada’s Premier, in common with Alberta’s, has a deep vein of overt, sonorous piety. The Bible has helped both men to win many a vote. Ting-a-ling went Mr. Bennett’s telephone. Mr. Aberhart, speaking from Alberta, asked for a loan from the Dominion Treasury of some $18,000,000. Far from banging down the receiver, Canada’s Premier did his best to save his Alberta seat by replying in honeyed terms. Said he later to newshawks: “I assured Mr. Aberhart that the province would be treated fairly by the [Dominion] Government, and that I would do anything I could reasonably do to assist him in dealing with the difficult financial obligations of the province.”

This looked so good to Mayor Andrew Davison of Calgary that he loudly threatened to default his city’s bond interests unless loaned $500,000 by the Dominion.

“Indian List.” Without crudely borrowing the name of Germany’s “Ministry of Propaganda & Public Enlightenment,” Premier Aberhart announced that Alberta Government news will hereafter be “dished out in platters” by a bureau with exclusive monopoly of statements from the Premier & Cabinet so that ”there will be no more scoops.”

According to the Premier, who used Father Coughlin’s radio methods in building up his Prophetic Bible Institute to a $65,000 plant & structure, his Government is going to function ”in a goldfish bowl visible to all.” According to Alberta reporters they are going to be stuffed with Aberhart press handouts, barred from ferreting out real news.

Getting back to his $25-for-everyone which won the election, Social Credit’s Aberhart emphasized severely last week that this will be paid not in cash but in credit, and “only to bona fide citizens of Alberta, forming a basic list.”

There will also be a list of shame, which William Aberhart called last week the “Indian List.” On this list the pious Premier will order placed the names of Albertans who spend any part of their $25 monthly credit for “liquor or luxuries.” Wicked men or women who remain for any great length of time on the Indian List will find their dividend abruptly stopped, this new rule being hailed by God-fearing Albertans as a distinct moral improvement on the merely economic tenets of Major Douglas.