CANADA: King or Chaos!

Still almost as unpopular as Herbert Hoover, Dominion Premier Richard Bedford Bennett submitted last week to the ultimate indignity in Canada’s election campaign (TIME, Aug. 19). His Conservative campaign managers convinced him that the huge posters everywhere reading VOTE BENNETT! are such a liability to the Party that they were ordered changed to VOTE CONSERVATIVE!

Rich and pious Mr. Bennett also was made to realize that it was not wise for a candidate like himself to travel about Canada in his personal private car named Mildred. Overnight Mildred became No. 100. Conservative Bennett created his first campaign sensation by coming out in broadcasts in favor of “controlled inflation,” proposing to cure Canadian unemployment and “give youth a chance” by retiring all workers on pensions at 60, and finally vexing his rich friends by promising to issue no more tax-exempt Canadian bonds.

As his most distasteful chore of the week, the Dominion Premier, who holds his House of Commons seat from Alberta, made a Federal loan of $2,500,000 to that Province’s newly-victorious Social Credit Premier William Aberhart (TIME, Sept. 2 & 16). Such seemed to be the price charged by Social Crediteers for withholding their attacks from Mr. Bennett personally in the election. Other provinces of Canada’s West simultaneously ganged up for loans on the Federal Premier who finally approved last week provincial loans totaling $12,250,590.

Assuming that Conservative Bennett will be defeated, traditional Canadian politics would turn up as victor the rival Liberal Party’s genial boss, onetime Canadian Premier William Lyon Mackenzie King who last week was having posters printed with the slogan KING OR CHAOS! Actually the electorate showed signs of splitting to candidates of minor radical parties such as normally would give Canada’s old guard Conservatives and Liberals no worries whatever. Ominous was a remark by Liberal Mitchell (“Mitch”) Hepburn, who upset Ontario’s entrenched Conservatives and became Premier (TIME, July 2, 1934). On a national electioneering swing last week, “Mitch” Hepburn told a pep meeting of Liberal Party workers in British Columbia : “In the West the situation is so scrambled up that I just don’t know what will happen!”

In Alberta new Social Credit Premier Aberhart, having got his $2,500,000 loan, announced that he was leaving for Detroit to confer with Radio Priest Coughlin. Said William Aberhart: “I am going to see Father Coughlin because I am in search of the most expert advice on this continent! We do not need Henry Ford’s assistance but I should like to talk to him also because of his interest in economics.”

Urged by reporters to define Social Credit as he intends to practice it, Premier Aberhart obliged: ”Briefly, what Social Credit means is that we are going to take what we produce, increase it scientifically, and distribute it to all. Like any company the Province of Alberta will deposit security in the banks, then instruct the banks to credit we citizen-shareholders with $25 each monthly. The citizen will draw on that credit, his ‘dividend check’ being the same thing as cash—and naturally just as good.”

With proposals like this being made to Canada’s eager West by persuasive votegetters, Premier Bennett, his back to the wall, cried out to fellow citizens over the radio: “You are being told of rare economic creations for which, perhaps, we cannot find a name—something never seen before on land or sea! . . . Zealots who obscurely think the printing press can take the place of hard work and thrift have a lot to say. . . . This is no time for unhelpful condemnation of the plans of our political opponents, and yet . . . my natural restraint breaks down before the clear need to warn the country!”

While Premier Bennett anguished and Premier Aberhart communed at Detroit’s Shrine of the Little Flower, an extremely tall, imposing British cleric in black gaiters and frock coat landed in Manhattan on his way to Alberta. As newshawks swarmed around him the very Rev. Hewlett Johnson, Dean of Canterbury, observed: “Newspapermen? Ah yes. Terrible people! You aren’t usually so eager for a sermon. Well, this is my chance!”

Social Credit, preached the Dean, is “about ready to be embraced by the young people in America,” but in older England, “the idea must be put to soak for a while.” Evidently afraid Social Credit will fail in the hands of Premier Aberhart, the Dean rapped: “I can assure you that a failure, even the collapse of the Government in Alberta, would not mean the end of Social Credit. … At present banks create money in the interest of Finance. The people should create money in the interest of Production! You get inflation only if you create money faster than you can produce goods!”

Recalling a long talk he had with J. P. Morgan about finance, the Dean said he finally told the financier a good deal about the simple, spiritually elevating life of Chinese too poor to know where their next meal is coming from. “At this suggestion,” concluded Dean Johnson, “Mr. Morgan merely smiled good naturedly.”

To help North Americans, and especially Albertans, embrace Social Credit, Canterbury’s tall Dean will make a seven-week whirlwind U. S.-Canadian speaking tour, then whisk home to snug England.

Said Father Coughlin after conferring with Premier Aberhart: “Social Credit is nothing new and has been in the Constitution of the United States since it was written.”