ABERHART SURVIVES CRISIS

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 158, 1 April 1937, Page 11

ABERHART SURVIVES CRISIS

Capitulates to Insurgents

DIVIDEND PLAN TO BE DRAWN UP By Telegraph—Press Assn.—Copyright. Edmonton, March 30. Capitulating to the Budget demands of the insurgents, the Premier of Alberta, .Mr. IV. Aberhart, escaped defeat in the Legislature in proposing a commission of five to draw up a plan for consumer dividends. On Monday Mr. Aberhart was overruled on a proposal to withdraw his Budget closure motion. Twenty-one Social Credit insurgents negatived the proposal without a vote being taken. The insurgents insisted that Mr. Aberhart’s Budget made an insufficient attempt to place .Social Credit in effect, and proposed a counter Budget providing for the payment of an unstated amount of consumers’ dividends, and for interest-free farm loans.

“NIGHT IS FALLING” Stephen Leacock on the Aberhart Experiment CAPITAL RUNNING AWAY “The Alberta of the Social Credit and the Prosperity Certificate lies out on the great Hats, once prairie, now grain. All the Albertans talk English, or think they 'do; they all attend the public school and high school and the college, and get an education as standardised as the make-up of a motor-car,” writes Professor Stephen Leacock. “But trace out where they came from, they and their parents, and you find that the province of 750 000 people has got in it 63.000 Ukrainians and 60,000 Germans. Of people whose parents’ speech was not English and not American, there are no fewer than 270,000. Alberta, in other words, is what used ‘to be termed hr a favourite sense a ‘melting-pot.’ “Now, a province that has no particular history or geography or nationality and is just a community in the making is a ready field for social experiment —especially if it goes ‘bust’ and is reckless enough to venture anything. And Alberta, to its own great surprise, went ‘bust’ not long after the Great War, first gradually and then with a smack. “It fell, first a victim to the specialism and mechanisation of industry that, is making many a country as lopsided as a lobster with one claw. “In Alberta, when they first raised wheat with vast gang ploughs that disappeared over the horizon and came back as threshing machines, all life was a shout. Then came the question, who was to eat the wheat? And the world wheat market broke, and Alberta was underneath it.

Thistledown in the Breeze.

“In such distress all kinds of new Winds of doctrine blew like thistledown in the breeze; and one especially seemed to blow as sweetly and as softly as the Chinook wind that melts away the winter—the doctrine of Social Credit! They recognised it as soon .as they heard it: ‘Social’—that’s us; ‘credit’—our own idea; and 25 dollars a month each—our own thought! “The basic thought of ‘Social Credit’ is absolutely sound; it starts from .the fact fliat each of us at birth owns his share of the earth and the right to live.

“Its new prophet, Mr. William Aberhart, of the Prophetic Bible Institute of Calgary, took it as religion. It carried Aberhart and bis retainers into power in August, 1935, with 56 of them in a legislature of 63. “Not for him the cold teaching of economics; away with it! Give us the working of the spirit! ‘Welfare’ does it—not wealth! This province has too many public debts (it owes, municipalities and all, about 220,000.000 dollars). Away with the debt! The bankers take away our money. Good! We’ll have money of our own! The people’s incomes are too small! All right—everybody shall have a new one. Everybody buy from everybody and pass round like the grand chain of a barn dance!

“Aberhart Cut the Debt.”

“So Aberhart cut the debt. The interest on all the provincial bonds was cut one-half—the five per cents, to two and a half, and so on. That was done by order-in-council and validated by a provincial Act of 1936. “All municipal debts are cut to a flat 3 per cent., if the municipality wishes it. Does it wish it? Well, now! Private debts? Not wiped out, but added up as to 1932, all interest since then deducted from the principal, interest rate cut to 3 per cent., and all payments subject to consent by the Advisory Board. “The next item: Alberta money! What will it buy? Pretty well anything in the country store at Wetaskawin or Red Deer; nothing at all in a big departmental store at Edmonton; no good for railways, telegraphs, express post office and all the things belonging to the accursed capitalists of the East. Payments to ‘foreign’ companies (foreign means Canada) ; yes, they Lake a percentage of pay in it, to get business. Some won’t touch it. But the unemployed eat it up! And Government employees get ‘doses’ of it. Biggest Thing of the Lot. "Last comes Social Credit, the biggest thing of the lot—the 25 dollars a month. ‘lt will take eighteen months to get it working,’ said Mr. Aberhart. His provincial treasurer said, ‘We may do it in fifteen.’ In fact, some people think it’s done. Aberhart’s legislature passed an Act ‘To provide the people of Alberta with additional credit’ (September, 1936) that is meant to implement Social Credit.’ In reality it does nothing of the sort. It’s just an Act for setting up a provincial credit board to make loans to those who need them—nothing in or of itself more revolutionary than the housing Acts and relief Acts of a dozen places. “Moreover, it has been announced that there can be no ‘Social Credit’ except for people who ‘register.’ When you register you sign a document that covers a page, that pledges you to Alberta money, that pledges your support to Social Credit, that cuts you out of individual buying and selling, that governs your ‘production’ on the farm.

“Before that time the ‘experiment’ will be over. Capital is running away from Alberta. People with real property are trying to sell it. Values are collapsing. Scrip is withering, Night is falling. Winter’s coming.”