ALBERTA CABINET

Timaru Herald, Volume CXL, Issue 20260, 8 November 1935, Page 12

ALBERTA CABINET

A YOUTHFUL MEMBER When Mr William Aberhart, Premier of Alberta, and head of the first Social Credit Government in the world, went to Ottawa soon after taking office, he left as Acting-Premier the Provincial Secretary of his Cabinet, Mr Ernest C. Manning—a youth of 26 years, and the youngest man ever to attain Cabinet rank in Canada, either in the provinces or in Dominion affairs. Mr Manning is unmarried, the son of a Saskatchewan farmer. He likes to tell of how, a boy on his father’s farm, one day he tuned in his radio on a broadcast from Calgary, Alberta. It was the voice of Mr William Aberhart, then an obscure Bible class teacher, “on the air” with his weekly lecture. That was eight years ago. Presently young Manning went to Calgary, became a student at, and the first graduate of, Aberhart’s “Prophetic Bible Institute.” Mr Manning became one of the Bible leader’s trusted advisers, and when Mr Aberhart went into politics—the United Farmers’ Government having declined to accept his Social Credit theories—Mr Manning was a crusader in the cause. He was elected to the Legislature, and a place in the Cabinet followed almost automatically. The Provincial Secretary does not think Social Credit will sweep the world. “It will sweep Canada, though.” he said, “province by province, and Australia and New Zealand are ripe for it.”