Word: alberta
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...Alberta's Premier Ernest Charles Manning, 43, heartily approves the strong spiritual note in his province's reaction to its added wealth. Said a wheat farmer's wife in Medicine Hat: "God knew that Mr. Manning would use the oil wisely, so He let it be discovered...
Money & Religion. His interest in the Bible, however, actually got Manning into politics. As a farm boy of 17, he heard a broadcast sermon by William ("Bible Bill") Aberhart, a Calgary evangelist with a persuasive social message. Bible Bill later became premier of Alberta as head of a Social Credit party that promised to pay a $25 monthly dividend to every citizen. Manning had joined Aberhart's Prophetic Bible Institute as a student and helped his chief sell Alberta on the fuzzy Social Credit theory by stumping the province, singing hymns and reciting prayers at political rallies. When Aberhart...
Helped along by the World War II boom and the unparalleled prosperity since, Social Credit's odd mixture of economic theory and religious puritanism has sewed up the loyalty of Alberta's fanners in much the same way that William Jennings Bryan's fundamentalism-cum-free-silver captivated the U.S. Midwest in the '90s. Manning's party has won four straight elections and has all but blotted out the opposition in the legislature. "We don't need an opposition," Ernest Manning has said. "They're just a hindrance...
Neither his thriving political fortunes nor Alberta's booming business expansion have changed Ernest Manning's ascetic private life. He lives in a middle-class home in Edmonton's Garneau district...
...Premier Manning has been less rigorous in his devotion to the woolly formulas of Social Credit. His public speeches still include occasional vague references to monetary reform, but there is no more talk of the $25-a-month bonus, although Alberta's current $70 million cash surplus would presumably permit a few token dividends. When some diehard...