"On the night of August 22, 1935, as Canadians listened to their radios, they heard, with amazement and incredulity, that the first Social Credit government in the world had been elected that day in the province of Alberta. . . . Before the tabulation of votes was completed, telephone calls from New York and London, headlines in newspapers, spot news in broadcasts, had confirmed the slogan of Social Crediters, 'The Eyes of the World are on Alberta.' The morning after the election a number of people lined up at the city hall in Calgary to collect the first installment of the Social Credit dividend of $25 monthly, which, they confidently believed, would be immediately forthcoming from their new government." This quotation from Professor Irving's book indicates how the apparent suddenness of the Social Credit rise to power and the magnitude of the victory aroused world-wide comment. Why had the doctrines of Social Credit, promoted unsuccessfully in the British Commonwealth and the United States for nearly twenty years, achieved political acceptance in Alberta? Why had the people of Alberta elected to public office persons so little experienced in the economic and political world as William Aberhart and his Social Credit colleagues? Professor Iving answers these questions and analyses systematically and comprehensively the rise of the movement as a phenomenon of mass psychology. His study, based mainly on interviews, supplemented with references to private papers, newspapers, and government sources provides a truly fascinating record.

For years scholars have maintained that Social Credit was a protest on the part of small-scale farmers, who fought against their disadvantaged position in advanced capitalism by rejecting central Canada's control of the prairie region. The protest is usually described as conservative and its supporters portrayed as small agrarian capitalists who combined their opposition to regional exploitation with a firm commitment to capitalism. Based on a review of census materials on occupations, election results, and the party's statements and appeals, Bell reveals that this traditional interpretation is misguided on several counts. He provides a greatly revised picture of the movement's popular class base and its goals and motives, and shows that it was far more radical than commonly believed. The theory of social movements Bell draws from this analysis is applicable not only to Social Credit but to social movements in general. Social Classes and Social Credit in Alberta will be of particular interest to sociologists, political scientists, and historians concerned with Canadian social movements and elections and the political history of the Great Depression.

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The Social Credit Movement had a Broad and significant impact on the social and political history of Alberta. A number of authors have examined this phenomenon, usually focusing on the economic and social conditions that influenced Social Credit's rise to power. Major Douglas and Alberta Social Credit Ideology, however, is the first work dedicated expressly to the intellectual history of the Social Credit government of the 1930s and 1940s. Bob Hesketh challenges us to revise previous thinking about Social Credit by placing new emphasis on the influence of Major C.H. Douglas's conspiracy-based ideology on the Aberhart and Manning governments. The author is the first to contend that Douglas's beliefs were strongly influenced by the infamous anti-Semitic book, The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. Douglas believed that a Jewish financial conspiracy with the single goal of enslaving mankind was orchestrating world events. Hesketh analyses the shared ground between Douglas's conspiratorial thinking and the fundamentalism of Aberhart and Manning. He suggests that both Premiers understood and applied Douglas's teachings to a wide variety of government policies, from the famous monetary bills to numerous lesser known economic diversification initiatives. This book develops important new interpretations of Social Credit's behaviour as a movement, party, and government, providing an unprecedented focus on ideology. It will be an essential reference for historians and political scientists concerned with the history of Social Credit in Alberta.

In this account of the Social Credit transformation, Alvin Finkel challenges earlier works which focus purely on Social Credit monetary fixations and religiosity.