September 17, 1935-Hear That Familiar Noise? — It’s the Canadian Politicians

Mackenzie King

The Washington Daily News — Tuesday, September 17, 1935

Hear That Familiar Noise? — It’s the Canadian Politicians

By ERNIE PYLE

OTTAWA — It is really fun for an American, who has listened all these years to the grave campaign spoutings of our own politicians, to read over the political platforms of the parties in another nation.

It is fun because the foreigners are so much like our own. Let me quote a few paragraphs from the platforms of the four parties stepping on the gas for next month’s premiership elections in Canada.

This is from the Liberals, headed by MacKenzie King, which corresponds to the Republicans in the States:

“The Liberals call unemployment the chief national problem of Canada, yet the platform says the Liberal Party would deal with the present emergency condition thru a representative national commission... in an endeavor to provide work for the unemployed,” and as a permanent measure would introduce policies which will serve to revive employment by reviving industry and trade.”(That’s grand, isn’t it?)

King would further the development of agriculture, lumbering, mining and fishing by (the capitals are his) EFFECTIVE REDUCTIONS IN THE COST OF PRODUCTION (Oh, Mr. Hoover, meet Mr. King); he would seek, as opportunity offers (come on Opportunity, don’t muff this chance) to give workers and consumers a larger share in the government of industry; he would cut down public expenditures, cut taxes, and increase revenues thru encouragement of trade (that’s the stuff!); and he would try to find means of “effecting a fair and just distribution of wealth with increasing regard to HUMAN NEEDS, to the furtherance of SOCIAL JUSTICE, and to the promotion of THE COMMON GOOD.”(Haven’t we heard that before somewhere?)

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Now comes Premier Bennett and the Conservative Party, which corresponds at the moment to our own Democratic Party. These quotes are from a series of radio “fireside” chats to the people by Bennett last January:

“The old order is gone. It will not return. Your prosperity demands corrections in the old system... I am for reform. And in my mind, reform means government intervention. It means government control and regulation. It means the end of laissez faire.

“When the system is reformed and in full operation again, there will be work for all.

“...Free competition and the open market-place, as they were known in the old days, have lost their place in the system, and the only substitute for them, in these modern times, is government regulation and control.

“I think there is an inequality in the distribution of income. I think there must be devised, by some plan of taxation to be considered at once, a better balance.

“I believe there should be a uniform minimum wage and a uniform maximum working week. There must be an end to child labor. There must be an end to sweatshop conditions.”

So saith Mr. Bennett. Are you listenin’, Mr. Roosevelt?

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Now let us lend an ear to the manifesto of the Reconstruction Party, headed by Harry Stevens, once a cabinet minister in the Bennett government, but who quarreled with Bennett and formed his own party:

“In the tangle of national economy Canadians recognize the failure of those whom they have elected to manage the country’s affairs. They realize that the shibboleths and incantations of the old political parties will not rectify faulty engineering.

“Unfortunately the desire for change has led to much careless condemnation of democracy and private enterprise and to the advocacy of panaceas which go far beyond the needs of the situation, and which provoke hostility to change of any sort.

“Canadians have asked themselves: Can Canada provide a standard of living commensurate with the resources of a developed country for every person willing to work? Yes, Canada can! And banded together in the Reconstruction Party, they say Canada will.”

Stevens hasn’t a ghost of a chance, but he is causing concern, because he’s going to take votes from somebody, and both the Conservatives and Liberals are afraid they will be the goats. Stevens might even acquire a balance of power.

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And now to J. S. Woodsworth, and his Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, the fourth man in the premiership race. His party corresponds roughly to our Socialists. Only not so much so. His manifesto says:

“We believe the Canadian people must aim at nothing less than the establishment of a planned and socialized economic order... The great obstacle which stands in the way of this is the monopolistic concentration of economic power in the hands of a small group of big financiers and industrialists who exploit the people for their own private profit, and who refuse to allow the machinery of production to work at full capacity unless they can levy toll from it.”

And that is how they say it in Canada.