1935 Alberta elected world's first Social Credit government - targetted private banks. tried for monetary reform

following on monetary reform movement of the 1920s led by Labour MP William Irvine and others, William Aberhart led the Social Credit League to victory in 1935.

The constitution says banking is federal responsibility, and the UFA said that meant it could do not bring in social credit to address the way private banks were foreclosing on Alberta farms and forcing families off their farms. But Aberhart did not let ththat stop him - he issued Alberta money "prosperity certificates" and founded a publicly-owned chain of banks.

Aberhart carried on the Debt Reconciliation Board of the previous UFA government.

He also founded Alberta Treasury Branch banking system, today the only government-owned bank in Canada and the U.S. that serves the public.

The Prosperity certificates put purchasing power in the hands of many families during the later part of the Great Depression. The Army & Navy stores famously advertized that they accepted the unusual money.

(work in progress)

miscellanous notes:

The Ottawa Citizen was a strong supporter of Alberta's SC movement. (People's Weekly, Jan. 6, 1945, p. 4)

Aberhart supported Alberta's STV/IRV mixed system under which he won in 1935. But SC suffered steady frustration under STV in the cities where they took only as many seats as their due share, and suffered occasional setbacks under IRV.

in St. Albert in 1940 the SC candidate was leding in the first count but Independent candidate Tellier pulled ahead with transfers from eliminated CCF and Liberal candidates to take the seat.

(I think the SC government also was rebuffed by the way votes were cast in a by-election in the late 1930s but can't seem to find the exact event.)

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see also Montopedia blogs:

"When Alberta gave out free money" (1960s)

"Peggy and Balmer" recounts how MLA Bramley-Moore campaigned for low-interest loans for farmers circa 1910 and how Peggy Balmer Watt was a supporter of Aberhart's SC policies despite the vociferous stand her husband's newspaper, the Edmonton Journal, took against the government. (Tom Radford's book "Peggy and Balmer")

The Nichol, Nicholls men...

https://montopedia.wixsite.com/montopedia/post/herbert-nichols-of-tasmania-and-alberta-pr-reformer-and-social-credit-er

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