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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 to us. You don't hire a man to do a job and then hire another man to hinder him."
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;
Mrs. Manning does her own housework. The premier mows the lawn in summer and shovels the snow in winter. Manning neither drinks nor smokes, and has no use for card-playing. "The family altar," he dourly comments, "has been replaced by the bridge table." On Sundays, the premier and Mrs. Manning travel 187 miles to Calgary, where he conducts a Bible class and broadcasts a sermon from the Bible Institute. His wife plays the organ for the hymns.
Pay-as-You-Go. 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
Social Crediters called for stricter adherence to the old creed two years ago, Manning sternly read them out of the party. The government-run University of Alberta no longer studies Social Credit as a political theory. From a hot-eyed economic reform movement, the Social Credit Party has changed into one of Canada's most conservative provincial governments, with a strict pay-as-you-go tax policy and a debt-retirement program.
Alberta's oil policy, bossed by Mines Minister Nathan Tanner, a Mormon bishop in private life, is a model arrangement between government and industry. Since 93% of all oil rights in Alberta are owned by the province, there is little of the feverish scrambling for land or the cutthroat competition that marked the oil booms of Texas and other areas where mineral rights were privately owned.
Rent in Advance. A company ready to invest in Alberta oil can lease the rights on almost any amount of land by paying an advance yearly rent of $1 an acre and signing an agreement to go ahead with immediate exploration. When a company strikes oil, it has three months to map out its entire lease in alternate blocks, usually in checkerboard pattern. The company keeps half the blocks, and pays land rent to the farm owners (up to $1,500 a well), plus a government royalty averaging 14% on all oil produced. The alternate blocks of the checkerboard revert to the government. These government-held squares, some of them adjoining producing wells, are a lure to smaller or more cautious companies that dare not risk the big gamble on unproved land. The blocks are auctioned to the highest bidders, and have brought as much as $1,800,000 for 160 acres.