Jimmy Rides Again

The one-man farm bloc within the Canadian Cabinet, bantam-sized Agriculture Minister James Garfield Gardiner, proved his shrewdness and power again last week.

Tough little Jimmy Gardiner was pleased as Punch to announce that: 1) the Cabinet had agreed to pay a subsidy on top-grade hogs, to keep up Canada's war-record production of bacon; 2) Britain, which depends on the Canadian larder in wartime only, was dickering for a four-year contract on Canadian bacon.

The second announcement was even better than the first. A long-term contract would give the Dominion's farmers long-term priority in the British market, which belonged mostly to Denmark before the war.

Answering All Complaints. Jimmy Gardiner's measures were cleverly devised to stop pot-shooting at the Canadian Government by three groups: price-conscious farmers; the Opposition, which complained that Britain was being shortchanged; and the British themselves, who want more and better bacon from Canada, at least for the duration.

The new premiums ($3 a head for A grade hogs, $2 for B1) guaranteed the farmer a better price--but only if he maintained the quality of his stock. But the subsidy was probably enough to keep hog breeding at its war-swollen level, enable Canada to ship at least 500,000,000 lb. a year to Britain. This is what Britain needs to maintain her 4-oz. weekly bacon ration, what Mackenzie King's Liberal Government needs to quiet Opposition yammering.

But what pleased Liberals most was that tough Jimmy Gardiner had forged a potent political weapon. In Gardiner's own farmer-dominated Saskatchewan the up-&-coming Socialist C.C.F., which both Liberals and Conservatives mortally hate and fear, has been winning many a convert among the disgruntled. Minister Gardiner's bacon deal might help stem the Left-wing tide in the part of the Dominion where it flows highest.

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