Plain Talk

Mrs. Noggins, a stout, pawky woman, came out to Canada before the first World War and settled near Saanichton, on Vancouver Island. She has an uncle in Liverpool, a cousin in Seattle, but her best friend is whimsical Columnist-Editor Bruce Hutchison, who lives near Saanichton too, and who helps run the Winnipeg Free Press by remote control.

Because Mrs. Noggins' husband, Alfred, is a shiftless sort who beetles out for a beer whenever he can, Mrs. Noggins tends their poultry farm. The only papers she reads are those in which the neighbors send over scraps of garbage for the Noggins' poultry. But she keeps up with the news and has her ideas. Reported in Hutchison's widely read columns (seven papers), they have made Mrs. Noggins* one of Canada's best known commentators.

Exasperation. "Every day on the radio," said Mrs. Noggins recently, "people are told they're a factor in some new crisis or other. I tell you, I'm awful tired of bein' a factor. I jest want to be a 'uman bein' for a change."

After reading a speech by socialist CCF Leader M. J. Coldwell, she said: "The way I figger it, come the day when Coldwell is runnin' the country, there'll be ... freedom for everybody. . . . Everybody starves to death, of course, after a week or two, but it don't matter. We're all free."

A visit to her Seattle cousin gave her plenty to talk about. "Why," said she, "you'd think to see [Americans] in the movies they lived in tiled bathrooms and took a barth every mornin'. Not that I'm against it ... I do like to 'ave a good 'ot soak once in a while, after cleanin' out the 'en 'ouse. . . . But when you get there, they're jest ordinary folks like us. ... When you see 'em, you like 'em. Wot's more, they like you."

Explanation. Last week, Mrs. Noggins sounded off on the dollar crisis. Said she: " 'Tis awful 'ard, you see, to realize you're goin' broke when you're spendin' your capital and 'avin' a whale of a time, same as poor Uncle 'Erbert when 'e mortgaged 'is 'ouse in Liverpool and lived like a prince until the sheriff arrived along with three widows, suin' for breach of promise. . . . Well, the way I read it, we can't pay for the goods we get from the States unless we get more dollars, and we can't get 'em like we uster, from the English, on account of the English ain't got 'em no more. And if we don't get the goods from the States we can't keep our factories goin' to send goods to England, and if we don't send the goods to England we're out of a job. Any child could understand it. . . ."

Said Bruce Hutchison last week: "I consider her judgment superior to that of any statesman or journalist I know. . . ." He ought to. He created her.

* Not to be confused with Mrs. Hunkle, an "old bag" who lives in Sam Boal's column in the New York Post (TIME, Dec. 23).

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