tariff group who are near-Continentalists, is at least
entitled to serious regard as a fantastic experiment in administration.
But we may trust Hon. Mackenzie King to simulate a vast moving-picture
smile of high benevolence and great sagacity as he contemplates such a
fantasia--with himself as the chief tight-rope performer and Niagara
roaring below.

NUMBER ONE HARD

HON. T. A. CRERAR

Some Frank Norris such as wrote "The Pit" and "The Octopus" should arise
in Canada and write a Wheat-Politics novel about T. A. Crerar. This
man's photograph was once published squatting Big-Chief-wise in the front
row of 300 farmers on a raid to Ottawa--I think early in the war about
prices. It was a second to the last delegation which the farmers intend
to send to Ottawa. The next one was in 1918, when the farmers went to
protest against conscription. If you ask T. A. Crerar to-day, he will
predict that in days not far to come manufacturers will petition a farmer
government in Ottawa. Because the farmers in the West regard Crerar as
almost a geological process, which sometimes results in a volcano.

Crerar was projected into public affairs by 50-cent wheat, monopolistic
elevator companies, discriminating railways and protected manufacturers;
all of which, while he was still a young man who should have been going
to dances and arguing about the genesis of sin, he concluded were into a
dark conspiracy to make a downtrodden helot of the prairie farmer.
To-day Crerar is at the apex of a movement. He embodies the politically
and commercially organized campaign of the biggest interest in Canada
against all other merely "big" interests. He is willing to let himself
be talked about as the next Premier of industrial and agricultural Canada
on behalf of all the farmers whom he can persuade to elect him a majority
minority in the next Parliament. And the prospect does not even dazzle
him, or awe his colleagues of the coonskin coats and the truculent
whiskers.

Crerar began responsible life as a farm boy in Manitoba, taught school,
and managed a small elevator company; he became President of the United
Grain Growers and of the Canadian Council of Agriculture--and the next
obvious thing to say is that he entered politics as Minister of
Agriculture in the Union Government. But T. A. Crerar had been in
politics a long while before that, though he had never even run for
Parliament or legislature. Unusual, unprofessional politics.