Ed Schreyer: A Social Democrat in Power

Winnipeg: Queenston House, 1977. Mass market paperback, illustrated with bank of centre plates in black and white, Pp247. Light creasing to spine and previous owner name neatly and modestly at top of title page else a tight and unmarked, very good or better copy. 145 grams. In the book, premier Ed Schreyer of Manitoba speaks out: 'You can have near-full employment without inflation only if you're prepared to go to restraints, intervention in the marketplace, but you can't have one without the other.' 'If we could show more restraint on affluent and often conspicuous consumption, like extra color T.V. sets and extra and big cars, then necessary public programs such as dental care or property tax credits wouldn't have to be restrained as much.' 'The marketplace has demonstrated a total inadequacy with regard to energy. Nothing short of mandatory, induced allocations of energy is sufficient.' 'I do not believe for a moment that the dignity of work is rewarded when somebody who works in the packing house or steel mill or smelter, full-time, honest effort, who works in a sense that his shirt sticks to his back, receives one fifth or one sixth of somebody in an executive or professional position.' 'National policies must be promulgated only after their regional implications have been made known and taken into account.' 'Every major reform that has added to the dignity of mankind has been brought about only after a major struggle against those who have something to gain by keeping conditions as they are. This will never change.' 'Politics is very much the art of the possible and this applies to socialist politics as well as any other.'