radical step. He passed a Debt Adjustment Act that cancelled all the interest on mortgages since 1932 and limited all interest rates on mortgages to 5%, in line with similar laws passed by other provinces. In 1937 the government, pressured by its backbenchers, passed a radical banking law that was disallowed by the federal government (banking was a federal responsibility). Efforts to control the press were also disallowed. The government passed a law of recall, but the only constituents who collected signatures for their member's recall were CCF-ers and oilmen in the Turner Valley. The MLA threatened with recall was Aberhart himself - the law was repealed retroactively. Aberhart's SC government was authoritarian and he tried to exert detailed control over its officeholders (especially in the late 1930s, those who opposed Aberhart's more radical ideas; then in the late 1940s, the die-hards who still called for Douglasite reforms); those who rebelled were dismissed as cabinet ministers and purged, "read out of", the caucus and were not named as party candidate for the next election. Although Aberhart was hostile to banks and newspapers, he was basically in favor of capitalism and did not support socialist policies, unlike the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) in Saskatchewan. In Alberta the CCF and Social Credit were bitter enemies, especially in the early 1940s. The antagonism was re-created in Saskatchewan. Thus it was impossible for the two parties to merge in Saskatchewan. The Saskatchewan CCF, already a potent force in that province, took on the mantle of defending workers'/farmers' rights and went on to form government in 1944. By 1938 the Social Credit government abandoned its promised $25 payouts. Its inability to fulfill its election promises led to heavy defections from the party, including at least one MLA, Edith Rogers, who later moved to the CCF. Aberhart's government was re-elected in the 1940 election, with but 43% of the vote, against a combined Liberal-Conservative coalition under the name People's League. The prosperity of the Second World War relieved the economic fears and hatreds that had fueled farmer unrest. Aberhart died in 1943, and was succeeded as Premier by his student at the Prophetic Bible Institute and lifelong close disciple, Ernest C. Manning (1908–1996). The Social Credit party, now firmly on the right, governed Alberta until 1968 under Manning. He was succeeded by Harry Strom, who led the Social Credit government to defeat in the 1971 general