Tommy Douglas "The cream separator"

Tommy Douglas recites one of his favourite stories.
Introduction by Pierre Berton, video by Doug Taylor.

"The Cream Separator" is an analysis of the capitalist economic system. This story was suggested by Tommy Douglas' reading of Lewis Mumford, who had argued: "During the age of expansion capitalism gave cream to the few, whole milk to the middle classes, and a blue watery residue to the majority of farmers and industrial workers, agri- cultural labourers and slaves." The way in which Douglas adapted this rather arid analysis to his rural audiences testifies to his oratorical genius.

Category:

Nonprofits & Activism

Tags:

• Tommy Douglas
• Saskatchewan
• socialism
• Pierre Berton
• ccf
• NDP

[wiegraf9009]

Thank you for the post! The world needs more Tommy Douglas!

[Marysue5252]

Geart video! It goes to show you how far the present liberal-lite New Democrats have to go to equal their founders!!

[northerbrewer]

Debs and Hanford.

An interesting pair to be seen in a video about a man who a generation later would change the face of Canada.

Although these are interesting American Marxists I don;t know what if any significants they play in the Douglas story.....

And I am not even sure if I would call them marxists, socialist, or union men.

Complicated things become when we invoke the spirits of people not related to our own class strugle.....

[recklesscoalition]

Nobody likes skim milk, so true.

[senhorengenheiro]

this is awesome!!! he seems to have been a great man!

[LightSnowOvernight]

i had the good fortune of working in the Sask Legislative Building in the mid-70s. In several offices, I commented to the staff how nice their desk was. All said..."It belonged to Tommy Douglas". Finally, I asked one guy.."how can everyone say they have Tommy's old desk?' He replied: "It's like Christ and the Cross. Everyone claims to have a piece of it".