THE CHILDREN’S CANDY BAR CRUSADE:  On this day in 1947, Canadian children in Ladysmith, British Columbia hit the streets to protest an increase in the price of chocolate bars from five cents to eight cents.  As the children marched, they sang:

We want a 5 cent chocolate bar, 8 cents is going too darn far

We want a 5 cent chocolate bar, Oh, we want a 5 cent chocolate bar.

The protest soon spread to Victoria and Burnaby.  Within a week, 300 children were marching down Jasper Avenue in central Edmonton.  In Toronto, 500 children marched along Bloor Street.  A smaller crowd of about 60 marched on Parliament Hill in Ottawa.

The candy bar protests were quite the thing for a week or so.  Candy bar sales dropped 80%.

According to the Wikipedia entry, the end came when “an anonymous tipster told the Toronto Evening Telegram that the National Federation of Labor Youth, which had supported the Toronto protest, had communist backing.”  The protest quickly fizzled as parents kept their children out.  What the Wikipedia entry doesn’t mention is that—for whatever you’d like to make of it—the allegation of communist backing was essentially true.

Candy bars remained at 8 cents.