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The Rural Community and Political Leadership in Saskatchewan*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2014

S. M. Lipset
S. M. Lipset*
Affiliation:
The University of Toronto
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Extract

The Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (C.C.F.) movement in Saskatchewan is the first avowedly socialist group to win an electoral majority in any province or state of Canada or the United States. Many have expressed surprise that a socialist party should have won office in the most rural province in Canada. This paper is an attempt to throw some light on this question through a study of the leadership of the C.C.F. as compared with that of other community groups and political parties in that province.

The significance of the growth of the C.C.F. party can best be expressed in economic class terms. The movement has two important aspects. Essentially, it represents the latest historical phase of the almost continuous conflict of the western grain farmers of the United States and Canada with eastern business interests. Secondly, within the province, success of the movement has resulted in a political transformation in which the representatives of the rural majority supported by the working class of the cities and towns rejected the political control of the urban middle-class business and professional groups which dominated the Liberal and Conservative parties and the government of the province.

Since 1901, the farmers of the West and of Saskatchewan in particular, have been attempting to reduce the hazards of a one-crop wheat economy which is perennially subject to extreme fluctuations in income, as a result of the variability in grain prices and climatic conditions. At the turn of the century, Saskatchewan farmers organized the Territorial Grain Growers' Association (later the Saskatchewan Grain Growers' Association) to force the Canadian Pacific Railroad to provide loading platforms and freight cars for their wheat.

Type
Articles
Information
Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science/Revue canadienne de economiques et science politique , Volume 13 , Issue 3 , August 1947 , pp. 410 - 428
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association 1947

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Footnotes

*

This paper was presented at the annual meeting of the Canadian Political Science Association in Quebec, May 30, 1947. The data were collected during 1945–6 while on a predoctoral field fellowship of the Social Science Research Council.

References

1 See Moorhouse, Hopkins, Deep Furrows (Toronto, 1918)Google Scholar; Wood, L. A., Farmers Movements in Canada (Toronto, 1924)Google Scholar; Mackintosh, W. A., Agricultural Cooperation in Western Canada (Toronto, 1924).Google Scholar

2 Report of the Elevator Commission of the Province of Saskatchewan (Regina, 1910), pp. 19–22.Google Scholar

3 See Patton, Harold S., Grain Growers' Cooperation in Western Canada (Cambridge, 1928)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Boyd, Hugh, New Breaking (Toronto, 1938)Google Scholar; Innis, H. A. (ed.), The Diary of Alexander James McPhail (Toronto, 1940).Google Scholar

4 Bank of Canada, Report on the Financial Position of the Province of Saskatchewan (Ottawa, 1937), p. 3.Google Scholar

5 Boyd, , New Breaking, pp. 151–61Google Scholar; Innis, , Diary of Alexander James McPhail, pp. 199–264.Google Scholar

6 Britnell, G. E., The Wheat Economy (Toronto, 1939), p. 97.Google Scholar

7 See Burnet, Jean, “Town-Country Relations and the Problem of Rural Leadership” (Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science, vol. XIII, no. 2, 08, 1947).Google Scholar

8 “By the very nature of their role reform leaders tended to be people devoid of ‘respectable” attributes. … The influences which prompted people to break from established institutions and to take up the cause of reform often increased opposition against them. Desire to escape from the boredom of routine tasks, inability to secure a living or recognition in any other way, love of power which was experienced in swaying large audiences or large reading publics, and personal ‘grudges”. against persons in authority, may have mingled, along with other motives, with the sincere conviction of doing good.” Clark, S. D., The Social Development of Canada (Toronto, 1942), pp. 14–15.Google Scholar

9 A study of the members and leaders of Communist organizations suggests that they come from marginal groups, i.e. they tend to be members of minority, foreign born or ethnic groups, or people who are personally insecure. Lasswell, Harold D. and Blumenstock, Dorothy, World Revolutionary Propaganda (New York, 1939), pp. 277–300.Google Scholar Actually the research data on the nature of leadership in new social movements are quite scanty and inconclusive. There is evidence to suggest that extreme poverty and outcast status results in apathy rather than revolt. See Lazarsfeld-Jahoda, Marie, Die Arbeitslosen von Marienthal (Leipzig, 1933).Google Scholar Considerably more research on the relationship between crisis situations and social movements is necessary.

10 See Changes in Farm Income and Indebtedness in Saskatchewan During the Period 1929–1940, University of Saskatchewan, College of Agriculture, Agricultural Extension Bulletin no. 105 (Saskatoon, 1940).Google Scholar

11 “I assumed the role of one who was out of work and had become a Communist because I couldn't get a job. I was told frankly and with great emotion that I could get work if I wanted it; that I was simply lazy and wanted a handout from people who had energy enough and ambition enough to work for a living, even though it meant twelve to sixteen hours a day.” Bakke, E. Wight, Citizens Without Work: A Study of the Effects of Unemployment Upon the Workers' Social Relations and Practices (New Haven, 1940), p. 61.Google Scholar

12 See Ruggles, Clyde O., “The Economic Basis of the Greenback Movement in Iowa and Wisconsin” (Proceeding of the Mississippi Valley Historical Association for the year 1912–1913, pp. 142–65)Google Scholar; Wilcox, Benton H., “A Historical Definition of Northwest Radicalism” (Mississippi Valley Historical Review, vol. XXVI, 1939, pp. 377–94)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Miller, Raymond C., “The Economie Basis of Populism in Kansas” (Mississippi Valley Historical Review, vol. XI, 1925, pp. 469–89)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rice, Stuart A., Farmers and Workers in American Politics (New York, 1924), pp. 156–77Google Scholar; Neprash, Jerry, The Brookhart Campaigns in Iowa: 1920–26 (New York, 1932).Google Scholar

13 “Cooperative Organization in Saskatchewan” (Cooperative Development, 02, 1946, p. 2).Google Scholar There is much duplication in the membership figures since one person is often a member of several co-operative associations.

14 Farms and Farmers in Canada: Facts from the Census 1941 and 1931 (Winnipeg, 1944), p. 13.Google Scholar

15 This relationship is probably a reciprocal one.

16 Canadian Protestantism, particularly as represented by the United Church, is even more than the Protestantism of the United States concerned with a sociological as distinct from a religious effort for betterment. Theological doctrine is less important than social effort. What is popularly known as ‘uplift’ is the driving impulse.… It is the outstanding agency of sociability and as such it plays a subtle and important part in the formation of public opinion and the creation of community consciousness.” Brady, Alexander, Canada (Toronto, 1932), pp. 129–31.Google Scholar

17 Britnell, , The Wheat Economy, p. 188.Google Scholar

18 Ibid.

19 See data for co-operative delegates in Tables IV, V, and VI.

20 The findings in this study of rural co-operative and C.C.F. leadership in Saskatchewan are similar to those of other sociological studies of rural leadership. In the United States higher economic status and farm ownership are correlated with active participation and leadership in farmers' organizations. ( Sanderson, Dwight, Rural Sociology and Social Organization, New York, 1942, pp. 598–600.Google Scholar) “Cooperatives are more successful in enlisting the better educated, the more experienced, wealthier farmers than the others, and farm owners will join more readily than tenants.… In the main co-operators belong to more organizations like churches, farm bureaus, lodges, and have a higher standard of living, more conveniences and more equipment than non-cooperators.” ( Kolb, J. H. and des Brunnes, C., A Study of Rural Society, New York, 1935, p. 353.Google Scholar)

Ethnic influences in the United States are also similar to those in Saskatchewan. Segregated ethnic colonies participate much less in organizations such as the Farm Bureau and co-operatives than the Anglo-Saxons. Farmers of Scandinavian and Teutonic origin participate more than those coming from the Slavic or Latin countries. ( des Brunner, E., Immigrant Farmers and Their Children, New York, 1929 Google Scholar, chap. V.)

21 From interviews and Canadian Parliamentary Guide (Ottawa, 1931).Google Scholar

22 Gerth, H. H. and Mills, C. Wright (eds.), From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (New York, 1946), p. 363.Google Scholar

23 Veblen, Thorstein, The Theory of the Leisure Class (Modern Library edition, New York, 1934), p. 193.Google Scholar

24 See Dobb, Maurice, Russian Economic Development Since the Revolution (London, 1928).Google Scholar

25 The shift in one decade in rural opinion in New Zealand has been significant:

26 Bazelon, David T., “The Faith of Henry Wallace” (Commentary, 04, 1947, p. 314 Google Scholar).

27 From interviews with leaders of the U.F.C.