Book Review

Canada and the United States

Bradford James Rennie provides an eminently fair treatment of the rise and first electoral successes of the United Farmers of Alberta (UFA) and the United Farm Women of Alberta (UFWA). Much of the writing on the movements and parties that arose on the Canadian prairies in the first half of the twentieth century is tendentious and moralizing, detailing how the organizations in question conformed or failed to conform to the author's idea of what should have been done to create an ideal society. Refreshingly, Rennie accepts the movements and submovements on their own terms, letting participants speak for themselves without endorsing or refuting their interpretation of the predicaments they were in or the tactics they used.

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The book begins with an examination of the origins of Alberta farm movements, showing the Grange and the Patrons of Industry to be precursors. The history of the UFA and UFWA unfolds mainly from the perspective of the rank and file, who were largely responsible for crucial matters such as recruitment and policy formation, and who were the driving force behind the organization's decision to run candidates in federal and provincial elections. Rennie's focus is on the class issues facing farmers, although the importance of regional grievances is by no means slighted. Class issues are interwoven with a depiction of farmers' self-image as the most important class in society, as people who produced the bulk of the national wealth and lived a life that fostered tranquility, enlightened cooperation, industriousness, and high-mindedness. Farmers and farm women believed that plutocrats, monopolies, the banks, speculators, middlemen, the railways, and the party system left them much poorer than they would otherwise have been, and that this conglomeration of forces prevented the full blossoming of agrarian civilization. The battle against these foes was to be won through political education and popular organization that would ultimately create a truly democratic, activist state.

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