What is to be the final outcome of the Western farmers' revolt and its spread to rural communities in Eastern provinces? Is there to be greater harmony among opposing interests or is Canada on the threshold of internal strife which will plow deep furrows of dissension between class and class to an extent hitherto unknown in this country? If there is to be a pitched fight between capitalistic groups and the people at large, led by the farmers, what are the chances of victory for the latter? If they win, what will be the national effect?
These were a few of the questions which first turned the writer's serious attention to the Grain Growers. It seems scarcely credible that this great economic movement has attained present momentum practically unheralded; yet such is the case. The writer had watched its early struggles to success from Government windows and as preparation for a brief historical sketch it seemed desirable to get out among the farmers themselves and study the situation from their angle.
Frankly, the task was not approached without some skepticism as to the motives which might be uncovered. Almost the only occasions on which the Grain Growers revealed themselves to the public were when they waited upon politicians for this, that or the other. So often did this happen and so insistent were they that there seemed some grounds for the belief that to satisfy a Grain Grower was humanly impossible. From Legislative casements it even looked at times as if they were a new species of Indian, collecting political scalps! All manner of people accused them of all manner of things. In the East they were called "blacksmith-shop politicians, nail-keg economists, grousers and soreheads"; in the West they were dubbed "corner-grocer statesmen and political football players."
When the caravans of the Eastern political chieftains, Liberal and Conservative, came West they knew they were going to be held up by the outlaws. Long before these respective expeditions started across the plains infested with wild and dangerous Grain Growers, their scouts—the Western M.P.'s—were ranging far and wide in preparation.
And when those Grain Growers in turn rode East to take possession of Ottawa there was a popular expectation that they were about to whoop in and shoot up the town in the real old wild and woolly way. They were referred to cleverly as "Sod-Busters." It was rather startling to find them merely a new type of Business Farmer, trained to think on his feet, a student of economics.
To gather and verify the facts here recorded has required two years. During that time the writer has listened to earnest farmers in prairie shacks, pioneers and newcomers, leaders and followers, and has watched these farmers at work in their "Farmers' Parliaments" where they assemble annually by the thousands. It is impossible thus to meet and know these men while examining the facts of their accomplishments without being impressed by the tremendous potentialities that underlie their efforts.
Almost the first discovery is that the organized farmers have ideals beyond material advantage and that these ideals are national in scope, therefore involving responsibilities. Undeterred by these, the farmers are eager to push on to further achievements. Their hope for these ideals lies in the success of their business undertakings and it is because that success is the spinal column of the whole movement that it occupies such a prominent place in this historical outline.
Not all the Grain Growers are men of vision, it must be admitted. Many have joined the movement for what they can get out of it. In all great aggregations of human beings it is quite possible to discover the full gamut of human failings. But loose threads sticking to a piece of cloth are no part of its warp and woof. It is the thinking Grain Grower who must be reckoned with and he is in the majority; the others are being educated.
If there is doubt as to the sincerity of the organized farmers, why did their pioneer business agency spend its substance in educational directions instead of solely along the straight commercial lines of the concerns with which it was in competition? The very mould into which it poured its energies shaped special difficulties, generated special antagonisms and every possible obstruction to its progress. Its cash grants to the Associations in the West, to the official organ of the movement, even to the Ontario farmers, run over the hundred-thousand-dollar mark.
Or, take the case of the Grain Growers at Virden, Manitoba, who proposed to bring into the district a large shipment of binder twine to supply their members. When the local merchant who had been handling this necessity learned of the plan he raised his voice, thus: