Ringing in the Common Love of Good: The United Farmers of Ontario, 1914 1926
Founded in 1914, the United Farmers of Ontario (UFO) became a significant force in the province, winning the most seats in the 1919 provincial election and forming a governing coalition with the Independent Labour Party. The UFO and its companion organisations, the United Farmers Cooperative Company (UFCC) and the United Farm Women of Ontario (UFWO), flourished, achieving much of its success by challenging those who controlled the economic, political, and social structures in Ontario and advancing an alternative vision of democracy that sought to maximise citizen participation in the decision-making process. By the mid-1920s the UFO had gone into a period of decline from which it never recovered. The promise of equality hoped for by UFWO members never materialised and the UFCC, once a key component in the development of an alternative vision, began to focus more on profits than on politics.In "Ringing in the Common Love of Good" Kerry Badgley explores both the rise and the fall of the UFO, focusing on the Ontario counties of Lambton, Simcoe, and Lanark. He challenges the liberal-capitalist interpretation that the movement was nothing more than a group of impatient Liberals, as well as the Marxist view that the UFO consisted of self-interested independent commodity producers. Badgley argues that as the UFO broke free from hegemonic forces it developed alternative economic, political, and social visions, but that it was these same forces, combined with internal struggles and a conservative leadership, that ultimately resulted in the decline of the movement as a vehicle for democratic change in Ontario. Kerry Badgley is an archivist at the National Archives of Canada.