“Truly I remember 1923, I wonder could any farmer forget it!!”
— PB Weekes, Perdue, SK, 9 August 1928
“The decade after 1908 was marked by a great error in Canadian domestic policy. In throwing open to settlement the relatively dry regions of southwest Saskatchewan and southeast Alberta—the drainage basin of the south Saskatchewan river—where the light brown soils indicated a historic absence of vegetation, the Canadian government was taking a great risk. Settlers in this district suffered the painful consequences of the government’s excessive optimism when several thousand of these farms were abandoned during the lengthy drought after 1917.”
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| Prairie sod house. 1 |
Prairie farming conditions were difficult long before the disastrous ‘dirty thirties’ made them common-knowledge across Canada. As Herbert, Saskatchewan-area farmer John Kramer wrote to Premiere W. M. Martin on 13 December 1919:
“That year [1914] was a crop failure I had 85 acres in and didn’t get a bushel in the fall. In 1915 I had in 115 acres I got a good crop but owing to the hard circumstances I was in I had to sell my wheat early in the fall on a average of 80 cents a bushel while them what could hold onto theirs got twice that amount in the spring.”
Circumstances such as those faced by Kramer led to the widespread belief that elevator companies kept the price of grain low during plentiful harvest months and drove it higher when the supply had diminished. Though rampant, farmer-criticism of the grain marketing system was ruled unfounded by three federal royal commissions during the inter-war years alone.
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| Elevators in Meyronne, 1923. 2 | Stooking wheat. 3 |
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| Avoiding the elevator companies, Radville 1928. 4 | Loading from platform, Moose Jaw. 5 |
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| Rural towns existed because of their elevators. 6 | Towns were spaced a day's wagon-ride apart. 7 |
“Co-operation is a combination of the practical and the ideal. It offers ample scope for putting into practice the ideals of the practical man as well as the ideals of the idealist. It is not only the most efficient, economical and practical way of doing business, but, when carried to its ultimate conclusion, it recognizes equality and the interdependence of all human beings. It provides a business medium through which progressive and socially minded men and women with high ideals can find satisfaction and peace of mind in useful work.”
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| Main Street Moose Jaw, 1884.8 | Prairie farmyard.9 |
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| Breaking sod with oxen. 10 | Elevator in Grasswood. 11 |
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