The Farmers in Politics
The Farmers in Politics
William Irvine
With an Introduction by Reginald Whitaker
Copyright Date: 1976
Published by: McGill-Queen's University Press
https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt7zt28n
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Book Info
The Farmers in Politics
Book Description:

First published in 1920, this book endures as a lucid statement of a class and ideological approach to Canadian politics, which with wit and passion seeks to demolish the great Canadian myths of classlessness and pragmatism.

eISBN: 978-0-7735-9150-9
Subjects: History
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  1. Front Matter
    Front Matter (pp. iii-iv)
  2. INTRODUCTION TO THE CARLETON LIBRARY EDITION
    INTRODUCTION TO THE CARLETON LIBRARY EDITION (pp. v-4)

    Canada, according to the familiar legend, is a country singularly without political ideology. Political ideologies are believed to be, like venereal diseases, the result of moral decay, and characteristic of the decadent areas of the world, such as Europe. Here, in the clean frontier atmosphere of North America, there seems little evidence of such weakness. Instead of ideology, the Canadian password has beenpragmatism.Our politics have been those of brokerage parties which seek to aggregate the largest number of disparate interests behind the most nebulous platform possible, and political. decision makers have been guided not by dogma but by...

  3. FOREWORD
    FOREWORD (pp. 5-8)
    SALEM G. BLAND

    Here is a fresh, vigorous, constructive, and Canadian contribution to the solution of our social and political problems.

    It is significant and, perhaps, prophetic that it comes from Alberta. Perhaps nowhere in Canada to-day is more interesting and vital thinking going on than in the most western of the three prairie provinces, most western, perhaps, in spirit as in position.

    I have followed the career of the author with keen interest since his college days. He has been finding his own way. I believe his dominant passion is devotion to the common people. No one who reads these pages can...

  4. PREFACE
    PREFACE (pp. 9-12)
    William Irvine
  5. Table of Contents
    Table of Contents (pp. 13-14)
  6. PART I. THE NEW SOCIAL ORDER IN PERSPECTIVES
    • CHAPTER I. THE PROCESS OF READJUSTMENT
      CHAPTER I. THE PROCESS OF READJUSTMENT (pp. 17-85)

      There are two instruments used largely to-day as aids to human vision: one the microscope, which brings to view the infinitesimal that without its use would remain invisible; the other the telescope which brings into focus that. which is beyond the natural limit of sight. Both are equally serviceable in the world of science; but they are not interchangeable. The astronomer would be helpless with a microscope, while the biologist would find little use in his laboratory for a telescope.

      In approaching the great problems of our civilization, our instruments of vision must be analogous to the telescope. We must...

    • CHAPTER II. THE OUTLOOK OF THE NEW LEADERSHIP
      CHAPTER II. THE OUTLOOK OF THE NEW LEADERSHIP (pp. 86-102)

      The perspective attempted in the foregoing chapter shows that what is really taking place is not a mere departmental reconstruction, but that society as a whole is being transformed. The war just ended is not responsible for the changes that are taking place; it but revealed social weaknesses in such a way as to attract to them the attention of the masses. But society is doing what it has always done, that is, accommodating itself to conditions. The various phases of human life, represented in what we call institutions, are so inter-related that any alteration of a fundamental character in...

  7. PART II. THS ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED FARMERS’ MOVEMENT
    • CHAPTER I. ECONOMIC NECESSITY
      CHAPTER I. ECONOMIC NECESSITY (pp. 105-134)

      How did the farmers’ organization originate? Did it spring into being over night, or did it grow in spontaneous response to conditions? The answer to these questions will furnish us with the key to the proper interpretation of the movement. The general environment of the movement has already been given. Its character has been affected by the atmosphere of unrest, and the universal desire for social justice peculiar to the period. We have now to examine the more immediate economic environment in which the United Farmers’ organization took its rise. To do this thoroughly would mean writing a complete history...

    • CHAPTER II. DEMOCRACY AND THE GROUP
      CHAPTER II. DEMOCRACY AND THE GROUP (pp. 135-254)

      The United Farmers’ movement, as I have said, is the result of the operation of economic and social laws. It was not planned in detail by any individual; and what it shall be is yet obscure. It has already branched out into: educational, industrial, commercial, and political activities, but its future or the future of any or all of these departments cannot be previsioned with absolute accuracy; it will keep on, unfolding and accommodating itself to the laws by which it came into being and through which it exists. Apart from the laws of social progress the movement cannot be...

  8. Back Matter
    Back Matter (pp. 251-254)
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