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The Effect of the Depression on Canadian Politics, 1929–32
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 September 2013
Extract
The war and the ensuing economic depression aroused divisive forces in Canadian life which only occasionally lie dormant–the forces of race, religion, occupation, and section. No patriotic speech delivered in English-speaking Canada from 1917 to 1922 was complete without a ringing declaration that the war had made Canada a nation. Actually, by the time of the conscription election of 1917, the war had made Canada two nations, one nation speaking English, the other speaking French. Nor did the English-speaking nation long remain united. The Ontario farmer had voted for conscription on the understanding that his sons would not be conscripted. His sons were conscripted, and the protests of his farm organization were met with contempt and derision. In revenge, he organized an agrarian political party. In western Canada, the causes which led the farm movement to enter politics were more deep-rooted than the mere emotionalism of Ontario, and consequently more obscure. The reciprocity campaigns of 1910 and 1911 had shown the farm movement its strength; the break of western Liberalism with Laurier in 1917 had laid the foundations of a third party; and the post-war depression provided the movement with its impetus and its objectives. The same depression strengthened, of course, the farm movement in Ontario and the nascent Labor movement in English-speaking Canada.
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- Foreign Governments and Politics
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- Copyright
- Copyright © American Political Science Association 1933
References
1 English-speaking Canada means the aggregate of those constituencies or parts of constituencies where the population of French origin, according to the 1921 census, constituted less than a fifth of the whole. In French-speaking Canada, the population of French origin constituted four-fifths or more of the whole.
2 The popular vote, in percentages, in English-speaking Canada in 1921 was: Conservative, 35.8; Liberal, 27.3; Progressive, 31.5; Labor, 5.2; Independent, .2. The popular vote in French-speaking Canada was: Conservative, 14.4; Liberal, 73.9; Farmer, 6.9; Labor, 1.0; and Independent, 3.8.
3 I.e., that part of the province lying south and west of a line drawn from Georgian Bay to Kingston.
4 I.e., the mixed farming part of the province of Quebec plus Eastern Ontario.
5 A detailed analysis of party alignments in 1930 is given in “Canadian Political Parties: A Study of the Economic and Racial Bases of Conservatism and Liberalism in 1930”, Contributions to Canadian Economics, Vol. VI (Univ. of Toronto Press, 1933)Google Scholar.
6 Speaking strictly, these voters should not be called farmers, but voters living outside of towns and cities having a population of over 1,000 in 1931. The popular vote in these rural districts of the Prairies in 1921 was: Conservative, 15.8 per cent; Liberal, 12.3 per cent; Progressive, 69.1 per cent; Labor, 2.4 per cent; and Independent, .4 per cent.
7 I am indebted to the statistical department of the Bank of Nova Scotia for permission to use its indices of industrial employment and of the prices of wheat, farm products, and manufactured goods.
8 Index of the Prices of Canadian Farm Products Compared with Index of the Prices of Fully and Chiefly Manufactured Goods. Base = 100 = mean 1924–30. In December, 1921, the former index stood at 92.4, the latter at 105.6. In December, 1932, the former stood at 44.5, the latter at 70.4.
9 If the vote in the cities and towns which had in 1931 a population of over 1,000 be deducted, the vote in English-speaking Southern Ontario in 1921 was: Conservative, 33.0 per cent; Liberal, 19.6 per cent; Progressive, 45.0 per cent; Labor, 2.4 per cent.
10 In the sixteen largest cities of English-speaking Canada, the popular vote in 1921, by percentages, was: Conservative, 46.7; Liberal, 33.8; Progressive, 5.5; Labor, 13.5; Independent, .5. In the remaining cities and towns of English-speaking Canada which had in 1931 a population of over 5,000, the popular vote in 1921 was: Conservative, 42.6; Liberal, 36.1; Progressive, 16.6; Labor, 4.7.
11 General Industrial Employment in Canada. Base = 100 = mean, 1925–1929. Corrected for shifting seasonal variation. The peak of the post-war boom was reached on April 1, 1920, when the index stood at 105.9. On December 1, 1921, it stood at 81.7. After reaching a low of 78.8 on February 1, 1922, it rose to a peak of 114.4 on August 1, 1929. By January 1, 1933, it had descended to 78.8.
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