Agricultural History Review, Volume 58 Part 1 (2010), p. 149

This title’s re-issue, 20 years after its initial publication by Canada’s Parks Service, is amply justified. The book’s scope goes far beyond its initial purpose to provide the historical setting for the W.R.Motherwell farm as a national historic site. As an in-depth micro-study of early prairie settlement, it gives what few others have. An additional welcome feature of the new edition is an introduction to the most recent historiography which sets the context for this study.

European settlement followed on the displacement of both native and mixed-blood peoples. The former negotiated for reserves of land, although their agricultural activity was subsequently crippled by government regulation. The federal government granted the latter ‘scrip’ (a right to claim 160 acres), if they received anything. Dick found some evidence of outright fraud by land-company and federal agents, although he perhaps generalizes beyond the available evidence for his area. Lack of any start-up capital may have hampered the chances of most mixed-blood families from joining the move to commercial agriculture more than lack of access to land.

Dick argues persuasively that the decisive factor in a homesteader’s success was to arrive early enough to get as much of the best land as possible (up to 540 acres) and to persevere through the hard times. In south-west Saskatchewan that meant filing your claim in the 1880s, and farming through multiple production problems (drought, gophers, grasshoppers) and marketing problems (distant railways, uncertain prices). Another key factor in that perseverance was the homestead’s distance from the railway. Cancellations of homestead entries jumped from 50 per cent (6–14 miles) to 75 per cent (22–30 miles). What the debates over initial start up costs show is that they varied greatly. Minimum costs could be very modest before 1900, especially with family and community support as well as low expectations.

Those who arrived in south-west Saskatchewan during the 1890s found that there was not only less low-cost land available, but also less good land. Dick contrasts the Anglo-Ontario settlers of Abernethy with the German settlers in nearby Neudorf. The latter got poorer land and less of it. They had a higher rate of ‘proving up’ than Abernethy, but a lower rate of long-term permanence. They soon moved on to look for better land.

Those who arrived after 1900 faced rapidly rising land prices, which forced up the level of capital needed to commence. For example, Georgina Binnie-Clark found she had to call repeatedly on her English funds to keep her farm in operation (pp.89–92). Of course she faced the additional handicap of being female, which made her ineligible for the free homestead grant (unlike the American homestead law). She had to pay $5,000 for land that would have cost a man $970 for homestead and pre-emption.

Early arrivals who persevered until 1900 could benefit from high grain prices, better railway connections, and a ready supply of credit due to the rapid rise in the value of their lands. Farm debts arose from purchase of land or farm implements to increase production and initially short-term debt (a couple of months) to cover the prairie farmers’ chronic irregular cash flows. These latter could, in effect, become long term, until the later established wheat board and wheat pools gave prairie grain farmers more regular income flows. Those early persevering homesteaders’ capital gains usually enabled them to avoid the worst of the debt crises, which fell most heavily on the later arrivals with less land and thus less security.

Dick’s theme of an economic divide between wealthy and poorer farmers comes out clearly in his analysis of agrarian protest politics. W.R.Motherwell was a key leader in the first effective prairie farmer protest, on which his later political career – as minister of agriculture for Saskatchewan (1905–17) and then Canada (1921–30) – was built. The Territorial Grain Growers Association that he led proposed modest reforms to grain handling, limited enough to be enacted by the federal government. Whether intended or not, these favoured large-scale farmers like Motherwell, over the poorer homesteader just getting established. As farm leader and cabinet minister, Motherwell opposed government intervention or even farmer cooperatives to store, ship, or market grain.

In an irony he saves for his closing pages, Dick points out that Motherwell farm, now made into a historic site, was far from the typical prairie homestead. Not only was Motherwell one of the early preserving pioneers who received a lot of good land very cheaply, but he became mainly a brome grass seed grower, rather than the typical wheat farmer.

While the University of Calgary Press is to be commended for the re-issue, the text has not been entirely re-worked: a study more than 30 years old is described as ‘recent’ (p.47). There are repeated print errors, at one point rendering the text incomprehensible (p.218). One hopes for better from university presses.