THIRD-PARTY IDEOLOGIES 343 



Even though this movement gained its greatest adherents in the western 

 Middle West, it can hardly be said to have been peculiar to that section, 

 nor to the United States for that matter. There were interesting parallels 

 in England, and in Canada farmer-laborities had considerable success with 

 their third-party movement. They were victorious in the provincial elec- 

 tions of Ontario and Alberta, and in the Dominion elections of 1921 

 they became the official opposition, holding 65 of the total 235 seats. In 

 England an organization similar to the Farm Bureau was found in the 

 National Farmers' Union, which claimed 100,000 members. In 1921 it 

 announced that it had gained the entire support of sixty-seven members 

 of Parliament, and the support of ninety-eight others with reservations, for 

 its program of agrarian legislation. 1 



The rise to power of the British Labor party had suggested to a vocal 

 minority that a similar movement might well develop in the United States 

 and take an active role in the postwar reconstruction. They felt that labor 

 and farm organizations could form the nucleus for such a movement, 

 conduct a program of education, and draft a plan for action. These ele- 

 ments felt that the conditions that led to the formation of the British 

 Labor party were also present in the United States, except that there was 

 no body like the Fabian Society functioning here, "studying social and 

 economic problems and developing a constructive program for the future, 

 comparable to 'Labor and the New Social Order,' adopted by the British 

 Labor Party in 1918." 2 



For a time it appeared as if the Nonpartisan League were going to 

 blossom forth into a national movement with the active political assistance 

 of organized labor. In September, 1917, a conference of producers and 

 consumers had been held in St. Paul, presumably for the purpose of enlist- 

 ing the support of labor, with representatives present from ten state federa- 

 tions of labor. A. C. Townley, the president of the League, was quick to 

 point out the political possibilities of such an alliance: "The farmers con- 

 trol 35 per cent of the vote of this country; labor controls about 27 per cent; 



1. Phillips Bradley, "The Farm Bloc," Journal of Social Forces, III (May, 1925), 

 p. 718. See also Paul F. Sharp, The Agrarian Revolt in Western Canada (Minne- 

 apolis, 1948). 



2. Fred E. Haynes, "The Collapse of the Farmer-Labor Bloc," Social Forces, IV 

 (September, 1925), p. 155. 



