ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED | OCTOBER 11, 1924 | CANADIAN COUNTRYMAN
This cartoon, published in the October 11, 1924 edition of the Canadian Countryman magazine, expresses one of the main complaints of the United Farmers movement in Ontario in the post-war period.
The formal peace treaty that ended the First World War did not put an end to the severe social disruptions it had caused. Farmers were particularly hard hit as the prices of agricultural produce returned to pre-war levels at the same time as the cost of raw materials produced in urban industrial centres increased. Some in the United Farmers movement blamed this price increase on what they saw as the unreasonable gains made by the labour movement in terms of wage increases and legislation that established the 8-hour work day.
This cartoon humorously illustrates the consequences of higher wages and better working conditions on farmers, who, unlike the laborer and the capitalist, must bear the full brunt of these costs. This cartoon illustrates the tensions that ultimately undercut the farmer-labour coalition that governed the province of Ontario from 1919 to 1923.