Wikipedia says that “Thomas D. Campbell (1882–1966) was the ‘World’s Wheat King.’ On the farms of his Campbell Farming Corporation he grew more wheat than any other farmer or corporation. He pioneered industrialized corporate farming. As a consultant in agriculture, he advised the British, French and Soviet governments, including advising Stalin in 1929 on large-scale farming for the Soviet Union’s first five-year plan.”

The Scoop Shovel said “The company has 95,000 acres owned and leased, of which 65,000 acres are plowed and 45,000 acres are in crop each year. It owns 56 tractors, 500 14-inch plow bottoms, 60 12-foot drills, 50 10-foot discs, 72 binders, 100 harrow sections, nine threshing machines, 21 combines, 200 wagons. It can plow 1,000 acres per day, seed 2,000 acres, harvest 2,000 acres, thresh 20,000 bushels of grain. When all tractors are in operation about 4,000 gallons of gasoline are used per day.”

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The Co-operative Dairies report that month said that while farmers were just entering into the heavy season for cream production, it was difficult to foresee market conditions. “First, the New Zealand control is off for the present and this has released quite a large quantity on the old country (Great Britain) market, necessarily affecting the price to some extent, though no doubt a great quantity of this will go into consumption before we Canadians have a surplus to ship. At the present moment Canada is an importer of butter, even our western provinces.”

The report from the Manitoba Co-operative Poultry Marketing Association encouraged producers to “Swat the Rooster” and requested that every egg shipper eliminate roosters by May 24. It estimated that 70 per cent of shrinkage in eggs marketed in Manitoba was due to marketing fertile eggs.

“A rooster contributes nothing towards egg production,” the notice said in capital letters. “Will you assist in Swatting the Rooster on May 24th,” it said, concluding with: “Note — Boil three hours before using.”

United Livestock Growers reported that due to scarce supply, cattle prices had been strong despite the “vanishing” of overseas trade to Britain. “The fact is that Canada has no cattle to share for the British market.” However Britain was expected to continue to influence bacon prices.

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The unnamed writer of “The Pool Woman” column reflected on media reports that a national church assembly in Spain had met to discuss the “deplorable” morals of the day’s youth. “It seems to be the widespread belief that youth of today — and especially feminine youth — has thrown all the precepts of civilization into the discard and is rapidly going to the dogs. Magazines and newspapers carry stories of this ‘revolt of modern youth’ and the dress, conduct and morals of ‘the rampant flapper’ are being discussed, criticized and condemned.” But the writer went on to quote two similar examples of despair over modern youth, one written 59 years and the other 800 years earlier.

She also reflected on the ninth anniversary of the 1918 Armistice Day. “And yet the world is as much an armed camp as it was in 1914… For a certainty all the sorrow and the sacrifice, the misery and the terror of war will be repeated in the next 50 years if men and women do not set themselves determinedly to prevent it.”

Among the ideas quoted from a Tennessee College of Agriculture list on “how to go broke farming” were “Grow only one crop,” “Don’t plan farm operations, trust to luck,” and “Mortgage your farm for every dollar it will stand to buy things you would have cash to buy if you followed a good system of farming.”

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The Scoop Shovel, which published from 1925 until it became the Manitoba Co-operator in 1931, was an official “organ” and unabashed promoter of the wheat pool movement in Manitoba. Ed Russenholt, who later became CBC television’s first “weatherman,” was the Pool’s publicity director and also a talented cartoonist. He took advantage of Confederation’s 60-year Jubilee in 1927 to put in this plug for both national and farmer unity (see photo at top).

The issue also contained some “Jubilee Jottings” from pioneers looking back at the first 50 years of farming in Manitoba, and just as we do when looking back today, they reflected on how much things have changed. We’ve posted images of all these pages on our website.

“Looking back over the years since I was born in Kildonan in 1862 the change is altogether startling,” wrote G.T. Sutherland of Clandeboye.

“In the early ’70s we used the Red River Plow, then the wooden harrow. In harvesting the grain, first came the sickle, the cradle, then the reaper which was drawn by one man while another forked off the grain to be bound into sheaves by hand. Then came the self-raking reaper, and when the self-binder was introduced it was regarded as a wonder and a blessing.”

• Click here for a look at more pages from the June 1927 issue of The Scoop Shovel

John Grover of Birnie wrote of the “striking contrasts” since he arrived from England in 1870 at age 20. “The crossing took 13-1/2 days in a sail-and-steam vessel of 5,000 tons as compared with the modern passage of about seven days, and vessels more than six or seven times that size,” he wrote.

He also commented on the change in land values.

“The old process, also, of filing on a homestead for $10 cash, and buying a pre-emption at $1 per acre with three years to pay, presents a distinct contrast to the land values at present varying from $25 to $50 per acre.”

Sheriff R.H. Home of Portage reflected on the “stormy scenes enacted after the birth of this province as the result of the Riel Rebellion,” and the arrival of a “body of virile men” (Northwest Mounted Police) to quell it.

He had special praise for the evolution of the grain-marketing system.

“Through the instrumentality of our extensive railway systems, the organization of the grain-marketing system which makes it possible for the farmer to load his grain from the machine, and with the aid of the radio watch the movements of the market and keep in immediate touch with the world, he is indeed fortunate compared to those who struggled in the early days.”

The women’s perspective

No first name or address was provided for Mrs. J. Munday, but she described her arrival from the U.S. by rail and vessel in 1866 and subsequent journey to farm in the Gladstone area.

“Reaching Winnipeg we stayed a few days in the emigrant sheds which were crowded with settlers, mostly like ourselves, from Ontario. We found quite a number of other settlers ready to start when we did, and it was quite a fair-size caravan which left Winnipeg on the Portage trail — now busy Portage Avenue — for the virgin lands farther west.”

She described seeing “some years after” Lord Strathcona’s herd of tame buffalo near his home in Silver Heights.

“The wild ones had all disappeared from those districts before then. I have eaten pemmican often enough, but cannot remember liking it particularly well.”

Mrs. E.M.A. George — also no first name or address provided — described her 62 years of life and the changes in home conveniences, including her mother’s first kerosene lamp in 1870.

“I think it was in 1877 that my mother bought a clothes wringer which was considered a very wonderful machine. Today when I step into a modern kitchen and see the up-to-date equipment, electric range, washing machine, iron, hot water heaters and all the little and great helps that electricity has brought to our assistance in the home, I feel like rubbing my eyes and wondering if I have come into a new world.”

Mrs. A. Tooth described her life in Canada starting in 1883, “just after the big land boom of ’82 collapsed, leaving desolation behind.”

“Then the struggle for existence commenced for many farm women, but they faced the problem patiently, with a fortitude that kept the home fires burning.”

Mrs. Tooth described how she supplemented the farm income by selling butter, eggs, lard, bacon and chickens in Winnipeg.

However, “Sometimes I think better prices and more livable conditions are somewhat deteriorating to the fibre of the present generation. Cream shipped and butter bought does not look right to me. I do not wish the young wives to work as the pioneer women worked, but there’s a medium — it should be a happy one — manufacture for use and ship the residue. Bakers’ bread is neither as healthful or as economical as homemade.”

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Immigration policy was apparently in the news at the time, and the editorial in the previous issue took exception to the Bishop of Saskatchewan’s statements to the press about “mongrel Canada.” The bishop reportedly objected to the government encouraging immigration of “Germans, Poles, Ruthenians, Scandinavians and other non-British stock.”

The editor said: “It is the individual qualities that country; if these are satisfactory Canada can afford to welcome every kind of immigrant. Not, of what race is he? but, what kind of man is he? should be the test for immigrants. If he will make a good, useful, industrious and intelligent citizen, we needn’t worry about the flag he was born under, nor about mongrelizing the country.”

Classified ads were beginning to appear in The Scoop Shovel, later named the Manitoba Co-operator. One raises questions about logistics; it read, along with a box number to contact by mail: “50 lbs. rhubarb $3.50. Immediate delivery. Highland Farm, Mission, B.C.”

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The issue featured extensive coverage of addresses to the International Wheat Pool conference in Kansas City, including speeches by the presidents of the three Prairie wheat Pools, Alberta Premier and former UGG director J.E. Brownlee, the U.S. secretary of agriculture and a representative of a Russian grain export firm.

“The Pool Woman” page in that issue featured a photo of Mrs. Ellen Foss of Stonewall, who had shipped the first carload of wheat to Manitoba Pool in September 1924.

On the co-operative livestock-marketing front, cattle supplies were said to be short, with strong prices in recent weeks. “So pronounced is the scarcity of supply that the vanishing of overseas cattle to Britain has made no difference. By the end of May last year 40,000 cattle had been exported to Great Britain. Latest figures this year record only 7,100 shipped, and it is doubtful if it will reach 8,000 by the end of May.”

Cattle were instead heading west, and United Livestock Growers was shipping slaughter cattle from Winnipeg to Calgary and the Pacific Coast.

In the U.S., the government had introduced a new grade called “U.S. Prime Steer,” along with an educational program to “teach consumers that good beef is more desirable than poor beef.”

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In the December issue, editor J.T. Hull offered his own version of a Christmas story, but with a twist to extol the virtues of co-operative marketing.

A. Blanche Gibson, author of “The Pool Woman” column, also reflected on the joys of Christmas. Apparently, concerns over Christmas being too commercial have been around for some time.

“Frequently we hear the phrase, ‘Thank goodness, Christmas comes but once a year.’ But if it does mean loosening of our purse strings, and a healthy weariness from days of shopping and tying up parcels, we think it would be a sad old world if it were suddenly put a stop to.”

In other news, the shareholders of the Saskatchewan Co-operative Elevator Company were considering an offer from Saskatchewan Wheat Pool to purchase their elevator system — at that time the Pools were only a marketing organization, not elevator companies.

In Manitoba, the push was still on to sign up farmers who would commit their entire production to the Pool for five years and the Scoop Shovel reported on several sign-up meetings — one at Virden had attracted 450 farmers.

“Very particular attention is being given to these meetings by the grain trade. In the majority of cases they have their men present taking notes, and they are required to send in their reports to head office.”

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For those who did want to deliver to an elevator, it was reported that after two years of operation, Manitoba Pool locals had decided to accept grain from non-Pool members. Pool members (who had signed a contract pledging their total production for five years) were reminded that this provision also covered any leftover bags of seed grain.

Manitoba Pool also reported that its library now contained about 1,300 volumes, of which about 500 were on sociology, politics and economics. “We have found these to be the subjects most in demand by our members,” said the article, but there were also books on other subjects including “practically every book in the English language on co-operation and the co-operative movement.” In the previous winter, about 300 members had used the library, which paid postage both ways.

The Pool also announced that its noon broadcasts on radio station CKY would now be delivered directly from a microphone in the Pool office.

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“The Pool Woman” column in that issue noted that the first five-year contracts committing farmers’ entire wheat sales to the voluntary pooling system were soon to expire, and that the campaign to renew them would start in June. The column said that women had an important role to play in the campaign, noting that the first-ever contract with the Pool had been signed by a woman, Mrs. Ellen Foss of Stonewall.

There was much coverage of the International Wheat Pool Conference in Kansas City, which had been attended by representatives of wheat pools in the U.S., Canada, Australia and Russia. Manitoba Pool president Colin Burnell dismissed notions that the conference was to establish a world wheat pool. The idea was to bring the organizations “to confer together so that they might be friendly co-operators instead of price-cutting competitors.”

Russian representative J.G. Ohsol spoke of economic reconstruction after the czar. “The Russian farmers, liberated through the revolution, intend to rise to a higher economic level and aim to use all measures which they have themselves and which the Soviet government can put at their disposal.”

The Manitoba Co-operative Poultry Marketing Association called for May 24 to be “Swat the rooster day,” asking (in capital letters for emphasis) that after that date “There are no roosters in the members’ flocks.” It was estimated that 70 per cent of grade loss in Manitoba was due to marketing fertile eggs.

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