Full bibliography

Between the 1880s and the Great Depression agriculture emerged and matured as the mainstay of the prairie economy. Farm workers were essential to the developing economy and society, but their place in the rural west was ambiguous. During the pioneering period, labour shortages and accessible land gave farm workers bargaining strength in the labour market and a niche in prairie society. A cooperative working relationship and a shared ideology resulted in a lack of overt conflict between labour and capital. But as lands were taken, farm workers faced more and more the necessity of remaining as wage labourers. Their position became institutionalized. The First World War highlighted the conflict that was fundamental to labour-capital relations, as farm workers and farmers alike bolstered their economic positions. Labour and capital entered the post-war decade recognizing the increasing divergence of their aims. Their relationship became more overtly conflictual. Throughout this transformation, farm workers used strategies to influence the shape and rate of change in the industry and to maintain significant control over their own working lives. They responded as members of the working class, as active agents in relationships with their employers and with capitalism.