The Saskatchewan Liberal Machine before 1929

Abstract

From 1905, when Saskatchewan was made a province, to 1911, the Liberal party in Saskatchewan controlled both the federal and the provincial patronage. These six years gave it an enviable opportunity for laying firm foundations for a political organization. During the next ten years the federal patronage was in the hands of a Conservative or a Union party but the more important provincial patronage remained with the Liberals. Then in their last eight years of uninterrupted power, the Saskatchewan Liberals once more had the support of a federal Liberal government. Thus for twenty-four years after the formation of the province the Liberal rule over Saskatchewan was uninterrupted, and for fourteen of those years the Liberals also ruled over the Dominion. Until a few years before its defeat in 1929, it seemed as if the longer the party remained in power the stronger grew the party organization. It is this long period of development under favourable conditions which makes the Liberal organization in Saskatchewan worthy of close study.The Liberal party in Saskatchewan, like Liberal and Conservative parties in the other provinces, had two sides to its organization—one formal and ineffective, the other informal and effective. In its formal aspect it resembled party organization elsewhere. The Liberals in each polling sub-division elected one or two representatives. These met to elect a constituency executive. Each constituency executive had one representative on the central council of the provincial party, on which there also sat the executive elected at a party convention. This formal organization, which paid so strict a homage to democratic theory in its pyramidical structure based upon the people's will, was unimportant. The constituency organization, for example, did very little; it met, perhaps, once a year. The formal organization constituted a democratic façade which hid from the common gaze the naked autocracy of effective party management. In the effective party organization which did the work, won the elections, and consequently possessed the reality of political power, appointments were from the top down.