It was learned that the Liberals spent AGT money to have telephone poles crated and shipped in big stacks to remote communities in which they had no intention of installing phone lines in an effort to garner support and votes.

The United Farmers of Alberta under the leadership of President Henry Wise Wood was contesting its first general election.

It won its first victory with the election of candidate Alexander Moore in the electoral district of Cochrane in 1919 and achieved a coup when Conservative leader George Hoadley crossed the floor.

In a famous speech he gave in Medicine Hat on July 8, 1921, he was quoted as saying "Farmers may not be ready to take over government, but they are going to do it anyway".

Dominion Labor ran candidates in primarily urban ridings such as Calgary, Edmonton, Lethbridge and Medicine Hat.

At the beginning of the election Independent Labor offered to nominate Edmonton area candidates at a joint convention with the DLP, to prevent the splitting of the labour vote and use the co-operative good-will to eventually unite the parties.

Among the ILP candidates was pioneer photographer Ernest Brown, soon after to lead meetings of the Communist Party.

[2][3] The Conservative Party which has been the primary opposition in the province since it was created in 1905 had seen a split in the ranks under the leadership of George Hoadley.

Hoadley left the Conservative party sitting as an Independent and then won the United Farmers nomination in Okotoks and crossed the floor.

The party replaced Hoadley by selecting Albert Ewing an Edmonton area Member of the Legislative Assembly as leader.

Former Liberal Premier Alexander Rutherford a big supporter of Ewing, led the campaign for the five Conservative candidates contesting for seats in Edmonton.

The United Farmers did not run in Calgary and only had a single candidate in Edmonton, thus it did not benefit from the higher weighted city vote.

The 38 MLAs who attended the first United Farmers caucus meeting voted unanimously for UFA President Henry Wise Wood to lead the government as Premier.

Wood declined becoming premier because he was more interested in operating the machinery of the United Farmers movement rather than crafting government policy.

He said he feared that the UFA would repeat what had happened elsewhere when farmers movements engaged in electoral politics, rose to power and quickly destroyed themselves.

[7] The UFA vice-president, Percival Baker, had won his riding with a majority of votes, but had been badly injured in a tree-falling accident during the campaign.

[8] The United Farmers caucus finally chose Herbert Greenfield, a UFA executive member who had not run in the election, to become premier.