United Farmers of Ontario
[4] The UFO had a comprehensive farmer's platform that called for the nationalization of railways, progressive taxation, and legislation that would facilitate the operation of co-operatives.
The UFO entered politics by contesting and winning a by-election in Manitoulin in 1918, in which Beniah Bowman was elected as the party's first Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA).
In the 1919 provincial election, with over 50,000 members,[3] the party sought to hold the balance of power so it could introduce legislation friendly to farmers.
The UFO platform called for the abolition of political patronage, better educational opportunities in rural areas, cheap electric power, conservation of forests, proportional representation and "direct legislation".
The UFO also favoured prohibition and budgetary restraint, two platform planks that were at odds with the views of urban Labour supporters.
[4] To the shock of everyone, including itself, it won 45 seats and formed a coalition government with the support of Labour MLAs in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario despite having no leader.
He had the UFO join with 10 Independent Labour Party MLAs (an 11th ILP MLA, Morrison MacBride, broke with his colleagues and sat in Opposition).
Drury's Farmer-Labour government created the first Department of Welfare for the province and brought in allowances for widows and children, a minimum wage for women and standardized adoption procedures.
It created the Province of Ontario Savings Office - a provincially owned bank that lent money to farmers at a lower rate, along the lines of "Social credit".
Drury also arranged for a grant for then-unknown researchers Frederick Banting and Charles Best who, with Dr. James Collip, later discovered insulin.
Though the United Farmers of Ontario remained the second largest party in the legislature, they were denied Official Opposition status by Conservative premier Howard Ferguson.
Raney resigned from the legislature the next year in order to accept an appointment to the Supreme Court of Ontario and 72-year-old John Giles Lethbridge was chosen as the new leader of the Progressives.
After Lethbridge lost his seat in the 1929 election Harry Nixon, who had served as Provincial Secretary in Drury's government, became the leader of the remaining Progressives.
In the early 1930s, Nixon and the Progressives agreed to an alliance with former UFO activist Mitchell Hepburn who, in 1930, became leader of the Liberal Party.
The UFO's newspaper, The Farmer's Sun, was sold to Graham Spry and Alan Plaunt and became an organ for the League for Social Reconstruction and the Ontario CCF.
