Copyright © 2011 by University of Nebraska–Lincoln, all rights reserved. Redistribution or republication in any medium, except as allowed under the Fair Use provisions of U.S. copyright law, requires express written consent from the editors and advance notification of the publisher, the University of Nebraska–Lincoln.
Henry Wise Wood was a farmer, first in Missouri and then in Alberta. In Canada he became a leader in agrarian organizations, had a weighty influence on agrarian involvement in politics, and was a prominent figure in establishing the Alberta Wheat Pool. Born in Ralls County, Missouri, on May 31, 1860, Wood was educated in a rural school, at a private school in Monroe City, and at Christian University (later Culver-Stockton College) in Canton, Missouri. In 1883 he married Etta Leora Cook, and they had four sons. Following three years in Texas (1878–81) he returned to Ralls County, where he farmed, bred cattle, and joined the Farmers and Laborers Union.
By the time he moved to a farm near Carstairs,
Alberta, in 1905, he was widely read in
political philosophers such as Karl Marx and
John Stuart Mill. The failure of American farmers
to enter politics directly, and the corruption
of their farm organizations through political
engagement, convinced him that Canadian
agrarian movements would share the same fate
if they embarked on a similar path. Wood was
elected president of the United Farmers of Alberta
(UFA) in 1916 and became president of
the Canadian Council of Agriculture in 1917.
His rapid rise in these bodies reflected his energy
and skill at organization, as well as his
conviction that the future for farmers lay in
their willingness to view themselves as an economic
class, committed to principles of cooperation
more than of competition, and acting
effectively to push the goals of farmers upon
both government and business while avoiding
the siren call of entering politics directly.
By the end of World War I, however, grassroots
determination to enter politics left Wood
no choice but to try to shape the political activity
in accordance with his ideas: the farmers should
enter politics as an economic group, which
would maintain its integrity as a purely agrarian
entity, but be prepared at the same time to cooperate
with other economic groups such as labor.
At all costs they should avoid participating in
the existing corrupt political system. While the
UFA officially supported the Progressive Party,
formed after World War I to represent the interests
of farmers at Ottawa, Wood's ideas were
fundamentally opposed to those of the other
major farm representative in politics, T. A.
Crerar of Manitoba. Crerar accepted the basic
principles of political organization as they existed,
but he believed that the Progressive Party's
duty was to pressure the traditional major parties,
Liberal and Conservative, to adopt policies
that were in the interest of farmers. Thus, despite
electing sixty-four members to Parliament
in 1921 and becoming the second-largest group
after the governing Liberals, the Progressives
were divided at their core, and the national
movement largely disintegrated by the
mid-1920s. A major factor was Wood's ideological
intransigence. Nevertheless, within Alberta
the political wing of the ufa became the government
in 1921, holding power as essentially a
farmer government until 1935.
Wood also believed in the ideas of the American
apostle of cooperation, Aaron Sapiro,
who spoke often in western Canada in the
1920s. Indeed, Wood was able to generate the
cooperation of businessmen, farmers, and the
Alberta government, all under his leadership
and that of the UFA, to form the Alberta Wheat
Pool, of which Wood became president in 1923.
From there he was instrumental in the creation
of pools in Saskatchewan and Manitoba and
became vice president (1924) of the Central
Selling Agency, which marketed the wheat of
the three pools.
Wood retired as president of the ufa in 1931, and as president of the Wheat Pool in 1937. In 1935 he received the Grand Cross of Saint Michael and Saint George from King George V, recognizing "his services to the cause of agrarian unity and cooperation." He died in Calgary on June 10, 1941.