By the mid-1920s the UFO had gone into a period of decline from which it never recovered. The promise of equality hoped for by UFWO members never materialized and the UFCC, once a key component in the development of an alternative vision, began to focus more on profits than on politics. In Ringing in the Common Love of Good Kerry Badgley explores both the rise and the fall of the UFO, focusing on the Ontario counties of Lambton, Simcoe, and Lanark. He challenges the liberal-capitalist interpretation that the movement was nothing more than a group of impatient Liberals, as well as the Marxist view that the UFO consisted of self-interested independent commodity producers. Badgley argues that as the UFO broke free from hegemonic forces it developed alternative economic, political, and social visions, but that it was these same forces, combined with internal struggles and a conservative leadership, that ultimately resulted in the decline of the movement as a vehicle for democratic change in Ontario.

Badgley (archivist, National Archives of Canada) explores the rise and fall of the United Farmers of Ontario (UFO), a party that won a majority in the 1919 provincial election and formed a ruling coalition with the Independent Labor Party. The author challenges views that the UFO was a group of "impatient liberals," or "self- interested commodity producers" and instead argues that the UFO developed alternative economic, political, and social visions that led to internal struggles ushering in the demise of a movement fighting for democratic change. Canadian card order number: C99- 9010468. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Almost from the moment of its creation in 1906, Ontario Hydro has been criticized for pursuing its own interests at the expense of the public it was established to serve. In Power at Cost, Keith Fleming demonstrates that while Hydro exercised tremendous influence over its political masters in the Ontario government, it nevertheless cooperated with the public and a succession of provincial governments in formulating rural electrification policies.