Ernest Brown best known for his vast election of photographs of early Edmonton and Alberta, was a socialist.
He ran for the Independent Labour Party in 1921, and later was active in the new Communist Party.
The ILP was a leftist group that, unlike the Canadian Labour Party, was not tied directly to trade unions, which it saw as bulwarks of the capitalist system.
The Ernest Brown papers at the Provincial Archives have much on his political involvement, fighting against unemployment, private control of the banking system, and much more.
On the banking system he points out in his writings how each dollar distributed carried with it a debt. The money is borrowed from a private bank and needs to be paid back with compounded interest.
Brown cites the historic day Napoleon was shown mathematically how compound interest builds up. Napoleon is said to have paled and staggered at the huge burden this places on the basic producers of society - farmers and workers. When he asked his tutor how people can escape from it, he was told without wars and revolutions they never could.
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