1904 November 3
General election results - Strathcona
Peter Talbot Liberal 3863
Orlando Bush Conservative 1878
Colonel John H. Gregory Independent 130
During the election campaign, Conservative candidate Bush had criticized the Liberal government's subsidy to the GTP for being "a gigantic steal, an extravagant expenditure of $150M of the people's money with no control on rates" charged farmers and other shippers. And apparently the government had little control over the railway line's route. (Edmonton Bulletin, July 29, 1904)
Colonel Gregory, identified on the ballot as Independent, ran under the auspices of the Lacombe-based Farmers Association of Alberta. He spoke in favour of nationalization of the railways, protection for farmers and government loans to farmers. (Edmonton Bulletin, July 29, Nov. 18, 1904)
Government loans, loans offered at lower interest rates than the private banks were demanding, was a major demand of farmers in those days when capital investment in pioneer farms was necessary.
Alwyn Bramley-Moore and other MLAs were part of a fact-finding commission on the issue. They reported that there was great need for the kind of low-interest loans that had been brought into use in New Zealand. New Zealand is now admired for its fair electoral system of proportional representation, but since the early 1900s it has been admired for its public services and its "gas-and-water" socialism - municipal ownership of services where required, but with no great Marxist ideological principle.
New Zealand's electoral system is Mixed Member Proportional. Recent moves have been made to bring in Single Transferable Voting at the city level, where MMP is not so practical.
(see my blog "New Zealand opens door to City STV and Maori wards" and https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/local-government/124258793/how-the-law-on-mori-wards-was-drawn-up)
Bramley-Moore died fighting in WWI.
He is best remembered for his book Canada and her Colonies, which Ted Byfield and others took up in the 1980s/90s as proof of their charge that Alberta was being ripped off by the federal government.
But I happened to meet Alwyn's two daughters in the 1990s. By then they were very old. Both never married -- their sweethearts were killed in WWII.
They told me that Alwyn, if he had been still alive, would have complained of having his views mis-interpreted that way.
After all, Bramley-Moore was a reform-minded Liberal, not a pro-business Conservative.
Byfield and the others of course see the federal government as the threat to prosperity in the West, not U.S. oil corporations that skim off the most profitable resources and disappear again, leaving pollution and despair behind. And of course it was private banks that put money in the Conservative Party's electioneering fund while it over-charged farmers so it could pay big dividends to its stockholders.
New Zealand had shown the world that governments could economically provide low-interest loans to farmers with general betterment to society as a whole.
Some of Bramley-Moore's cries for monetary reform and the general despair of hardworking farmers made receptive ears and minds to discussion of Social Credit in the 1920s. Calgary Labour MP William Irvine is credited with helping popularize Social Credit on the Prairies. As MP, he organized a committee to investigate banking practices. He invited testimony from Major C.H. Douglas, author of many books on the subject, and also George Bevington, self-taught financial expert and reformer (Bevington Road in west Edmonton is named after him).
Irvine warned of the the need for reform and for proper government supervision of the private banks. The Liberal government took no action. The collapse of the Home Bank not long after proved the value of his warnings.
Thanks for reading.
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