page_title: Premiership of John Edward Brownlee
section_title: Urban unemployment
hierarchical_section_title: Premiership of John Edward Brownlee / Depression and scandal (1930–34) / Urban unemployment
caption_attribution_description: English: The "Hunger March" in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
context_page_description: John Edward Brownlee was Premier of Alberta, Canada, from 1925 to 1934 as leader of the United Farmers of Alberta caucus in the Legislative Assembly of Alberta. After a number of early successes, his popularity and his government's suffered from the hardships of the Great Depression. In 1934, he was embroiled in a sex scandal when a family friend sued him for seduction. Though Brownlee denied the events she alleged, when the jury found in her favour he announced his resignation as premier.
  Brownlee became premier on November 23, 1925, when, at the request of the UFA caucus, he took over from the indecisive Herbert Greenfield, in whose cabinet he had served as attorney-general. After winning the 1926 election for the UFA, Brownlee achieved a number of successes. In 1929 he signed an agreement with the federal government that transferred control of Alberta's natural resources to its provincial government, which had been a priority of his three immediate predecessors as premier. In 1928 he divested the government of the money-losing railways it had acquired after the syndicates that founded them went out of business, by selling them to Canadian Pacific and Canadian National.
context_section_description: The effects of the Great Depression were not felt only on Alberta's farms.  By the winter of 1930–1931, unemployment in Edmonton and Calgary was at record levels, which were only exacerbated by a migration of farmers' offspring, hoping to find work, to the cities.  Brownlee, who had long advocated curtailed immigration to the western provinces, urged the federal government to prevent new migrants from swelling the ranks of Alberta's unemployed.  He also asked that it shoulder a greater share of ever-rising relief payments; by 1932, it started to do so.
  Unemployment bred labour militancy. In December 1930, Brownlee asked John Lymburn, his attorney-general, to prepare a list of known Communist leaders so he could arrange for their deportation where possible.  He staunchly opposed the activities of organizations that he viewed as communist, including the Ukrainian Labour Farmer Temple Association and the Farmers' Unity League.  In December 1932, labour organizers staged a "Hunger March", at which 1,000 unemployed met in Edmonton's Market Square and marched to the legislature building.  Brownlee refused to grant permission for the march and requested and received police assistance in breaking it up.  While he pronounced himself willing to meet with a delegation of the march's leaders, he believed that the atmosphere at the march would be dangerously volatile and refused to address it.  One participant said "A lot of us understood that [Brownlee] couldn't do too much, but we figured since it's a farmers' government, least he can do is come out and explain.  But they wouldn't let us near the Parliament Building."
caption: The hunger march in Edmonton, December 1932
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