here is an arresting photograph in Volume 6 of a large group of farmers from the Two Hills area, marching in protest against all the terrible ills of the Depression: drought, collapsed grain prices, unemployment, hunger and governments' seeming inability or unwillingness to do anything. At the head of the procession is a man holding a hammer-and-sickle flag. The Communist revolution had come to Alberta.
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"Long trainloads of bawling cattle crawling across the sun-baked prairies...tired women with lacklustre eyes and grimy children, looking out the windows of day coaches...The cattle are better off than the women...at least they can bawl their hunger and thirst; the women and children cannot do that-not loud enough to be heard by the world."
--- Edmonton Bulletin, 1931
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It didn't stick, of course, but the fact the Two Hills farmers and many other Albertans were open to Communism shows just how desperate people were for statist solutions to the economic crisis then gripping the province and the continent. In the end, Alberta opted for another revolutionary philosophy, Social Credit, brought to them by a demagogic radio preacher named William "Bible Bill" Aberhart. The old UFA regime collapsed under the weight of the Depression and the dubious sex scandal that sank Premier Robert Brownlee. Thus, in 1935, began the province's third great political dynasty.
Fury and Futility vividly portrays the trials of the Dirty Thirties, often from the letters, diaries and reminiscences of people driven off their farms by drought, driven into relief camps by unemployment or driven to "ride the rods" in search of work. Even the first prime minister from Alberta, R.B. Bennett, couldn't solve the Depression. A Conservative, he tried market solutions, but when they didn't work he embraced welfare statism. It marked a philosophical shift in government that would dominate the political scene for decades to come.
