Herbert Greenfield

Herbert W. Greenfield was born November 25, 1869, in Winchester, Hampshire, England, the son of John Greenfield and Mary Leake. He attended Wesleyan School in Dalston, but dropped out as a result of his father's bankruptcy. He remarried in 1926, to Marjorie Greenwood Cormack, who brought two children of her own into the marriage. == Early political career ==

Greenfield entered public life on a local level soon after moving to his new farm. He was elected to the local school board, where he spent twelve years, including stints as chair, Greenfield also was an officer of the province-wide Association of Local Improvement Districts, which advocated for reforms such as a change from a ten-hour to an eight-hour work day, on the grounds that many Local Improvement Districts (LIDs) were having trouble competing with railways for labour. John E. Brownlee later said of Greenfield's involvement in the ALID that it was there "that he was first initiated into the discussion of public subjects, and it became the training ground for his subsequent success." Provincially, Greenfield was originally a Liberal, but along with many other farmers, began to grow dissatisfied with the Liberal government's treatment of farmers. He was elected to the organization's executive in 1919 and chaired its mass conventions in 1920 and 1921. However, Wood had little taste for the minutiae of government, preferring to remain at the head of what he saw as a broader political movement (saying he would "sooner be President of the UFA than the USA"), George Hoadley, one of the two UFA members with previous legislative experience (Hoadley had been a sitting Conservative MLA prior to the election; UFA MLA Alex Moore had been elected in a by-election a few months before the general election), was considered, but since his previous experience had been as a Conservative—one of the old line parties so disdained by the UFA — he was deemed unacceptable. There was even some speculation that incumbent Liberal Premier Charles Stewart, who had become a member of the UFA before it entered politics directly, would stay on as Premier, but he immediately announced that he would serve only until the UFA selected a leader. A meeting of the UFA caucus in Calgary selected Greenfield, and he took office as Premier on August 13, 1921. == Premier ==

Greenfield took office as Premier amid great expectations. The Lethbridge Herald called him "the only new Moses that can bridge the Red Sea", while the Calgary Herald noted that "no government ever went into office in this country carrying better wishes for its success". This latter circumstance was addressed through the voluntary resignation of Donald MacBeth Kennedy, who had won the riding of Peace River for the UFA. When Greenfield selected his cabinet and was about to announce it to his caucus for their vetting, he was interrupted by Lorne Proudfoot who asked whether, in addition to the rumoured inclusion of Labour members, the cabinet would include any of the fourteen Liberal MLAs. Proudfoot argued that to exclude them would be to "start out much after the matter of the old parties". Greenfield had not intended this, and suggested that no Liberals would likely be amenable to it. Irene Parlby, the caucus's only woman (who Greenfield would shortly name as Alberta's first female cabinet minister) agreed, and suggested that the UFA's ideal of securing representation for all economic groups in society did not apply to the Liberals, who were not an economic group and were not democratically organized in any event. Greenfield went on to name the seven member cabinet he had intended, including Labour MLA Alex Ross as Minister of Public Works, Parlby as Minister Without Portfolio, and Greenfield himself as Provincial Treasurer. Once the legislature convened in 1922, the inexperience of the Premier and his caucus was further laid bare. Greenfield, devastated by the sudden death of his wife, turned in a poor performance. Faced with an aggressive attack by new Liberal leader John R. Boyle, Greenfield relied heavily on Attorney General John Brownlee, who sat next to him in the Legislature, to provide the defense. The session got off to an inauspicious start: Greenfield nominated the government's preferred candidate for speaker, Oran McPherson, only to have one of his backbenchers, Alex Moore, nominate Independent Conservative John Smith Stewart; Stewart spared the government embarrassment by declining the nomination. By convention of the Westminster system, a government was required to resign on the defeat of any piece of its legislation that was critical to its program. Moore and Love objected to the manner in which this provision could be expected to pressure UFA MLAs to back government legislation that they might otherwise be inclined to oppose, and introduced a resolution in the Legislature that called for a policy by which the government would resign only upon passage of an explicit motion of no confidence. This belief too proved problematic to the government. The ''Dairyman's Act'' had been adopted by the Liberal government to provide low-interest loans to dairy farmers. The session lasted only a week, and on August 31 the only item of business that remained was the members' pay for the session. Agriculture Greenfield became Premier at a time of agricultural depression, especially in the province's south. The region, which was responsible for approximately 75% of Alberta's wheat production, was in the midst of its fifth consecutive year of drought, and the farmers who had been responsible for putting the UFA into office were now demanding action. However, this effort was driving the province close to bankruptcy, and in 1923 Greenfield announced an end to the handouts (the bill authorizing the last of these was a source of chagrin for MLAs from all parties, both because it marked the end of direct assistance for farmers and because the last of the assistance was itself so expensive). The government did not give up on addressing the problem when it ended subsidies. It had previously commissioned a number of studies on the agricultural situation and related factors, In the words of University of Calgary professor David C. Jones, the bill offered "solace, but no real satisfaction". According to Jones, Greenfield's attempts to rescue southern Alberta from agricultural calamity were probably doomed to failure. Even so, Greenfield had called the situation his top priority, This they proved unable to do. Besides the low wages, miners were unsatisfied with working conditions in an industry that saw more than 3,300 workplace accidents per year. Police were used to aid the strikebreakers and had been sometimes attacked as well. One constable was partially paralyzed from the beating he received. He went anyway, and was greeted by an ambush in which three bullets were fired into his car, missing him. The situation was still unsettled after Greenfield became premier in autumn 1921. Greenfield was at a loss as to how to respond to this crisis, complaining that both employees and employers were the most difficult people in the province to deal with and that they showed "very little spirit of compromise". The Liberal version of prohibition was weak, and Greenfield came into office intending to strengthen the legislation. Even by 1920, however, it was becoming apparent that the policy was not working (or, as the Medicine Hat News noted, "Prohibition is now working smoothly. The only thing left is to stop the sale of liquor!"). Public opinion, too, began to shift against the policy, more rapidly after 1922 when three police officers were killed in the line of duty by bootleggers. The last and most dramatic of these was the murder of Steve Lawson in front of the barracks where he and his family lived, by Emil "Pic" Picariello and Florence Lassandra. An autumn 1923 referendum saw Albertans vote decisively for the repeal of prohibition, despite the UFA's continuing support for the policy. In response, the government resolved to repeal the Prohibition Act and replaced it with government-controlled liquor sales. While the legislation passed, the new measures were divisive, pitting community leaders who wanted their towns to remain "dry" against those who wanted to apply for liquor licences, and different would-be saloon-keepers against one another in competing for the government-issued licences. One reason for this was the government's involvement in railways: it had found itself the owner of four uncompleted money-losing railway lines after the private syndicates set up to run them collapsed due to construction cost overruns. By 1922, the government had lost a total of $6.7 million on the endeavor, He found an ally in Richard Gavin Reid in 1923 when Greenfield, exhausted by his responsibilities, appointed the latter to replace him as Provincial Treasurer. Natural resources At the time that Alberta was made a province in 1905, the federal government retained control of its natural resources (though it provided financial compensation to the new provincial government for this), a fact that set it apart from the older provinces. By 1925, negotiations to alter this state of affairs had been ongoing for more than a decade, Despite this, Alberta Liberal leader John R. Boyle sent a letter to his fellow Liberal, Canadian Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, pleading with him to delay any agreement until after the expected 1925 election so that the UFA could not claim success. but was enough to rob Greenfield of his glory; he left office the next year. Provincial banking It was the longstanding view of a segment of the UFA that the Alberta government should enter the banking business directly by obtaining a bank charter from the federal government (which has responsibility for banking under the Canadian constitution). In fact, UFA President William John Tregillus had included the idea in a speech he gave on his goals for the organization in 1913. At the UFA convention in 1923, a proponent of provincial banking, George Bevington, made a passionate speech in favour of this idea, bringing most of the membership around to his side. The convention passed a resolution in favour of the idea (along with one calling on the provincial treasury to establish a loan department, an idea that came to fruition fifteen years later with the creation of Alberta Treasury Branches), against the stiff opposition of Attorney-General Brownlee. This conclusion was affirmed by University of Alberta professor D. A. MacGibbon in a government-commissioned study. Against them stood Greenfield's government, UFA president Henry Wise Wood (whom Bevington was challenging for re-election), Thanks to Irvine's surprising intervention on the side of the conservatives, the resolution was soundly defeated. ==Departure from politics==

Greenfield's political stock fell during the course of his time as Premier. His arrival was heralded with great expectations of economic and political reform. After the 1921 federal election, Progressive Party of Canada leader Thomas Crerar was considering a merger of his party with the Liberal Party of Canada and asked Greenfield to join him as Alberta's representative in the federal cabinet upon completion of this merger. This initially lofty stature was reduced by incident after incident: his reliance on Brownlee in the legislature and elsewhere, By 1924, many of Greenfield's own backbenchers had had enough and hatched a plan to force Greenfield's resignation and replace him with Brownlee, who was perceived as more likely to lead the UFA to victory in the impending election. This group—which included George Johnston, George MacLachlan, William Shield, Donald Cameron, Oran McPherson, and Austin Claypool—contacted Brownlee to alert him to their intentions and were taken aback when the Attorney-General told them that if Greenfield resigned, so would he. He initially agreed, but then vacillated long enough for Brownlee to once again pledge his loyalty to the Premier. He never again ran for elected office. The media judged the rebellion harshly. The Calgary Herald mocked the rebels as a "group of farmer politicians who have always claimed to be purer than those of other parties" and yet "[threw] their leader to the wolves in the hope that they may save their own skins". It concluded: "Greenfield was not a good political captain, but he had a poor set of officers and a mutinous crew." ==Later life==

In 1927, Greenfield was appointed Alberta's Agent General in London, England. Liberals also accused the government of benefiting the Hudson's Bay Company, which owned the London office that the government leased, more than Alberta. Even so, Greenfield's performance in the position was well regarded: his personality was better-suited for his duties there, which included the promotion of Alberta's burgeoning oil and gas industry, attracting English immigration to Alberta, In 1931, the Agent General's office closed, and Greenfield returned to Alberta, settling in Calgary. There he entered the oil and gas business, serving as a director (and later vice president) of Calmont Oils, president of the Oil and Gas Association, president of the Alberta Petroleum Association, and director of Home Oil. He also served as managing director of the British Dominion Land Settlement Corporation and as president of the Calgary Board of Trade. He spent the rest of his life in the city, maintaining an office in the General Trusts Building. Greenfield died at 8:25 in the morning of August 23, 1949. His funeral took place at Grace Presbyterian Church and he is buried in Union Cemetery, both of which are in Calgary. In 1968, Greenfield School, an elementary school in Edmonton, was named in his honour. ==See also==