A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY OF EDWIN JAMES BRADY - Mallacoota ...

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With the approach of the depression, Brady needed all the strength that he could find
within himself. Using produce from his farm to supplement his literary earnings, he
was still finding that his returns were continually diminishing. Consignments of
beans sent to the markets were dumped. He wired his agents to give them free to the
unemployed but was told that this was impossible; when his intentions became known
however, many people interested in alleviating the hardships which were occurring
got in touch with him. He lost, by his own estimate, over a thousand pounds before
he stopped consignments and produced only enough for his family and for local sale.
But one effect off this restriction was to give him added insight and sympathy for the
other victims of depression and economic distress. It was this sympathy which led to
his writing of The Religion of Humanity, in which he endeavoured to relate the
principles of Christianity to the tenets of Socialism, foreseeing that the application of
these principles in the social structure would result in a society vastly better than the
existing one. This sympathy also led him to give practical support to the founding of
a co-operative farming venture to assist some of Melbourne’s unemployed. 1 This
increased insight into and understanding of human problems was probably enhanced
by the death of his mother, for whom he wrote some not very good obituary verses. 2
In a further attempt to improve his standing and financial status, Brady to his friend in
Canberra, E.G. Theodore, 3 offering to set up a Labor Press Agency there to handle all
the publicity for the Labor Movement, but institutions, as individuals, were finding
finance difficult to obtain and the offer was gracefully declined. Brady, with his flair
for the vivid presentation of ideas, his social interests and his journalistic and political
background and contacts was good at this type of work. His knowledge of the
development of the party, much of it first hand, would have been invaluable. He was,
in fact, working during this time on a monumental history of the Australian Labor
Party which he had tentatively entitled The Red Objective and had been enlisting the
assistance of his Labor colleagues to fill in information where needed. J.T. Lang was
one who wrote expressing willingness to supply information on Labor’s early days. 4
This history was never completed, but there are many pages of manuscript and notes
for it, usually unnumbered, scattered throughout the various boxes of his papers in the
National Library.
Where disappointments occurred, there was sometimes a balancing recompense. One
of these was his appointment as a Justice of the Peace and Honorary Magistrate in
January 1930 – an event which made him rather proud of himself and boosted his
flagging morale temporarily. But it was not long before his blameless status as a
Justice was somewhat sullied by a letter from the Lands Department accusing his of
cultivating eight acres not covered by his lease. He was given the option of
surrendering his lease of paying an extra four pounds annually to include the right to
cultivate this particular area. 5 This pin-pricking attitude of authority was not designed
to appease a man who was deciding that life was passing him by. He pledged himself
to become more active in attacking the kind of society which encourages such
pettiness. He became the correspondent at Mallacoota for The Argus; but more
importantly, he began to write, under the pseudonym of “Scrutator”, for the official
journal of the Victorian Branch of the Australian Labor Party, The Labor Call.
1 See Chapter Four.
2 Among his papers in Mitchell Library.
3 Brady to Theodore, 18.7.1929, in National Library.
4 J.T.Lang to Brady, 5.8.1929, in National Library.
5 21.7.1930, in National Library