He served briefly as leader of the Manitoba Liberal Party (1906–07), and was later a cabinet minister in Tobias Norris' government (1915–1922).
[1] Brown made his electoral debut in the provincial campaign of 1903, narrowly losing to Conservative Hugh Armstrong in Portage la Prairie.
He subsequently became a leading organizer for the Liberals, and was acclaimed as party leader on March 28, 1906 (replacing Charles Mickle).
[2] The Liberal party led by Premier Tobias Norris had already won a landslide victory in the rest of the province,[3] and Brown had joined the cabinet as Provincial Treasurer;[1] perhaps not surprisingly, he was unopposed for his riding.
While these efforts were successful, they led to a popular perception that the previously-independent Norris government would henceforth be subservient to the federal Liberals.