EDITORIAL

~

Support the CPR sérike

HE central issue in the CPR
= Strike, now in its second
week, is one of wide public
» concern. This crippling strike,
J forced upon the Brotherhood of
Firemen and Engineers, is not
| against “technological progress
| (automation) as such, but rath-
| et to determine who are to
| be the beneficiaries of automa-
| tion — the working people or
| the powerful monopolies! ’
@ Unlike the Luddites in the
ag °atly stages of the English indus-
| trial revolution, who -regarded
| labor-saving machines as their
| €nemy,’’ workers in this en-
© lightened age regard new pro-
@ duction techniques as a means
as of lightening the burdens of la-
bor. On the other hand, big
tt COrporations like the CPR re-
@! gard automation as a means of
¥ displacing wage labor and in-
a creasing their profits.
a §©=-_ With the introduction of die
, sel-driven locomotives on Cana-
dian and U.S. rail systems, a
campaign got under way years
4880 to dispense with firemen
and leave one man only at the
i controls, .
| The CPR strike, forced upon
the Brotherhood of Firemen and
Engineers (BFE) by an arbitrary
vé ruling of an arbitration board
‘4 award’’ recommending the el-

mination of firemen in freight
i q yards and rail terminals, is the
att OUtcome. It is the thin edge of
_ the wedge for the elimination of
ie all firemen on railway diesel
e locomotives.
a he hundred or more railway
op Systems in the U.S. recently
a fave this contentious issue a
» hoist’ for three years, pending
further study of the problem.
tht The Canadian Labor Congress,
™ Supporting the striking CPR
_ Workers, proposed a similar hoist

ri :
jo)

19 Of one year here to permit a

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4 :

thorough study of the problem.
The CPR chiefs turned down
the CLC proposals. The CPR
wants a showdown now. It re-
lies on the St. Laurent govern-
ment (facing a federal election)
to support it behind the scenes;
to appear ‘impartial’ while
playing the CPR’s game.

Given the opportunity to dis-
charge its diesel firemen in
freight yards and terminals, it
would only be a matter of a very
short time before 90 percent of
its entire firemen personnel were
laid off. And the CNR stands
ready to follow suit should the
union be defeated in the CPR
dispute, as do 140 railway sys
tems in the US.

In this CPR strike, the St.
Laurent government has a press’
ing obligation to Canadians
which it should not be permitted
to evade. To implement and ex-
tend the proposals for settle-
ment made by organized labor
through the CLC, a government
administration should be plac-
ed in charge of the CPR with
instructions to end the strike
immediately, establish the status
quo of the firemen and guaran-

tee in the course of commission
investigations as proposed by
the CLC that not a single fire-

man or railroad worker shall be

displaced by automation of the
CPR system.

NE of China’s foremost scien-

tists has just concluded a story
which he and a Canadian scien-
tists began 30 years ago.

The Chinese is Dr. Pei Wen-
chung and in 1929, as a young
palaeontologist, he was excavat-
ing at Chou K’ou Tien with Dr.
Davidson Black, Canadian-born
professor of anatomy at the
Rockefeller Institute in Peking,
when he found the first skull of
what has since become known to
every school student as Peking
Man. :

But the story did not begin
there. Like every other story
of science, it is an international
story and it had its beginning
around the beginning of the cen-
tury with two Germans, Dr.
Haberer, a collector who found
in the apothecaries’ shops of old
China a rich source of fossil re-
mains, and Prof. Max Schlosser
of Munich whose studies of the
material Haberer collected direct-
ed international - attention to

China as a birthplace of Man.

The story was continued by a
Swedish geologist, Gunnar An-
dersson, now director of Eastern
Asiatic Collections in Stockholm,
who was the first to appreciate
the importance of the now famous
Chou K’ou Tien site in North
China, and Otto Zdansky, who
worked with Andersson and
found the first tooth of Peking
Man.

It was Zandsky’s discovery that
drew Davidson Black to China.
os eo: os

Black took the appointment as
professor of anatomy at the
Rockefeller Institute in Peking
because he ardently believed that
the human race had originated
in China and he wanted,to be
where he could prove his belief.

Like another famous Canadian,
Dr. Norman Bethune, who died
while serving with the Chinese
Liberation armies, Black was an
indefatigable worker, passionate-
ly devoted to his mission — but,
unlike Bethune, his mission was
the past, not the future.

When young Dr. Pei, after near-
ly two years’ excavations, found
the skull of Peking Man em-
bedded in limestone at Chou K’ou
Tien Black took four months to
free it from the stone. In his
eagerness to complete his studies
he took to working through the
night, driving himself beyond his
strength. And one morning in
March 1934 his secretary, enter-

ing his room at 9 a.m. to get his
notes, found him dead at his
desk, clutching the skull of Pek-
ing Man in his hand.

it xt xt

Now Dr. Pei has added another
chapter that began in the apothe-
caries’ shops of China. For among
the “dragons’ bones” sold by the
apothecaries, fossils to be ground
down into medicines for every

human ailment, were found
gigantic teeth, far larger than
human teeth but remarkably

human in appearance, of a being
to which scientists gave the name
of Gigantopithecus.

Scientists have been arguing
for years over whether these
teeth came from a giant ape or
a giant early man. Prof. F.
Weidenreich, who _ succeeded
Black at Peking, maintained that
the teeth came from a giant man.
G. H. R. von Koenigswald, pro-
fessor at the University of
Utrecht renowned for his dis-
coveries of primitive man in In-
donesia, contended that the teeth
were those of a giant ape.

Dr. Pei and his colleagues have
settled the argument. The new
China is not only conscious of
its ancient civilization, its pre-
history stretching back to the
dawn of Man, it is able to explore
and preserve it. Working with
ali the resources of the state at
their command they have proved
conclusively that the teeth are
those of exinct giant apes.

JANUARY 11, 1957 — PACIFIC TRIBUNE—PAGE 7