Lock step

Profits vs ‘morale’

WHEN maritime disaster
strikes, such as last week's burn-
ing of the Greek luxury ship “‘S.S.
Lakonia™ in mid-Atlantic with
over one thousand persons on
board, the issue of crew “morale”
invariably breaks into the open.
And too often the “‘behavior”’ of
such is held up to public oppro-
brium before the facts are even
known.

Greek shipping, like that of
other countries closer to home,
provides much of the mercantile
tonnage flying “flags of conven-
ience,”’ or to use another term,
ships of ‘foreign registry.” Thus
British, American, Canadian or
other profit - hungry shipping
monopolists will put their ships
under a “foreign registry” (and of
course a “flag’’) in order to hold
down seamen’s wages and work-
ing conditions to the lowest and
crummiest possible level. This
practice insures the highest ratio

x K. *®

JANUARY 1 the Cuban
people will celebrate the fifth an-
niversary of their Revolution
which ended the tyranny of Ba-
tista and started the process of
building a new independent Cuba.

The world has watched with
admiration the heroic struggle of
the people on this little island:
against adversity, threats and at-
tempted invasion.

The PT extends its greetings to
the Cuban people and wishes them
well in their efforts towards build-
ing a new and fuller life.

Pacific Tribune

: Editor — TOM McEWEN
Associate Editor — MAURICE RUSH
Published weekly at
Room 6 — 426 Main Street
Vancouver 4, B.C.

Phone MUtual 5-5288
Subscription Rates:
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tries (except Australia): $4.00 one year.
Australia, United States and all other
countries: $5.00 one year. Authorized
as second class mail by the Post Office
Department, Ottawa and for payment

of postage in cash.

"EDITORIAL PAGE

Nn

WtREOSUn wes

Mauldin in the Chicago Sun-Times

of profits to the real owners, and
leaves the imposition of sub-

standard conditions tec

their

“foreign registry partner.
Tn this “foreign registry’ busi-

ness Greek shipping has long been.

an easy contender for the worst
conditions and lowest wages afloat.

Hence, it might be well for those
now noisily condemning Greek
seafaring “morale” tc take a good
hard look at the basic causes for
its alleged being so. Toseethe
close relationship between a Brit-
ish, American (or Canadian) ship-
ping tycoon, pocketing fat pro-
fits from the ““morale”’ (cr lack of
it) on his “flags of convenience” in-
vestments, the while noisily con-
demning the end-product of his

Ow

n creation.

x

Ir is customary among kept
press editors, bell-weather poli-
ticians and other specie of national
“leaders” to unburden thémselves
of editorial ‘forecasts,’ ‘‘mess-
ages’, etc., on what the New Year
may have in store for humanity.
No dcubt the youthful 1964 will
get a similar “prophetic” messag-
ing.

1963 having been a record year
for coupon clippers, profits and
dividends, financial forecasters
and their political echoes in gov-
ernment will doubtless see 1964 as
“prosperous’’, “bouyant”’, “grati-
fying in perspective’, etc., with
“business confident” that new
“high peaks” will be scaled, and
sc forth in the new year.

Workingclass spokesmen and
journals which do not indulge in
the concoction of frothy ‘‘fore-
casts” will see the New Year some-
what differently; a year of more
intense labor and peoples’ strug-
gles in many fields of activity—all
closely related.

Central of all issues is the
struggle for peace; to transform
the favorable coldwar thaw of 1963
into a Spring flood sweeping the
world in 1964. In this, to rid our
cwn country of U.S. nuclear weap-
ons and the double-dealing sellout
policies responsible for their being,
here. Inseparably linked to this
struggle and part of it, is the
struggle for the sovereign indepen-
dence of Canada, from the highest
level of government down to the
smallest trade union local. “Auton-
omy” for Canada from the dictates
and domination of U.S. imperial-
ism; “autonomy” for Canadian
unions from the dictates of a cor-
rupt U.S. trade union hierarchy.
“Masters In Our Own House”
from the attic to the basement.

1964 will also see a concerted
demand and drive by Canadian
labor for substantial wage in-
creases,

But in 1964 the issue is not
alone of wage increases to meet
steadily rising living costs, but one

Comment

- Looking forward!

of even greater significance; the @

urgent need of safeguards against q
mass unemployment and the mass 7
displacement of labor power by 7

automation and general technolog-

ical advances in modern industry. ©

The problem of making automa-

tion benefit all, rather than just 4

a vested few.

Karly in 1964 we may expect -
the Liberal and Socred “Copper- =

heads” in Ottawa and Victoria to @

consummate one of the greatest |

Canadian sell-outs since Confeder-

ation; that of handing over the q

great Columbia River hydro re-

sources to U.S. monopoly. The sale :

of a priceless heritage for a quick
dollar. That is, unless a tremen-
dous protest against this political

brigandage boils up in the early ©

hours of 1964. If we fail in this the
years ahead will fully illustrate
the enormity of this gigantic be-

trayal of Canada’s wealth — and ©

perhaps in an awakening con-
sciousness, compel the restoration
of resources so stolen with a na-
tional unity now so deplorably
lacking.

Dare we “forecast” that 1964
with all the pressing problems it
will bring, will also spark the
awakening necessary for labor
and the people to provide the
political alternative which can
write a finale to government “by
and for monopoly.’ To win a form
of government pledged to restore
Canada to its people; to make Con-
federation a triumph of the unity
of a great two-nation state, instead
of a pawn for double-dealing politi-
cal hucksters, whose betrayal of
Confederation is only exceeded by
their abysmal ignorance of the
issues involved. —

We believe the foregoing “fore-
cast’’ on some of the big issues that
will confront usin 1964 make a
good starting point for the united
action required to make 1964a
decisive turning-point; to make it
a banner year for peace, for nation-
al unity and independence, a year
for the people instead of the
coupon-clippers.

Tom
McEwen

a

Accorpinc to a recent article in
the ‘AFL-CIO News’’ by Edward P.
Morgan there is ‘‘more than 3 million
illiterates in the United States’’. This
according to the U.S. 1960 census.
*“‘That figure,’’ says Morgan, ‘‘doesn’t
really mirror the intensity of the
problem’’,

The same writer also points out that
**more than one-eighth of the young
men rejected for the military draft
last year (1962) on the grounds of
illiteracy, actually had high school
diplomas’’,

The obvious inference here is very
simple; an individual can have a high
school diploma, or even a university
degree, and still be intellectually ill-
iterate. One has only got to listen to
some ‘‘professor’’ of something or
other demonstrating their illiteracy on
a TV program to appreciate this seem-
ing ‘‘contradiction’’ between illiteracy
and ‘‘diplomas’’, For so called ‘‘ed-
ucated’’ men many of these characters
are deplorably dumb.

However, let us get back to the
most basic meaning of illiteracy, to
the harsh reality that in the U.S. and
Canada there are still tens of thous-

ands of adult people in both countries
who can neither read nor write, Peo-
ple who, because of an ever-present
poverty, isolation, or total lack of op-
portunity or facilities, have been de-
prived of this basic element of a civ-
ilized society.

Official Canadian statistics are very
meagre on the subject, but from fig-
ures given in the 1951 census the per-

' centage is tabulated at around 2.2 per-

cent. Percentage-wise that doesn’t look
too bad, In actuality, however, it com-
pared very closely, population-wise,
with the staggering totals of the U.S.
And as Morgan put it, probably ‘‘doesn’t
mirror the intensity of the problem’”’
in Canada, then or now.

On this Morgan spotlights an inter-
esting event: ‘‘In his 1962 State of
the Union address, President Kennedy
called for a massive attack to end
illiteracy. But a bill to help all the
states help all their citizens to be-
come literate, was strangled in the
House Rules Committee’’.

In Canada our politics never
**strangle’’ such efforts. They simply
sweep it ‘funder the rug’’ with an
official smugness that is rarely equal-
led, the while boasting of an ‘‘ed-
ucational system’’ par excellence —
but which still leaves a too high ratio
of citizens unable to read or write,

When one compares Soviet educa-
tional statistics, which, among other
things lays bare the fact that at the
time of the great October Revolution
of 1917, sone 90 percent of the entire
Russian people of that day were tot-
ally illiterate,

Today,47 years later, illiteracy in
the USSR has not only been completely
abolished, but the once ‘‘illiterate’’
have now become world pioneers in
all the multiple branches of educa-
tional and scientific achievement.Sim-
ilarly with other Socialist countries,
the once illiterate are now blazing
new trails to human enlightment, with
all the facilities of education and
science at their disposal.

Even the ‘‘miracle’’ of Cuba’s revo-
lution against illiteracy during the past
three years is one of the great educa-
tional epics of our time; an epic in
which a sorely oppressed and exploit-
ed people, held down by the dark-
ness of illiteracy, have almost over-
night become highly illiterate,

We on the other hand, getting ready
to celebrate the Centennial of Confed-
eration, (and as yet not too sure
whether we’ll celebrate it or not),
can still count our totally illiterate
in the thousands—and our diploma-
carrying ‘‘illiterates’’ in the tens of
thousands,

While Canadians can feel justifiably
proud of our educational achievements,
(even with all the current uncertain-
ties of our ‘‘experts’’ on how to‘‘catch
up with the Russians’’), the: fact that we
still have thousands whe can neither
read nor write, somewhat mars the
picture,

Just as Abraham Lincoln once said
*‘no nation can survive, half slave and
half free’’, so also no nation can
boast of ‘‘universal education’? — and
still count its illiterates in the thous-
ands,

Par ee ee

January 3,1964 —PACIFIC TRIBUNE—Page 4