ESS than six months ago every newspaper

organ of big business was ready to bury
the United Nations. Many had already writ-
ten its obituary in their leading editorials.
In fact, when UN secretary-general Tryg-
vie Lie sojourned to Moscow to interview
Soviet leaders there, the kept press were
ready to bury Lie along with the UN.

Now the situation has changed. The
sewer press symphony of UN gloom has
been changed to one of loud hozannas.
American imperialism. assured. of a major-
ity bloc (high subsidized. of course) in the
UN is now draped with the authority and
collective power of this bloc to “put down
aggression anywhere”, or, in more sitiple
language, to crush by force and weight of
arms the people’s liberation movement
anywhere—east, west, north or south—
wherever their aspirations for the basic
freedoms supposedly guaranteed by the UN
4 Charter, get in the way of the atomaniacs
of Wall Street.

That is the essence of Truman's recent
speeches on America’s policies for “peace,
which in turn are imposed upon the UN by
a subsidized “majority.”

There is just the possibility however

U.N. Week- Peace ata price!

that the real UN, as outlined by the pro-

that Yankee imperialism, despite its pur-
chased majority in the UN, will not be able
to permanently sequester the UN from the
millions of people in Europe and Asia who
look upon the UN as something more than
a Wall Street puppet show. There are still
strong voices in the UN itself for genuine
peace, based upon the democratic right of
peoples to run their house according to their
own desires.

The promise of warmongers that there
will be “other Koreas”, coupled with the
“peace” now being established in Korea by
American bombs, is not an evidence of the
“orowing strength of the UN”, despite the
hurrahs of the kept press on the “changed
character” of the UN, but rather an evidence

found articles of its Charter, has been tem-
porarily traded off for dollars.

Progressive labor the world over salutes
the UN on this historic anniversary week,
the UN of genuine peace and the fraternity
of nations—not the UN that trades its birth-
right for the Marshallized currency of nak-
ed aggression and the “peace” of charred
bodies and devastated villages.

‘PIVIC. “scandal” has boiled up in the upper
‘® Island ‘city of Port Alberni. It would ap-
‘pear that city clerk Frank L. Kitto decided to
ibuild himself a new home (a worthy decision
“in any language), but in achieving his ambi-
‘tion, it is charged that he used city funds to
‘purchase his building materials.
A public inquiry into the civic adminis-
‘tration of the city is now in progress, under
‘the direction of B. C. Bracewell, inspector of
‘municipalities. From the scraps of evidence al-
ready in, it would also appear that there has
been more than one Kitto’in the civic bag,

Alberni Kitto out of bag

The case of Port Alberni is not unique.
On the contrary, political coruption. graft,
slick deals, nepotism, are all -part and
parcel of socalled “non-partisan” civic politics.
The only difference between Port Alberni and
numerous. other municipalities throughout
Canada that have been held for years in the
erip of tory and liberal “non-partisanism”, is
that the Port Alberni civic “administrators”
have been caught redhanded.

In such situations the common people
who pay the shot in high taxes and low serv-
ices, get a chance to take a peek behind the
civic pork-barrel.

‘How to beat high living costs

WO AFL unions, pressing their case for im-
mediate wage hikes to meet spiralling liv-
ing costs, reopened their 1950-51 wage agree-
ment, negotiated last May, and won a general
wage increase of five percent for 2,000 work-
‘ers in Powell River and Ocean Falls news-
print industry. he unions are International
‘Brotherhood of Pulp, Sulphite and Paper Mill
Workers, Local 76, and the International
- Brotherhood of Papermakers, Local 142,

The new wage scale lifts the base rate
to $1.18 per hour, and represents an average
boost of from 6 to 10 cents for all workers
in the industry. The new contract also provid-
‘es for a reduction of the working week from
-44 to 42 hours. <

2 In the wage contract negotiated last May
>for 1950-51 between these unions and the
‘mill operators, the workers won a.six-cent an

‘hour wage increase. This new “rider agree-
ment”, not only establishes a precedent for

‘the pulp and paper workers in securing a mod-
sest wage increase to meet higher living costs,
‘put it sets a fine pattern for B.C. laber to fol-

—tlow. It puts things in proper perspective, and

‘the emphasis on butter rather than guns.

“some of Vancouver’s biggest shipyard indust-
‘ries, the members of the Marine Workers and
‘Boilermakers are on the picket line, backing
‘up the demands of their negotiating com-
‘mittee for a straight 20-cent increase across
‘the board. The daily press made a hectic at-
‘tempt to portray the shipyard strike as “com-

“it Owing to the adamant stand taken by

‘munist sabotage of our war effort”, but that |

‘moth eaten cannard didn’t put one extra cent
‘in the pay envelopes of the shipyard workers.
‘You just cannot meet the grocer’s bills with

- red baiting.
: In many logging camps and sawmills:

“ithere is already a widespread discussion de-

veloping around the idea of re-opening the.
contract and going after a wage boost now.

‘The loggers and sawmill workers reason that

if the AFI, unions can do it, (even with their
1950-51 wage contract signed a month later
than the IWA) and win another 10 cents, why
not the IWAP.

The pulp and paper workers of Powell.
River and Ocean Falls have set a fine example
in the only definite way to meet steadily rising
living cost: that is, utilizing their bargaining
power to put more money in the worker’s pay
envelope.

~

Scientists lacking
horse-sense

ZOST Western scientists refuse even to consider
the theories of Trofim Lysenko, the Soviet
scientist, on the inheritance of acquired characteris-
tics. The reason is not hard to find. To admit

Lysenko’s theories is to admit that human nature

can be changed, than man under a socialist system
becomes different from man debased by the greed
and lust of his capitalist environment.

All the anti-Soviet propagandists have been
holding Soviet acceptance of Lysenko’s ‘‘absurd”’
theories as proof that Soviet science is no longer free.

And now, along comes the Canadian Press
with a report of “‘five fully grown horses the size of ;
Great Dane dogs” acquired by a Vancouver Island

farm from a unique American ‘herd, descendants of

three horses which “‘strayed and became trapped in,
a cul-de-sac in the Grand Canyon of the Colorado
River. They survived and multiplied, but thyough
years of inbreeding and shortage of food they
gradually became stunted in size... .” :

Has even the Canadian Press become an agency

-of Soviet “‘propaganda’’? Or is it rather that it

is Western scientists who are no longer free?

' unionists?

TOM McEWEN

As We See It.

WE October edition of the Trades Congress Journal earried an
editorial entitled “Who The Convention Barred and Why”, 4a
blurb that has since been reproduced by the TLC News and sent out
as “news servics.”> :
Following a number of cheap slams at Tim Buck, J. B. Salsberg,
Mel Colby and other “peas in Joe Stalin’s Canadian pod” (it is re-
markable how adeptly Bengough has picked up the ‘official language
of Washington), the editorial proceeds to explain the identity and
presence of one Joseph Godson who attended the 65th convention
of the Trades and Labor Congress, thereby setting a precedent.
The explanation is brief, to say the least. “It is quite true that
Mr. Joseph Godson, a man highly respected by many representatives
of the International Labor Movement in Washington, D.C., was at
our press table in Montreal.” : :
This is supposed to “explain” the presence of §&
a labor attache from the U.S. state department
at a national convention of Canadian trade

Should anyone have the temerity to question
the unethical presence of a stooge for Yankee
imperialism at the Trades Congress convention,
the editorial provides a democratic contrast: “Mr.
Mel Colby . . . sat immediately beside Mr. Godson
at the press table, taking voluminous notes for the
Tribune .. .”

What are the Communists squawking about?
Could anything be more eloquent than this in
proving that the quality of top TLC democracy is
“not strained”? Here we have a representative of the U.S. state
department, sitting at the press table (when he wasn’t instructing ~
delegates on the technique of cold-war union busting). On the other
hand, we have a reporter for the Canadian labor press (and when
we, say labor press, we mean that small but influential platoon which
steadfastly rejects the “kiss of Judas’, regardless of how many
Yankee dollars accompany it) paying strict attention to the job on
hand, that of bringing the most comprehensive and factual story of
ae Saber! to thousands‘ of working men and women across

‘anada.

The Bengoughs could scarcely argue—with any degree of
success—that Colby was representing the “Kremlin”, in a similar
capacity to that’of Godson for the !U.S. state department, but ity is
symptomatic of their mental agility, when caught in the grip of a
U.S.-inspired anti-Communist hysteria, that they tried to do just
that in their editorial blurb. “If he (Colby) was not directly represent-
ing the Kremlin, he was, unquestionably, collecting and writing the
king of stuff that they and the party-line Tribune want to get.” With
that crude falsehood as a setting, the presence of an agent of Yankee
imperialism ata trade union convention, is blandly “explained” away.

All this red-baiting drivel is projected for one purpose—to have
organized workers throughout Canada fonget that the policies of
union splitting, demoralization and disunity, as laid down by the 65th
convention of the TLC, were formulated by aggressive dollar imperial-_
ism, and the blueprints for union-wrecking laid out by its state de-
partment labor attache Godson. (The wrecking crew is already at.

“work in Vancouver under the expert direction of Carl Berg, vice-

president in charge of demolition.) 4

When Mel Colby wrote of the Montreal convention that “Peroy
Bengough was still president, but it was the U.S. state department
that was in charge of the 65h convention of the Trades and Labor
Congress,” he touched’the raw quick of truth .. . and it hurt like hell.
Hence the TLC editorial, which “explains” nothing—except the dil-
emma of those who attempt, behind a barrage of demogagic phrases
and “explanations” to serve two masters. :

e' ; :
We saw a letter some time ago which underscores this dilemma
of the top trade union burocracy in the camp of the warmongers.
Under the guidance of a Communist business agent, a Vancouver
local in a given industry had grown from an unorganized, ‘sweated
industry to ‘a healthy, united, fighting organization, winning substan-
tial wage gains and improved working conditions for its membership.

“In due course”, as the late Mackenzie King used to say, some
members of the Judas fraternity reported to the Marshallized inter-
national president in Washington, D.C. that business agent so-and-so
was a “Red.” Horrors! “In /God we trust ... get rid of him ‘at

once.” ,

In due course the axe fell, and in, something less than “due
course”, pernicious anemia afflicted the union. The bosses got to
work. Hard-won gains were lost without a fight and soon conditions
in the industry were worse than before the union was started. The
workers could see no ‘point in paying dues into a union that not only
deprived them of a good business agent, but appeared to have no
interest in their union, other than, per-capita collection.

After the usual correspondence with international headquarters
on the deteriorating situation, the grand old international president
got a bright idea and proceded to put it down on paper, “Dear Sir
and Brother: Yours of the etc., etc., réceived. We would suggest that
you try and get a business agent with all the qualities of ability and
efficiency displayed by the old one . . . but without his politics.” |

; It's like telling the wife to make bread without yeast, butter
without cream, overalls for Junior without cloth. It is like telling every
traden unionist to surrender the constitution of his union for a made-
in-the-USA “loyalty” test; to tear up his union obligation to his fellow
men, and accept in its stead a “way of life” dictated by long-range |
bombers instead of fraternal reason) and brotherhood.

When the editorial writers for the TLC Journal stoop to cover

- their betrayal of labor unity and principles by prattling about the

‘established freedoms and democratic way of life” in which the TLC

found its origin, continuity and strength, they will fool very few, and

least of all their own members who are not yet ready to “accept more

cesspEne: which leaves them nothing to say but “Heil Bengough! Heil
Son . .” :

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Published Weekly at Room 6 - 426 Main Street, Vancouver, B.C.
By THE TRIBUNE PUBLISHING COMPANY LTD. —
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ns Tom McEwen .......---- NO gai tikes |: eeitaas Editor
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PACIFIC TRIBUNE — OCTOBER 27, 1950 — PAGE 8 — ;

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