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Tom McEwen
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Roads, tourists and politics

Agee numerous other legislative proposals brought

down by the Coalition government at the opening of
the legislature was the matter of “extra grants for promot-
ing the tourist business.” This is a very laudable proposi-
tion if the fact is kept in mind that in this age of the auto-
mobile, tourists and roads are almost synonymous, and that
British Columbia’s roads on the whole, and especially in
her key cities of Vancouver, Victoria and New Westmins-
ter, are perhaps the worst. on the North American con-
tinent.

One could pile up voluminous statistics to show that
B.C. has less to show in road mileage and condition for
the amount of money per capita collected and spent than
any other Canadian province. Any motorist who travels
our highways can give a forceful opinion of their neglected
and dilapidated condition. Highways, streets and bridges
are, almost without exception, ruinous to motor vehicles
and a constant hazard to those who have to travel them.
Yet, while our license fees and gas tax are the highest in
the country, the mileage of new highways built during the
last decade is negligible compared with the amount of pub-
lic funds squandered on temporary repairs, and even new
roads have been allowed to fall into disrepair.

The party patronage system which bedevils our roads
and highways is not peculiar or exclusive to this province,
but here the politicians, because of special geo-economic
factors, have developed road-building to the nth degree as a
political art. That, and not the lack of money or facilities,
is the basic reason for the sorry state of our highways and
roads today.

When an election is in the offing, all the party stal-
warts in the municipalities are mobilized with trucks and
other road-building gear, and for a brief period the ring of
the shovel is heard in the land. During that brief period
the party in power gets rid: of tens of thousands of the tax-
payers’ dollars by patching some roads and sprinkling
gravel here and there on .the rest. If at the end of this
period there has been no appreciable improvement to roads
or bridges, at least the party machine has been consolidated,
and for professional politicians that is the most important
achievement.

Wherever we have built safe and substantial bridges,
additional super taxes in the form of tolls have been clapped
on, which is neither an attraction for the tourist, nor an
incentive to the native to travel far afield.

It is high time that public works department, currently
the portfolio held by E. C. Carson, learned that the best
Statistics do not attract’ tourists, nor do they convince Brit-
ish Columbians that they have a system of all-weather
highways upon which they can travel with safety and com-
fort. On the contrary, one trip over any of the trunk high-
ways at this time is enough to convince any British Colum-
bian that B.C. has been taken to the cleaners in highway
and road construction.

If we are to attract toiats: or enable British Colum-
bians themselves to get around their province, our roads
will have to be taken out of the realm of opportunist parti-
san politics and placed upon a basis of development in the
public interest. To invite tourists to traverse our ee
and highways. in their present condition is little short’ of
compounding a felony. To increase license fees 20 percent,

tion is doing, is likewise nothing short of highway robbery.

ad

Prosperity on credit

ETAIL merchant associations throughout the province

are conducting a high-pressure lobby in Victoria for the
full restoration of ‘consumer credit.’ i.e., a return to install-
ment buying. Retailers are being urged to contact their
MLA’s with a view to winning support for the elimination
of war-time restrictions on credit purchases.

This is one of the best barometers to date, which indi-
cates that worker’s savings, veteran’s gratuities, etc., have
been absorbed, that cash purchasing is waning, and that
‘prosperity’ can only be maintained upon an installment
basis. The urgent insistance of the retailers for consumer
credit buying stands in sharp contrast to the current ‘supply
and demand’ tripe handed out by the WPTB propaganda
bureaus as an excuse for, price hoisting.

In order to meet rapidly rising prices and provide a basis
for genuine prosperity the people need increased purchasing
power, Installment buying on declining incomes only serves
to mortgage the future and hasten economic ruin.

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 19417

add three cents to the gas tax and retain tolls, as the Coali-.

Help crush this menace

miners’
courrs left.

Nova Scotia miners have earned huge dividends
for the absentee owners of the Dominion Steel
and Coal Co. (DOSCO)
century, while their own portion has been low
wages, unemployment and stark poverty.
prices skyrocketting ang the federal government
backing DOSCO
demands,

during the last halt

With

in consistently
strike action

ignoring the
was the only

 WiCH C osr ro of,
Z LYING

A RRNA

As we see it

ia TROT By Tom McEwen

LLOWING the lead of the

Canadian Manufacturers’ As-
sociation (CMA) in their ‘crus-
ade against communism’ the

Western Business and Industry,
official mouthpiece of big busi-
ness in Western Canada, hits a
new low in downright lying in
its February issue. In an editor-
ial entitled, ‘Reds as Labor Ne-
gotiators,’ a fancy yarn is cook-
ed up to ‘prove that the com-
munists in the leadership of the
International Union of Mine,
Mill and Smelter Workers are
not concerned about winning
wage increase or the 40-hour
week for the miners and smelt-
er workers, but mainly with fo-
menting what the CMA scribe
ealls ‘disruption’ in the industry.
Then the editorial charges that
the recent election in the
IUMM&S were ‘plugged’ and
that president Reid Robinson
was only elected by ‘irregular
election methods’ with which the
communists are alleged to be
‘not unfamiliar.’

To round out the fable the
CMA prostitute inkslinger then
goes on to give his views on
the elections in the ‘communist-

ridden’ countries of Poland,
Hungary, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia,
etc., and to repeat the moth-

eaten canard that in all these
elections the people were depriv-
ed of a democratic vote, There
is nothing new in this line of
slander—except one basic lesson
which no working man or wo-
man, be they communist or non-
communist, should forget. Wars
of this period begin with at-
tacks upon the communists, then
the unions, and finally the peo-
ple as a whole. The hired provo-
cateur of big business began his
editorials with a tirade against
the unions (in this case the
IUMMSW and ended by calling
for a ‘showdown now. And
bless your heart, he doesen’t

mean a ‘showdown’ with the Ca- .

nadian communists — they are
only incidental to the dangerous
game his paymasters are play-
ing; he means a ‘showdown’
with the USSR. In short, this
vest-pocket Goebbels of the CMA
wants war—war on the Soviet
Union. He doesn’t conclude with
‘heil Hitler’ but it would be

‘quite anf appropriate ending to

this slanderous —_ provocation
against Canadian labor and
world peace.

ERTAIN leading churchmen
in variocs parts of Canada
are very anxious to have the
German cleric, pastor Martin
Niemoller visit Canada after his
sojourn in the U.S.

In world war one pastor Nie-
moller was a U-boat commander,
specializing in sending wunpro-
tected ships of the allied powers
to the bottom, regardless of car-
go. When the first war ended
in the defeat of the kaiser, Nie-
moller ‘saw the light’ and be-
came a preacher.

At the outbreak of world war
two Niemoller, in spite of his
‘ i‘allegiance’ to
the ‘prince of
:peace, offered
is services to

ommang
of the

wolf-packs. Der
Fuehrer — didn’t
trust a U-boat
commander

one
latter’s

Tom McEwen

er, and told
him so. Niemoller continued his
preaching, and for his opposi-
tion to Hitler, sharpened by the
rebuff of his proffered services
to the fuehrer, he got tossed
into a concentration camp.

Niemoller’s opposition to Hit-
ler must not be construed as
cpposition to mnazism; on the
contrary, like most of the nazi
chiefs who now seek to save
their necks by parading their
‘opposition’ to Hitler, Niemoller
was and remains an ardent
nazi. His mission in the USA
now, is to secure, in the name
of his Lord and with all the
authority of his clerical robes,
‘soft peace’ terms. and mercy,
for the remnants of German
fascism,

Niemoller’s record ‘speaks for
itself; in 191418 he was a U-
boat commander, holder of the
‘iron cross, first class’ for his
daring exploits in sending help-
less ships to the bottom. During
the period of the Weimar Re-
public he incessantly advocated

“a resurgence of German militar-

ism, and was one of the most
noisy crusaders for  Hitler’s
‘anti-comintern pact.’ In 1933
when the. nazis seized power,
and Hitler’s brownshirt legions
were murdering communists,
trade unionists, Jews, catholics—

:Der Fuehrer to™

turned preach-

any and everyone who dared
speak against the Hitler terror
Niemoller characterized the
nazi organization and terror as
‘an instrument approved by
God.’ Gerald Kahen, writing in
the New York Daily Worker,
declared of Niemoller ° that
‘never once, not from 1984 to
this day, did Niemoller protest
against the persecution and mur-
der of Jews, Never once did
he find it necessary (as a man
of God) to éven deplore such
activities’ So much for this
U-boat-cum-preacher record.

Niemoller is in the USA to

_seek the overthrow of the Pots-

\dam Pact; to help pull the props

out from under Big Three unity
and widen the breach in U.S.-
USSR relations. With his cleri-
cal robes and the sanctimonious
posture of a ‘man of God,’ this’
ey-U-boat commander is doing
a job which a Krupp, Stinnes
or Thyssén would find some
difficulty in doing at the mo-
ment—seeking U.S. imperialist
backing for German fascism in
the reconstruction of a new
‘cordon sanitaire’ in Western
Europe again) st the ‘rising tide
of Socialism, and first and fore-
most against jthe Soviet Union..

Niemoller’s ‘persecution at the
hands of Hitler) made him anti-
Hitler, but he }emains pro-nazi,
craftily pursuing: his nazi mission
clothed in the garb of a church-
man, Canadian workers should see
to it that this U-boat preacher is
not listed among our  ‘dis-
tinguished RueEtey

j x :

A

*

KINDLY word of advise to
Tribune correspondents. When

a worker sits down and sweats

over a long ‘lettei to the edi-
tor, then waits to see it in
print, he or she quite naturally
gets a bit wiled whén it doesn’t
appear. We agree that such

_ treatment is not very encourag-

ing to the writers. The best
assurance of letters: being pub-
lished, is to keep. ‘them short
and to the point, avoiding long
philosophical dissertations on the
numerous evils of capitalism, and
concentrating mainly, and in
keeping with locaX conditions,
on that ever-burning: question of

‘what is to be done’ now. Fol-.

lowing this rule will make life
easier for the editor (a con-
sideration), and more important,
help to produce a better Trib-
une.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE -— PAGE 4