UCT TA:

CEI UUETUUESSOASS OUTTA TUTAAS ERLE TTS TT
Bi lI
I /
AUUESHSTEET AGES SHRAAGANGEESEL OUEGEL SAT TTR LSET TSR a aa

Short Jab

ABOR papers make reputa-
tions for themselves differ-
ent from _ the run-of-the-mill
capitalist newspapers. No work-
er ever gets fired for being a
reader of a capitalist paper.
But this has happened many
: times to work-

ers who take
their news ser-
‘ously—and find

; and read a

or Bill newspaper in
their own language. It was
named Borba which, in their

language, means struggle.

A miner in one of the B.C.
coal camps was killed through
negligence of the mine manage-
ment. One of his fellow work-
ers sent a report to Borba giving
all the details of the accident in

which the mine manager was
mentioned by name. A few days
after that copy of Borba reacned
that mine all the unmarried Yu-

goslay workers were fired. The
reason is not far to seek; the
mine manager was making sure
he got the man who wrote the
story—a story that was too true
for his comfort.

Borba was a paper that lived
up to its name—struggle. It
was a paper that fought for
the interests of the Yugoslav
workers, like its first editor, my
old friend Tom Cacic, who went
to Spain with the International
Brigade in the first armed at-
tempt to stop fascism.

Borba’s reputation is still 4
force today. Although the paper
was compelled through circum-
stances to change its name
twice, first to Free Thought and
then to Novosti, when the Yugo-
slay kiddies bring the mail from
the post office today and the
ol@ man asks what’s in the
mail’ they answer Borba.

Our Pacific Tribune has the
same kind of reputation. We

know our readers will support it
to the extent of the $15,000 they
are asked to donate.

The $200 our column has un-
dertaken to raise must be forth-
coming. One of the best and un-
tiring workers for this column
in all press drives, Mrs. Lam-
mede, is now dead, and we need
three or four hélpers to take
her place, for she was worth
that many.

If you would like to help to
raise Ol’ Bil’s quota, put on a
ecard party at your home, Mrs.
Lammede used to do that. Or,
if you prefer, raffle a bowl of
mush or something else Scotch
and send in the proceeds. Or
if you don’t have enough initi-
ative for these proposals, just do
as I do and put the bee on all
the sympathizers you know and
send the money to Ol’ Bill.

Maintaining the Pacific Trib-
une is our prime task. The
fight against Bill 39, agarnsv
Abbott’s austerity plan, against
high prices—all need the Pacific
Tribune as their mouthpiece.

So let’s get busy.

HAH AEREEERALUESHUHEEATAUUHURAE EEA EREATAEEA HTN

Be E HAVE got to put our

brains to the task of per-
feéting our own kind of democ-
racy”. So says an editorial] in
the March 5 edition of the Van-
couver Sun, under the catchy
title “An Answer to Communism.”
- Quoting other brainy authori-
ties(?) on the subject, the Sun
gives the lowdown on how this
“perfecting” of
democracy is to
de attained. All
that is neces-
Bary in ™ ..~ to
prove the Marx-
ist bible wrong
by making it
impossibe for
Marxism to
dourish in our

midst.”
A’ beautiful

Tom McEwen thought — but a

m McEwen

shade shopworn during the last”

100 years or so.

« <2 (thhd “this is a big -“it")

this social system we call capi-

_ talism, which all its propagan-
dists (including the Sun) de-
scribe as the “best of all possi-
ble” systems, could provide food,
clothing, shelter—all these things
which make for a happy pro-
gressive humanity, then it would
be a foregone conclusion that
Marxism and»Marxists would be

a as rare as truth is now among
_ the apologists of capitalism.

Had such been the case Marx
could well have dedicated him-
self to raising potatoes instead
of burning the midnight oil to
produce his great scientific work
Pas Kanital — or his scathing
indictment of capitalism 100

Aditi UP

mn

OT ih id’

MikS:
\)

D @il

years ago in the Communist
Manifesto! :

The bourgeoisie, or shall we

Say, the capitalist class, have
made democracy work — for
themselves. In this they have
been eminently successful, and
in that respect it neéds no
“perfecting.” A gang who can
‘achieve fabulous profits and
mass starvation in a single oper-
ation—who can promoce hunger
as a political weapon (in the
midst of plenty) to perpetuate
its rule or “way of life’; who
can make of labor a commodity
to be bought and sold under the
hammer of “free enterprise”;
whose unholy trinity of princi-
ples are rent, interest and pro-
fits—has little to “perfect”.
does anyone who applies an
ounce of. intelligence to the
problem, assume that this gany,
of its own free will, will strike
out for new and higher forms of
democracy.

Of course they sometimes ad-
mit that there are “a few evils”
in our social system, but nothing
that cannot be cured, were it
not for those damned Reds!

One clear fact emerges from
all this anti-Marxist apolo-
getic drivel—the realization
that capitalism and capitalists
are on the way out, and that
the science of revolutionary
Marxism presages a mew social
order—Socialism.

That fact explains the frenzied
yelps of reaction against “Com-
munism”, “Marxism”, etc. It
serves as a temporary cover-up
for their moral, ethical and poli-
tical bankruptcy. It also sh6ws,
that, unlike Hitler, who regard-
ed bourgeois democracy as an
obstacle to facism, the capitalist

HAHA
el

sc i
" Pn fi lt
mr alll

eae
INE)

} tl | Y ry ; Hy
[ reser ete

emcee

: Published Weekly at 650 Hewe Street
By THE TRIBUNE PUBLISHING COMPANY LTD.

Telephones: Editorial, MA.
Tom McEwen ......... sie

5857; Business, MA. 5288
: Editor

Sete ee eene settee eee

_ Subseription Rates: 1 Year, $2.50; 6 Months, $1.35.

Printed by Union Printers Ltd, 650 Howe Street, Vancouver, B.C.

Nor.

class of North America use their
concept of democracy to pro-
mote fascism—and may end up
(temporarily) by calling fascism
a “perfected democracy”!
e@ ‘

FX-KING MICHAEL of Ru-

mania has now discovered
that his abdication was not a
matter “a la Windsor’—of re-

linquishing a throne for love, but ~

another “Moscow plot’, It ap
pears that rtouowing a lunch at
bucxingnam rasace, Mike issued
@ “Toya” ukKase to inis eliecu—
well spaced Win anii-poviel arecos-

Following the October Revo-
lution of ivl/ a waose tock of
Tsarist coun.s, dukes, princes
and princesses, lanaged jops as
major domos and waitresses in

the posh restaurants and night —

clubs of the world’s elite. There
was the spice of adveniure) in
having a princess of “royal”
blood serve you the cocktail and
soup, or an ex-grand duke shine
your shoes. It was also good
business.

But there will be no  hash-
slinging or shoe-shining for
Mike—at least not for a time.
Director Barrie O’Daniels of
the Detroit Civic Opera cabled
Mike a _ sporting proposition,
with a salary of $1,000 per
week. Mike is to have the role
of “Red Shadow” in the Desert
Song, and in) case you miss the
point promoter O’Daniels has it
underlined in his come-on to
Mike: “I believe it would cre-
ate a favorable impression, es-
pecially after your heroic stand
for democracy”! To this Detroit

Marshall planner, ex-king Mike’s _
- opera voice

isn’t half so im-
portant as his anti-Soviet stage
effects. - 3

Just where promoter O’Daniels

dug up this “heroic stand for
" democracy”

in the Rumanian
royal warrens is not clear—and
least of all to the Rumanian
reonle, who for the first time in
long decades of monarchist and
fascist oppression, are tasting

the first lexne rience of a real —

people’s democracy. é

1

Sales tax gets ‘new look’

5 an effort to head off the growing opposition to the Coali-
tion’s proposed sales tax levy, the Vancouver News-
Herald has assigned one of its top editors, Barry Mather, an
erstwhile “socialist”, to glamorize the sales tax.

In the jargon of Coalition-heeling journalism, Mather is
doing “a fine job.” Taking the sales tax in the State of
Washington as his model he plows rather laboriously through
the complex ;,technique of its modus operandi . .. the
primary contusion between buyers and sellers in its initial
stages, and so on. All of which is interesting but scarcely
convincing.

The real service rendered the Coalition sales tax planners
by the News-Herald is not the nice neighborly confusion
inspired by an onerous and burdensome “nuisance” tax, but
its happy discovery that the tax. has added “30 cents to the
state’s income dollar” and “helped the state to pay out
millions for school, pension, city and county (municipal)
costs.”

“The majestic equality of the law” as Anatole France
once observed, “forbids the rich as well as. the poor to sleep
on park benches.” The News-Herald editor paraphrases
this classical observation in the democratic equality of the
sales tax which hit all alike “whether you are an old age
pensioner or a millionaire.”

And in Washington the state takes it all, so why should
B.C, municipalities get hot unden the collar and begin referr-
ing to the Coalition as ~“pirates”?:
Anscomb cabinet made the magnaminous suggestion that
one cent of the three-cent proposed sales tax levy go to the
municipalities? mat

' The essence of the News-Herald homilies on the sales
tax would appear tc be pained surprise that the people of
B.C. are not sufficiently grateful or aware of the blessings
conferred upon them by the Coalition government? Mather
has labored to produce justification for the imposition of a
sales tax—and the right of the Coalition to “pocket” the lot.

Although unintended, all of the News-Herald’s sales tax
dithyrambs, stripped of their “how-it-works” details, are
good arguments—against the sales tax and its Coalition
promoters. But it can be said of the Liberal-controlled
News-Herald effort that “the laborer is worthy of his hire.”

“And we must make our workers really believe that our
initiative and enterprise is the answer to all their problems.”

re

~ Looking backward

(From the files of the People’s Advocate, March 11, 1938)
Distribution of milk in Vancouver, now a public scandal, may be
taken over by the city. This was forecast by Alderman: Fred. Crone
in social services committee at the city hall last Monday. He
indicated that he would investigate the system used in other cities
and present a plan in the near future.

Crone, conferring with Hon. K. C. MacDonald, minister of agri-
culture, next day in Victoria obtained the support of the provincial
government and promises of aid to his investigation of methods
of milk distribution: were made.

. The plan, according to bare details available, would entail the
buying out and operation of the present milk distributing system
as a public utility. Under such a plan, Alderman Crone stated this

week, if would be possible to give the producer an extra cent a

quart and cut the consumer’s cost three cents.

The city would buy only high grade milk which would probably
be pasteurised, e added, = .

It was learned in ‘Victoria that the department of agriculture

regards the plan with favor.

Provincial government officials believe that Vancouver has ample
legal power to control milk distribution as a public utility,

Hasn’t the Johnson- -

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—MARCH 12, 1948—PAGE 8_

\