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| EDITORIAL PAGE |

‘Penny wise ...

and pound foolish!

HE voting on new. money by-
laws for much-needed munici-
pal services during recent civic
elections throughout British Co-
lumbia, provided seme basic les-
sons yet to be learned, and proves
the truth of the old homily about
being “penny wise and pourd fool-
ish.”
The majority of all such mone-
tary bylaws voted down had to do
with education facilities, recrea-
tional and other urgently needed
municipal services.

With or without NPA-CVA-or-
what - have- you reactionary
prompting, the taxpayer (in the
main) didn’t vote these projected
bylaws down because he (or she)
felt a new school or other public
service wasn’t needed.

On the contrary; but like the

proverbial camel, loaded to the ,

breaking point with taxes to pay
for municipal services, which
rightfully are the responsibility of
provincial and central government,
his anti-bylaw vote was a short-
sighted effort to avoid the back-
breaking “last straw.”

Thus, while the Bennett cabinet
orchestra stages a “debt-free” one-
ring circus at the expense of the
municipal taxpayer, and seeks to

smooth irate municipal feelings by .

passing the buck to Ottawa, the
taxpayer reacts by doing what
Tory and Socred tricksters expect
and encourage him to do — vote

against his own interests, in the

illusion that by doing so he is
“holding the line” on taxes.

This is the same taxpayer who
Sees roughly 50 percent of his tax
dollar go down the arms race drain,
to the tune of some $2 billion an-
nually, but who as yet says or does
very little about ii.

The Avro-Arrow $400 million
which Diefenbaker and company
poured down the “defence” sink-
hole, without even one flying
machine to show for it (only one
such example in the suicidal arms
race) would have covered all the
money bylaws voted down in B.C.

Pacific Tribune

Editor — TOM.McEWEN

' Managing Editor — BERT WHYTE

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municipal elections for schools and
the like.

But the overburdened municipal

taxpayer, thinking he couldn’t “af-

ford” a new school or recreational
centre for his young folks in the
home community, coughs up
around $2 billion annually, and
votes Liberal or Tory or Socred to
assure that such wanton squander-
ing of his resources be continued.
To top it off, the Socred govern-
ment in Victoria;wearing its best
Machiavellian halo, points to Ot-
tawa as the “culprit” strangling
the municipalities, but offers no
opposition to the Diefenbaker
government’s criminal spending on
“Bomares before schools.”

The lessons flowing from Iost

money bylaws for schools and.

other essential services is a simple
one; the need for grass-roots unity
to compel. provincial and federal
governments to live up to their
obligations to the people — to put
peoples’ welfare before nuclear
warfare. To transfer the billions
now being spent in armaments,
into building for peace and pro-
gress.
A good resolution for 1960.

Service before profit

TARTING off 1960 on the

“right” foot, that is, right for

the B.C. Electric transit monopoly,

it is planned to impose another

cutback in bus service, effective in
mid-January.

This cutback in public transit
services by the BCE will be the
fourth within the period of one
year or less. Over the years BCE
fare hikes (authorized by a
BCElectrified Public Utilities
Commission and a supine NPA ad-
ministration at City Hall) have in-
variably been accompanied by cuts
in transit services.

While spokesmen for the Street

_. Railwaymen’s Union have correct-

ly pointed out that this latest cut-
back, as with others, will greatly
aggravate an already overcrowded
automobile congestion, obviously
the B.C. Electric operates on the
principle of the maximum profit
for the minimum of commuters
carried, rather than providing a
maximum public service. As
Charles “Chuck” Stewart of the
SRU stated, “transit service in our
city should be based on the prin-
ciple of service to the public, in-
stead of a consideration on the
profit side of the ledger.”

With a traffic problem on Lower
Mainland streets and highways

reaching the chronic stage, the
issue of public ownership of the
B.C. Electric transit system, oper-
ated in the public service, for the
sole purpose of providing cheap
and efficient transportation, be-
comes a “must” for 1960. Were
such a publicly-owned transit sys-
tem now in operation, the problem
of automobile congestion and frus-
trated car drivers would be on the
way to solution. As it-stands, the’
mid-January cutback of bus sery-

ices by the BCE will compound the

problem.

A splendid New Year resolution
for 1960 would be for the people of
Vancouver and elsewhere who sup-
port the idea of a publicly-owned
transit system, to get together and
write finis to this transit mon-
opoly; to take over the B.C. Elee-
tric and operate it in the service of
the people, instead of as a profit-
gouging “cutback” monepoly.

During the past year opponents
of public ownership of the B.C.
Electric have propagated the idea
that this power and transit mon-
opoly is now too big to “take over,”
therefore it should be left as is, to
continue its profit gouging.

Bigger jobs will be undertaken —

by the people in 1960 — and this
one shouldn’t be longer neglected.

Tom
McEwen

“my EACE On Earth, Goodwill To
Men,” is the centuries-old

ideal that makes hope spring

~-eternal in-the heart -of mankind—-~--

from the stone-axe age to this era’

of the dreaded H-Bomb.

Not satisfied with “Peace on
Earth” in its original form em-

bracing all humanity, evil mental--

ities well-versed in the art of
double talk, have re-written in H-
Bomb language: ‘Peace on earth
—to all men of goodwill.”

In that forked-tongue coldwar
version, millions of peoples in
scores of countries can be conven-
iently obliterated in the attain-
ment of such “peace.”

Hence, at this annual holiday
season when millions of our people
are literally stampeded into a buy-
ing orgy and good old Santa Claus
rated top commercial salesman of
the year, it might be well to re-
member those who are most easily
forgotten, in our Christmas and
New Year greetings.

To say a “Merry Xmas and a

’ Happier 1960” to the half-million

or more Canadians deprived of the
right to earn a decent livelihood,
and condemned to subsist on re-
lief and charity soup, as thin as
pre-election Tory promises. To say
a like greeting to our senior citi-
zens, widows and other “pension-
ers” similarly condemned to live
out their lives in penury, amid the
vast riches their labors created.
To say a “Happy Christmas and

Success in 1960” to all, no matter
where they be or whom, who fight
for peace and an end to the geno-
cide horror. of nuclear war; to all

- who struggle for the beauty” and

happiness of ‘Peace On Earth” for
the generations to come—instead
of an atomic-charred planet, lost
in the void of eternal space.

To salute with a hearty Yule
greeting the mighty battalions of
Labor, the workers and farmers of
our country, whose unity against
a common enemy, can become a
mighty bulwark for ‘Peace On
Earth, Goodwill To Men.” -

And further afield, to those
whose struggles for peace and
goodwill are inseparably linked
with our own. To the Algerian
patriot, fighting a long and bitter
battle to free his land from the
strangling grip of an alien power.
To the brave men and women of
Africa, who hourly suffer hardship,
prison, concentration camp, torture

tion and foreign exploitation. To
African men, forcibly separated

to live and enjoy the resources of

classical

.cisive victory for Peace in 1960.

and mass death, in their resistence
to racial segregation, discrimina-

from their wives and families; to
dauntless African mothers, forci-
bly torn from their children, be-
cause they want to live in peace;

their own land in their own way.
To. these, excluded in the nuclear
version of a noble ideal, all success
and a stout heart for 1960 — and
victory. :

There are other forgotten people
we should remember at this Yule-
tide;. the 167 Irish lads, rotting in
prison, without charge or trial, be-
cause they struck a blow in the
centuries-old struggle for Irish
freedom.

The countless thousands of
Greek patriots, trade unionists,
democrats, Communists, rotting in
lonely. prison and _ concentration
camps, facing execution and end-
less torture, because they dared to
translate the ancient language of
Greece, ‘Demos’ (the
people) into people’s democracy,
in place of a foreign-imposed police
state.

To these, and to others in the
great family of Humanity, building
a new Socialist society, predicated
upon the precept of “Peace On
Earth, Goodwill To Men” we say:

A Happier New Year, and a de-

December 24, 1959—PACIFIC TRIBUNE—Page 4