EDITORIAL PAGE x

Review  *

Nominate people's candidates, get out the vote

UNICIPAL elections through-

out B.C. will hold the spot-
light during December. Nomina-
tions for aldermanic office will
soon be completed, and numerous
Programs for improved civic gov-
ernment scattered around in pro-
fusion.

The percentage of “acclamations”
iti past B.C. civic elections is still
telatively high, many of these an
evidence of apathy in civic affairs
tather than expression of “satisfac-
tion,”

Tory-Liberal and Socred domina-
tion of B.C.’s largest urban muni-
cipalities under the guise -of a
Tammany Non-Partisan Association

Whitewash?

OLLOWING the B.C. Power

Commission chairman, H: Lee
Briggs’ expose of Socred fiscal -and
electric power policies, all three
remaining members of the BCPC
have now resigned their positions.

‘Meantime the Bennett govern-
ment lost no time in setting up a
toyal commission -to “investigate”
(read bury) Briggs’ allegations.

This commission is headed by
Dr. Gordon Shrum, UBC depart-
Ment of physics; a professor who
attained some notoriety as a “scien-
tific” apologist for the continua-
tion of nuclear bomb tests — des-
Pite the warnings of world noted
Scientists on the dangers inherent
in H-tests.

The other members of the com-
Mission are W. M. Anderson, a
Vancouver chartered accountant,
and Robert Dunsmuir, Vancouver
businessman and descendent of
a family notorious in B.C.’s early
days in the exploitation of its
coal resources and ‘people.

Through such a commission the
Socreds hope to accomplish a dual
end; to keep *the Briggs charges
out of the domain of public de-
bate, and to secure a royal com-
Mission whitewash of Socred give-
away policies.

——s

Pacific Tribune

Phone MUtual 5-5288
Editor — TOM McEWEN

Managing Editor — HAL GRIFFIN’

Published weekly. at
Room 6 — 426 Main Street
Vancouver 4, B.C.

Subscription Rates:

One Year: $4.00
Six Months: $2.25

Canadian and Commonwealth
Countries (except Australia): $4.00
One year. Australia, United States
4nd all other countries: $5.00 one

year.

(NPA) rule, has enabled a pow-
erful monopoly octopus’. like the
B.C. Electric to gouge the people
at will. In Vancouver, Victoria
and other Lower Mainland munici-
palilties, the imposition of exorbit-
ant B.C. Electric rate increases on
transit, electricity and natural gas
services has become an annual pas-
time.

In this “legalized” extortion a
compliant government at Victoria,
through the medium of a creature
of its own creation, a so-called Pub-
lic Utilities Commission, provides
the official sanction for B.C. -Elec-
tric scalping of the taxpayers. Even
when statutory appeals are lodged
against PUC decisions in favor of
the B.C. Electric, the latter ignores
these and goes merrily ahead with
its public fleecing in rate hoists.

That such a situation is possible
rests entirely on the. fact that for
over two decades large urban muni-
cipalities have been under the
thumb of NPA administrations or
similar political aggregations, who
take their orders and their poli-

cies from big business monopoly,
instead of from the taxpaying elec-
torate. Vancouver, Victoria and
other Lower Mainland municipali-
ties are the principle victims of this
Socred - City Hall © B.C. Electric
gouging.

The Briggs expose of Socred
financial juggling, and undermin-
ing of the B.C. Power Commission
asa public-owned enterprise in, fa-
vor of the B.C. Electric also has
its impact on municipal affairs.
Powell River provides a good ex-
ample. Originally served by the
B.C. Power Commission,: the Soc-
reds sold out to the B.C. Electric
by deciding in favor of a private
monopoly and ousting the BCPC.

In terms of dollars and cents to
Powell River taxpayers through in-
creased electricity rates, this was a
highly. profitable deal — for the
B.C. Electric.

These basic problems can and
must be tackled at municipal level
—by the people themselves. Not
by the continued election of NPA,

or similar partisan stooges for big
business masquerading under new
“reform” labels, but by replacing
these yesmen.for monopoly exploi-
tation by working men and women,
dedicated to the task of cleaning
out the “Augean stables” of muni-
cipal government in B.C.

The building of an “alternative”
to the political domination of big
business in municipal affairs, be-
gins at municipal level. It is the
“grass roots” of independent and
united labor-farmer political action
to replace the municipal lackeys of
monopoly with genuine peoples’
representatives.

Nominations by trade unions’ and
other people’s organizations should
be the order of the day; to assure
the widest nomination of working
men and women for civic offices—
and to mobilize the vote to assure
their election to civic administra-
tion, urban and rural.

That is the one and only answer
to Socred-NPA-B.C. Electric - PUC
corruption, chicanery and taxpayer
gouging in «municipal government!

HERE’S an outfit known as
The National Research Bureau,

Inc., with headquarters. in Chi-
cago, Ill., which annually pours
tons of trashy .literature into
this country.

No statistics are available for
any Canadian city or the country
as a whole (and the Post Office
doesn’t reveal the tonnage handl-
ed) but it is a fair guess that
scores of Vancouver business and
industrial firms, unionized and
non-union, have become distri-
buting agents for this literary
tripe, by handing it out in
bundles to their employees, and
all for “free.”

This stuff is not the popular
sex and crime “comic-strip” (that
is a different branch of Yankee
kultur), but the type of litera-
ture which aims to show -that
“YOU. too can become a. success-
ful business man or woman” if
you'll just follow the advice so
“freely” given by Research Inc.

No matter the subject, and
they are wide and varied in
this dosage of. Yankee ‘“know-
how,” ‘one finds running through

it all like a red thread the ideol-
ogy of class colloboration —_ the
identity of interests between cap-
ital and labor. Even in “help-
ful hints” on how to fix-it-your-
self around the home, the work-
er is pictured as a budding capi-
talist.

Thus, if the boss has made a
name for himself in the -world
it has nothing to do with wage
labor and the theory of surplus
value. The boss has just been a
bit cleverer than YOU, knew
how to dress well, picked the
right brand of tooth paste, chose
his shampoo with uncanny skill,
and knew how to command that
look of distinctive “executive”
ability!

The secret of all this is, of
course (you guessed it) “hard
work,” with all your thoughts
concentrated upon a “job well
done” rather than upon such
mundane things as wage rates,
working conditions. and = take-
home pay envelopes.

There are booklets. for the
girls too, full of “helpful” hints.
For the woman beginning to
have worries about a job at 40,

don’t go to bed reciting Poe’s -~

dismal‘ Raven’s “Nevermore.” It’s
just a matter of buying ‘the
“proper dress .. . to make the
boss sit up and take notice,” with
extra care with the 40-ish toilet,
since “failure to use a good
deoderant is*alH too frequently
the cause of office “offence.”
“Forty,” says this Chicago lit-
erati, “is just two times twenty,”
and if girls in- sweatshops, de-

partment stores and other hives
of exploitation will just take
their minds off their age, their
low incomes, their economic or

other trivial worries, and dedi-

cate themselves to dressing well,
cultivating ‘good manners,” use
the correct deoderant, toothpaste,
lipstick and soaps “success is
bound to follow.”

With who or with what the
Chicago oracles don’t say.

Mebby, instead of ambitions to
become a boss YOU would like
to become a great baseball play-
er, another Babe Ruth? In this
all you have to dd is “master
your inferiority complexes,” and
hit a home run every time you
swing. YOU too can be in the
big league money.

An hour or two with this
baseball “success” brochure will
take your mind: off the realiza-
tion that your unemployment
insurance benefits have run out
while you were starring in the
role of. “Casey at the bat.” The
prime aim of National Research
Bureau, Inc., is to do just that.

Maybe you have personal prob-
lems? Do you fear the future?
Have you money troubles? ,Are
you afraid of old age or death?
Are you approaching a_ crisis
and about to give up? Don’t do
it. The.-Swamis of Chicago have
a sure-fire ‘cure.

Work hard, emulate the boss,
keep your mind off unions, pay
envelopes, union_ organizers,
strikes, Reds. “If the elevator
to success is out of order —
use the stairs.”

November 28, 1958 — PACIFIC TRIBUNE—PAGE 5

=
—