gor was feelin’ mighty good
when he made Gene Debs
and He didn’t have anything
else to do all day.”

This tribute to Eugene V.
Debs by the poet James Whit-
Combe Riley expressed the love
millions of U.S. working peo-
ple felt for one of their great-
est leaders. Railroad - workers,
Shopkeepers, newspapermen,
writers, businessmen, corpora-
tion presidents, prison wardens,
even the president of the United
States — all at one time or
another succumbed: to the sim-
ple humanity and compelling
charm of Debs and acknowle-
dged him as a great man.

He could have become a man
of wealth and respectability,
but all his life until he died
29 years ago, on October 20,
1926, at the age of 71, Debs
remained faithful to his allegi-
ance to the workers and his
belief that some day the wealth
they produced would belong to
them. ;

His first clash with the forces
of “law and order” came in
1894 during the epic Pullman
strike. The newborn American
Railway Union, organized by

union for all rail workers was
in a head-on battle with the
Pullman Company.

Driven to desperation by a
long, hard winter of firings,
wage cuts and hunger, workers
in the company town of Pull-
man, Ill., flocked into the ARU
and voted unanimously to strike.

A bitter commentary on the

came from one striker: “We
were in a Pullman house, fed

the Pullman school, catechised
in the Pullman church, and
when we die we shall be buried
in the Pullman cemetery and go
to the Pullman hell.”

After the Pullman workers
had been out for seven weeks,
while the company tried to
starve them into submission, the
ARU. issued an ultimatum.
Either the company agreed to
arbitrate or a nation wide sym-
pathy strike would be called.

: Pullman would not arbitrate.

On June 26 the U.S. saw its

first big nationwide strike. Tens

- of thousands of railroad work-

ers walked off their jobs. The

1 country’s transportation was at
a standstill.

A week later President Grover
Cleveland ordered out federal

Attorney General Richard Ol-
meyy a. corporation lawyer,
issued a drastic. injunction that

Debs to provide one industrial.

slavery of Pullman workers -shown serious concern

a the Pullman slop, taught from

troops to smash the strike, and.

| a EUGENE DEBS: Drawing by Art Young |
| All his life he held that workers
should get the wealth they produce

tied the strike leaders hand and
foot.

Debs was arrested. Federal
grand juries began turning out
mass indictments of strikers.
On July 20 Debs was sentenced
to six months in jail. A month
later the strike was completely

broken.
*

Debs’ experience with govern-
ment strikebreaking and its
subservience to the _ trusts
molded his strong belief in
socialism, which was to lead
him to his second and even more
serious clash with the govern-.
ment some 20 years later.

It was June 1918, and for
more than a year Debs had seen
many of his closest friends and
co-workers jailed on charges of
sedition because they opposed
U.S. participation in the First
World War. . Debs himself
could not remain silent.

Addressing a crowd of 1,200
persons in a public park in Can-
ton, Ohio, he declared:

‘J would a thousand times
rather be a free soul in jail
than to be a sycophant and
coward in the streets. They
may put those boys in jail—
and some of the rest of us in
jail—but they cannot put the
socialist movement in jail.”

In eloquent . terms Debs
spoke of the sufferings of work-
ing people, of the profiteers who
paraded as super-patriots and
drove the nation to bloodshed.

“The master class has always
declared the wars, the subject
class has always fought'the bat-
tles.. The master class has had
all to gain and nothing to lose,
while the subject class has
had nothing to gain and all to
lose—especially their lives.”

For these remarks Debs was
sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Before sentence was imposed
Debs spoke these words to an
enrapt courtroom:

*

“In the unceasing struggle be-
tween the toilers and the pro-
ducers and their exploiters, I
have tried to serve those among
whom I was born, with whom
I expect to share my lot until
the end of my days.

“T am thinking this morning
of the men in the mills and

New Zealand has a

ANADA is not the only coun-

try with a shortage of teach-

ers—part of a growing general
crisis in education.

Low pay and bad conditions
for teachers threaten an under-
staffing crisis in New Zealand
schools.

The New Zealand Secondary
Schools Association, represent-
ing school principals, has sharp-

‘ly drawn attention to the in-

creasing shortage of teachers,
especially in secondary schools.

If there is no change in the
rate of recruiting, many classes
will be without teachers by
1965.

The Federated Farmers’ con-
ference recently protested
against the lack of houses for
country teachers.

Other organizations have
over
education. The unity of prim-
ary and secondary teachers,
which defeated a government
attempt to deny them a public
service wage increase, can be
a foretaste of broader action
still. :

At a time when commercial
radio stations call hourly for
army, navy and air force re-
cruits, nothing is being done by
the government to advertise
the real need for teachers.

There won’t be a real increase

in the number of teachers with- .

out a real wage increase.
The recent increase varied
from $70 to $224 a year — but
the starting point for men and
women is $1484 and $1274 re-
spectively — lower by about
‘$280 than a private in the regu-
-lar army.
Top salary for a “rank and
file’ male teacher is $2898.
To these salaries shoyld be
added a marriage allowance of
$168 a year plus an allowance
of up to $168 according to edu-
cational qualifications,
Compare these with the earn-

ings of doctors, lawyers, den-

tists and other professional
groups.
New recruits for teaching

must be won in competition
with these sections if highly

‘qualified teachers are to be ob-

tained — and that means wage
scales equal to the $4200-$5600
income a young doctor may ex-
pect.

It does not pay to spend four
years at the university to be-
come a teacher. About 200 bur-
saries are offered yearly for
teachers (on a fairly generous
basis compared with most bur-
saries), but only three-quarters
are accepted, and only two-
thirds of those taking bursaries
eventually become teachers.

The shortage of women teach-
ers is particularly acute. The
average $210 gap between men
and women teachers is a big
factor. A good~ stenographer

can earn $33-$45 a month more

Poor schools in a beautiful countryside

factories; I am thinking of the
women who, for a paltry wage,
are compelled to work out their
lives; of the little children who,
in this system, are robbed of
their childhood...I can see
them dwarfed, diseased, stunted,
their little lives broken, and
their hopes blasted because in
this high noon of our 20th cen-
tury civilization, money is still
so much more important than
human life. Gold is god and
rules in the affairs of men...

“J never more clearly com-
prehended than now the great
struggle between the powers of
greed on the one hand and upon
the other the rising hosts of
freedom. I can see the dawn
of a better day for humanity.
The people are awakening. In
due course of. time they will
come into their own.”

Debs had a fine sense of irony
and a splendid scorn of august
judges. Of his own case he re-
marked: é

“Great issues are not decided
by the courts, but by the people.
I have no concern in what the
coterie of begowned corpora-
tion lawyers in Washington may
decide in my case. The court of
final resort is the people and
that court will be heard from
‘in due time.”

And it was heard from. It
was heard from when almost
one million Americans voted for
Debs for President of the United
States when he ran as the Social-
ist candidate while in Atlanta
Penitentiary in 1920. It was
heard from in the hundreds of
thousands of signatures affixed
to petitions demanding amnesty
for Debs.

The people were heard from
and on Christmas Day, 1921,
Debs was freed after serving
two years and eight months of
his 10 year sentence.

|’ Canada in 1887, between

Canedian
firsts

ELECTRIC RANGE
The .worid's first elec-
tric cooking range was
developed in Canada in
1893.
bos Bos 3
ELECTRIC TOASTER
North America’s first
electric turnover toaster
was built in Canada in
1914. ‘
Oe gee, 22 TE 7: os
TRANS-PACIFIC CABLE
Sir Sanford .Fleming,
a Canadian engineer, laid
the first cable across the
Pacific in 1887. F
5e3 re a
- TRANSMISSION LINE
' The first high-voltage
transmission. line in
the British Common-
wealth was pioneered in

St.. Narcisse and Three
Rivers, Que.
se bes a
FIRST TO USE PHONE

Hugs C. Baker of Ham-
ilton, Ont., was the first
man in the world to make
use of the telephone, in
1877. :

bos os Bos
NOW US IMPORTS FIRST

More than 420 com-
panies in Canada’s elec-
trical manufacturing indus-
try are capable of pro-
ducing practically all
Canada’s. electrical re-
quirements, but ...in 1953,
nearly 50 percent of ali
refrigerators. and freezers
sold in Canada were im-
ported from the U.S.

teacher shortage too

than a woman teacher receives
on commencing.

New Zealand teachers’ organ-
izations are now going on re-
cord for pay on an equal basis
— though with some reserva-
tions.
©

As in British Columbia, the
shortage of teachers is most
acute in rural schools. ~

There is a shortage of houses, .

and no extra payment for teach-
ing in the country.

Some incentive is needed for
the young teacher to give up
studies, friends, family contacts
and social life in the cities.

A salary bar is now used to

compel teachers to go into the’

country — no promotion unless
two years are spent out of city
schools. Many young teachers

resign from the service rather |

than leave the cities.
Teachers are demanding pay-
ment of a country service al-

e

lowance of not less than $280
a year. ;

The housing shortage in the
country is second to salaries as
a bar to better education.

Cases- are cited of teachers
paying high .board rates in
houses having no form of light-
ing or heat supply (except wood’
stoves), and where transporta-
tion is a matter of guesswork.

Jobs in Maori schools are
often attractive because they
are more likely to have a house.

So, many two-teacher schools
have several changes of staff:
every year. = :

Many give up teaching  be-
cause of the conditions under
which they have to work. :

It is common for teacher to’
have classes in corridors, in
shelter sheds or even in the -
open air.

Prefab classrooms , which
cover a third or more of class-
rooms being built now, are hot- :
houses in the summer and re-
frigerators in the: winter.

All school building increas-
ed in value by 166 percent from
1949-50 to 1953-54, but defense
housing jumped in the same
period by 2329 percent. - :

Government expenditure this
year will be about $17 million
on school buildings and about
$70 million for defense.

All of these problems have
been known ever since the Na-
tionalist government of Prime
Minister Holland went into of-
fice in 1949. . :

'It was known, too, that school
rolls would increase by at least
100,000 by 1960. No one but
the government can be blamed
if the situation worsens. °

Higher wages, and more and
better school buildings, and
houses for country teachers —
these are demands which must
be taken up by all who want a
genuinely democratic educa-
tion in New Zealand.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — NOVEMBER 4, 1955 — PAGE $
\