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PEOPLE’S

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August 6, 1937

For Your Health’s Sake - - - Join An

OQ marriage is wholly

satisfactory, no child is
perfect, and no parent ideal,
but as long as the economic
situation is secure and the
work regular the different
members of the family man-
age to digest the usual an-
noyances that are bound to
arise when any group ot peo-
ple live together.

The husband with a steady job
linows that he is keeping his end
up, that he is doing what a hus-
band and father should do. He
has self-respect and is respected
by the rest of the family.

But how different it is when 2
man loses his job and can’t find
other work. For a while he kids
himself that he can find another
in a few weeks, but sooner or later
he reluctantly admits that chances
are pretty slim.

*

EF he hangs around the house,
he finds that his wife’s sharp
fongue is being used more than he
thought possible. Im the old days
he used to laugh or wisecrack.
Wow, just as he’s about to wise-
erack, he stops.

How can he say anything? he
asks himself. Maybe it is his own
fault he’s out of work. Somehow,
somewhere, he has failed, and the
family is haunted by the fear of
economic insecurity as a result.
He begins to think of the little
mistakes he made years ago. A
few months ago, if he had thought
of them, he would have shrugged
his shoulders. Now they assume
the proportions of major errors.

Or perhaps, instead of blaming
himself, he blames his wife or the
children. He says things he would
never have said in the old days.

The children can’t be managed.
While he had his self-confidence
and self-respect they had confi-
dence and respect for him. Now
it’s different. He feels useless and
sometimes they act as though they
too, believe he is useless. At other
times they go to the other extreme
to show their sympathy, and this
only seems to make things worse.

He finds he is keeping his
thoughts more to himself. He
doesn’t feel like mixing with many
of his old friends who still have
their jobs. Hinancially, he ean't
keep his end up.

His health begins to suffer. For
some reason or other, his stomach

‘The

By LESLIE MORRIS.
BVASTATING drought
has added to the accum-
ulated burdens of the middle
west. Debt, long years of in-
security, bankrupt munici-
palities, unemployment
which has not diminished as
in the east, villages now fes-
ter amidst a desert land
which stretches for hundreds
ef miles through the once
fertile south, a wasteland

which is moving north.

Truly drought is a national
emergency. The federal minister
of agriculture was compelled to
say that a few days ago, but he
made the false claim that his cab-
inet had so regarded it for severa]
years.

This is not so. The people have
onee more impinged bare reality
on the office-limited mentalities of
hardshelled Liberals. Perhaps
more important than that the
GGF, the United Farmers and the
Communists have struck a similar
keynote of action—the Young Lib-
erals, sensitive to mass feeling and
of the people themselves, have
stuck a long pin into the sides of
federal and provincial Liberal
leaders by demanding action
which which every real patriot
can support.

HAVE read for many years of

the drouth. I have attended
many farmers’ conferences in the
past few years and heard face-fur-
rowed farmers tell of the ruin of
soil drift. With my fellow party
members, I have supported the de-
mands long ago raised—for re-
gerassing, tree-planting and relief.

But not until I rode by car from
Edmonton to Calgary, then to
Medicine Hat, then through the
bad-lands to Swift Current, then
fo Moose Jaw and Regina, and
back again over the same terri-
tory to Calgary, did I really under
stand what dreary rainless days,
months and years have brought
to bursting point all the criminal
waste, all the nickel-chasing land-
grabbery, all the wheat mining
which marks the history of these
splendid plains.

Jan Lakeman, chairman of the
Alberta Communist party com-
mittee, said to me: “When Holly-
wood wants to re-film Beau Geste,
all they need is to come here with
53 few camels and shoot their
scenes. Even the people are dark
enough to act without makeup.”

That about sums up the hun-
dreds of miles of parched land on
which cacti have taken the place
of waving wheatfields; where
white smears on the horizon de-
note the sites of dried-up Jakes;
where mirages appear before you
on the hot, dusty, white road to
call up memories of adventure
stories read in the days gone by;

where you talk with farmers, sery—

ice station attendants. storeleep-
ers and kiddies, and get the same
reply to your question: “Some-
thing has.got to happen.”

cok
URE, something has got to hap-
pen. The federal government

is out of order and he has head-
aches all the time. He doesn’t
sleep as well as he used to-

*
We has happened to a man
in this situation? Why does
he get angry at those he cares for
most? Why does he haye head-
aches, stomach trouble, insomnia?
Why does he blame himself far
more than he need?
We all grant that actual worry
over foo

d, clothing and the chil-
rE SESE z

perfectly free expression of his
instinets. Direct instinctual out-
lets are limited and the surplus
energy has toe be converted into
some socially constructive activity.

If this process is successful and
the individual finds enough direct
outlets for his instinctual energy,
he remains healthy. Otherwise,

nervous illness devejops. And of
all the possible outlets for this
important is

energy,
work.

the most

SS Saas

<<

sr onranpesesee Re
dren's education is enough to
worry anyone, but it is not enough
to cause the details of his illness;
it doesn’t explain why he blames
his wife and children, or why he
blames himself so much.

The economic trouble seems to
set in motion a train of events
that, once started, continues of its
own momentum. In fact, it hap-
pens not infreqnently that once a
serious nervous condition has been
precipitated by economic trouble,
the illness remains after the eco-
nomic trouble has disappeared,

*

His fact is that the driving
{ force behind all human ac-
tivity is instinetive and must he
directed along proper channels.
Wo one can ever permit himself

Dust

has to act. The province of Sas-
katchewan or of Alberta alone
cannot do it. That golden stream
of profits and rents which flowed
to St. James street and to Bay
street has to return, even if par
tially, to nourish great stretches
of sub-soil, and to save the people
of the south while there is yet
time.

Saskatchewan alone cannot do
it. Only seven people in the proy-
ince have taxable incomes of $15-
000 a year and over! The big shots
don't stay where their ill-gotten
gains come from. Like their blood-
prothers the gold-miners, they go
to distant and greener pastures?

At the Saskatchewan convention
of the Communist party at the be-
sinning of July (the first meeting
of farmers and workers to really
tackle the drought disaster) 2
good proposal was made.

Acting on the basis of the old
adage that seeing is believing, our
party comrades agreed to suggest
{to Premier Patterson that the pro-
vincial government take a docu-
‘mentary film of the dried-out
‘areas, and finance its showing
through those parts of Canada
where good citizens read about the
drought but don’t Know what it is.

A good idea, that. Let's hope the
people of Saskatchewan compel
the premier to do it. Most Liber-
als, all the CCF’ers, all the union
men and women and most decid-
edly all the Communists would
support that idea.

Let us see in a vivid series of
shots what capitalist drought can
do to great rangelands, where not
the buffalo but the harrassed farm
boy roams—for work and eats:
What the newsreel did for the
South Chicago murders, and whet
Dr. Bethune’s film will do for
Spain, so will our film do for the
people of Saskatchewan and Al-
berta—aye, of Canada.

a SR

Repression of an instinctive
drive without adequate compensa—
tion will result in the energy find-
ing its outlet in nervous ilinesses,
anxiety and crime.

Unfortunately, the process of
education in the contro] of in-
stincts is, in our present day so-
ciety, rarely wholly successful,
with the result that most indi-
viduals are neurotic to a certain
extent, or, if they have no actual
neurotic symptoms, at least ex-
hibit certain neurotic traits. In
spite of this partial failure, under
ordinary circumstances these
characteristics cause relatively
little trouble.

x

© return to the man who is
unemployed. He can see that

weeps

ET no man say the farmers and
the dominion agronomists do
not know what to do. They do. rt
have spoken with farmers who,
drawing in the dust with a stick,
described in the most minute de-
tail what must be done here, and
there; what must be grown; which
coulee must be dammed; what
must be done to the great rivers
which flow from the North and
with the small rivers which run
East from the Rockies.

Read the papers in the western

let—work.

SSE a Be ey er

the time is not remote when his
family will not have enough to
eat, if that time hasn’t already ar-
rived. He can see his dependents
getting sick from lack of proper
food, from ever more cramped and
unhealthy living quarters, from
Jlack of warm clothes in cold
weather. This haunting, ever-pres—
ent fear has a direct effect on his
instinctual drives at the same time
as he is deprived of his main out—

reared in such a home?

The wife is also oppressed by
the same insecurity and conse-
quent fear and anxiety. Ske has
enough to do trying to make an
inadequate relief allowance feed
the family, but in addition, she
has an irritable, nervous husband.

Often her life and health are
equally disturbed. The effect of
this on young children is naturally
bad. Irritable, nervous parents are
not usually good parents. They

Pies epee PPO Rees

The result is a tremendous piling
up of instinctual energy Or ten-
sion. The energy is dissipated in
neurotic symptoms. Every time
he becomes angry the jobless man
has no way in which to work if
off and it finds its outlet in
stomach trouble, headaches and
insomnia.

After prolonged unemployment
the energy may have been directed
along neurotic ehannels so long
that considerable psy ehiatric
treatment may be necessary be-
fore normal health is restored.

x

Boe there are others in the

family who are also seriously.
affected. What happens to the
wife of such an unemployed man?
What happens to children who are

Over The Wheat L

cities, and you will find out do-
minion agricultural specialists
know what to do, and are busy
telling the farmers to do it. Strip
farming, the planting of caragana
pushes, deeper plowing—this is
needed.

As Communists in Regina point-
ed out, no one has a monopoly
of the knowledge of what has to
be done.

Weither Jimmy Gardiner in Ot-
tawa nor Bill Childress of Iron
Springs, Alberta (who gave me 2

difficulties of an unemployed man
and his family are due to two fac-8
tors: anxiety, caused by lack of its
security, and the real
from privations suffered; and the}j
piling up of instinctual energy for bed
which normal outlets are denied. ia

dangers it

Any attack on the problem must}

: uae -

make mountains out of molehills.
Their patience and tempers are
short. Their judgment is often
poor becouse of their preoccupation
with their nervous symptoms and
anxieties. The child grows up in
an atmosphere of constant anxiety
and tension. It is obvious what a
harmful effect this has on char-
acter development.

In addition, of course, to this
serious handicap, the older chi]-
dren, particularly, are faced with
deficiencies in the other things
every child needs and has a right
to—food, education, amusement
and the knowledge that, when he
has undergone training, a good job
will be his.

The psychological yesults of all
this on children are often not seen
so much at the time it happens as
some years later when nervous Or

prilliant lecture on how to fight
the drought) know everything
that has to be done.

But the combined genius, es
perience, common sense and love
of land—buried deep within the
heart of western toilers, can Save
Saskatchewan, can save Alberta,
can save the as yet uninfected
prairies and the range from the
body-and-soul-destroying drought;
ean prevent that sight we saw in.
southwest Saskatchewan as we ap-
proached the Alberta border:

laf

Below The Rio Grande

x

HE split which for two months

has threatened to tear asun-
der Mexico's powerful labor move-
ment is now practically healed,
thanks to the prompt and unself-
ish efforts of the Communist par-
ty of Mexico in eorrecting its er-
rors, and subordinating every in-
terest and complaint however jus-
tified, to the cause of labor unity.
The decision of the party at its
plenum of June 26-28 to recog-
nize the legality of the fourth Wa-
tional Council of the CTM (Con-
ference of Mexican Workers),
from which about half of the
CTM’s 700,000 members — includ-
ing three national secretaries, two
of whom are Communists —_ had
withdrawn, will serve jmmeasur-
ably to strengthen the mass sup-
port behind the progressive 20Vv-
ernment of Lazaro Cardenas at a
moment when it again proves at
self eminently worthy of such

support and also very much in
need of it.

That the government is steadily
moving in an anti-imperialist di-
rection was dramatically verified
on June 24 when Cardenas an-

nounced that, under the provi-
sions of the Hxpropriation Law

passed last Wovember, the govern-

ment would nationalize the mis-
named National Railways of Mex-
ico, the country’s ehief railroad
network. While the government
has owned a little more than halt
the stock, it is mo secret that the
company was actually controlled
by a group of Wall street bankers
who held the bonds of the railroad
debt. Now the debt will be con-
siderably scaled down and form
part of the general national debt,
while the railroad will become
sovernment property, and, as
President Cardenas has promised,
will be run by the railroad work-

Woman’s Diary

Wh ee I got the thrill of
A Militant 1), life the other

Union Girl. night at the
Trades and Labor Council when
a young girl who was introduced
as Miss Erma Whitman, a striker
prevented from picketing Scott's
cafe by the recent injunction, gave
us aS rousing a speech as ever
echoed in the Labor Temple and
brought those hard-boiled trade
unionists right out of their seats.

After exposing the miserable
frame-up of the manager of this
cafe to form a company union, this
pretty but determined-looking girl
finished by saying, “AS soon as
the injunction is lifted the girls
will take up the fight and show
this boss that he can’t get away
with this sort of thing.”

These colorful types of trade
unien girls are all too scarce in
the labor movement of BC. Many
more are to be seen in Seattle
where great numbers of waitresses
and store girls are organized and

who add to the pep and fighting
spirit in the struggle for more of
the amenities of life. There are
many like Erma in Bc, but union
organizers can only unearth them
by building bigger unions.

*
Thought For ‘Speaking of Se-

sc attle where [I
Pacifists. spent a short va-
cation last

week, JI wandered
ound the Boeing airport there to
look over the latest makes of
planes which always hold a fas-
cination for me. There was 4
beauty, a new transport plane for
the US navy. Capable of produc-
ing about 4000 horse power with
its four engines, it had space un-
derneath for plenty of bombs in a
big rack and room for nests of
machine guns. The nose of the
plane is pullet-proof glass and one
would never know what a mur-
derous weapon it could be, to see
it in the air.

T was told that the approximate
cost of one of these machines, of

which ten haye been ordered, is
$150,000 to $260,000. Here was the
angle whereby people can be
aroused to fight effectively against
war. Speakers and newspapers
could announce the amount of re-
lief and wages that could be cir-
culated were this money diverted
to proper channels. Let these war
mongers build fighting planes,
put let us demand the issue of an
equal amount of money to be
spent on providing for the wel-
fare of the people. This is a good
one for the pacifists to think over.

Were are som

x renee. e
Concerning handy things to
Gloves. know about
gloves which I pass on to you

hoping theyll be as much use to
you as they are soing to be to me.
When I bought a pair of gloves
jJast week, I asked for washable
ones. sistant looked at me
rather queerly, and said, “All
loves are washable if you know

>

how to do it.” forthwith I looked

ers themselves.

At the same time, conservative
and reactionary elements are fev-
erishly plotting the destruction
of the Cardenas regime. Recently
the most aggressive of these ele-
ments joined forces in a new
political party demagogically
named the Mexican Soecial-Demo-
eratic party. Though it was very
soundly trounced in the congres-
sional elections of July 4, this or-
ganization represents 2 constant
threat to Mexican democracy. No
greater obstacle at this moment
ean be placed in the path of Fas-
cism in Mexico than 2 reunited
Jabor movement. It is fairly cer-
tain now that as a result of the
action of the Communist party,
complete unity of the CTM will
be restored at the fifth national
eouncil, scheduled to convene at
the end of July.

Cre

rather stupid, and here is what
she told me:

Wash all gloves, except chamois
and doeskin, on your hands, rinse
thoroughly under the cold tap, and
dry on a towelas though you were
drying your hands. Stretch prop-
erly with a glove stretcher, or
failing that, use a spoon handle
and thoroughly extend all the fin-
gers. This helps to keep the gloves
soft.

Now, with chamois and doeskin.
These should just be swished
around in a Lux lather, rinsed
thoroughly, and just lightly
squeezed to get as much water out
as possible without wringing, and
stretched in the same way as OIM
dinary gloves.

When you are putting on new
gloves—don't press on the seems
between the fingers, but on the
fingers themselves. Also when
taking them off, ease off the fin-
gers a little way, and they pull off
from the wrist inside out. This
puts no strain on the seams, and so

therefore be directed at these two
factors. How can the worker's
security be increased? When he
jis employed this depends on his re-
lation to his job-

Hias he earned a right to his job
with years of labor, or is his job
the property of his employer wio
can fire him at will? U, in years
of work, he earns a right to his
job, he earns security and need
fear less.

One of the ideas behind the sit-
down strike is that the job—the
place at the bench—does not be-
long exclusively to the employer,
put rather that the worker -has
earned an ownership interest in it
and that the employer, as one link
in the chain of the present produc-
tive process, has a responsibility
not only to his stockholders but
to the worker as well.

frightening black clouds scudding
before a high wind, giving an in-
ferno-like effect as the bright sun
shot through.

“Alberta, coming to meet us,”
said Bob Peters, Alberta farm or-
ganizer of the Communist party.

Action will be gotten. Not the
two-day rain of this week will
save the crops, the livestock or the
people. True, the dominion gov-
ernment is making gestures at
help, but it talks more about sav-
ing the livestock than about saving
the people, and the crops, and
providing that greenstuff which,
if it is not forthcoming, will bring
scurvy and pellagra to our citi-
zens, as it came south of the
Mason-Dixie line.

x

HEY will have to do more than
that to help Piapot, in Sas-
katchewan. Five great elevators
Tun along the track. Once that
town shipped a million bushels of
wheat. Now it is deserted, save for
a few business men who hang on
for dear life.
Piapot has no water. You must
drink warm pop. Piapot has had
no rain since June 6, 1936! The

“service station man told us all

about it.

More will have to be done to
save Maple Creek, Saskatchewan.

There the boy who served the
coffee pointed to the other side of
the street, and showed 2 Tow of
stores—empty and boarded up.
“We shall all be gone soon,” he
said. While out blow-out was
fixed we looked at Maple Creek.
Once the heart of a great crop
country, it is as deserted as Gold-
smith’s village.

Where Alberta and Saskatche-
wan meet, near Walsh, Alberta, we
stopped for gas. An Englishwoman
came out to fill up the tank. She
looked like one of those sturdy

by Victoria Post

your gloves will last Jonger with-
out splitting-in betwee the fin-
gers or at the thumb where gloves
usually go first.

: In case many of
: 3
Recipe For you have had

Mayonnaise. trouble with may-
onnaise — getting it lumpy, I
mean — here is a recipe that is
very simple and requires little
preparation.

Beat together one egg, one tea-
spoonful of vinegar, one teaspoon-
ful of sugar, and butter about the
size of a walnut. Heat in a cup in
a saucepan of hot water stirring
continually until the mixture is
thick, then remove and leave to
cool. Then add enough mustard
to cover a dime, pepper and salt
to taste, and enough sweet milk
or cream to make the sauce thin
enough to use. This is delicious
when it is freshly made, but will
not keep very long, and therefore
jt is best to make it each time you
need it.

Organization

mental illness develops or delin-g
quency follows.

Waturally, this. right of the

Bl worker to his job will be of prac-
fi tical importance only if he is well
enough organized with his fellows
to enforce it.

Unemployment insurance is an:

other factor which increases the
worker's real security. Such insur-
ance, however, should be adequate
fi for his and his family’s needs and
payments should start at the be-
‘ginning of the period of unem-—

ployment as a right and not asa
kind of charity, grudgingly ex-
tended after the worker has been
economically and emotionally
crushed by the exhaustion of his
meagre reserves.

*

ig order to attack the second

factor—the loss of adequate
outlets—it is important for the
unemployed man to find things to
do; things in which he can take a
real satisfaction and which are
socially constructive undertakings
—in other words, adequate outlets
to take the place of those he lost _
with his job-

Thus work in the trade union
movement, or in the organization
of the unemployed, is an outlet
for some of his energy and is at
the same time a socially useful
form of activity.

It gives him social contacts,
helps to dispel the feeling of isola-
tion which is so often present and
is work in his own interest as well
as in the interests of others faced
with the same problems.

The feeling of inferiority which
so many unemployed men develop
is unjustified, but as long as they
keep off by themselves and shun
contact with their fellows, the
feelings of inferiority and futile
bitterness and the nervous symp-
toms increase.

@n the other hand, when men
can get busy with their fellows
they can see conditions in better
perspective, can learn to place re-
sponsibility where it belongs and
Can engage in action.

Such activity is constructive for
the personality of the individual
and also for the society in which
he lives. By participation in trade
union activity the man who has
lost his job not only helps him-
self, but also helps to change the
conditions responsible for his
plight.

But, when all is said and done,
the real solution of the problem
lies, not in treating the sick indi-
vidual, but in treating the sick so-
ciety responsible for the economic
situation.

ands

Soviet women we have seen driv-
ing tractors. With oil-smeared
Overalls and work=bitten hands,
she busied herself with our car,
sand told us of the country.

“@ver in Gypress Hills to the
South,” she said, “they have never
known until now a crop failure.
Wow they are on the rocks.”

The white heat seared our eye-
balls at this spot. A yellow haze
stretched as far as we could see.
Wot a sign of life. Signs which
warned, “Beware of the sheep
along the road’’ seemed cynical.
Wo sheep were to be seen. That
was the ‘nth degree of desolation
—Walsh and the country around.
(Five elevators rise up near there.
Only rats run around).

Yet Mat Shaw, hero of the 1935
trekkers, who is now Communist
organizer in Willow Buneh con-
stituency, Saskatchewan, told us
we did not see the real drought
country. Mat is hard at work in
a district where there has been
no crop for nine years. It is the
heart of the new Canadian Gobi.

Dante complained the Italian
language was not made for de-
scriptions of hell. It would take
a Dreiser or a Gorky to tell PA
readers what the drought is like—
except those militant, fighting
farmers who live there and who
read our papers.

HAT are the governments do

ing? The Liberal party in
Saskatchewan cannot bide its
time, hoping against hope that tis
election pledges will see it through.
Wo. The Communist party conven-
tion correctly said to the people

of Saskatchewan (over the air

from the convention platform af
one session) that they must make
their government act, and that
the government must go to Ottawa
and camp there until great and
bold measures are taken to Save
the people.

The Liberals of Saskatchewan
are of the common people. They
are of the farmers, the small
townsfolk, the workers and the
traders. They are feeling the full
blast of the effect of rainless
years. They will act. Liberal right
wingers like Dr. Ulrich, will be
shoved aside if they persist in
blocking the road to relief and
reclamation.

The Tories, who have two-
facedly drawn up a program
which the People’s Front im

Canada could well support, so
progressive is it—-will be exposed
by this rising indignation of the
great mass of the people.

The CCF has taken a good and
laudable stand. George Bickerton,
leader of the United Farmers, has
placed the issue in a nutshell.

“Out of the strong comes forth
sweetness” Said the old proverb,
Out of the rough will come a peo-
ple’s movement, springing from
deep down in the hearts and
minds of true Liberals, CCF’ers,
Communists, and thousands who
are bound to no party program
put who will echo what the farm-
ers at one Saskatchewan meeting
shouted at a government speaker

not long ago: “What have we got

a government for?’’