Page Six

Palate ADVOCATE

August 20, 1937

The Peoples Advocate
Published Weekly by the
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Rooom 10, 163 West Hastings Street, Vancouver, B.c.

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Vancouver, B.C., Friday, August 20, 193

Support the Boycott! .

f A M. STEPHEN brought a timely request
»- before the Trades and Labor Council
shen he asked for a boycott on all German and
Ttalian-made goods. The quick response to his
appeal proved that the trade unions understand
the importance of combatting Fascism as a
menace to organized labor the world over.

Strone organizational steps are now needed
to. transform an ti-Fascist sentiment into prac-
tical channels. A lead was given by the execu-
tive of the council and the delegates approved
wholeheartedly.

“German toys may be on the high seas but
we are not concerned about that,” stated P.
Bengough, when a delegate expressed doubt as
to the practicability of the proposed boycott.

Vancouver's departmental stores have been
overloaded with German goods since the advent
of Hitler and unless a wide campaign is started
jmmediately, they will again be on sale in large
quantities this coming Christmas. Sueh a boy-
eott by anti-Fascists can be made effective very
quickly if the Trades and Labor Conneil ¢o-
operates with the B.C. Section of the Canadian
League for Peace and Democracy, which has a
large following. The league’s president made
this plain.

There is another matter which comes within
the province of the Trades and Labor Couneil.
The management of B.C. Nickel Mines obtains
generous space in the daily press to manifest
iis satisfaction toward the Sino-Japanese con-
flict. The mine manager in joyial mood de
clares, “We are marking time until we hear
from Japan.”

This ghoulish anticipation of big profits with
the sadistic hope for a prolonged war, ignores
any feelings that labor may have on this ques-
tion. The press indicates that the Japanese
war machine has been preparing for the ship-
ments and treatment of B.C. Nickel ore for
jmany months.

A hard blow can be dealt to the militaristic
clique in Japan were organized labor to inter-
fere with the export of metal to that country.
Japan is every whit a Fascist a@eressor as 1S
Germany and Italy, and a ban on the export
of war products would be directly in line with
the boycott imposed on German and Italian
imports.

EDITORIAL FEATURES

No More Toll Bridges

OME time toward the end of September or
the beginning of October the new Pattullo
bridge across the Fraser river at New West-
minster will be officially opened. A special
meeting of the provincial cabinet is being called
to decide the official date of opening.

But, far more important than the official
date of opening, is the matter of tolls. Ottawa
has been approached in the matter. But Ottawa
is silent. And in the meanwhile hard-hit farm-
ers and growers up and down the Fraser Valley
for whom New Westminster is a market place,
are seriously perturbed by this added burden
to be placed on their already over-taxed shoul-
ders. Small businessmen in the Royal City
who rely to a large extent on the farmers’ busi-
mess are no less perturbed.

The value of British Columbia’s tourist
trade is drummed into our ears by every casual

publicist who sees only the grandeur of our, ”

scenery aud never the tragedy of our jobless

_jingling cams at our street corners. But ringing

Vaneourer around with toll bridges can
scarcely be construed as adding to its attrae-
tions for the tourists.

The people who can least afford to pay and
yet who must use the bridge most—in other
words, the farmers—will bear the heaviest part
of the burden. We have too many toll bridges
now. The new Pattullo bridge must be free
and, as always, the surest method by whieh this
can be ensured is the weight of aroused public
opinion.

Unmasking the Trotskyists
N= that the Socialist Party of the USA

is cleansing its ranks of Trotskyists and
that 52 of these disrupters, including Max
Schachtman, J. Burnham and M. Ahem are
already expelled, indicates that the crushing
weight of evidence regarding these unprin-
cipled people is at last accepted, but only ‘after
tremendous damage has been done.

To the millions who lone ago realized the
harm the Trotskyist wreckers were doing, it
does not redound to the credit of a party which
lays claim to the mantle of leadership of the
workers, that until recently, proven Trotsly-
ists were at its helm. However belated, it is all
to the good that such expulsions have taken
place.

This, of course, means that all the ridicule
heaped on the Communist Party of the USA,
which never ceased to point out and warn the
SP against these people and their treacherous
role, has been retracted, in fact, if not in state-
ment. All the polemics indulged in by the SP

in defense of Trotsky for the past lone period
are now proved to have been inspired by his
disciples or else so much mischievous nonsense
calculated to contuse honest readers.

The fact is that the Communists were right
on all counts regarding the Trotskyists and the
Communist Party is Tight again when it lays
its finger on the cancer spot in the CCF, de-
seribing it as the activities of a Trotskyist
clique which is strangling the movement. Their
work in the last CCF convention was all too
plain.

Until the CCF, nationally and provincially,
takes the tip from its sister party in the USA
and cleanses its ranks of these elements that
have sabotaged all progressive and unifying
plans, it can néver attain the stature desired by
every sincere member. :

Release the Ex-Service Men!

ENHAT the savage treatment meted out to
World War veterans has aroused the anger
of the overwhelming maiority of citizens, goes
without saying. Innumerable discussions on
Thursday morning, on streetcars, restaurants,
offices and workshops, were centred on the jail
sentences siyen to hunery ex-service men.
The veterans would do well to publicize the
speech of Sir Robert Borden, made betore
Vimy, an extract of which is as follows:
“The goyernment and the country will
consider that it is their first duty to see that
a preper appreciation of your effort and ot
your courage is brought to the notice ot the
people at home, and it will always be our
endeavor to so guide the attitude of public
opinion that the public will support the goy-
ernment to prove to the returned man its just
and due appreciation of the inestimable
value of the services rendered to the country
and the empire and that no man, whether he
eoes back or remains in Flanders, will have
just cause to reproach the government for
having broken with the men who won and the
men who died.”

Encouragement and promises made to men
who were facing death in many borrible forms.
Canadians everywhere hailed Borden’s speech,

believine that the men who eame back would-

never suffer want or the dependents of those
left in Flanders would ever be destitute.

The Hon. G. S. Pearson has the effrontery
to declare that the government sees no differ-
ence between eroups of unemployed men and
their dependents, and has instructed his de
partment to carry on with the present ruthless
policy toward relief recipients.

The minister: of labor knows full well that
veterans cannot compete with young men in

the present scramble for jobs and yet he delib-
erately pursues a policy which he knows will
make ex-service men desperate because of their
poverty.

The protest meetings now being held should
bring home to the citizens of B.C. the wretched
betrayal of those discarded men they once
hailed as heroes to be feted. :

The war danger seems to have disappeared
from the earth.

While there are two fair-sized disturbances
eoinge on, nobody thinks of declaring war any
more.

It’s been renounced.

When we were a kid, we used to say, “Meet
vou behind the gas-house at 4 o’clock.”

That’s out of date.

Following the example of modem diplomacy,
you sock the other swy in the back of the head
with a blackjack when he’s not looking, knock
him cold, brush off your hands, steal his watch,
deny there’s been a fight and declare that he
was the ageressor anyway-

Japan is horrified at the stubbornness of the
Chinese. =

Her latest complaint is the discovery of the
existence of widespread anti-Japanese senti-
ment !

On the day the British war minister an-
nounced an inerease of 25 cents a day in pay
for army men, two English aviators were lalled
in maneuvres.

Too bad they died so soon; think of the
money they'd haye made!

Dearborn city officials haye decreed that the
United Automobile Workers does not legally
exist.

Tt is understood that they will now repeal

the law of gravity.

Maybe they’ll repeal.the law ot density, too.
The density of a Dearborn city official is so
ereat, its hard to be very specific about it.

Nineteen died in a recent Staten Island, NY,
building collapse.

A number of recent developments point to
better structural standards for new building
in the New York area, says President William
H. Poueh, of the Conerete Steel Co.

After the cow is out of the stable, it’s always
wise to lock the door.

ef

Progressive Forces in Alberta Unite for

Defeat of Reaction

(Below is the text of a 7advo
address given by Malcolm

in point of popular vote as the of
second party in BC and as the

reaction represented by
People’s League. 2

the

try to go it alone has already, as
the last provincial elections clear-

HAT some of the legislation of
the Aberhart government and CP

tion which it now possesses. The
knows that money is not

Bruce over the Communist
party broadcast from CIOR
this week. He provides a keen
analysis of the present situa-
fion in Alberta and reveals
those forces working for forma-
tion of a people's front and
those that are exerting all their
efforts to thwart the desires of
the progressive majority of the
people of Alberta).
HE province of Alberta
and its Social Credit
government are very much
in the public eye these days.
The press gives a good deal
of space to the legislation
brought down in the provincial
house, especially that legislation
having to do with the banks and
their control.

Practically all
editorial com-=
ment is antag-
onistic to the
legislation and
in defence of
the banks.
From these
comments one
would be led
to believe that
the banks are
sacrosanct, that
they should be
allowed to op-
erate as a law
unto them-
selves — With-
selves — with-
out regulation of control by the
government elected by the people.

In order to discuss the situation
in Alberta it is mecessary io un-

Malcolm Bruce

derstand, first of all, that the
people of Alberta is far more
highly developed politically than

the people of any other province
in our Dominion. Remember that
in all its history from territorial
days to today there has never been
@ Conservative zovernment in
office. And it has been fifteen
years since there was a Liberal
government in office. Despite the
capitalistic resime of the United
Farmers of Alberta covering a
period of fourteen years until the
yictory of the Social Credit forces
some two years a£0, the people of
Alberta when disillusioned and dis-
gusted with the UFA government
did not go back to the old line

parties, as ihe people of BC so
often have done.
When. after four years of the

Pattullo government, there was in
¢he last provincial elections a de-
sertion of many fhousands otf
former supporters of the Liberal
party, these voters did not in any
appreciable degree SO over to the
CCE. They went pack to the ultra-
reactionary Tory party in such
numbers as to place the Tory party

official opposition in the House—
places formerly occupied by the
CCE.

The Alberta people did not go
back to support of reaction, but
followed the leadership of Aber-
hart and the Social Credit League.
The important political considera-
tion here is not whether or not
the theories of Social Credit are
sound. The significant thing is
that the people tried a new way
for the alleviation of their miseries.
That the theory of Social Credit
will not hold water can be proved
easily. But an honest government
in the course of events and by
the painful process of trial and
order will find, and already has
found, that Social Credit theory
will not work. However, the Al-
berta government has given more
honest and efficient government
than any of its predecessors.

It is true, that some reactionary
legislation was passed in the early
days of the Aberhart government,
legislation such as the licensing
of tradesman and the imposition of
the sales tax, which worked a
hardship upon the common people
by reducing ~ their purchasing
power.

Qn the other hand, it is to the
credit of the government that it
has reduced interest payments to
the bondholders who are bleeding
the province white, as they are
bleeding BC. It is also to its
credit that it passed Bill 49, guar-
anteeing right of trade union or-
ganization and other rights to
working people.

12 is clear that the government
is attempting to curb the power
of the banks and biz industrial-
ists, who are out to exploit ruth-
lessly and wastefully the natural
resources of the province and the
Jabor of its people. The sovern-
ment is also keenly aware that
the forces of reaction are uniting
for its overthrow and for the es-
tablishment of a reactionary coali-
tion fovernment made up of the

Tory party and the reactionary
section of the Liberal party which
is expressed in the so-called
People’s League, a political organ-
ization of blackest reaction.

This then, compels the Social
Credit League to seek allies to
meet and det

at this threat of re-
action. And veg
merits or demer
theories, the Social

or S 2
Credit Le

and the people who support it in
Alberta represent a pt! essive
force with which any progressive

organization, Socialist, Communist
or trade union, must unite if re-
action is to he Kept down.

The mass of the people of Al
pberta who elected the Social Credit
majority and still support the
Aberhart government realize that
alone Social Credit supporters will
be unable to cope with the forces

The Aberhart government and
its supporters are out for unity
of all exploited and oppressed
people against the menace of re-
action. Throughout the province
can be heard the demand for a
people’s front. The Communist
party of Alberta is supporting this
movement. It is working harmon-
jously with the people of the Social
Credit movement, the trade unions
and other progressive bodies,
while reserving the right of critic-
ism and maintaining its indepen-
dent political role, and putting for-
ward its own political program.

Unfortunately, the CCF in Al-
berta, which is by no means as

strong as the CCF in BC, is Stand- ©

ing aloof, contenting itself with
high-sounding demands for social-
ism, and achieving a splendid iso-
lation.

Being a small party, and with a
small following, Such a position is
fatal. One can understand, if not
approve or condone, the OCF in
BC taking up such 4 position. For
in this province the CCF has been
and still is a considerable political
force. But even here the swell-
headedness that moves the CCF to

ly Showed, halted its advance.

The people of Alberta are out for
a people’s front against reaction
and they are going to get it. Al-
ready the government has re-
pealed the iniquitous sales tax and
is moving to bring the predatory
banking interests under provincial
control.

Tt is clear that the federal gov-
ernment is on the side of the
banks, and wants the whole mat-
ter of control over banks referred
to the supreme court of Canada.

Censored By Radio Station.

But can anyone in his senses
expect any decision from the su-
preme court that will be in favor
of the common people and against
the banks? All one has to do is
to reflect upon the way the selec-
tion of judges is made to know
that a maze of legal technicalities
will be spun to defeat the will of
the people. Im the struggle to
alleviate the lot of the people of
Alberta the banks and their tools,
the People’s League, will have to
face the people of Alberta welded
into a Solid progressive people’s
front.

The head of the procession joined in by over 20,000 people under
the sponsorship of the American League Against War and Fascism.
Directly bebind the vanguard of flags is Minnesota’s Farmer-Labor
governor, Elmer A. Benson (in the car), who led the parade and
spoke at the mass meeting afterwards.

much of its administration has not
brought to the people of Alberta
that measure of relief which they.
need and demand is to be regretted
_-and remedied. Nevertheless, this
seeking after a new political ex-
pression as the support of the
Social Credit League evidences is
the dominant political note in Al-
berta, with which the activities of
every trade unionist, every Com-

munist, every CCE’er should be
completely harmonized.
Byvery attempt to ridicule the

temporary forms and directions
this search may take,
sume a sectarian, doctrinaire or
superior attitude to Social Credit
forces will result In disaster and
sow confusion and discouragement
among the people.

Tt is to be regretted that some
provincial GCF leaders in Alberta
persist in a cynical attitude to-
ward the Social Credit people who
are progressively seeking 2 Way
out and, at least, are ranged
against the forces of reaction.

The reactionary Tory party and
right-wing Liberals are at all
times seeking to make capital out
of the mistakes of the Social
Credit government, mistakes upon
which political tricksters thrive,
and try to utilize to divert the
people into support of reaction
decked out in a false face of
demagzosy.-

Signs are not wanting that un-
serupulous politicians in the old
parties are working for the total
discrediting of the present sovyv-
ermment and of the movement
which gave it birth. Their main
aim is to sow confusion and des-
pair, to destroy the independant
movement of the people of Al-
perta and to foist upon them by
the most deceptive means an exec-
utive committee of the bondholders
as a reactionary government in
order to continue the rule of ble
capital’ and to further plunder the
resources of the province and in-
tensify the exploitations of the
people.

The big interests cannot depend
upon the present gZovernment to
carry out the measures they desire,
because the government, despite
all its vague theories, is based
upon the peopie and is more oF
Jess responsive to its meeds and
demands.

The Communist party in Alberta
has taken its position alone with
the Social Credit people, and sup-
ports every effort ef the Aberhart
zovernment to bring relief to the
suffering people of the province.
The Communist party Supports the
demand of the people for a pay-
ment of $25 a month, while point-
ing out that this payment will not
be made through Social Credit, but
through the utilization by the sov-
ernment of those powers of taxa-

or to as--

created through the manipulation
of a fountain pen, nor is it based
on wishful thinking.

The $25 a month that the Al-
berta people demand is for the
purpose of adding to their pur-
chasing. power and can be realized
without resorting to impractical
experiments along Social Gredit
lines. It can be paid by taxation
of income and profits at the source.
In other words, by taxing the
profits of the rich. And this is
what the Communist party stands

for.
*
co. reach the objective of in-
creasing the purchasing power
of the Alberta people requires the
maximum unity of all progressive
peoples in the province.

This means that the mass of the
Social Credit people, many honest
and genuine reform Liberals, trade
unionists, the CCF, the Commun-
ists, the United Farmers of Al-
berta and other farmer bodies, to-
gether with thousands of other un-
affiliated people, must come to-
gether to stem the rise of reac-
tion and procure something for the
people now, even within the limit-
ations of capitalism.

This is the issue in Alberta.
There the people are much more
advanced politically than are the
people of BC. There they are
coming to grips with finance capi-
tal which is determined to con-
serve its privileges of wholesale
exploitation. Already the federal
government is arrayed on the side
of the bankers and other big inter-
ests against the people.

The BNA Act and other legal
and constitutional impedimenta
will be used to defeat the will of
the people. But these people who
have never succumbed to the
demagogic blandishments of reac-
tionary Toryism, and who, fifteen
years ago, booted the Liberals out
of office, will not remain divided
nor permit a reactionary govern
ment to be installed at Edmonton-

They may have followed will-o-
the-wisps in the past and placed
their faith in utopian and imprac-
tical schemes, but they were ever
striving for progress: And sigus
are not wanting that they are
finding the right road.

Great issues are involved in Al-
berta, issues which are of interest
to all the people of Canada- There
in the stress of the strugele for a
petter life the people’s front is in
process of formation.

In the making of this people’s
front the CGommunist party is
playing a leacing role, aS it did
in France, in Suain and every-
where throughout the world where
the forces of Fascism are being
halted.

We in BC can well afford to ob-
serve developments in our neigh-
boring province and, learning from
them, build our own people’s front.

OL’ BILL

Getting Rid One of the most
Significant re-

Of Crime.
marks made by

Dr. Bethune in his masterly talks
in BC was probably the least
noted by his audiences. Telling of
his arrival in Madrid he said,
“We found in Madrid a homogen-
eous people. There was no crime
no law-breaking.” if

Dr. Bethune was not referring
to the kind of criminals who com=-

prise the notorious “Fifth Col-
umn,” the spies, provocators,
traitors and other agents of

Erance who operate from the
rear, but to the numerous cata-
gories listed in the police records
as “dips, porch-climbers, second-
storey men, boxmen,’” and so
forth—products of the capitalist
system.

: The heroie doctor’s experience
in this matter is not a strange co-
incidence to any one who has
studied closely the history of revo-
lutionary upheavals under the
leadership of the workers.

The Paris Gommittee of 1871 is:
the classical example of this type
of historical phenomenon. ur-
ing the 72 days in which the Par
isian workers and. their petty-
bourgeois allies held power in
Paris there was no crime in the
accepted sense of the term. Most
of the thieves, prostitutes, garrot-
ters and other underworld mem-
bers of the lumpen proletariat left
Paris and went out to Versailles
with the French government fol-
lowing.

During all that time the work
of the police consisted, not in
solying burglaries and hold-ups,
but of ferreting out saboteurs,

spies and other tools of the
French ruling class, political
eriminals.

It is the same today in Madrid.
The garrotters, the thieves, the:
prostitutes, the crushed and
broken elements, with the excep-
tion of the few among them who
were “criminals,” as their method
of revolt against the degradation
of capitalist society, are with the
Franco forees looting and raping:
with the sanction of their “law-
abiding and religious” masters.

* * * *

The Great The Vancouver

> “Sun,” in an edi-
Crime. torial of last Sat-
urday, entitled ‘The Great Crime,”
takes occasion to thank J. Traf-
ford Taylor, KC, president of the
Kiwanis International, for ‘one
of the most photographic and dev—
astating pictures of war ever pre-
sented in this city.”

We don’t know how Mr. Taylor
treated the subject, but the “Sun”
editorial handled it in the regula-
tion chartered accountant man
ner, mostly in columns of figures
that represented cold, clinking,
cankerous cash. z

Says the “Sun” in its new-found
hatred of war: “But this money,
this credit, this actual value was
wantonly blown up in high explo-
sivse.” In the light of this chunk
of economic wisdom, maybe the
“Sun’’ editorial pundit could ex-
plain to us how it comes that in
Hansard of January 28, this year,
figures are published showing that
Canada has paid out $1,878,178,582
in interest alone from 1919 to 1936
as part of the war costs of the
nation. The war finished (7) in
1918 so this money which is over
and above the direct war expendi-
tures, could not have been blown
up in high explosives.

Wo! All the money spent on
the war did not go up in high
explosives. War is a means for
the exploitation of workers and
profit is won from it as from any
peaceful industry. And this progit
was not blown up during the war
as the Dominion Government
treasurer must have learned last
year (1936) when he paid out 103
million dollars to the holders of
war bonds (Holt, Gundy, ete).

We are glad to welcome the
“Sun” into the anti-war ranks—
but perhaps we should wait 2
little: this may be only a piece of
hypocritical sniveling on the
“Sun’s” part, for there are those
among us who remember how the
“Sun” “ywhooped it up” for that
same war and how it slandered
the workers who had courage
enough to oppose that mass mur
der and incited its ‘‘patriotic™”
dupes to murder them. ( August
ist, 1918.)

* * * *
Inflam- Te decision of the
mation! British Home Office,

as reported by the
Havas News Agency, not to make
public its reasons for expelling
three Nazi press correspondents
from Britain because “the dis-
closures would inflame public
opinion,” places the British Gov=
ernment actually in the ranks of
the avowed fascists-

Tf it would inflame public opin-
jon to let the public know the
underhanded, subversive, anti-
British work that was being cat-
ried on in Britain by these agents
of the blood-bespattered Nazi
government, who will penefit from
hushing it up? The Nazis, of
course, and their black-shirted
Moseley cohorts in England.

Compare this fear of “inflam=
ing public opinion” with the
recorded actions of the British
Government in its dealings with
the representatives of the Soviet
Government and the Soviet ¢0
operatives. They were not afraid
of inflaming public opinion when
they raided the Arcos premises,
nor when they published the scut
rilous forgery known as the “Zino
viev letter.” But Hitler is of their
own kidney, so they are afraid oi
public opinion: