Page Four

THE PECGPLBEB’S

ADVOCATE

December 16, 1938

THE
PEOPLE’S ADVOCATE

Published Weekly by the Proletarian Publishing
Association, Room 10, i163 West Hastings Street,
Vancouver, B.C. Phone Trinity 2019.

One Year —__.______ $2.00 Three Months ____-- $ .60
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Make All Cheques Payable to: The People’s Advocate
Vancouver, B.C., Friday, December 16, 1938
i

Blubber Bay and Bill 94

ND of the trials of 15 Blubber Bay strikers
this week and the conviction of 12 of
their number serves to emphasize more sharp-
ly than before the urgent meed of further
drastic changes in the Labor Conciliation and
Arbitration Act.

The Blubber Bay strike, in progress since
last June 2, has served as the biggest indict-
ment of the Pattullo gsovernment’s labor leg-
islation.

There have been other occasions during the
past year when Bill 94 has been exposed in all
its union-busting nakedness—notably in the
case of the short-lived BC Box strike and the
Chanticleer Lammch dispute—but the experi-
ences of the Blubber Bay strikers have left
no shred of doubt that Pearson’s legislation
was passed primarily in the interests of BC’s
open shop industrialists.

As a matter of fact it was the very weak-
nesses in the act, its failure to provide strong
enough penalties against employers who
failed to observe its provisions, that forced
some 120 Blubber Bay workers to strike in
the first place.

Having won the award of the arbitration
board established under Bill 94, then wit-
nessing the Pacific Lime Companys refusal
to abide by its terms, the workers could do
nothing less than strike to uphold an award
which the government itself refused to carry
out.

The things that followed later—scabherding
by police, then open and provocative attack on
picket lines with tear-gas and clubs, were the
logical results of the weaknesses in Bill 94.
Colin Cameron .and other CCF legislators
were justified in their claim that the act was
a piece of bosses’ legislation.

So it’s not too early now to begin a renewed
campaign for more amendments to the act.
The trade union movement's success in fore-
ing changes in Clause 5 is an augur of suc-
cess. With a little more heat on the depart-
ment of labor and the cabinet, labor can and
will get labor legislation with teeth in it.

Lessons From France “

VER two weeks have passed since French

labor downed tools in a 24-hour general
strike, news of which was so effectively sup-
pressed both in France and in Canada.

Facing the Premier’s mobilization of the
regular army and the Mobile Guard, driven
in many cases, such as in transport, to return
to work at the point of the bayonet, hampered
by a stifling censorship on the press, telegraph
and radio which gave reaction an opportunity
to spread wild rumors of defeat, the millions
of workers of the General Confederation of
Labor struck work and make it stick. And in
doing so they stopped Daladier in his tracks,
saved France from fascism once more.

That is why the pro-fascist Premier sup-
pressed the news in France. That is why Can-
ada’s own reactionaries suppressed or distort-
ed the news throughout the country.

Those millions of CGT members knew what
they were up against. They had right on their
side. They could see fascist measures cloaked
under the so-called emergency decrees for
saving the country’s finances. They were
warned by the threats to outlaw the Socialist
and Communist parties. In addition, they
were defending their hard-won economic and
political rights—the 40-hour week, collective
bargaining, holidays with pay. And when
they acted they left no doubt as to who were
the real defenders of democracy, the real
patriots.

Since that time the stream has turned
against the pro-fascist premier, as evidenced
by the narrow majority given his government
in the Chamber of Deputies. The courageous
action of the trade unionists brought heart to
the millions of middle-class people, stiffening
their opposition to Daladier’s policies which
were driving France to fascism.

Canadian labor can learn much from the
present struggle in France, and of paramount
importance is the lesson of unity. Without
one united trade union movement, without
the Popular Front, Daladier would have won
two weeks ago, just as the Daladiers of Can-
ada will surely win if our labor movement
fails to organize its ranks.

With the rest of the workers of Canada and:
the world, then, here’s our greetings to the
French people and their Front Populaire.
Armed with so powerful a weapon as labor
and people’s unity, Daladier and reaction is
headed for defeat.

By heaping long-planned Italian fascist de-
mands on France, Mussolini, like Hitler
against Czechoslovakia, expects to obtain an
smmediate understanding from Daladier at
the expense of loyalist Spain. And just as
Hitler’s drive on Czechoslovakia, with the
Maunich outcome, resulted in undermining
French national security, so any concession to
Mussolini with respect to Spain will further
weaken France in the face of fascist war plans.

“Jews Pushed Deep Into Isolation as Christ-
mas Festivities Begin,” says a Berlin headline.
Celebration of Christmas, under the circum-
stances, has a rather hollow sound.

Reaction Plans A ‘Putsch’

ernment ?

What’s behind the latest open break between
Mackenzie King and Hepburn—the plot to re-
move the Premier from fteadership of the gov-
Maiccim Bruce answers these im-
portant questions in the following timely article.

By MALCOLM BRUCE

IN[C2= of the workings of the sinister _Hepburn-Duplessis
alliance has come to light with the exposure by two
federal cabinet ministers of a Canadian “Cliveden” conspiracy
to oust Prime Minister Mackenzie King from the leadership
of the Libéral party and bring about the downfall of his gov-
ernment as a prelude to the setting up of a government of a

reactionary cabal.

In order to cover up the real forces behind the plotting
against democracy in Canada, the Hepburn apostasy has been
pictured, until the recent flare-up, as a personal quarrel hbe-
tween Hepburn and King, as a minor difference within the

Liberal party.

Recent developments show,
however, that the statement made
two years ago by Hepburm that
he was not a Mackenzie King
Liberal was merely camouflage
for the final break which would
come when, with Duplessis and
other reactionaries and pro-
fascists—all backed and directed
by the real power, St. James St—
he would be ready to go over
openly to the camp of reaction
as Chamberlain went to the
Rome-Berlin alliance.

e

T HAS been apparent, ever since

the mear eclipse of the Con-
servative party in the 1935 elec-
tion and the diehard control of
the last Tory nation#l convention,
that Canada’s financial rulers
could not hope to gain control at
Ottawa under the banner of the
discredited Tory party. A new
front and political concentration
therefore had to be formed of all
the reactionaries wherever they
could be found, and especially
from corruptible elements in the
Liberal party.

The vain and weak spendthrift,
Hepburn, proved an easy mark for
the millionaire owner of the ob-
scurantist Globe and Mail and the
wealthy stock broker and banker
mine owners of Northern Ontario,

The

“IN THE answer to questions

which I am going to give I
am in full agreement with the
Fuhrer’s ideas.

“Some Hotspurs among us are
rather inclined to urge the Fuhrer
to exterminate the Catholic and
Protestant Confessional Church-
es, just as we did with the Bol-
shevist parties. Apart from the
fact that the prohibition of these
parties has not by far been equi-
valent to the extermination of
Marxism from the thoughts and
feelings of our population—we
notice it daily—you must keep in
maind that the international posi-
tion of the Catholic Church cem-
pels us fo be very cautious in our
tactics towards the Church. Every
attack on the Church is inter-
linked with internationai rela-
tions and can aggravate our posi-
tion which has been already diffi-
cult enough.

“T do not hesitate to say, and I
believe that I can speak in the
Fubhrer’s- name as well, that the
Catholic Ghurch and the Protes-
tant Confessional Church as it is
today will have to disappear from
the life of our nation. But if the
various groups of so-called Ger-
man philosophy (Weltanschauung)
think it convenient to display a
sort of wild radicalism in their
publications, I must tell these
gentlemen that by doing so they
not only harm the prestige of the
government but at the same time
strengthen the martyrdom among
the followers of these Churches.

“We have been able already to
penetrate German youth consid-
erably with National Socialist
philosophy (Weltanschauung). The
splinters of Catholic youth move-

“Those Who Pay the

FRUITFUL topic of discussion

is that of broadening the

base on which income tax rests

and bringing within its scope

those wage earners and low sal-
aried workers now exempt.

Supporting this argument, Sir
Edward Beatty in a recent ad-
dress to the Vancouver Board of
Trade, stated:

“The way to make taxation less
of a burden is to lower it. The
way to lower it is to make people
realize they are paying it .---

“Jf there is any greater delusion
than that the poor Man pays no
taxes because the tax collector
only goes to the rich man, Tr do
not Know it. Tt would be an
actual benefit to the people in
the lower income brackets if no
income in Canada were free of
taxation. It would be a benefit,
because it would bring home to
the people of this country the
fact that they are paying taxes.”

While not prepared to accept
the remedy suggested by Sir Hd-
ward Beatty( we do agree that it
is not generally understood the
extent to which taxes are collect—
ed from others than the rich.

Information given by Hon.
Charles Dunning, minister of fin-
ance, to parliament during last
session, showed that over $70,000,-

and soon the blatant boor was bel-
lowing their propaganda and mak-
ing war on trade unionism and
the whole working class. They had

Duplessis in their bag two years
ago.

The reactionary tie-up of the
two provincial premiers for block-
ing national unification and pre
venting the enactment of social
legislation has already wrought
great mischief and constitutes a
major menace to the people of
Canada. And directed by big inter-
ests behind the scenes in Toronto
and Montreal, they have been
reaching out to bring more into
their camp, extend their influ-
ence, and undermine and wreck
any and all organizations, includ-
ing the WTiberal party, which
stands in the way of control at
Ottawa by a reactionary concen—
tration directed by Canada’s fifty
wealthy families as the Krupps
and Thyssens of Germany direct
Hitler.

The situation is further compli-
eated as far as Ontario is con-
cerned, by the selection of the
notorious pro-fascist Col. Drew
as leader of the Conservative
party in that province, With the
demagoguery characteristic of re—
action today, Drew, recopnizing
the great public demand for na-

War on the

Not all the rabid speeches
of the Nazi overlords reach
the columns of the German
and foreign press. That there
is good reason for this can be
seen in the followimg secret
address delivered by MHerr
Rosenberg to a recent Nazi
party rally. Rosenberg, who
is responsible “for political
education im Germany, was
brutally frank regarding Hit-
ler’s policy with the churches,
and allowed only slight refer-
ence to his remarks in the
press at the time.

ments which are bustling about
will be absorbed in the course of
time. The Hitler Youth is lke
a sponge which sucks everything
without resistance. And, further,
the curriculum of all categories in
our schools has already been so
far reformed in an anti-Christian
and anti-Jewish spirit that the
generation which is growing up
will be protected from the black
swindle.

“Do not forget that inside the
Churches unright Germans who
are deeply devoted to National
Socialism are working as priests.
With their help we shall clear the
last. and I admit very firm, posi-
tions of the Church.

“We have another means of
pressure, and that is finance. We
shall proceed 2autiously but very
systematically, and cut the veins
of finance to the clergy whom we
can win by no other means.

In this editorial appearing
in a recent issue of the Con-
gress Journal, P. M. Draper,
Trades and Labor Congress
president and editor of the
Journal, raises thé important
issues of taxation, points to
the burden on the worker and
farmer, concludes they should
have the right to “call the

tune.”
Se

000 of the $102,000,000 paid in in-
eome tax during the fiscal year
1936-37 came from those on re—
ceipt of $10,000 and over per an—
num.

It would be falacious, however,
+o assume from this that the bulk
of taxation raised by the Domin—
jon was collected from those best
able to pay.

In the same fiscal year other
taxes which came almost entirely
from the consuming Masses ac—
counted for more than the in-
come tax.

These included $112,832,000 from
the sales tax; $83,771,000 customs
import duties and $45,957,000 ex-
cise taxes, totalling in all $242,-
560.000.

tional

unification im order to
make possible social legislation,

has come out clamorously for “na—

tional unity.”’ But the national
unity Drew seeks to attain is the
unity of all forces of reaction and
the establishment of a reaction-
ary coalition government at Ot-
tawa.

@

Communist party has long
been warning the people of
Canada of the Gangers lurking in
the Hepburn-Duplessis alliance.
The revelations consequent upon
the open rupture between Hep-
burn and King furnishes addi-

tional proof of this danger.

The people of Canada must be
Shaken out of their complacency
and made aware of the dark plot-
ting of the enemies of the Cana-
dian people. It must effect the
unity of the progressive people,
and oppose the democratic front
of the people to the national unity
of reaction if the Canadian peo-
ple are to sscape the fate that
overtook the people of Germany,
Austria, Italy and Czechoslovakia.
And in bringing about this unity,
there is no time to lose, for time
may well be the decisive factor.

Cross

“As far as the charges of im-
morality is concerned, my opinion
is that they have not had much
effect in the old Reich and that
in future denunciations should be
carefully checked. You know
that the Jewish world press

watches very carefully and starts

a wild campaign against National
Socialist Germany if a charge
against the clergy cannot be
proved.”

With reference to the special
position of the Church in Austria,
Rosenberg declared:

“Circumstances are very differ-
ent in Austria. If we start action
there a terrible swamp will appear
on the surface, but it must be
left to our command to decide
when this is to happen. There is
no reason why we should, provide
the, world with the spectacle of
a d&moralised clergy, and we shall

settle these things in our own
house. Reasonable men, as, for
example, Gardinal MInnitzer,

though I do not yet trust him
very far, will have to submit to
the National Socialist command
under the pressure of facts.

“Tt is a very great success that
already a wide gulf exists be-
tween the Austrian and the Ger-
man bishops, and I hope sincerely
that we shall be able to extend
this gulf throughout the whole
of German Catholicism and thus
deal the death-blow to the worst
enemy of National Socialism. But
we must not make the same mis-
take as Bismarck, for we have
to face a cunning adversary
whose means of fighting we must
meet by better arms.”

Piper. .”’

This, with the $32,000,000 re-
sidue of the income tax, shows
that over 60 per cent of the total
taxes raised come directly or in-
directly from the pockets of far-
mers and workers.

On the other side of the ledger,
it is shown that out of a total ex-
penditure of $387,112,000, about
$140,000,000 or close to 40 percent
went for the payment of interest
on public debt, cost of loan flota-
tions, premiums, discounts and
exchange.

While the bulk of the taxes
are, therefor, paid by those of
small means, they are by no
means the largest beneficiaries.

Workers demand social secur-
ity in the form of unemployment
insurance, adequate pensions
when they reach the declining
years of their lives, health and
sickness insurance, etc., and, on
the principle that those who pay
the piper should have the right
to call the tune, there would seem
to be no valid reason why more
of the taxes they pay should not
be returned to the masses in the
form of desirable and necessary

social services.

_#rom the Congress Journal.

SHORT JABS.

A
Weekly

Commentary

By Ol’ Bill

= The judicial treatment of the

In This Case Blubber Bay pickets in every

ease yet heard in the police,

county.and Assize courts, does not bear out the

contention of Blaylock’s defence at Trail when he
was on trial for intimidation.

The Blubber Bay pickets were railroaded in regu-
lar Kangaroo court fashion. Their witnesses were
practically denounced as perjurers and liars. The
real criminals, the police and company officials
responsible for all the trouble at the strike area,
were defended and supported by all the types of
judges and government ministers and officials in-
volved since the arbitration board made its award.

At Blubber Bay the union had no rights, and its
members and those who sympathised with them
were looked upon as lawbreakers and social out
casts. The judges and prosecution dealt with all
the evidence from the Same angle. Intimidation,
which the union pickets were falsely charged with,
though it was disguised in other legal terminology,
“iliegal assembly, rioting, etc.,” was interpreted by -
the prosecution as a criminal offense according to
Pearson's so-callea trade union act and this inter—
pretation was supported by the judges.

JOIN OL’ BLILL’S INTERNATIONAL BRIGADE?
And In That lock, representing the Consoli-

dated Mining and Smelting, was
charged with “intimidation” (and should also have
been charged with inciting to violence), the prose-
cution claimed and were supported by the judge,
that Blaylock’s phoney-boloney company committee

(mot union) could use intimidation and be wathin
their rights according to the Pearson act

Blaylock’s defense may have been true, but on
the face of it it looked like perjury. The defense
claimed that Blaylock circulated the copies of the
fascist MeBadden Liberty magazine which was an
intimidation and incitement to violence, at the re-
quest of a company stooge, Tim Buscomb, chairman
of the so-called workmen’s committee. The guilt
was admitted, but since it was done at the request
of this individual, Blaylock was found not guilty
by the learned magistrate, who at the same time
expressed hypocritical concern for the union.

By this same forensic logic, if Blaylock had gone
out and clubbed Slim Evans to death with a meat-
axe and then pleaded that Tim “‘Buscomb had re-
quested him to do it, he would have been found
not guilty also.

The explanation of the different results of these
two legal battles is very difficult for those who
do not use the correct measuring stick — the class
struggle, the conflict of class forces.

JOLIN OL’ BILL’S INTERNATIONAL BRIGADE!

Artists Tn ter Winchell and the publicity agents
Politics have painted Hollywood, but their
Hollywood is like a rococo front ona Greek temple,
a false face of scandal, dissipation, divorce and
slack morals, that hides the real Hollywood.

The Hollywood that chased out the Mussolini
brat who boasted of the thrill he got out of bombing
helpless Ethiopians; the Hollywood that poured its
money into ambulances and food for the Spanish
people in their struggle against fascist barbarism,
is the real Hollywood and the Hollywood that is in
the news.

Fifty movie leaders, including Edward G. Robin-
son, Fred Astaire, Robert Montgomery, Gale Son-
dergaard, Claudette Colbert, Paul Muni, Ginger
Rogers, Joan Bennett and other top-notchers, are
solidifying the tradition that grew in Hollywood
with the building of the umions and the advance of
the CIO, by launching a moyement to request the
President and Congress to sever economic relations
with Nazi Germany.

In the Trail case where Blay-

Hollywood is again in the news. Wal-

Of course there is the other Hollywood, but there
is not much of it left for Jimmy Fidler and Louella
Parsons to work on. So Hitler’s girl friend, Leni
Riefenstal, need not expect to get very far with her
Nazi propaganda.

JOIN OW’ BILL’S INTERNATIONAL BRIGADE!

Tales of Moscow gold are still
Ill-Got Gold told by the more ignorant scribes
and penny-a-liners of the capitalist press—and- the
nondescript following of Trotsky. If this latter revo-
lutionary-phrasemongering group of allies of fas-
cism had any sense of shame they would refrain

from any further references To the Communist
parties being financed from Moscow.

The trials of the Trotskyite-Zinoviev-Bucharin
traitors proved that unprincipled Trotskyite groups
throughout the world were financed with money
stolen from the Soviet workers. Again in the trials
of the POUM Trotskyite scoundrels who attempted
to make easy the way of the fascists in Barcelona,
evidence proved beyond any doubt that they had
stolen art treasures ang money belonging to the
Spanish people and sent it out of the country to
finance heir reactionary friends allied to fascism
in other countries.

Closer to home we see Trotsky selling bis counter-
revolutionary writings to Hearst and the porno-
zraphic Macradden. This money, too, goes toward
providing the sinews of murder and counter-revo-
lution. :

And right at home in Canada only a few months
ago, “Red” McAuslane exposed the source of some
of the funds of the Trotskyite leadership of the
Canadian Federation of Labor, money paid to them
by the Saskatchewan coal barons to defeat a strike
of the miners.

Some of their funds is Moscow gold—stolen. Some
is Spanish treasure—stolen. Some is the price of
treason from Hearst and MacFadden, and some of
it is the wage of betrayal of Canadian workers.

JOIN OL’ BILL'S INTERNATIONAL BRIGADE!

5 Statements issued from head-
Labor Spies quatrers of the RCMP during
the past week denying that members of that yel-
low-striped organization do not engage in labor spy-
ing do not tally with the announcement from Otta-
wa by the same officials a month ago that reserve
units are to be formed in Winnipeg and later in
three or four other cities. These reserves are to be
organized among the staffs of large firms and to
be trained in police work.

“i

The only difference between the proposed “re-

serves”: and the existing set-up is that the “re-
serves” will be cheaper. They will still be spies on
the workers in these “large firms” Garge firms like
Bloedel’s and the Consolidated M & S). :

JOIN OL’ BiLl's INTERNATIONAL BRIGADE!

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