THE PEHEOPLE’S ADVOCATE

THE
PEHOPLE’S ADVOCATE

Published Weekly by the Proletarian Publishing

Association, Room 10, 163 West Hastings Street,
Vancouver, BC. Phone TRinity 2019.

One Year . 2 =: $2.00 Three Months —._ $ .60

Half Year _________$1.00 Single Copy —_.- $ .05

Make All Cheques Payable to: The People’s Advocate

Friday, May 12, 1939

Vancouver, B.C.

WVieat Prices Must Come Down!

NNOUNCEMENT of a consumers’ meat

strike during the week May 14 to 21 in
protest against high retail prices in Vancou-
ver is a significant and commendable action.
A long-suffering consuming public has, for
the first time we believe, resorted to the boy-
cott weapon in order to force retailers to re-
duce scandalously high prices of staple com-
modities. -

So far the various government boards es-
tablished by legislation, supposedly to protect
both producer and consumer. have been of
little or no value to the consumer. In fact, in
most instances the only result has been in-
ereased prices to the consuming public. This
is true especially of the Potato Marketing
Board.

In these days of monopoly control of the
Gistribution and sale of commodities no one
will deny the need of government marketing
boards to protect the primary producer and
the consumer. However, if the consuming
public is to receive protection, it is clear we
must have legislative acts without loopholes
and marketing boards with consumer repre-

sentation as well as representation from the
producers and distributors.

It appears in this instance the Beef Grading
Act has simply served as a medium for shame-
fully imereasing prices to the consumer. In
addition to prices generally being greatly in-
ereased, the lower grades, C and D, which
were formerly easily procurable, are now
seldom stocked at all, while the higher priced
Grade A meats monopolize the display coun-
ters.

The Housewives’ League should be con-
gratulated for the initiative it has shown in
launching the campaign against high meat
prices.

The twenty-eight women’s organizations of
the city which are sponsoring the meat strike
should receive the full support of the people
of Vancouver.

The Danger to Poland

pt eeeR ‘the outcome of Berchtesgaden,

Godesburgs and Munich taught the capital-
ist newspaper editors nothing; or they are
pretending ignorance. This is the only con-
elusion one can come to in view of the amaz-
ing alacrity with which they hailed the pro-
posal of the Pope for a conference of European
powers to “negotiate” the dispute between
Poland and Germany.

Only a few weeks earlier the Pope sent con-
gratulations to the butcher Franco for the
victory which “‘God granted to him.” Italian
and German bombs which destroyed hundreds
of thousands of Spanish Catholic men, women
and children had nothing to do with the vic-
tory of Franco, Hitler, Mussolini and Cham-
berlain, according to the Pope’s congratula-
tory message.

Remembering the fate of what once was
Czechoslovakia, Foland declined the invita-
tion to be carved up. The immediate declara-
tion of Hitler, Mussolini and Chamberlain of
their willingness to take part in the proposed
conference should have been enough in itself
to expose the trap which was prepared.

The delay, the evasiveness and maneuver-
ing of Chamberlain in his discussions with the
Soviet Union shows that he has no intention
of building an effective peace front. No
longer able to use the lie of Russia’s military
weakness, Chamberlain is exaggerating the
reluctance of the Polish and Rumanian gov-
ernments to inclusion of the Soviet Union in
the anti-agsression pact.

The policy of Chamberlain, despite his
shadow boxing in response to an aroused pub-
lic opinion, is still a policy of appeasement.
He is plotting to dismember Poland as a price
to Hitler to expand toward the East and at-
tack the Soviet Union.

The “non-intervention policy and appease-
ment have got Britain and France into a sorry
mess, with a friendly Spain destroyed and a
hostile fascist regime, a puppet of the Rome-
Berlin axis, established. The national govern-
ment will sacrifice Poland and every other
border state to Hitler in an effort to turn him
and Mussolini away from pressure against the
West, ie., Britain and France, and against the
Soviet Union.

In this nefarious scheme he can rely on the
pro-fascist Polish foreign Minister, Beck, and
other Polish Fifth Columnists. But the tra-
ditional love of national independence of the
Polish people prevents Beck from assisting in
selling out his country in the way that the
Fifth Columnists of Austria and Czechoslo-
vakia did.

W’CULLAGH AND BLAYLOCK

By H. J. LUNDGREN

is untangling the plot of Canadian Big Business and reaction
to usher in a pro-fascist government using as its vehicle
the McCullagh Leadership League, some startling facts come
to light, chief of which is that George McCullagh is no more
the originator of the propaganda he has been feeding the Cana-
dian people than the Leadership League is accidental.
Comparing the radio addresses and the “program” of the
Leadership League with the speeches made by Sir Edward
Beaity and other reactionary spokesmen over the past two
years, then we find that the blossoming into full bloom of the

Leadership League is but an out
growth of previous well-laid plans.

And if we want to find the main
representative in BC of the St.
James Street and Bay Street fi-
mnanciers, the eye is sure to fall
on Mr. Ss. G Blaylock of Trail,
president and managing director
of the Consolidated Mining and
Smelting Gompany of Canada:
Here we find Beattys “Man Fri-
day.”’

oe
ET US for a momnet compare
what Blaylock had to say in a
speech before the convention of
the Canadian Chamber of Com-
merce in Vancouver
that of re-
eent pro
n ouncements
of McCullagh
in order to
gain a better
knowledge of
just who are
behind Mc-
GCullagh and
what is in-
tended by
these indi-
viduals.
Depioringe

the extent of
taxation on
the idle rich,
Mr. Blaylock
remarked: “It would be interest-
ing to examine what percentage
of the population pay no income
tax whatever, and how much a
one-half to two percent tax on this
group woudl bring in to help bal-
ance the budget. Such a tax would
also give these citizens an incen-
tive to refrain from demanding
unnecessary expenditures.”

Compare this with McCullagh’s
remarks on similar questions:

“.. The solution to most of our
problems ilies in the expansion of
private enterprise and industry
... This can be done only by ar-—
resting wild government spending
and making a substantial reduc-
tion in taxation generally.” And
again: “. . . If our tax bills were
cut in half, natural spending would
ereate sufficient industrial actiyi-
ty to take up the slack and the
accumulated effect would be the
solution to our unemployed prob-
lem.’’

e -
HE PLAN of Canadian reaction

is made quite clear here. Tax-the management.

in 1937, to

ation on the profits of the idle rich
is to be reduced 50 percent and
social services are to be drastic—
ally cut if not entirely eliminated,
the cost of government to be borne
by imposing a sweeping income tax
on all wage earners, farmers,
small business men and profes-
Sional workers. ne

Again let’s listen to Mr. Blay-
lock: : i

“~.. iL am inclined to think that
we are very much over-governed,
and that it is necessary to throw a
lot of things overboard which the
governments have been doing lest
we Sink the ship of Canadian in-
dustry . . This is undoubtedly a
problem for the executive man-
agements of industry in this coun-
try.”’

Back comes Mr. McCullagh:

“Our governments must be dis-
ciplined There is too much
government. Rather than submit
to the alternative of dictatorship
it would be preferaible to restrict
the franchise until discipline is
learned, or surround it with con-
ditions which will rule out de-
structive forces.”

In other words, Mr. Blaylock
was expounding the plan of re—
action some 18 months before Mc-—
Cullagh came on the scene as the
new “Messiah,” clothed to look
like a benevolent “grandmother”
while he tries to lure Little Red
Riding Hood — the Canadian pec-
ple — into the fascist fold of the

Big Bad Wolf — Canadian reac—
tionary finance.
©
HAT’S in line for the trade

union movement if the Lead-
ership League captures the gov-
ernment? Blaylock supplies the
answer. This individual has or-
@anized and perfected over a per—
iod of 19 years a system in the
vast ©ME&S empire for which a
counterpart can only be found
under Hitlerism in Germany. This
system is known as the Work-
men’s Cooperative Committee,
Similar to the “Confidence Coun-
ceils” organized by Hitler’s labor
officials.

What was behind the organiza-
tion of the Cooperative Commit
tees? Blaylock declares as fol-
lows: “. .. It is absolutely essen-
tial that the men should at all
times have implicit confidence in
the honesty and fair dealing of
. . The way

How Lindbergh

By SAM RUSSELL

AZI Air Minister Hermann
Goering and his underlings

do not believe Col. Charles <A.
Lindbergh’s renewed slanders
against the Soviet air force.

Weither does Lucien Bossoutrot,
Radical deputy and Chairman of
the Air Commission of the Cham-
ber of Deputies, who is one of
France’s best known air aces.

Lindbergh’s Nazi friends are not
under illusions about the Soviet
military strength, at least so far
as the air is concerned. The third
volume of the “Handbuch der
neuzeitlichen Webrwissenschaf-
ten” (Handbook of Contemporary
Military Science), just out in Ber-
lin, openly states:

“In the past 16 years the USSR
has built up a military air force
which leads the world in num-
bers. In mid-1938 Soviet air
strength was estimated at 6,000

first line planes and 5,000 second
line craft.

“The powerful Soviet aviation
industry is based on some 50 fac-
tories producing planes and en-
fimes, and another 50 factories
producing spare parts. These fac-
tories together furnish 6,000-7,000
planes annually with 7,000 engines.

“In a short time Soviet Russia
has become an air power of the
first order.”

Waturally the figures given by
the Nazis need not be accepted as
absolutely correct, but they are
certainly not underestimated.

)

APTAIN BOSSOUTROT visit-
ed the Soviet Union in 1936
with a delegation from the Air
Commission of the Chamber, and
inspected all aspects of Soviet
plane production and training of

the air force.
When asked his opinion about
Col. Lindbergh’s latest derogatory

Comment From Our

MOTHER’S DAY
Editor, People’s Advocate:

A few more days and the flor-
ists, the candy makers and the
photographers will be reckoning
up the profits on Mothers’ Day.
A few more days and the radio,
the press and the pulpit will ring
up another successful culmination
of Mothers’ Day, 1939.

Mothers’ Day always reminds
me of Christmas when one day
out of the 365 is utilized to give
the children of the poor, food,
toys and a good time, while noth-
ing is done throughout the re—
maining 365 days to give them
the food, clothing, shelter and
suitable home environment to
enable them to become good Can-
adian citizens.

It would be a fine thing indeed,
that is, for capitalism, if the
mothers of the nation could be
lulled to a subconscious and false
contentment through the highly
commercialized sentiment of
Mothers’ Day. This year the oc-
casion will dawn on a world that
is rushing nearer to another
world war that will be more deyv-
astating than the human mind
can conceive. Insecurity, hunger
and self-denial is the lot of too
many mothers on this day of 1939.
Too many mothers are confronted
with the problem of what to do
with their young people who are
annually ieaving school with
little hope for a happy and use-
ful future.

it would seem that still an-
other of the old sayings of cap-

italism—‘the hand that rocks the
eradie rules the world’ —has
been shot to pieces. Most mothers
iknow how untrue this is and the
job that confronts all mothers on
this day is to get together and
work together for a solution to
the many ills the human race is
suffering from.

Mothers want something more
than flowers and candy one day
of the year. They want a society
in which all their children will
have the right to a happy home
environment, higher education,
suitable employment and a happy
life for all, and one of the most
effective means of achieving this
is to join the numerous progres-
sive women’s organizations, rais-
ing a united voice to demand leg-
islation that will put an end to
the miserable existence so many
of us are living under today.

Let’s change the old saying so
that “the hand that rocks the
eradle rocks the world.”

(MRS.) JEAN MASON.

THE “PALATIAL” CPR SHIPS

Editor, People’s Advocate:

We hear a lot these days about
slum clearance and TB preyen-
tion, but it was left up to the
Inland Boatmen’s Union to take
up the cudgels to clean up on
the tuberculosis dens in which
the men who go down to the sea
in ships have to live in order to
make room for freight and bigger
profits.

Take for instance the officials
of the BC Coast Steamships who

to this confidence can be made
much easier by permitting the
workers to elect a shop commii—
tee by secret ballot and without
interference or pressure by the
management.” (Tt is well to re—
member that Blaylock is a per
manent member of these commit—
tees. H.J.L.) “It will be found that
such a committee will be of real
assistance to the management in
bringing out suggestions for in-
ereased efficiency in every way.”
Gf Pecan CM&S president is also

proud of two other features
of his labor policy — pensions and
encouragement of home building.
By taking out insurance policies
through the Sun Life, part of the
Same financial octopus, on his
workers, insurance which is inci-
dentally charged to labor costs in
the financial statements, a loyal
and faithful worker receives an
average pension of $20 a month.
The CME€&S also advances loans to
its workers at five percent in-
terest for home building, which
gives the company an approxi-
mate net return on capital invest-
ed of 70 percent, while retaining
ownership of the land and an op-
tion on the house.

INow we understand why Blay-
lock’s scheme of “harmony be
tween labor and capital” is given
such prominence in the capitalist
press throughout Canada. It is
also this very system, accompa-
nied by the most deceiving dema-
gorgy, which has until now kept
the CM&S employees chained to
the chariot wheels of this labor-
hating corporation and in ignor-
ance of the benefits of bona fide
trade unionism. Little wonder the
CM&S is envied by other labor-
hating industrialists throughout
Canada.

@

LL that is required for Mr.

Blaylock to realize his dream
of becoming the Canadian proto-
type of Dr. Ley of Germany is the
election of a coalition government
of Big Business in the coming fed-
eral elections.

Organization of GCM&S employ-—
ees underway at the present time
by the International Union of
Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers
should warrant the support of all
progressive people in Canada, and
in particular by citizens of BC and
the Kootenays. A union victory
would be the biggest defeat of re—
action in recent years and would
remove one of the greatest threats
to the international trade union
movement.

Im the coming federal elections
the people in the two Kootenay
ridings must see to it that the
candidates of the Consolidated
Mining and Smelting Company are
defeated at all costs, and with the
support of those millions who
stand for democracy throughout
the Dominion doing likewise —
fascism shall not pass in Ganada!

Lied

remarks about the Soviet air force
and praise for the
Bossoutrot recalled that during

his Soviet visit he had inspected
an aviation factory in Moscow em-
ploying between 2,000 and 3,000
workers, which produced about
seven airplanes a day, which
would mean a minimum of be-
tween two and three thousand 2
year.

Nazi force,

e

N THE basis of experts who
inspected conditions else-
where in the USSR, Bossoutrot
said he was convinced that the
Soviet Union produced more
planes than any other country in

Europe.

“TI can only repeat,’ Capt
Bossoutrot said, “that in 1936 the
Soviet air force was the most pow-
erful in the world, and since then
even German technicians agree
that its production has increased.”

Readers

take such an interest in their
employees’ welfare that they
steer them away from the IBU
by spreading lies and falsehoods,
and never thinking of cleaning
up on the dungeons in which the
erews live and sleep.

On the Princess Charlotte as
on all CPR steamers except one,
the Princess Louise, where the
stewards are quartered on the
Same deck as other humans, the
crews’ quarters are all under the
waterline, which is also under the
freight deck. In cases where
cattle are carried, they are quar-
tered on deck above the crew. Of
course, I realize that cattle cost
money and men are cheap.

On the palatial triangle run
steamers there is little difference.
Air, in the form of dust, TB
germs or what have you, is
pumped down to the crew, but
when it gets hot it has to get out
as best it can. It never occurs to
anyone to instal a suction fan for
this purpose.

Conditions on some of the older
ships—the Maquinna, for ex
ample, is such that the seamen
of Nelson’s day would have turn-
ed up their noses. The Alice and
the Adelaide quarters are real
ratholes about ten feet by fifteen
in which some fourteen men are
quartered. Even the newer steam-
evs—Princess Elizabeth and Prin-
cess Joan—still have the ports
shut just as they came from the
builde:s.

“Underwater Dweller.”

SHORT JABS

A
Weekly

Commentary

By Ol’ Bill

errors mas |

a Typographical
Typo a provide the wits who writ jf
graphical. script for imitation comedi j7/-

ans and boring radio humor |
ists but to the scribbler who finds them amon
his work, distorting his meaning and confusing hi j§
readers, they are worse than irritating.
This comment is called forth by a typographics
blunder which one paragraph in this column sui
fered from last week, taking all the point out of 3 ©
and making it scund ridiculous. :
The mistake occurs in the last phrase of th |
sixth paragraph, which reads: “and the-other hight: 7f
moral gentleman who always finds an opportunit: jj
to inject propaganda for his particular brand of re {—
ligion into his political diatribes and who has bee: |=
well named by Frank Pitcairn as Lord Halifax’
It should have read “Lord Holifox.” Different
isn’t it? E Ae

A Clever
Lad.

or should it be down—to where he is today.
one of those pushing young men who got their op
portunity in life-by selling newspapers in the days ~
of their boyhood. : i
Although there are many admirable and honest |@ i
people who started out that way it may not be Sy
such a fine recommendation at that. Warden §
Lawes of the Big House on the Hudson made a
startling contribution in this connection a few
years ago. He said, “Recently I had a census
taken here in Sing Sing to determine how many
of the inmates had sold newspapers in their youth,
Of the 2300 men 69 per cent had done so.”

Of course Pat Maitland was not among them or
that would have increased the percentage. He
was doing his stuff here for the Tory Party in BG

At North Vancouver last week he spread himself
over the landscape. Although he has studied law
he does not seem to have studied mathematics very
deeply; just enough, apparently, to sell newspapers,
for he seems to imagine the Tories got all the votes
in the May Day Vancouver Center election. Ac
cording to this exnewspaper peddler the Tories ©
were the winners—but it is Mrs. Jamieson who goes }
to Victoria. 1}

The Misery of
gusted to hear the leader of

The People.

the Tory Party telling a hard-
boiled Tory audience that “the CCF has capitalized
on the misery of the people.’ ““‘The misery of the
people” was not created by the GCE, but by the ex-
ploiting capitalist thieves for whom Maitland is
the front and ‘lip’ -

He is “albbsolutely opposed” unless “absolutely ne
eessary”’ to a coalition of Tories and Grits. “We
should,” he says, still referring to the CCF, “never
risk having a people in charge at Victoria who do
not believe in the fundamental principles of sound
government.”

“Sound government’ such as Al Capone is in :
favor of and no doubt a large proportion of Warden
Lawes’ 69 percent newspaper peddiers.

Another

am

_Pat Maitland is one of the >}
smart young men of Tory re 1%
action in British Columbia /#f!

It is hard to say whether one
should be astounded or dis- -

Another clever young man,
Cl Mr. Graham Towers, gov-
ever Lad. ernor of the Bank of Canada,
speaking the lines of Mr.

Montagu Norman, told the House of Commons
committee on banking and commerce last week, that
Since the national debt “is an asset of the people,
what would be the object in repaying it?”

Tf the public debt is an asset, why is not private
debt also an asset? Neither Mr. Towers nor any
other banker will admit for a moment that their
customers’ debts are assets of these same cus-
tomers. Why?

The national debt, however, is an asset to the
creditors of the state who are the “people” in the
eyes of Mr. Towers, the bankers, brokers and other
usurers who grow fat on the wealth gouged out of
“the common herd” by their tax-gsatherers.

Marx knew this tribe well. In the first volume of
Capital, he writes, ‘National debt, i.e., the alientation
of the state—whether despotic, constitutional or re-
publican—marked with its stamp the capitalistic
era. The only part of the so-called national wealth
that actually enters into the collective possession
of modern peoples, is—their national debt. Hence
as a necessary consequence, the modern doctrine
that a nation becomes richer the more deeply it is
in debt.”

To drive this home he quotes William Cobbett’s
remark that in England all public institutions are
designated “royal”; as compensation for this, how-
ever, there is the “national” debt.

State bonds are merely certificates which give the
holder a claim on the annual tax revenue. Con-
sidered as capital, they are illusory, fictitious capital,
a fact which is proven every time a government de-
faults (and haven’t there been a lot of them since
1929!)-

In volume three of Capital, Marx again speaks of
the national debt He says, ‘““‘The capital of the na-
tional debt appears as a minus, and interest-bearing
capital generally is the mother of all crazy forms,
so that, for instance, debts may appear in the eyes
of the banker as commodities.”

For my part, the governor of the Bank of Canada
can have my share of this “asset’’ for one plate
of ham-and-eggs with the trimmings and once on
the corn-beef-and-cabbage—one days grubstake.

Riding under the shade of
89 Years Chamberlain’s umbrella in
Young. the Vancouver May Day
parade, I heard many com-

ments from the sidewalk. Although there was no
inscription on the storm-wrecked bumbershoot,
tattered and ragged after its encounter with the
Wazi foreign policy of lying promises and broken

pledges, everybody on the sidewalk knew whose
gamp it was. Vancouver people know their um-
brellas!

This, however, was not what pleased me most

about Ol’ Bill’s turnout. In our car we carried the
oldest participant in the demonstration—not Ol’
Bill, but a physically wornout old worker of 89 years
who was young enough in mind to want to miss
nothing of the May Day celebrations and whom we
were proud to have with us.

a> The screaming indignation of
A Subsidized Sir Edward Beatty recorded
Railroad. in the press last week about

unfair government subsidized
railroad competition should be noted. If he is
talking about the CPR, it certainly is a government
subsidized outfit They had $140,000,000 up until
1935 and are now getting ocean liners built at the
public expense for the Pacific runs. Subsidized, all
right!