mereased premium ‘Vimmediately result, while semprehensive safety meas- and health safesuards, fficiency and still speed- truction of ships can be as the proposals worked conferences of labor, op- and government represen- | are put into effect. ' year’s negotiations pre ‘the signing of the agree- _during which consider- iscussion tock place on pro- *@i and labor welfare prob- Many of the questions in the course of these dis- 1s and negotiations, par- Wiave already been put into and have contributed te the-present day recerds achieved in shipbuilding. myer, for all workers was aginting of one week’s holi- ig}th pay to all workers in =seel shipbuilding - industry # This has special import- 4 ince it is a new develop- in labor affairs in this #. The agreements pro- at the holidays and wage Jents brought about will imued after the war. 5 ¥ x “6 ae uE we have come a long 'ay compared with a year must be said that labor Msatisiied with the progress being made in labor-man- & relations in the field of ion. many thousands of work- gaged in shipbuilding are verful productive force, remendous creative power must be harnessed and 4 toe the full. The atti- hat production problems fdely the concern of the ‘ement and no business of jorkers is altogether too inued May choice than that of to all indignant cries from — aged public, the club raises eble ery that it is “un- Reed,” that art must not pides; that literature must yt pure and unfettered! fe were to go into a Van- Hise, and intended to keep t of burning metal “pure,” tuld still call him a sabo- is war against fascism, it luty of every man, woman ild to use his capabilities full for the good of the Beople. Artists; and selec- Tamittes of book clubs are 2ptions, e does not mean, of course, t honest book club judges select only heavy, political nomic tomes. what we don’t want, and r€ must protest, are books undermine our war effort, in- fily with regard to produc- - pay for second and graveyard well as many improvements im working conditions prevalent. It is the task of a democrary to elicit the demo- cratic initiative of its people. Wow that the supplementary agreements providing for seven- day operation and improved con- ditions have been signed, we can anticipate greater consideration on the part of the unions ‘to the work of the labor-manasement production committees, function- ing ineffectively at this time. The Dobson committee, which will continue its work, can become an important and esential part of the labor-management committees and their work. z ~) EFLECTING the questions now being considered by the unions in the shipyards will be the brief now being prepared by a committee set up at a recent _conference of unions with mem- bers in the shipyards. It is sug- gested. that this brief should con- tain a strong request for the es tablishment of compusory collec- tive bargaining legislation on a federal scale. Effective collective bargain- ing legislation Is vitally neces- Sary in bringing about harmon- ious labor relations and remov- ing the distrust and wasteful wrangling arising from con- tinued refusal to grant the workers their indisputable right to trade union organization. This would serve to prevent labor disputes rather than at- tempting to cure them after they have arisen. The existence of such legisla- tion would have disposed of end- less arguments and controversy with the management of West Coast Shipbuilders _ Limited, where the unions are asking that agreements be entered into simi- lar to those existing in other yards. This would have allowed fth Column Poison books that are anti-democratic, anti-British, amnti-Chinese, anti- Russian, anti-labor, or contribute in any other way to disunity, ignorance and fear. é To choose good books is the book club judges’ task, and a bock club with a similar set- up but an entirely different set of values, could play an import- ant part in our wartime lives. Fhe Book-of-the-Month club is not the answer. W THE Soviet Union there is a publishing house called “The Soviet Writer,’ which has distri- buted more than 3,000,000 copies since the Nazi invasion of Russia. The authors edit their own books, ~ and a board of world-famous Soviet writers pass on their work. The Soviet Writer issues no anti- American books, yet it publishes books the people like and want to read. : It is only to this type of book elub that Canadians and Amer- icans can look for good reading material. The formation of such a club would be of tremendous importance to our cultural life— and to our national existence. at°’s Needed Now B.C. Shi By LAWRENCE ANDERSON siness Agent, Amalgamated Shipwrights, Joiners and Caulkers, : _ _, Local No. 2 era in shipbuilding on the west coast is signallized by the signing of new supplementary agreements by all unions in Vancouver this month. Holidays with pay, r the first time in labor history to such industrial yards More attention to be focussed on essential production problems. e A MINISTRY of production is also reguired, to give special consideration materials and to the supply of labor power to our vital war industries, as well as giving attention to the plan- ned preduction of consumers’ goods. Such a body, it is sug- gested, might set up committees to deal with the special needs of particular industries such as shipbuilding, and bring the pov- ernment more directly into con- tact with the labor-management production committee. Such boards or committees set up by the government should be com- posed of labor representatives, together with the government and representatives of the em- ployers. Labor feels that if this were tackled boldly and the work- ers given their proper place in the direction of production, we could exceed all schedules beyond pres- ent expectations. It is one thing for the govern- ment to assign contracts to the employers in industry, but a yery different matter to con- cern itself fully with the af- fairs of the industry. How can the workers, fer-example, give their best attention to produc- tion when they are aggravated by shortage of fuel for their homes and are unable to find housing accommodation for their families? 6 ASATION of workers’ comes is another matter needing reconsideration, especi- ally from the point of view of its effect on production. The dol- lar received by the worker today is an inflation dollar, buying less on the market. The cost of liv- ing bonus is supposed to help keep up his real wages. How- ever, the tax structure is such that it digs deeply into the dol- lars that the worker requires for the basic necessities of life, and eost of living bonus is also sub- ject to taxation. Heavy tax im- posts on the goods he buys makes his inflation dollar, already sub- jected to heavy taxation at source, £0 a very short way. With the tremendous shortage of manpower existing in the country, it is obviously neces- sary to induce labor to work longer hours so that plant facili- ties may be utilized to the ut- most and our present limited Jabor power extended te the full. Yet present government taxation measures definitely penalize men for overtime work, and in fact encourage absenteeism on regular week days. in- T IS no wonder that labor or- ganizations across Canada are taking advantage of the present inquiry into labor relations and the causes of unrest in the coun- try, indicated by the increasing number of strikes, to bring to the attention of the authorities the true state of affairs and make proposals to correct them. - While taking up these questions to improve conditions for the workers, it is the task of all re- sponsible labor people to direct their undivided attention to pro- duction for victory in this war. The free and open discussions that we have been able to main- tain on all matters affecting us up to this time must now be continued te ensure success in the solution of these problems now affecting us and in exert- inxg our fullest support to de- feat the armies of fascist Ger- many and Japan. Karl Marx And Science By J. B. S. HALDANE Fellow of the Royal Society London. ARL MARX was born -125 years ago this month —on May 5, 1818. Hach year sees his growing influence on world history — above all since Lenin put his theories into practice in 1917. Today even those who most abhor Marx- ism have to admit that he was a much more important histor- ical force than such contempor- ary political figures as Glad- stone, Disraeli, or Queen Vic- toria, or philosophers such as Herbert Spencer, Cardmal New- man or August Comte, who seem- ed to be great in their own time. He can justly be compared with contemporaries like Faraday, Darwin, and Pasteur, who are still influencing our lives and thoughts, because their ideas were important not only for their own time, but for many generations to come. These men applied scientific method to new fields. So did Marx. = HERE were great socialists before Marx. They saw what sort of organization of society was needed. But they had not studied history deeply enough to analyze the process of historical change, and state the conditions by which socialism could come into being, as Marx and Engels first stated them in the GCommun- ist Manifesto. There were great economists before Marx. But they were most- ly content with describing the economic structure of society as they found it. Marx did not merely do this. He traced its Origin and showed: how it was decaying before his eyes, while the embryo of a new society was growing up within it in the form of the workers’ organizations. Ace eemic philosophers had tried to explain the world starting from our sensations, and some of them concluded that the world consisted of nothing but sensations. Marx saw that we are just as closely related to the world by labor which changes it, as by sensation, which only copies it, and that a philosophy in which labor is not as important as sensation is of little value. In the same way we can only get to understand the nature of society by trying to change it. No living man has a clearer grasp of the nature of society than Stalin. who has played a leading part in two great changes, the overthrow of capitalism and the building up of socialism. Marx learned the true nature of class society from his early revolutionary work. ¥ STUDYING the laws of change in their most general form, Marx and his friend and colleague Engels not only illu- minated history, but science. They did this in two ways. In the first place scientific discoveries are vart of the historical process, and depend on productive forces and relations. : Newton’s work was possible be- Cause people needed exact knowl- edge of the movements of the stars for navigation, and of can- non balls for war. He showed that they obeyed the same laws. Darwin could make his great generalizations because the exploi- tation of colonies had disclosed the distribution of living animals and plants through the world, and the development of Mining had disclosed the order in which fossil animals and plants had appeared and died out in the past. In the second place material systems develop and perish ac- cording to dialetical principles like those which hold for human institutions. Engels was almost alone in his time in thinking that chemical atoms were not inde- (Continued on Page 12)