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THE WILLIAMS LAKE TRIBUNE

EDITORIAL PAGE

THE TRADE UNIONS ACT

We suggest that the great hue and cry being
Taised by organized labor in opposition to the new
Trades Union Act will do more to harm their cause
in the eyes of the Public than any employer-sponsored
anti-labor campaign could ever achieve.

The main points of the bill are to limit strike
action to the place of dispute, and to make unions
and employers’ associations responsible for their actions
as legal identities. By fighting the bill, union officials
appear reluctant to accept the principle of responsi-
bility.

Bill 43 is not a wordy piece of legislation. Its
chief provisions can be stated in very simple terms.
It limits picketing to those premises where a legal
strike or walkout exists. Picketing is limited to mem-
bers of the trade union involved in a legal strike, or
to persons authorized by that union to participate in
the picket line. Both employers’ organization and
trade unions are liable for damages for violations of
the Labor Relations Act. Use of the ex parte injunc-
tion in labor disputes is limited and controlled. Con-
spiracy charges are not applicable to labor disputes.

That is Bill 48.

As labor legislation, it may fall far short of pro-
viding a permanent or complete solution to the labor-
Management disputes that effectively crimped our
economy last summer, but we feel it is an honest at-
temt at making a direct approach to a problem that
other governments have recognized and failed to come
to grips with.

The day may yet come when the strike weapon
will be abandoned in favor of judicial settlement of
labor disputes, to the overall advantage of labor, man-
agement and the country. Strikes are something like
wars—after they are over it is often difficult to ascer-
tain which side “ won.”

RECLAIM THEM BEFORE THEY'RE LOST

We wholeheartedly support Magistrate C. H.
Poston’s appeal for the appointment of a full-time
probation officer for the Cariboo. With the rapid
growth of population in this part of the province,
particularly the Percentage of “ drifting ” population,
we believe an appointment is long Ovengue:

he magistrate is, of course) closer\yo the probjeny
vnan the rest of us, but when he!gives aetual examples\
of the situation,
present arrangéments are.

The court is placed in an unenviable position in
some of these cages involving juveniles. They must
be punished for their misdeeds, yet sending them to
institututions at the coast may be giving them their
entrance papers to a course of criminal habits. In the
environment they know, and under the skilled observa-
tion of a probation officer, their lives could be straight-
ened out before the warp of crime becomes permanent.

Such an appointment would be no cure-all, but if
the services of a probation officer straightened out just
one case in five, thé move would be justified.

READING HABITS?—WE HAVEN'T ANY

The Canadian Library Week Council is concerned
about the reading habits of Canadians, and after perus-
ing the facts on the question, we are inclined to believe
their concern is justified.

Here are some of the facts the council has dug up.

Canadians rank very poorly as a reading nation.
Of all the English-speaking nations, only the United
States has a worse record in reading books. The most
srecent Gallup Poll on reading habits showed that almost
oma Canadian in every three (32 percent) had not
read @ book in more than a year. Only one Canadian
in every ‘ight is a registered borrower at a public
library. Reflecting the low demand for books in this
country, we as a nation rank 14th among the world’s
countries in the number of bookshops per capita, We
have one book store for every 18,125 people, a long
way behind the leading nation, Austria, which has a
bookshop for every 2,745 people.

The council offers a ray of hope though. We are
improving in our reading ratio. Library coverage is
increasing by about three percent a year, and in the
period from 1951 to 1956, circulation of books in-
creased by 42 percent while the population increased
only 14 percent.

But the council feels we have a long way to go
yet. Compared to a surprising number of other coun-
tries, we are just plain lazy when it comes to perusing
the printed word.

THE WILLIAMS LAKE TRIBUNE

Established 1931 Editor, Clive Stangoe

Published every Wednesday at Williams Lake, B.C.
by the Cariboo Press Ltd.

Subscription per year, $3.00. Outside Canada, $4.00
Advertising rates on application

Authorized as Second Class Mail by the Post Office.

e can appreciate how unfait the?

back in the 20's.

Here is another view of Oliver Street
Note the way
Mackenzie Avenue (then Railway)
traffic cut on to Oliver Street at a

AS IT USED TO LOOK
lazy curve.

awning,

Montreal.

the Weetman
Grand Central Hotel and Bank of

That’s the Williams
Lake Meat Market building with the

residence,

ee

Ss

By Clive Stangoe
MOST OF US have stored up a good deal of
interesting information in the course of our life-
time, but the majority of these items are filed away
and seldom come to light again.

Exception is
usually a long trip,
when the travelling
time forms a reflec-
tive springboard to
the past, uncompli-
cated by the busy life
that waits at your
destination, ready to
engulf us in the pres-
ent again.

My travelling companions on
a recent trip were ideal for this
reflective mood. Fred Basd and
Dick‘ Selfars have +
interesting lives, and-whas
more important to the listdner,
relate their experiences in an
interesting manner. \

Fred has tramped for miles
over the hills in the Ashcroft
and lower Fraser Canyon areas
in search of minerals, and can
give a running account of
“finds " old and new along the
Cariboo road. It was the first
time I knew that the old
abandoned “ Maggie ” mine be-
low Clinton was sitting on a
chromite deposit, or that salt
was once mined near Ashcroft.

He pointed to a deep gash in
the mountains part way down
the canyon road and told of
working up the rushing creek
to the mountain lip one sum-
mer in the ‘dirty thirties.”
There he sank a shaft and took
out $1,200 in gold. He was
certain he had made his for-
tune, but it proved to be just
a pocket of the precious metal
and there was no more to be
found.

Working around to talk of
the war, as all vets will, Dick
told us about his most embar-
rassing experience in the ser-
vice.

Eventually he wound up
with the tanks through Italy
and Germany, but in the first

days of the war he was
stationed at Prince George,
where he joined up. There he

worked with a recruiting team
of an officer, a sergeant and
a private—him.

Things went along in a pretty
satisfying and unmilitary man-
ner for the soldiers of Prince
George, until one day an order
sifted through from above,
stipulating that every member
of the Canadian forces had to
take their basic training. The
officer called in the sergeant
and following this huddle the
“other ranks — Dick—com-
menced his basic training, in-
cluding the rudiments of drill.
Eventually the training period
was over, and another order
came down. ll recruits who
had had their basic training
would be inspected by the
commanding officer. Now, ac
cording to Dick, there is noth-
ing caleulated to make a person
feel quite so insignificant as
being the entire strength of a
unit being inspected for pro-
ficiency in basic training.

SINCE WE ARE guilty of
reading most anything, those
lines on the backs of small
boxes of matches come ia for

their share of atten-

tion each time we
buy one. Generally
speaking the lines

come under the clas-
Sification “file and
forget,” but we liked
the one we ran across
the other day: “Ap-
proach every school
the way you did
you were a child—

} an wie ae:

AND SPEAKING of schcolst
Wwe were iapheee by more?
than the playing of the young
high school curling rink from
Prince George who appeared
here last weekend. The boys
were friendly and well-man-
nered as well as being good
curlers. Couldn’t help wonder-
ing if the grand game itself,
where good sportsmanship is
the rule, not the .exception,
doesn't have something to otter
the educational system.

when
slowly.”

MORE COMMENTS
ON SPECIAL ISSUE

The Editor,
The Williams Lake Tribune

Dear Sir—Copies of your
Centennial issue of The Tribune
have been sent to former
Horsefly residents in many
parts of Canada, the U.S.A. and
overseas, and all have been re-
ceived with great pleasure.

A friend in California writes:
“The Centennial number of
The Williams Lake Tribune,
which we have read from cover
to cover and will cherish al-
ways, the pictures, the history
and the stories of old-timers,
make it a most fascinating
record, worthy of a metro-
politan. paper.”

t ) BESSIE Preys

At the Canadian Conference

on Education last year, 850
delegates representing three
million Canadians said: “ We

must spend more on educa-
tion.”

In 1957, Canadians spent
$1,687 million on defence,
$1,865 million on cars, $1,
million on tobacoo and alco-
holic beverage — and only
$1,072 million on education.

co

The effect on

— LOOKS AT —

Canada of

U.S. subsidies

By A. J. Drinkell

While the recent invasion of Ottawa by our
prairie farmers failed in its objective, it undoubtedly
created a keener public awareness of their difficul-

ties.

No permanent cure
for their ills would
have resulted had
they been promised
parity prices or sub-
sidies. They already
have a most efficient
selling organization
in the Wheat Board

which, through the
years since its in-
auguration, has

served them remarkably well.

Unfortunately, surplus stocks
of grains in most major pro-
ducing countries have brought
about many difficult marketing
problems. Subsidies in the
USA have in turn encouraged
increased production and still
larger surpluses. The cost to
the American taxpayer is prov-
ing somewhat of a burden. ‘The
cost for storage alone is stag-
gering and has caused the ad-
ministration to resort to giving
away huge quantities of farm
products. Other sales ~ have
been made on exceptionally
long credit terms or by accept-
ing in payment the currency of
the purchasing country. This
is re-invested in that country
or used to pay for American
military needs therein.

Some, of these transactions
have been negotiated in tradi-
tionally Canadian marketing
areas. The financial aid re-
quired to overcome competition
of that nature is utterly be-
yond our resources. The situa-
tion is naturally irksome to our
own farmers by reviling
American authorities for trying
to ease their financial burdens

i owever,
Peet nee aid toe pit-
terly i€ we resort to a few ex-
traordinary methods of crop
disposal, whenever and wher-
ever possible.

BACKED WRONG HORSE

The USA backed the wrong
horse in China and has been
accorded lots of face-saving
support by her allies, including
Canada. In view of her de-
parture from orthodox marker
ing practices and her determin-
ation to defect to the extent of
interfering with the marketing

operations of Canad-
ian subsidiaries of
her manufacturing
groups, the time has
definitely arrived for
Canada to seriously
consider terminating
this supporting role.
The resultant loss of
business in the
Asiatic theatre alone
is already too
great to assess.’ We should
now make every effort to re-
enter this lucrative field and
take every possible step to en-
sure our manufacturers against
unwarranted interference
through their American coun-
terparts.

ECONOMIC SHELLS

‘We have boasted for many,
many years of 3,000 miles of
boundary line without a gun
mounted on it. Are we now to
be blasted out of existence with
economic bomb-shells? We
think not. We must now move
in our own interests. Any
unjust retaliatory action by the
USA would crumple im the face
of world wide indignation. In-
asmuch as it seems agreed the
answer to our agricultural
trubles is not to be’ found in
subsidies or parity payments

and such, but only through in-
facilities

creased marketing
and wider scope, it becomes ob-

vious that on the home front
an extensive reconstruction of
our whole economic structure

is vitally necessary.

The farmer is justified in
claiming that every tariff and
jeach quota restrictign is a
\airect }subsidy to some com-
modity\or other. If we are to
recapture lost ground and de-
velop new markets, the farmer
must be enabled to produce at
prices attractive to prospective
purchasers. If those engaged
in industry—management and
labor alike—insist upon having
their pie served a la mode, they
must see to it the farmer re-
ceives, at least, a little fairer
share of the pie or he is apt
to quit providing the in-
gredients.

ONE YES

March 19, 1958

Copies of the new Public
School Act, first major revision
of school legislation in 86
years, were received by officials
in Williams Lake this week...
Five local Indian delegates will
travel to the coast next month
to attend an all-Indian confer-
ence taking place from April
15 to 18... Decision to post-
pone extensive finishing work
and installation of bar equip-
ment at the Legion Hall was
made by the branch at their
meeting Monday night

FIV& YEARS AGO
March 18. 1954

In an effort to restcre the
rapidly depleting rangelands,
the Indian Affairs Department
is experimenting with aerial
seeding in the Chilcotin . . .
RCMP officers are still investi-
gating the case of the armed
robber who, last Thursday
night, escaped with $600 from
the 150 Mile General Store...
The congested traffic condition
existing on Railway Avenue,
north of the Oliver Street inter-
section, came up for considera-
tion at the Board of Trade
‘meeting last Thursday.

TEN YEARS AGO
March 17, 1949

Suggestions for amendments
of the Game Act in 1949 will
be discussed next Monday by ~
members of the Williams Lake
and District Fish, Game and
Forest Protective Association
. .. There will be no affiliation
with the Cowboys’. Protective
Association this year for the
Williams Lake Stampede... A
railway survey party has been
organized and will be sent into
the Quesnel district on March
15 to lay final stakes for the
first 14 miles of the Quesnel-
Prince George Pacifie Great
Eastern Railway extension.

TWENTY YEARS AGO |
March 23, 1989

The first real chinook of the
season was welcomed last Sun-
day by hay-short rancners of
the district, but aroused resi-
dents of Williams Lake from
a Sunday of rest to a frenzy of

bat the running water which
was flooding basements, stores
and dwellings . . . The ‘uneral
service was held at Beaver
Ranch last Saturday for Nor-
man Lee, early ‘pioneer rancher
and trader of the Chilcotin.

THE MACDUFF OTTAWA, REPORT

OTTAWA — Newfoundland,
Canada’s saltiest, youngest and
most independent province,
celebrates its 10th birthday this
month as a member of the
family.

Coincidentally, it is tryiug to
lead the way in checking the
advance of international trade
unionism.

In doing so, it is bucking a
nationwide trend and bringing
lines of worry to the foreheads
of political leaders in the other
nine provinces,

The action of Newfound-
Jand's bouncy premier, Joseph
R. (Joey) Smallwood, in de-
claring open war on the Inter-
national Woodworkers of
America is being watched
closely by both top manage-
ment and organized labor
throughout Canada.

If Mr. Smallwood succeeds
in ridding his verritory of the
militant IWA—and ‘his pros-
pects are good—it may serve as
an incentive to other union-
busters to try the same act.

They are not, however, likely
to achieve the same success.

Newfoundland ‘is different.
As Canada’s youngest province
—and, incidentally, Britain’s
oldest colony—it has liad the
least experience of the so-called
Canadaian way. And what it
has seen of it via the invasion
of the IWA it doesn’t like.

The IWA turned up on the
island nearly three years ago.
on the invitation of a sleepy
organization of working log-
gers called the Newfoundland
Lumbermen’s Association. It
decided to organize the island's
logging industry.

WON CERTIFICATION

The NLA got shoved out in
the process, and the first of a
series of rivalries and bitter
exchanges cropped up.

By 1958, after a series of
contrived setbacks by the proy-
ince’s two big pulp and paper

concerns, the IWA won certifi-
cation as bargaining agent for
the 8,000 bush workers em-
ployed by the Anglo-Newfound-
land Development Co. But its
exaltation was _ short-lived.
After a brief hassle of contract
talks, negotiations broke down
and the IWA applied for and

got a  government-sponsored
conciliation board to hear its
case.

The board unanimously

recommended a five-cent pay
increase for loggers (from the
current rate of $1.05 an hour)
and a reduction in working
hours from 60 to 54.

The company, even though
its own nominee had signed
the report, turned the deal
down flatly. The IWA accepted.

The union took a strike
vote, and armed with a 98.8
percent approval of its mem-
bership, struck the AND Co.
operations on New Year’s Eve.

Since then it’s been a story
of bitterness.

After 48 days of picketing
and repeated clashes involving
violence on the picket lines, the
IWA called on Premier Small-
wood to intervene.

SMALLWOOD MOVES

He did—by calling on the
loggers to chuck out the IWA.
He labelled the strike a “ civil
war.”

The And Co. and the other
big mall, Bowater's, backed up
the premier with a statement
saying they would never—re~
peat never—sign a contract
with the striking union. A
flurry of court actions resulted
The IWA sought to prosecute
the premier for unfair labor
pratices, followed that up with
a $300,000 libel suit, on behalf
of its three senior officer:

It gave notice of a similar
the two com-

Premier Smallwood, warm-

ing to his’ task of ousting the
unwanted union, got blanket
endorsement from the provin-
cial House of Assembly to
organize a new, “independent”
(but government - sponsored)
union of loggers.

The fiery. little Liberal

premier won strong backing
from church groups, the prov-

ince’s newspapers and even
other international trade
unions.

Despite complete determina-
tion of the strikers to carry on
as long as funds lasted, it will
be a victory for Smallwood, but
in a sense a defeat for New-
foundland. For the province's
labor laws will have been
roughly shoved aside in the
process.

For regardless of the merits
of the arguments pro and con
the IWA, it’s a fact that (a)
the union was chosen by its
members, and legally certified
by the Newfoundland govern-
ment, and (b) Mr. Smallwood
is openly using his wide poli-
cal support to smash it.

Management spokesmen for
the industry elsewhere in Can-
ada, and even the premier him-
self, agree that the IWA’s
wage goals are not excessive.
Mill employees earn ‘a basic
$1.78 an hour now, against the
$1.05 woods rate.

The argument as far a8 Mr.
Smallwood is concerned, turns
on the international union’s
tacties in seeking to achieve
those goals—and on the less
tangible and difficult to sustain
claim that it is a “ foreign-
dominated " union, owing “ all:
egiance to a foreign flag.”

There seems little doubt that
Mr. Smallwood will have all
the support he requires to
smash the union and organize
a government-sponsored puppet
to take its place which raises
questions on the workings of

Canadian democracy in New-
foundland.

Ottawa was a farmers’ town
this week as Conservativ
cabinet ministers and M.P.’s
played the role of uneasy host
to prairie-dwellers who want
$300,000,000 in deficiency pay-
ments. A full report on the
reception, coming up in the
MacDuff Report.

Next to the CF-105 Arrow
and unemployment, one of the
government’s biggest head-
aches is how to burn all that
coal dug from the Nova Scotia

mines. Prospects for increased
subsidies to move it to' the com-
petitive Ontario market are not
bright.

Former Liberal immigration
minister Jack Pickersgill had
no more luck than the greenest
steenhorn with his bill to give
naturalized Canadians full and
equal rights with the Canadian
born. It was “talked out” in
the Commons, but may reap-
Pear if the session lasts long
enough for it to reach the top
of the list of private members’
bills.

WITH G. E. MORTIMORE

Whenever someone is kind
enough to write a letter to this
column, I put it aside carefully
to answer. As you have already
guessed, I often put it aside so
carefully that I can’t fing it
again.

I don’t throw it away. J
have a horror of throwing any-
thing away. If I were more
ruthless, and not so Kindly dis-
Posed toward inanimate objects
my life would be better organ-
ized.

The letter is there, mind you.
But for the time being I can’t
turn it up. The letter is just
as thoroughly lost as though I
had sealed it in a lead envelope
and dropped in it the sea,

The person who wrote it
waits for a reasonable time,
then dismisses me as a boor
and forgets the incident,

Months or years afterwards,
the letter works it way up
through the shitling mass of
debris to the surface, and I find

it in the time-honorea way,
while looking for something
else.

My response to any sort of
letter is much the same as that
of a dog to a bone. After T
have chewed it for a few min-

utes, I bury it for safety and
forget where it is,

I don’t care how bad a letter
it is either. Someone has taken
the trouble “to write it,
Person may despise me.
ever, if there is one kind of
letter that I enjoy less than
others, it is the missive with-
out a name,

Often a letter needs to be
made clearer, or to be cleansed
of libel. You can't print the
stuff because it isn’t fit for the
Public eye. And you can’t
Write to a person who identifies
himself only as “Eternal
Vigilance,” or “ Ech!”

From now on, anonymous
letters will still be greeted with
small yelps of pleasure, but
(unless in extraordinary ¢H- _
cumstances) will not be printed

If a citizen wishes to make
his views public through this
column without his name, he
can sometimes do so. However,
I must have the name for my-
self, so that I can contradict
the writer and tell him that he
is a scoundrel, too—# likeable
spirited, scoundrel,

and public-
of course. This means you,

“« Nauseated.””

a

=