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ACK in the days of the “Hungry
Thirties” the political huck-
sters for big business boasted
of “curing” unemployment. Now,
a quarter of a century later, they
don’t talk about “curing” unem-
ployment, but of “coping” with it.

And how goes their “coping”?

Each year as soon as the leaves
begin to fall “winter work” pro-
grams are dusted off and trotted
out by these Tory, Liberal and
Socred “copesters,” generally with
no other idea in mind than to allay
public concern at a rising tide of
unemployment. Congenital “optim-
ists,’ these lackeys of big mon-
opoly always “see” unemployment
“declining,” “levelling off,” “re-
ceding” and what not, meantime
filling press columns with long-
winded blurbs on what “their” re-
spective governments are doing to
provide “winter work projects.”

In this they get a helping hand
from the Dominion: Bureau of
Statistics and National Employ-
ment Services, both of which do a
brisk competitive business in jug-
gling decimal points, to prove that
the myth is more real than the
empty stomach. Unfortunately,
however, jobless workers and their
families cannot survive on DBS-
NES statistics.

The recent 56th annual conven-
tion of the Union of B.C. Munici-
palities held at Kelowna recently,
put its finger (for the umpteenth
time) on the sore spot; the failure
of both provincial and federal gov-
ernments to assume their respon-
sibilities on municipal financing,
thus rendering it impossible for
the municipalities to even begin to
“cope” ‘with overall municipal
needs and the plight of their resi-
dent unemployed.

_ UBCM president A. P. Murison

Pacific Tribune

Phone MUtual 5-5288
Editor — TOM McEWEN
Managing Editor — BERT WHYTE

Published weekly at
Room § — 426 Main Street
Vancouver 4, B.C.

Printed in a Union Shop

Subscription Rates:
One Year: $4.00
Six Months: $2.25

Canadian and Commonwealth
countries (except Australia): $4.00
one year. Australia, United States and
all other couniries: $5.00 one year.

EDITORIAL PAGE *

of North Cowichan made it clear
that just so long as municipal rey-
enues have to be spent on services
which are rightly the responsibil-
ity of provincial and federal gov-
ernment, nothing is left for badly-
needed municipal works projects.
UBCM financial report notes that
such a situation “keeps municipal-
ities continually on the _ bread-
dine: . 32

Socred Provincial Secretary
Wesley Black’s announcement to
the UBCM convention that “his”
government would “pay 25 percent
of the labor costs of approved pro-
jects,” with a possible similar par-
siminious “handout” from Ottawa
may net a handful of Tory or So-
cred votes, but it doesn’t begin to
meet the needs. of the municipal-
ities nor provide adequate “winter
work” projects.

It is time the trade unions and
the unemployed themselves began
to take a stronger hand with this
sort of perennial “coping,” and to-
gether with municipal govern-
ments, demand that the millions
now going down the drain for
armaments, be spent on real “win-
ter’”—and summer projects!

RAFFIC congestion on the
First Narrows Bridge has long
ceased to be an academic question,
or a political football with the
“kick” always aimed at the motor-
ist. Nor will the (delayed) comple-
tion of the new Second Narrows
Bridge provide a solution. The
problem of traffic crossing Bur-
rard Inlet is one that grows almost
daily, accentuated by the hazards
of weather, accident, and toll col-
lection.

‘Socred Highways Minister Gag-
lardi recently “discovered” that
West Vancouver and environs is
Vancouver’s “bedroom,” where the
natives come to Vancouver daily to

work, then retire to their mountain |

fastness for the night’s sleep, thus
creating a traffic “problem” with
their coming and going. Hence
“Flying Phil” sees no urgent need
for extra facilities, bridge or tun-
nel to accommodate North Shore
Morpheus devotees.

——

Next came Socred Premier Ben- -

nett with a “suggested” (but not
stated) “solution.” Too many cars
on the Lions Gate with only “one
man” in them. A devoted ‘yes-man
for the B.C. Electric, no one should

Projects-not platitudes One or the other-now!

get the notion that the premict
was suggesting car owners om tht”
North Shore should go into the

“jitney” business. He was J
doing “what comes naturally” 10
Socred politician — finding a 84
pretext for doing nothing about it
At least not until he has the “g”
ahead” sign from B.C.’s top tral
sit monopoly, and some of the big
real estate sharks who have nevél
abandoned the hope of gettilé
their teeth into a chunk of Stanley
Park and other bridge or tune
approaches along both shore lines

Bennett’s announcement last
week that “his government ©
against construction of any ne
First Narrows crossing” and thal
“the time has passed when tlt
problem can be served by movillé
cars instead of people,”
else than a demagogic evasion of!
steadily growing problem.

A new six-lane bridge or tunnel
at First Narrows is needed nov
and no amount of Socred blah cal
obscure that need: Motor traffit
and B.C. citizens generally at
paying the shot in tolls, time all
inconvenience, and therefor
should be able to call it!

Tom
McEwen

OME of the more frank spokes-
men of the capitalist world
are beginning to tabulate Nikita
Khrushchev’s proposals for an end
to the coldwar and total disarma-
ment, in terms of economiics. In
general they are agreed that to

drastic policy changes, would
create an unprecedented crisis—
for them and the social system
they represent.

Just how many men in the
capitalist world now under arms
would be released for peaceful
creative labors is anybody’s guess,
but the total must run into mil-
lions. Add that to an already per-
manent and growing army of job-
less and the cause of capitalist
headaches from the Khrushchev
proposals becomes very obvious.

Then take the biggest of the big
monopolies, the people who make
super profits out of all wars, cold
or hot. The du Ponts, steel corpora-

tric, the chemical trust, plus a
score of other ‘industrial giants”
presently raking in the dough with

“impose” peace now, without some .-

tions, Westinghouse, General Elec- .

their ‘“cost-plus” research, manu-
facture and delivery of nuclear
and ‘‘conventional”’ armaments, for
whom the “dislocation of peace”
would be a major—but-not an in-
surmountable headache.

Then we have the politicians,

the brinkmanship ‘diplomats,’ the
brain-trusters, themselves so long
conditioned to a cold-cum-hot war
ideology, who can and do change
their thinking sometimes — when
subjected to the steady pressure
and insistance of the common
people for peace and the creative
economies of peace. For those lads
the Khrushchev proposals will be
difficult, but also. not unsurmount-
able. :
The Vancouver Sun edition of
September 22 had a very timely
editorial on “defense” spending
entitled “What Canada Could Do
With Its $2-billion Arms Outlay,”
based on the Khrushchev plan.
This editorial pointed out what is
already well known; that Canada
spends some $2-billion annually
on war purposes, while U.S. “de-
fense”’ spending totals some $5-
billion or more annually. Add to
that the “defense” billions spent by
Britain, France and other Euro-
pean $-satellite states and the
staggering total, if put to peaceful
uses, would assure every living
being in every corner of the world
an abundance of food, clothing,
shelter, knowledge, culture, plus
the greatest freedom of all—free-
dom from fear and want.

' work for all.

-much more useful than building a

Where to begin “beating. our
swords into’ plowshares?” Here in
B.C. there isn’t a single municip-—
ality which hasn’t got a pressing
need; a new school, a_ hospital,
recreational facilities, new housing
for senior citizens, pensioners, the
ordinary John Doe citizen, miles”
of roads (with or without the
Gaglardi “inconvenience’’), decent
pensions for veterans, widowed
mothers and senior citizens, public
power projects, scholarship incen-—
tives, new industries, heavy and
secondary, farm aid and develop-
ment—there’s no end to the use
ful things the billions that now go
down the drain for war could be
used for. All that would be re
quired would be about three
months “re-tooling’”’, mentally, and
at the point of production, to make
the creative objectives of peace

Building a thousand homes is

missile base. Shooting rockets at
the moon for the advancement of
knowledge is much better than
shooting rockets to kill and des-
troy. A new hospital in a B.C.
community is far more valuable
than $400-million dollars down a
drain for a mythical “defense”
weapon. The comparisons are end-
less and often odious. Khrushchev’s
plan offers mankind a future. The
alternative is ‘a world covered
with graves and ashes.”

Yes Sir, as the Sun editorial
correctly put it, this is something
“that can’t be pigeon-holed!”

a
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_ October 2,

1959—PACIFIC TRIBUNE—Page |