McEwen

Tom

“BROTHER, can you spare a dime?”
Looking over a number of mon-
opoly balance sheets for the past year
with their imposing array of profits,
the question finds a ready answer.
There are plenty of dimes to go around.
In the lumber industry, the Mac-
Millan and. Bloedel interests which
have joined other big lumber outfits
in howling to high heaven about the
“high wages” of loggers and mill-
workers “pricing us out of the mar-

ket,” wound up its 1955 operations

with $18 million net profit. And Mac-
Millan is only one of the big monopoly
tycoons in the annual profit rakeoff!

The B.C. Electric, which loves to
Pose as a misunderstood philanthrop!-
tal institution while it hangs on tena-
Ciously to unauthorized ‘fares, fran-
chises and sundry hydro and natural
Sas pipeline deals, came through 1995
~ with a modest profit take of $7 million
net. With the B.C. Electric’s ability
to juggle figures that is probably much
“loWer than the actual “take”! ,
Anyway, it’s not bad considering
the additional cost of having to under-
take the wrecking of a good union to
“consolidate” , wage levels.
International Nickel Company of
Canada, in which John Foster Dulles
is one of the key directors, shit a Hew
profit high in 1955 with $91,566,566
‘The hardrock miners and smelter
Workers should be the wealthiest men
in the country, but of course, with
“Such unearned wealth in the pockets
of others, they are not. ;
_ Railroad workers, once the “aristo-
crats” of Canadian labor, now in the
lowest wage category — and now mov-
ing into a big struggle to “repair the
breach” — will be happy to know that
the CPR “earned” a net profit of over
“$44 million in 1955, truly a happy
augury for a big railroad wage boost
now, ;
er oe ee eee ae Sag
Even the Hudson’s Bay Company
Which got the best part of Canada as
8 gift away back in the 17th century
“id very well in 1955, coming out on
top with a $5.5 million net boodle.
Best of all, of course, is Canadian
Dividend and Compound Fund, a Wall
treet outfit which extracts dividends
Tom dividends — a-leech which fat-
€Ms on leeches. During 1955 this
Sutfit upped its “assets” and its divi-
dends by 300 percent, or from $1.25
billion dollars in 1954 to close to $5
Mion in 1955. ae
ho says Wall Street hasn’t “confi-
dence” in Canadians to pile up the
Profits? : ‘
_, The struggle for ‘substantial wage
hikes during 1956-57 need not be held
ack by some indecisive souls ponder-
me the old stock question, can industry
afford” such wage increases. They
Pfofit balance sheets of industry are
the best reply to the kind of ,eyasion-
ot only can they “afford” it, but
Y. the Moral and economic: strength
®t a united trade union movement,

they must be compelled to disgorge it.
| eee:

Pacific Tribune

Published weekly at
Room 6 — 426 Main Street
=e Vancouver 4, B.C. ’
_,. Editor — TOM McEWEN
psetiate Editor — HAL GRIFFIN
Usiness Manager — RITA WHYTE
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EDITORIAL PAGE

Time for a new policy
on the gas pipeline

OWHERE in the annuals of
Canadian development has
less statemanship been .shown or

more evidence given of outright

conspiracy to squander the nation’s
resources than in the St. Laurent
government's handling of the
Trans-Canada natural gas pipeline.

As a lead editorial in the Van-
couver Herald of March 20 states:
“Gradually, over the nation, there
is forming an awareness that the
time has come for tearing up old
approaches and facing the pipe-
line problem anew.’

To save this country’s priceless
natural gas resource, certain things
must be done immediately. The
policies of Trade Minister C. Dp
Howe must be scrapped and with
them Trans-Canada Pipelines Ltd.,
the Yankee setup engineered by

Howe to effect this “‘gigantic give-
away of a priceless and irreplace-
able resource,’ as the Canadian
Congress of Labor has described
the government's policy.
~ Canadians in all walks of life,
from Conservatives to CCFers and
Communists, are angered at see-
ing our rich resources handed over
piecemeal to U.S. monopolists,
since with the surrender of our
political independence — the give
away of our national sovereignty.
Instead of Howe and St. Laurent
haggling with TransCanada Pipe-

lines over its April *30 franchise

deadline. a federal authority should
be established to begin the building

of a publiclyowned natural gas

a

pipeline, by and for Canadians —
a pipeline to which the B. C. pipe-
line now under way can be linked
to make it truly a national under-
taking.

This is what the Canadian people
want: An end to the Howe-US.

‘conspiracies against the national

interest and a new ‘“‘do it our
selves’ policy to develop. our
national heritage. Howe was elec-
ted to serve the country — not to

auction it off to ‘any select group
of Yankee bidders. “

|| | : I HLL

* This spring, as for a century past,

this pear tree at Fort Langley will
bloom again. It was brought around
Cape Horn 100 years ago and planted
on Hudson’s Bay Company land.

— Working class unity.

See eager praise of the capitalist
press for the decisions of the
Council of the Socialist Inter-
national, meeting at Zurich, Swit-
zerland, “‘rejecting all forms of
political cooperation with commun-
ism, ' is worthy of careful appraisal.
The hand-of the U.S. State De-
partment could be seen in some of
the Zurich deliberations, just. as it

is apparent in the “‘free’’ press -

chorus of approval.

Such praise is interesting, but
only insofar as it expresses cold
war hopes that the hand of friend-

‘ship and unity between all social-

ist-thinking and non-socialist peo-
ples for peace and progress, ex-
tended by the 20th Congress of the
Communist Party of the Soviet
Union, will be studiously ignored
and rejected.

But throughout ‘the world mil

lions of people, Socialists and non-
Socialists alike, do believe that:

“The interests of peace urgently
require the united action of all
peace-loving forces. It is therefore
of vital importance that the division
that exists to some extent among
these forces, above all the split in
the working class movement,

‘should be healed, working class
unity achieved, and business-like
contracts established between the
Communist parties and Socialists,
and also other parties really desirous
of upholding peace, fighting against
imperialist oppression and defend-
ing the interests of the working
people, democracy and the in-
dependence of their country.”

It is just possible the ‘‘free’’
press has been a little premature
with its praise. Even the Socialist-
‘sponsored motions in the B. C, and
Saskatchewan legislatures, for peace
and the banning of the H-bomb,

show how wrong it can be. ,

Hal

, ILL Parry’s article on the argil-
W lite totem carvings of the Haida
Indians seems to have aroused con-
siderable interest among our read-
ers. The question most of them ask
is one that Parry, who incidentally
is a staff writer for the San Fran-

in a position to answer.
‘Tm told this is a dying art,’ _one
reader writes. “Surely this is a
strange contradition when so many
people are anxious to keep it alive.
I would like to know what is being
e.”
aoa answer is, very little.
Le * * *
There are perhaps a dozen good
carvers left on the Queen’ Charlotte
Islands today, most of them around
i e,
Bie of them is Lewis Collinson.
Another is Tim Pearson, a man of

cisco Daily People’s World, was not |

65° who only started carving two
years ago. :

The two men who have done
most to revive the once flourishing
art are Wilson Duff of the Provin-
cial Museum and Bill Reed of the
CBC. Some time ago they wrote to
the National Museum at Ottawa sug-

eff gesting that copies of Marius Bar-
rl in : beau’s works on totems be sent to
the Haidas. :

The books were sent and as a
result the art has been given a new
leasé on life.

Today a few of the younger In-

- dians are carving the traditional.
argillite forms, using Barbeau’s
works as a guide. The best known of
them is Gordon Cross, a son of John
Cross, who was himself considered
the best of the Haida carvers since
the famous Edenshaw. ,

. But Reed is not optimistic for the

. future. :

“Tm afraid Cross and his group
represent the last of the Haida car-
vers,” he says. “The traditional
totem carving is a fixed static form
which has nothing in common with
the lives of the people today and
so they have little interest in keep-

~ ing it alive.” :
* * * \

The contradiction is that most of
the carvings, good, bad and indif-

ferent, are bought up on the islands
or in Prince Rupert. Relatively few
of them find their way into Van-
couver art stores and there they
seldom remain long on the shelves.

“T had five last summer,” one art
dealer told me. “One went to
Mexico City, one to Halifax, two
to Toronto and one was bought here.
I don’t know when Ill get any
more.” :

The price ranges from $5 an inch
for the smaller poles to $10 for
the larger ones. :

The Provincial Museum at Vic-
toria and the Vancouver City Mus-
eum both have fine collections of
Haida carvings, but many of the
best specimens are in foreign mus-
eums or private collections. Pioneer
settlers acquired the carvings and
sent them to relatives overseas who
regarded them as little more than
interesting curios. One fine piece
now in Vancouver City Museum was
bought in a second hand shop in a
Devonshire village for the equiv-
alent. of a dollar. Yet it could not
be bought here for $200.

The answer to perpetuating the
art would seem to lie in adapting
i to express the lives of the Haidas
today and in obtaining government
assistance to train the carvers and
organize cooperatives to market
their work..

‘ =

MARCH 16, 1956 — PACIFIC TRIBUNE — PAGE 5__

Pana