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Tom McEwen Editor

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Hitting where it hurts

HE UNITED NATIONS wili be helped by plain talk.
| Backstairs methods of murky diplomacy have no place
in the fight for peace’ Warmongering should te called
warmongering, and to call it by its right name, instead of
“curb the veto” or “you can’t inspect our atom bombs,” will
only help to clarify the situation. :
Appeasement of U.S. world-wide interference in other
people’s affairs paves the road to war. To condone British
actions in Palestine or Dutch aggression in Indonesia is to
encourage the incendiaries. :
Underneath all the hysteria and misrepresentation which
follow the speech of Andrei Vishinsky to the UN Assembly
is the plain truth that the people of the world don’t want
war. But not wanting it is not enough. The people must
be able to recognize the aggressive, pro-fascist policies which
sabotage peace.
Vishinsky hit where it hurt, and hit hard. \
He named people and newspapers in the USA engaged
in the business of warmongering and fomenting provocations
against the USSR. He could have added to the list a large
section of the Canadian press, together with the Kirkconnels,
Farrises and members of government, who follow the Tru-
man Doctrine of atomic-dollar aggression to “save the world
from communism.”
The squeals and' yells which emanate from all directions
are tributes to the effectiveness of plain and truthful talk in

= Vishinsky has put into words what millions of

people in all continents know or suspect—that the Anglo-

American bloc is striving to preserve and extend imperialist
domination at the expense of peace.

-Marshall’s plan of a “Little Assembly” to replace the

_ UN Security Council is nothing more nor less than the

creation of an international rubber stamp to sanction Anglo-

_US imperialist aggression-

One-track ‘brain trusters’

RYING to “explain” rising prices by blaming it on
high wages and shorter working hours is much like
the game of blaming Russia because Anglo-American
imperialism wants to turn the UN into a nice little docile
replica of the defunct League of Nations but just cannot
manage it—at least yet. Both arguments of course stem
from the same root, and neither will stand too close investi-
gation. But both are worked overtime by the lords of press

Both these arguments serve as a two-stringed fiddle to
the editorial scribes of “Western Business and Industry,”
mouthpiece of big business in B.C. In each successive issue
they are either twanging on one or the other string, some-
times on both simultaneously.

In the September issue the “WBI” is alarmed because
the “Communists grow bolder.” They are also alarmed at
the “obtuseness” of non-communist labor leaders who fail
“to see the advantages” of Bill 39, and who have allowed
themselves to be tricked into criticising the legislation, along
with the Reds-” “WBI” lauds the Taft-Hartley bill in the

describing it as “boldly realistic,” since it presumes that

ists at the head of labor unions are traitors to. the
_ US because they are the sworn agents of a foreign country.”
This snappy touch of Hitlerism is supposed to clinch the
argument, and impress upon the powers-that-be the neces-
sity of “getting tough” with the communists.
_ There is reason for this perpetual smokescreen of red-
_ baiting—profits. Alongside of their anti-communist rant the
issue of rising prices is “scientifically” dealt with. What
makes them go up? Three things—the export market which
cannot be profitable unless production costs come down.
_ Organized labor’s drive for shorter work weeks, with a too
low hourly production. And three, “uneconomically low
price ceilings set by government.”

The big business brain thinks of foreign markets in
terms of cut-throat competition, based on coolie labor pro-
duction costs. Its slavish organs never tire of repeating the
formula that must come down and production must
go up. If its hack writers would care to look into the
authoritative statistical data on Canadian production and
labor costs, they would see that this has already taken place.
That production over 1939 has more than doubled, while
nominal wages are only barely above the 1939 level. And,
“WBI” should not complain about the price ceilings since

the King pekinese. _ = a real job of work for big

business in this respect, as the profit indices of all leadin

Canadian industries will show, ai =
But the smokescreen of “more production - lower wages -

longer hours” plus unbridled red-baiting is still their No. 1

_ formula for hoodwinking the people.

_ FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 1947

SUPER—DUPER ;

FOR SUPERIOR PEOPLE

STEAKS ¢

)

“With price ceilings gone we shoul
& make enough to afford a depression.”

As we see it

F you smoke-.. are you

the proud possessor of

a ‘Kirsten’ pipe? They
come in two sizes and cost
anywhere from $10 to $16 in
Canada. A good friend of mine
sent me one from Anchorage,
Alaska for Xmas a couple of
years ago. Made me feel like
a small-town stock broker, saun-
tering down street smoking a
streamlined: fluted all-nickle and
briar production. Now I leave it
on the rack. Somehow during
the last two months it tastes like
hell.

Reason? Well, since June the
boys of Local 79 of the Interna-
tional Association of Machinists
(AFL) at the ‘Kirsten’ Pipe Co.,
Seattle, have been on. strike,
fighting against a 15 to 22*cents
per hour wage cut. Mr. Gunn,
the big shot of the ‘Kirsten’ pipe
outfit wants to make more money
out of the ‘Kirsten’ invention.

Local 79 got out a leaflet which
gives some revealing figures of
labor costs in the manufacture
of this ‘exclusive’ pipe. The basic
machine operation in making a
‘Kirsten’ pipe or cigarette holder
is the milling machine. It cuts
excess material; off the stem,
shaping the streamlined flutes.

Before the strike a machinist on-

this operation (which is the ma-
jor part of the pipe) got $1.31
per hour. He shaped 1500 of
these stems in an 8-hour day,
which, boiled down amounts to
7;10ths of one cent per. pipe.
On the basis of Local 79’s ‘cal-
culations on this one major op-
eration on a ‘Kirsten’ pipe, it

_is obvious that on the mouth-

piece and bowl, even allowing
that labor costs are ten times the
7/10ths that go into the stem,
the whole labor cost of a ‘Kir-
sten’ does not exceed 75 cents.
Yet smokers like you and I—
(unless someone makes you a
present of one), must cough up
from $10 to $16 for one of these
nicotine samovars in Canada.
Next time you ogle one of
these streamlined beauties in
your popular tobacco:store, keep
two things in mind; first, that
the ‘Kirsten’ product pays its
manufacturers approximately
800 percent profit on every unit,
and second, that the Washing-
ton State Machinists Council, and

monthly or yearly

Local 79 IAM, supporting their
families on meagre strike bene-
fits, appeal to you not to buy
a ‘Kirsten’ until Mr. Gunn agrees
to keep his wage schedule movy-

ing in the same direction as
prices and profits . . . upwards.

CCORDING to the ‘News-Her-
ald’ of September 19, Admir-

al Rowland Nugent, RN, is sell-
ing, out and going ‘home’. En-
tirely aside from the Admiral’s
worthy decision, the ‘Herald’
news item is a tearful gem,
tinted with a simple naivete
which would have made the late

Bob Edwards of the old ‘Calgary.

Eyeopener’
goric pills.

“Another of the noted homes
of English gentry on Vancouver
Island is going under the auc-
tioneer’s ham- :; Sipe acoscass

reach for the pare-

Miers).
beautiful Som-
enos Lake in
the Lake Cow-
ichan valley,
two miles from
this most Brit-
ish town in
North America.
Admiral Nu-
gent, like a
number of
other English
people, is going ;
back to England to live. Many
English people who have been
living in country hideaways on
Vancouver Island are finding it
increasingly difficult to get along
on their remittances from home,
with the value of the pound in
Canadian dollars down. Too, a
number of British people feel it
unpatriotic to be taking money
out of England, when England
is so hard pressed for money
% ”

Tom McEwen

At the turn of the century
Canada had a goodly population
of English ‘remittance men’,
scions of the British nobility,
who for one reason or another
were sent ‘to the colonies on a
‘remittance’
to keep their aristocratic didoes
from further soiling the baronial
escutcheon.

We met many of them in the
old days, ‘gentlemen and patriots
all’, and if their hand shook
a little when changing their
pounds for dollars at the local

sense the ‘remittance’ man W&*

the Chinese communists.” |

By Tom McEwen

bank, the tremors did not stem
from ‘unpatriotic’ qualms. Mostly
it was from too long and too i=
tense association with John Bat
leycorn. Z

In the strictest Oxforaia?
a gentleman, just as in the strict:
est workingclass sense he was
and is a social parasite. If he ®
now finding it difficult to 8%
along on his remittance due ©
atomic dollar regulations, don’t —
let us put his return ‘home —
down to patriotic motives. The
very least we can do for
British worker who earns what
he eats by the sweat of his broW
is to maintain his faith in OU
intelligence. :
> e ea
WHEN the King government
sold. approximately fiftee?
million dollars worth of war 78
terial to the Dutch it was just
a. ‘straight business deal’.
suggestion that by so doing ee
ada was backing Dutch imperial
ism against the Indonesian '
ple was ‘ridiculous and absur —
and could only emanate
such places as the Kremlin.

Last week the Canadian Prey
reported that Chiang Kelsie

is now negotiating with Or
for the purchase of 150 Mosaur

fighter-bomber planes. The 7 es ae
has still to be settled—the ~
quitos need a bit of tuning oR :
and of course we would Hike |
get as much of the PU ae
price as possible in America”
dollars. All strictly business, -
Just as an afterthought, 1
C.P. report says: “It was plete
here (Ottawa) that this i ine
handled as a straight that
deal. There is no suggestion port
there is an effort on the oe
of Canada to back the against

nationalist government

te
We had thought that what 7,
Chinese people needed ™ ;
food, clothing, medical
machinery . . . all those
which make life a shade
for a war-ravaged people
we have been wrons- ~~ o¢
helps us keep the aie
killing on ‘a strictly PUS
basis’ thus preserving UF

trality’ . . . and our profits:

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—¥ AGE