RE you on the Vancouver civic voters’ list? Civic politics being what they are, the fact that you may have been on last year’s list is no guarantee that you are on now. To register your vote come December against . Non-Partisan- BCElectric domination of Vanocuver’s city hall make sure you are on the voters’ list. The final registration for 1949 ends on Sep- tember 14. You can register at the city clerk’s office, third floor, city hall, any day from Sep- tember 8 to the 14, between the hours of 8:30 a.m. and 9 p.m. If you live in Vancouver, make sure you check your registration as a voter. All property owners who are British subjects by birth or’naturalization, 21 years or over, are entitled to vote. All tenants of property assessed at $300 or over have similar rights. In the case Are you on the voters’ list ? of tenants, a husband and wife must show that both contribute to rental or other civic taxes to establish the eligibility of both to vote. Non- Partisan. interpretation of an archaic city charter can and has barred eligible civic voters from ex- ercising their right of franchise. “There are no longer any racial exclusions’ says an advertise- ment issued by the city clerk’s office, but there are still plenty of “property’’ disqualifications of Vancouver citizens who pay civic taxes and rents without democratic representation. In North Vancouver and Burnaby the voters’ list closes on October 31. Check your name on the V. ancouver voters’ list. Make sure it gets there within the final regis- tration period. Register now to oust the Non- Partisan machine in December. n 3 Action needed now ATIONAL Employment Service officials re- port a “general tightening up” of business and jindustry this year with respect to jobs~ As of June 30 of this year a total of 21,640 applications for work had been filed in B.C. as against 2,938 jobs listed. Roughly, about eight persons for each job. Although the applications for work run close to the number filed in the same period last year,'the num-. ber of jobs listed has almost been cut in half. An NES official is quoted as saying that the “employment situation is. levelling off,’’ which means in less official language that a permanent army of unemployed is already in the making. Some reasons for this “trend’’ are given by NES—reasons which would be humorous if they weren't pregnant with tragedy. For instance, “. . . Employers are more selective in hiring ... are demanding more work _from employees and are increasing efficiency so that less men are needed to do the work.” What the wage earners are to about this “trend” is apparently not the business or concern of N.E.S. One fact, however, cannot be ignored; this “selec- ' tive’ hiring, with more production (speedup) de- manded from workers employed, plus a chronic fall- ing off of export markets, all point up to an un- employment problem double the proportions of last winter, when NES reported 53,868 last February looking for jobs which had been Marshall-planned out of existence. With pre-election promises of “prosperity’’ al- ready heavily discounted, it is time organized labor took stock of {and action on) the growing -unem-. ployment in its ranks. Otherwise what the NES calls a “trend” will rapidly become a ‘“‘condition’”’ parallel to the Hungry Thirties. Who can’t afford peace? HILE Yankee consulates in various Canadian centers have been busy during recent weeks devising red-bogey obstacles to delegates from attending the Continental, Congress for Peace in Mexico City this week, the Calgary Al- bertan ran a story on August 9-which should make ‘Canadians sit up and think. Under the caption ““World Cannot Afford ~ Peace,” the article points out the dangers to our economic structure, were peace miraculously to de- cend upon the earth. “Were it not for the fact that ithe great powers are spending more than one-third ‘of their national revenues preparing for the Third “World War, the unemployment position today would ibe far worse.” There you have it in simple prose: Our Mar- shall planned-cum-Atlantic-pact ‘“‘economic prosper- A job we URING the provincial election campaign, At- i” torney-General Gordon Wismer referred to this paper as “a rag called the Pacific. Tribune.” Numerous similar epithets are heaved at us from time to time by equally “high-placed” officials and publications. We regard this as proof that we are ~ on the right side of the tracks. If these sources start- ed handing us bouquets it would be a sure sign that something was wrong—with us. However, there IS something wrong with us. Our circulation is much too far below what. these times of “‘dollar crisis,” high profits and low wages, demand. The Pacific Tribune, with its arsenal of stop Canadian - canalldo ity’ is geared to war—because only through war can our “economic structure” be saved. \ On that thesis it is easier to understand why it is taboo for a Canadian (whose grandfather might have been an active trade unionist) to pass through or over U.S, territory en route to Mexico City to speak for peace. The dollar world of Wall Street «|. cannot afford peace.” Like all predatory im- perialisms, war is its highest political expression— shaping the pattern of its “‘economic structure.” That is why people who think in terms: of peace, jobs, homes, social security, democracy, are TOM McEWEN As We See lt —— Ce raiser for Labor Day was the latest report of the DO minion Bureau of Statistics, showing Canada’s cost-of-living 1 dex at an all-time high of 162.8, an increase of 61.5 percent ove? August, 1939. The average Canadian housewife (by trade union stam dards) can figure this out by more simple arithmetic. Her August 1949 dollar is worth about 39 cents of her August 1939 dollar. As 4" aid to “prosperity” her husband is strongly advised not to go after any wage increases in 1949. Labor Minister “Humph” Mitchell topped off the annual spate of Labor Day “messages” with the demand for an all-out “purge of the trade unions of what he calls “destructive elements,” and by that he means workers WhO — think—with damn good reason—that a greater H portion of monopoly profits could be transform into increased wages—without a correspon rise in prices. ; As a counter to that kind of thinking, noth ing short of a major trade union split will satisfy our bumbling minister, or those -he sounds 0° for. Having set his sights for an era of cate collaboration designed to keep wages down 4m profits up, it is natural for Humph to want Gide thing “purged” that gets in the way of this capi talist utopia. Hence his Labor’ Day “messas® to the unions to clean out those “subversives” who want their wages to keep up with living costs, w CCL president Aaron Mosher sees labor “deeply concerned lag seasonal fluctuations in industry and with problems of internation trade.” Such remarkable foresight is uncanny. Could it be that an top-level CCL-CCF endorsation of the Marshall plan aid with i - Atlantic pacts for war on socialism, Aaron is beginning to se e branded as ‘“‘subversives.” It also explains, despite © American domination in Canada, why a growing number of Canadians believe peace and not war is. the only solid foundation upon which a lasting prog-— ress and prosperity can be built. Only those who profit from war can “afford” it. : \ facts on the warmongers and profiteers, is not reach- ing the number of workers it can and should. Beginning September 15 the “PT” is appealing to its readers and supporters—to its tireless group of press builders, to help boost our paid-up circulation by 2,000 new and old subscribers between now and the end of October. ; We know it can be Abie: We know of no better method of enlightening workers on the burning issues of the day, than by doing it. ‘ ‘ Let’s get set to carry the Pacific Tribune to 2,000 new readers. . entitled Information On The Marshall Plan For Americans glimmer of reason in dead smokestacks, disappearing markets—an?e - 39-cent dollars in the worker’s pay envelope? After all, ARE should have learned by now that shrinking pay envelopes, skyrocke ting prices and profits are the end-product of his delayed discovery of “industrial fluctuations’ and market “problems.” : Figure it out for yourself! In 1917, approximately 198 millio? people of the vast Soviet Union moved out of the orbit of capitalist : exploitation into the new plane of socialism. Since 1945, some ninety millions, comprising the populations of Poland, Hungary, Czech slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria and Albania, followed suit, and set UP forms of Peoples’ Democratic republics and social systems—not at all to the liking of “Western democracy.” lion . Next, 300 million Chinese workers and peasants have complete? “the, first cycle of their revolution by kicking out the Chiang K* shek nationalist “government” and its Wall Street backers, 22°° have set their feet firmly.upon the path of socialism. Totalled uP that represents roughly about one-fourth of the world’s people shy longer available (or amendable) to imperialist exploitation, whether — in the raw or with Marshall plan sugar-coating. ; To this can be added the millions of colonial peoples of ines Burma, Indo-China, the Viet Nam, Indonesia and the Near Has ‘ who are daily chopping away their imperialist chains. The fabulow profits from colonial exploitation which used to go into the pechye of those carrying “the white man’s burden” of stocks and bone», must now be used to maintain a standing army of police and soldiery to keep the colonial people in “that state of life which it has please! the gods of imperialism to call them.” ; Thus an awful lot of people and an awful chunk (a most decisive chunk economically) of this world has “moved out” so to speak of OU! “Western way of life.” Boiled down to its simple proportions, “* imperialist world has shrunk to the point where it can no Jonge! survive. In the process of creating this shrunken imperialist wot we have “mastered tchnique.’ We can produce more~than ever before with less labor power—but the area in which we used filch raw materials and sell (at our price) has narrowed down. *- if that weren’t bad enough, we have draped a stainless steel curtain between ourselves and those millions. They are not permitted 44 buy from us at all, while other millions still supposed to be in “80° grace” can only buy what we have to sell with Yankee dollars~ — which they haven’t got! ; Small wonder that as the “dollar talks” open in Washingto? this week between top-level !U.S., British and Canadian “statesmen | on how to solve Britain’s “dollar crisis,” the press should headli™ the event with Gloom Grows As Dollar Talks Near. — Nor is it surprising that American tourists now applying ae passports for European tours, are supplied with a nice little isan Abroad—a condensed “reply” the “Communist-inspired” oppositio? to the Marshall plan. (Se : We'd sure like to be around when some pot-bellied se “ambassador of good-will” is explaining to an Italian or Fre? i housewife how she is better off on a diet of ERP Coca-Cola than s good Russian bread or British bacon, because she would lose ue dollar she hasn’t got by buying with her four shillings what dollar won’t give her. : * ‘ | oe : =n Fue ml anil OTECINIE. Z \ Miuwcasthuiaindhaiandenisillltvscahialtanr Nanavennsnete te | NH \. et ies IC ane ! Published Weekly at 650 Howe Street A By THE TRIBUNE PUBLISHING COMPANY LTD. Telephone MA. 5288 .Editor Tom McEwen Subscription Rates: ie Printed by Union Printers Ltd., 650 Howe Street, Vancouver. BO. yl PACIFIC TRIBUNE — SEPTEMBER 9, 1919 — pace §