‘Get the Picture?’

FLASHBACKS FROM
THE COMMUNIST PRESS

50 years ago...

WORK FROM
4:30 a.m. to 9 p.m.

BORDEN — The prairie har-
vest hand requires no: “daily
dozen” to keep himself in trim.
Here is his daily working menu:

Up and at it, 4:30 a.m., to feed,
water and harvest teams; break-
fast at 5 a.m.; 6 a.m., in the field
until 11:30, when one hour is al-
lowed for dinner, then at it
again until 4, when five whole
minutes are allowed to gulp
down a cup of tea or swallow a
leather pie crust. This extra is
given as a “receiver” and the re:
juvenated hand is then expected
to make the pace until 7:30 or
thereabout when supper is serv-
ed, and after fixing the team for
the night he “calls it a-day”
about 9- p.m. '

A stone is as soft as a pillow
for a weary body, and on this
principle the harvest hand is al-
lowed to select his choice sleep-
ing spot on the quarter section
of land, and he lies down to plea-
sant dreams of the coming day.

The Worker, Oct. 10, 1923

25 years ago...

ALBERTA PRICES
STILL GOING UP
EDMONTON — Living costs
are still soaring in Alberta. Hair-
cuts in Edmonton and Calgary
will be increased by 10 cents and
shaves by 15 cents.

Calgary gasoline prices have
gone up half a cent a gallon (it
seems that the more oil we find
in Alberta, the higher goes the
price of gas). Calgary bread
prices may increase one cent a
loaf due to the blanket permis-
sion given by the WPTB. (At pre-
sent bread sells from 10 to 13
cents a loaf.)-

Milk in the Crows Nest Pass
and in Drumheller Valley (both
coal mining areas) has gone up
two cents a quart and now sells
at 21 cents.

Calgary weekly streetcar and
bus passes have gone up from
$1.25 to $1:50. These are only a
few of the increases in the cost

of living that took place over the

last few weeks.
Tribune, Oct. 11, 1948

Worth quoting:

“Since the source of violence rests with reaction, whether or not
it will appear depends not so much on the will to use it but rather
upon the capacity to use it. This is why, in the history of Marxism,
there have been differing evaluations, at different times, as to the
possibilities of the peaceful or relatively peaceful transition to social-

I SS

*“, .. violence is not an organic part of the definition of the process
of revolution, and that conventional presentation which equates
violence with revolution is false. And we conclude that the conven-
tional view places the onus for the appearance of violence in con-
nection with basic.social change upon the advocates of such change

is altogether wrong...

—Herbert Aptheker, The Nature of Democracy,
Freedom and Revolution

Editor — MAURICE RUSH
Published weekly at Ford Bldg., Mezzanine No. 3, 193 E. Hastings St.,
Vancouver 4, B.C. Phone 685-5288.
Business & Circulation Manager, FRED WILSON
Subscription Rate: Canada, $5.00 one year; $3.00 for six months
North and South America and Commonwealth countr‘2s, $6.00 one year.
All other countries, $7.00 one year

ENS

PACIFIC TRIBUNE 12> FRIDAY OCTOBER 12, 1973 —PAGE'4

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Editorial Comment...

Support day of prices protest

Efforts to straitjacket Canada’s work-
ing people, with living costs pushed to
unbearable heights and interlocked
with the smothering of wage increases,
are revealed in the federal govern-
ment’s own statistics.

The National Anti-Poverty Orga-
nization warned on Thanksgiving eve,
“there are many people (in Canada)

who just won’t make it this winter.
They'll starve to death.”

The Canadian Labor Congress (with
1,800,000 members), in an Oct. 3 re-
lease, was “greatly concerned that wage
gains are being wiped out by rapidly
rising living costs . . .” Its conclusion:
“The time has come when wage earners,
in order to protect themselves and their
families, must become much more mili-
tant.” With that statement must go the
assumption that the CLC will back up
such workers with its full strength.

Statistics Canada’s figure, a damning
indictment of the anti-labor forces, at
that, speaks only of the highest-paid
half of the work force, whose average
weekly wage is $161.32. Millions of
working Canadians earn less; and those
on fixed incomes are nowhere in sight
of such statistics.

Even this best-paid section of work-
ers fell behind the soaring cost of liv-
ing, Statistics Canada admits. The
mealy-mouthed denial by Finance Min-
ister John Turner’s office, saying “peo-
ple are at least holding their own,” is
not worth the spit it takes to cover it.

Back in May, the Communist Party
of Canada, in a Marxist, not a bour-
geois analysis, stated that wages were
falling behind the inflationary price
rise. There was a chorus of denials.

Now, a non-government analysis

quoted in the Toronto Globe and Mail,
says workers who earned that $161.32

in July this year, had $12.42 less pur
chasing power from it than in July
1972. Average increases, it said, were

$11.64. So if you got $161.32, and if you”

were in on the average wage increase,
you fell behind by 78 cents a week.

Canadians by the provinceful were
swept back far more than the full
$12.42-a-week loss in purchasing pow-
er. And never mind the ifs, productiv-
ity and profits are soaring: Canadian
workers’ purchasing power should be

_rising.

* * *.

One of the weakest links in mondis
oly’s conspiracy is food prices. Literal

ly millions of Canadians now agree:

Food prices must be stopped in thelr
tracks and rolled back!

Groups united in the Coalition 0
Roll Back Prices will answer with 4
Canada-wide Day of Protest, Oct. 16.
Along with people from distant points
a truly massive turnout from Ontarl0
and Quebec is needed, on which the gov
ernment may judge whether or no
consumers are serious.

Back home, local anti-inflation pro
tests should include no-nonsense 1
structions to MPs before their retur?
to Ottawa.

The Ottawa demonstrators rely 0”
a tremendous backup of local demo:
strations, telegrams to government, am
the harvesting of massive support for
showdown battles with the profiteer®
and their parliamentary hirelings.

With every method available—every
voice heard on the Day of Protest, oF
15, will be counted a blow against hig
prices.

—_—

No contradiction in
‘fighting’ for peace

What is peace? — an armistice, a
quieting of guns? Even that is far from
achievement on a world scale.

But the word peace implies more.
Can people know peace under the yoke
of colonialist oppression practiced by
Portugal, under armed occupation of
their homelands, as Israel has occupied

‘Arab lands for many years?

Is peace possible for people ravaged
by fascism in Chile and Greece (to name
but two), or by apartheid in South
Africa? Would any of us live at peace
with that?

A state of peace implies human ful-
fillment, human progress. Some think
it a contradiction in terms to “fight”
for peace. But the striving for peace
is no tea party. Peace must be fought
for politically, economically, socio-
logically, and sometimes militarily, as
the people of Guinea-Bissau were forc-
ed to prove.

Fighters for peace have to withstand
the blows of all the forces of back-
wardness, who insult and label us, im-

prison-us- —-whe exploit humans -to -

. peace the-world over. « so.0.,

their last spark of life in the quest for
profits and power.

All these considerations will find oy
pression in the most representatl¥
meeting ever of people from all wa

of this planet’s life — the World Com

gress of Peace Forces, in Moscow,
tober 25-29.

Such a Congress of: 3,000 to 4,004
delegates, including several Unite
Nations commissions, can as never
fore, unite the world’s millions 0? ”
minimum program to open for humé g
kind the opportunities of all-embrac!?
peace.

To work at-peace, to fight for peace -

demands making the Congress findin€”
and directives a part of daily routl!
Millions of Canadians dependent on Oa
men’s media, and so deprived of
real essence of the Congress, have
right to be informed. And peace fi
ers have a duty to inform them.

That duty extends to recruiting 0
fighters for peace, to speed the, nc?
when mankind battles with ee
against sickness, with ideas in the #
to conquer space and the elements, nis
when no oppressor will dare raise ot
hand against the powerful millions ~~
ape

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