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W hat about this
RECENT Vancouver News-Herald editorial

A lauds J. Stewart Smith, “deputy minister of
brokers” in the Coalition government, for going after
the get-rich-quick promoters of phoney mining and
oil stocks. These lads take the suckers for several
million dollars annually. With oil and mining in
the headlines almost daily, the job seems to be as
simple as taking candies from Junior.

Compared with the BCElectric fare racket, the
phoney oil and mining stock lads are amateurs.
The latter do have a modicum of restrictive legisla-
tion to contend with when playing the sucker racket.
But for the BCElectric it would appear to be “‘open

season” the year ‘round.

Fare promoter Dal Grauer goes to the Public
Utilities Commission and says, “We need another
two or three million. We're n
The PUC announces that its
ing BCElectric books

im increase on the flim

ot making a dime.”
“experts” are examin-
and promptly grants an inter-
sy pretext that it wants to give

squeeze-play

‘sucker racket’?

the company “some experience of the higher charges.”*
Neither Vancouver's “little Coalition”

city council
nor the Coalition government offers an

y objection.
For the BCElectric ‘this “experience”

less a pleasant and profitable one.

it is costly and can only be political

at the next election, it turns out

aldermen who consistently and flag

public interest.

is doubt-
For the public,
ly profitable if,
of office those
rantly abuse the

What grasping monopoly ever has any diffi-
culty in “proving” its needs to the government it
helped to place in office? The result here is that
instead of a sprinkling of suckers who take a flier
in “gilt-edged”’ phoney mining or oil stocks, B.C.’s
John Q. Public is taken for a dime ride—which

will cost him a cool million or more at the end of

the BCElectric fiscal line. :

It appears to us that some competent authority
should use the “interim” period to investigate both
the BCElectric and its PUC. British Columbians

just hate to be classed as suckers without protest,

~ Goalitions chickens moult

Ee Atominum or poverty.” This
Coalition Attorney General Gordon Wismer
placed the alternatives in his pre-election speeches.
“New pulp mills or industrial stagnation”” was an-
Coalition version of the same theme. A Coal-
ition government dedicated to “free enterprise’ would
attract capital investment to B.C. aid steer us down
the primrose path of “unprecedented prosperity.” A
F or any other kind of government spelled ‘‘poy-
erty” in Coalition jargon.
Now .the chickens are beginning to moult as
they clamber back to the old roost.
The big shots of the Aluminum Company of
: a have been around, but they are not going
to build . . . not yet. Maybe next year, or the
_ year after. Construction costs and markets, you
know—especially markets. Everything is so uncer-
tain, even the prospect of another war. They don’t
exactly say so, but that is what they mean in their
“explanations” of delay.
But it did make a bright picture on the Coalition

is how

Instead of new pulp mills ‘opening up the ones
in operation are closing down or going on sHort time.
0 markets for pulp. The dollar crisis cuts across
the Canadian market. The pulp dividend collectors
¢an stand a “recession,” but the workers can’t,
New cement plants projected in the Coalition’s
menu have solidified before being poured into the
“Promised mould of industrial expansion. Market
trouble again. Abroad, people permitted to buy
from Canada by the Marshall planners haven’t the
Yankee dollars to buy with. At home clipped pay
envelopes, part-time work and growing mass unem-
ployment knocks the economic props from under
basic domestic consumption and requirements,

_ of unemployed and part-time

Quietly, almost imperceptibly, _ the depression
settles on the land. Tucked away in odd corners
of community Papers one finds the “news” of layoffs
here and there. Pulp mills, logging camps, shingle
and lumber mills, closing down or going on’ “‘short
tme’” because of market difficulties. The big mon-
opolists hog the available markets left and the little
fellows are frozen out. Unemployment expands
as the Marshallized markets contract. ,

“Canada won't be affected by dollar crisis”
screams a press headline, but this graveyard whistl-
ing doesn’t help those deprived of the right to work,
or transform growing ghost towns into centers of
industrial prosperity. i

e elections are safely. over, the promises al-
ready half forgotten. The reactionary-inspired fears
that won votes for the Coalitionists and Liberals
are becoming grim realities to- thousands of workers
being tossed: onto the industrial scrap-heap, In
short, the economic crisis is not “coming”. [ft has?
come—with Canada caught “‘in the bight of the
(market) line.”

A united labor movement, standing solidly to-
gether, can meet the gathering storm head-on. ‘Dis-
united, the labor movement can be scattered like
dry grass before a hurricane. The growing ranks
workers show there’s

not much time left to choose.
% % #

Times change even city councils, but not the
BCElectric. Vancouver Sun files, show that as far
back as May 3, 1899, Vancouver's city council was
objecting to BCElectric’s practice of turning out
street lights on moonlit nights. Now the city council
doesn’t even object when the citizens are taken for a.
10-cent car ride. :

'

TOM McEWEN

_ As We See It _

ACK in 1923-24 when mass unemployment, shrinking markets a

high corporate profits were the order of the day, the pow
that-be hit’ upon a number of unique stunts, designed to take
people’s minds off their stomachs—and the incomes they didn’t hav

Big industrialists like Henry Ford and top Wall Streeters ¥
millions of dollars into the financing of Billy Sunday’s “strike
home-run-for-Christ” crusade. Billy hit the salva-
tion sawdust trail with the choice vocabulary of a
a baseball ump. “Why you low-down double-crossing
nation of ingrates, you grouch because you are not
making a million, because your wife cannot buy a
fur’ coat, because you cannot have T*bone steak
every day. How much do you miserable sinners
think Christ had?”

It went over big. Billy cleared a million himself
before the glamor tapered off. Then We had the
curvacious Aimee Semple McPherson who proved
a better’ distraction. Even the Babbits fell for §
Aimee’s husky fervor and appeal. A few badly- &
planned weekend romances lowered Aimee’s stock
with the rabble ... but not ~her bank account.

Despite such efforts to “solve” the growing economic crisis, Pay
envelopes just weren’t, and the masses continued to look upon

upholders of “peace, order and good government” with a jaundi
eye.

poure

* ~ a,

Then a new star arose to shine in the firmament, this time from
the jolly land of France. Monsieur M. Cuie visited America, and be
promoted in and by the best circles. M. Cuie jhas a sure-fire cur
for depression blues. Your wife perhaps grumbles because your Pe
envelope—if you have one—doesn’t stretch half-way around 1ex
family budget. Saere, a mere illusion—just her inferiority as '
at work. M. Cuie had a simple formula; just have her stand bef
a mirror every night before retiring and repeat 50 times, Repl
day in every way the world is getting better and better.” If a
have no pay envelope at all and are relying upon relief vouchers
get by—join your wife before the mirror and together repeat
formula 100 times. You'll soon forget about the crisis.

It all sounds a bit looney at this distance, but the Sundays, Mc
Phersons and Cuies were very real people, and their respective b x
accounts for their efforts to psychologize a nation into insanity Wel
proof of the fact that they had the full backing of the lads wh
the coupons and collect the dividends from depression, :

e

Times change. True, we have
1923, but in the main we still sub
tripe. We have split the atom .
economy of hunger.
able to eat, wear a
or blow us all to
attune our minds
to good living.

We are back again at the Cuie stage of the crisis. Two nook
are being serialized in sections of our “free press” to provide © —
with a 1949 shot of the “Cuie cure.”

A Guide to Confident Living by Norman Vincent Peale is ve
‘Tun serially in the Vancouver News-Herald, and the scab-prodt in
Daily Province is giving us Peace of Mind by Doctor Joshua °
Liebman. 1e,

The first is a vulgar plagiarism of the Cuie piffle. For examP i
here is a young man who hasn’t the proper “thought alenta in
hadn’t reached the skid-road stage but was obviously head el :
that general direction. Then he meets up with this Peale no

‘If you would get up each morning,” says\ Peale, “and talk H
yourself in the mirror—say out loud the ten tremendous words, is
God be for us, who can be against us?” Naturally the bers
amazed at this early morning performance. What woman would? e
be? You have brains—you can do things—you have brains—you :
do things,” recites Hubby to himself, unworried by wifey’s
that her man has blown a mental fuse, » Bis

“That man,” says Peale, “has now a grip on_ himself. pe
tnferiority complex is gone, ‘He can meet any crisis without wort —
The Peale formula runs parallel with the “Cuie cure”. “To be h® BN
and successful you must cultivate the ability to say to your put
forget it. It may not be easy, neither is it as hard as you think, eS
one thing is certain, you must learn to forget.”

Ah, sweet forgetfulness! In these days of shrinking pay-envey :
Opes, austerity, dollar-crises an@ what not, what a_ splendid 2
When the rent, comes due, just tell the landlord to “forget it setly
you're a bit behind on the payments on the house, just smile ate ;
and tell the mortgage sharks to “forget” it. They will love 8 the ni
charming naivety. If the boss tells you he is shutting dome '
Plant because Marshall plan markets have gone with the plan, ry:
“forget it’—and tell the wife to do the same when she starts waaat ae
ing where the next pay cheque is coming from. If the children RE ,
rise to such heights of “forgetfulness”, that’s just too bad—for a to
Like Cuie of 26 years ago, Peale has reduced the economic crisi$ eo
a “thought slant”—slanted in favor of the coupon clippers. — ring

Peace of Mind is a blending of “religion and philosophy” offers

; 1
: sn
“poise, balance and peace” (of mind) to the reader, The book doe

offer the sure-fire “every day in ever

and
Detter” panaceas of Cuie-Peale,

y way the world gets fae” nt
but is strictly an ivory-to

Philosophical work, having little in

life.

es 0
keeping with the hard cee :
But Peace of Mind in the

half year ITU picket lin
thought” without any th

progressed along some lines sinc?
mit to being fed the same me? 4
- . but so far, only to maintain th
Our legislators debate whether it is more profit
nd enjoy the things we produce in abundance
hell in one grand Hiroshima. That is, unless
to the acceptance of hungry austerity as a gw

; ; yne-
Daily Province—with a three and “for i

e outside—does provide a lot of “£000

Ought “slanting”,

Hut

} i} AC
Wied

Published Weekly: at 650 Howe Street
By THE TRIBUNE FUBLISHING COMPANY LTD:

Telephones: Editorial, MA. 5857; Business, MA. 5288
Tom McEwen ........_. 9h Usa baie «vale noes REO

Subscription Rates: 4 Year, $2.50; 6 Months, $1.39.” ‘Be.
Printed by Union Printers Ltd., 650 Howe Street, Vancouver:

8
PACIFIC TRIBUNE—JULY 22, 1949—PAGE

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