OL’ BILL

SHORT JABS

N THE editorial page of the Vancouver News Herald of May 16

‘there appeared what is purported to be a doctorate address by
Dean W. H. Brittain of McGill University, delivered at the UBC. The
general tenor of the address dealt with adult education, but the out-
standing feature of it was that our main shortcoming in dealing with
the affairs of life is the lack of a sense of humor.

Now, a sense of humor is a very fine thing to have, either in a
people or in an individual. It is expressed in the literature, the writings
and speéches of peoples who can laugh at them-
selves. Among those who use the English language
(notice, I do not say speak the English language),
it is highly developed in the English themselves
and in even more marked a degree in the Scots.

The editor of Punch is authority for the state-
ment that all. the jokes about thrifty and miserly
Scotsmen that ever appeared in that paper came
from Scotsmen, many of them Aberdonians. That
is only one of the native characteristics about
which the Scots make fun of themselves, but there
are others, and with the English they are number-
less.

This senSe of humor shows only the faintest ES!
gleam in Canadians and is absolutely lacking in Americans. Now
@ sense of that kind that would make us confess to our failings is
all right in some circumstances, but it is no substitute for many other
qualities at other times. .

Dean Brittain in his address tells his hearers the possession of
-a sense of humor would make it impossible for any individual to call
@ “quiet, kindly scholar who has spent his life in the objective search
of truth, a ‘rabid imperialistic lackey’ or to refer to some obscure citi-
zen who nas throughout his life practised the virtues of industry,
honesty and thrift, ‘a blood-sucking capitalist.’ ”

Dean Brittain may or may not know that peoples are made up
of classes so that no matter how keen the sense of humor may be
when applied to the people as a whole, it falls short of meeting all
the requirements in the relations between classes. The keen sense of
humor of the Scots does not prevent the West Fife miners from send-
ing Willie Gallacher, to parliament election after election. Yet Willie
uses the kind of descriptions the Dean is so horrified at, in his refer-
ences to the Scottish mine-owners. But these miners know they are
true.

Two years ago an explosion occured at Centrailia, Ill. One hundred
and eleven miners were killed. For two years mine inspector Scanlon
had been reporting the danger from dust in the mine and demanded

it be closed. But the mine owners warned him ‘they would have him |

fired if he did not shut his trap. They were “citizens who had practised
thrift. industry and honesty,” and profits came first, before miners’
lives. What use would a sense of humor have been to those 111 miners?
And the “quiet, kindly scholar” searching for objective truth?

This passage shows that the Dean lacks a sense of humor himself.
Like some philosophers whose eyes were so fixed on the stars they
failed to see the ditch at their feet and fell into it, for there is no
Such thing as objective truth. Like every other abstract idea, truth
is conditioned. It is like the objective writing of the scribblers of the
capitalist press. On the same day as Dean Brittain’s screed was pub-
lished, the Vancouver Sun had a front page headline in letters big
enough for a boxcar, “Strikers, Dupes of Jimmy Thompson.” That was
“objective” writing. But a reading of the story showed that it was
only the raving of the anti-labor lawyer, Walter Owen, made in some
court.

The Dean, by using’ these examples, comes pretty close to earning
them himself.

NION MEN!

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support Trade Unionism by demand-
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cent

up it says:

“Semanticists in Washington
might talk about ‘disinflation’ and
businessmen might talk about
‘healthy readjustment. But in a
less sophisticated era men: might
have used a five-letter word for
what was going on—slump.”

The gravity of the economic
situation is more acute than any
of the bank letters or Washington
economists admit. The crisis fac-
tors are multiplying.

Industrial production has shown
a five percent decline. Steel output
is running 15 per cent above cur-
rent demand.

Unemployment in the U.S., offi-
cially estimated at close to the
is reported to be
closer to 5,000,000 by labor econ-
omists and it is still going up. The
total wages and salary payments
in many industries have dropped.

Sales have shrunk almost 14 per-
in department stores alone.
The building of new dwellings, de-
spite the shortage of housing, has
dropped 38 percent,from peak.

Exports have dropped sharply
by 27 percent. Imports have. de-
clined. Capital investments for
plant and equipment in manufac-
turing industries will be 30 per-
cent lower in 1949 than in 1948.

Farm prices have fallen. Food
consumption has dropped six _per-
cent since 1946. Chain store sales
are down ten percent. Total per-
sonal incomes are declining
monthly. :

All along the line the U.S. econ-
omy registers slumps and declines.

The only new peaks were reg-
istered by corporation profits
which continued to soar at the
expense of the American people
and their national economy. The
Wall Street Journal reported
, that “the year 1948 was the most
profitable ever.” Corporation
profits before taxes in 1948 were
more than 400 percent above
corporation profits in the pre-
war year 1939. |

* * *

These are the bare economic
facts after all the shouting about
how the Marshall plan has brought
prosperity. This is the economic
scoreboard of the cold war, ECA,
the armaments race and the trans-
formation of the American econ-
omy into a war economy.

It is only against this back-
ground that we can properly as-
sess the speech made by Dr. Ed-
win C. Nourse, chairman of Presi-
dent Truman's Council of Econ-
omic Advisers, at a Pentagon
orientation conference on “Econ-
omic Implications of Military Pre-
paredness.” The Nourse speech has
received sume publicity but its
prime significance has been either
ignored or deliberately distorted,

This leading. conservative

economist admitted that the
military expenditures of the U.S.
budget were straining the econ-
omy to the breaking point. He
warned against further increases
in military expenditures, a warn-
ing that has since been ignored
by President Truman in defer-
ence to the military.

Here a leading supporter of the
cold war admitted that the rapid
developments toward the
son” state were proceeding so
boldly and recklessly that mass
disavowal, as well as the break-
down of the economy, confronted
the war-preparedness program.
As an advocate of the program of
war preparations, he was counsel-
ling caution; in offering his coun-
sel he made certain admissions
not made before in official Wash-
ington, which has been preoccu-
pied with sugar-coating the war
program.

Dr. Nourse admitted that high
prices, which. have so plagued the

U.S. and Canada, are the direct

“garri- |

Military costs leading
U.S. to economic bust —

By JOHANNES STEEL

Disinflation, recession, cyciicai postwar price deflation, economic readjustment, or whatever the term
applied by the business journals, bank letters and economists in Washington—the fact is that the boom
bubble has burst and we are riding the descending curve of the business cycle. The beginnings of an
economic crisis are now apparent through the .murky curtain of words.

Fortune magazine, at a dollar a copy, can afford to talk plain English.

In its April Business Round-

result of the unprecedented mili-
tary appropriations of the past
period. He pointed out that the
civilian economy was sorely neg:
lected during the war. He cited
the deterioration of U.S. schools
as a result of ‘failure to build
during the war years and the
further deterioration of the physi-
cal facilities of the schools, as
well as the teaching personnel,
as a result of postwar inflation.

He called attention to the deter-
ioration of public facilities and
Public services generally, streets
and highways, the delay in devel-
oping much-needed sources. of
electrical power, And then he ad-
mitted frankly that the Truman
budget, providing over $15 billion
for military spending, had to “lim-
it the scale of social services
for education, health and social
Security,” and had to hold down

any recommendations for the
maintenance or expansion of nat-
ural resources.

Perhaps the most significant ad-
mission made by Dr, Nourse was
his description of the present wat
economy of the United States 48 —
the way “Hitler played it.” He

Made this highly revealing econ

omic confession: :

“All these deferred civilian needs
are still there, ready to employ
any manpower or block.of mater
lials made available by reduction
of preparedness effort. Instead of
military spending being needed to
cure or prevent unemployment, 4§
Hitler played it all the re
sources which can safely be spat
€d from armament can be us
under forward-looking private e?-
terprise and public enterprise t®
raise the living standards of thé
whole population.”

Edwin Nourse,

week.

“This statement bears out almost
to the letter our prediction that
the snowballing elements of crisis
developing in the United States
would reach crisis proportions,”
Buck declared.

(From Ottawa,
Bureau of Statistics in its May 21
Bulletin, showed Canada’s trade
had declined to the point where a
$33,900,000 surplus in March 1948
had becom: a deficit of $16,900,009
in March of this year—a loss of
$50,800.06 The debit balance of
trade’ with U.S. was $44,900,00—a
$20 million increase, whereas the
credit balance with Britain was
down to $11.206,000 from $37 mil-
lion for Mareh 1948)

Citing these officia] tigures,
declared that “tying our
to the bcom and bust

the Dominion

Buck
economy

War economy
of the United States is driving Can-
ada along the road ty Crisis and

Nourse warning bears
out LPP prediction _

TORONTO..

The warning about the economic crisis in the U.S. made by Dr
adviser to President Truman,
made by the national convention of
Buck, LPP leader and federal candidate in Toronto Trinity, said last re

“confirms the analysis
the LPP last February,” Tim

will mitignte the effects of toi
development on the mass of th®
people,” } :

Canada, he said, “must i0-
crease its trade by turning aga!
to the United Kingdom, thé
Commonwealth countries #2
Europe as our main export maF-
kets.

“There must be a floor put ander
retail trade in Canada by ineree™
ing unemployment insurance be? -
fits by 50 percent, raising old-a8°
peusions to $60 at 65 and puttin’
a foo: under farm prices. aia

“Thirdly, Canada can maint
the level of new construction y
building 100,000 low-rental nou
each year for the next four yeal™
and raust carry through @ la: efi
Scale conservation, irrigation pen:
construction programs that is
promised by the King L,neral ered
einment in 1945 and then serappe

: 4 after th lection.
Bens cae Seanad “ese a the measures Lr
; He emphasized, kLowever, that candidates are fighting for 18 thi
there is still time for action which election.” paces)
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PACIFIC TRIBUNE — MAY 27, 1949 — pace