Stirred by

yew
e
sugar profifeers
By BOB WARD
A bunch of the boys were piling it up in all the free trade

nations,

They'd hatched a plot to sweeten their pot through sugar

speculation,

Back of it all is a con man’s game to steal from the

workers’ purse,

And there’s many a man in jail for life for a crime a lot

less worse.

Don’t mention ‘sugar’ around
_our house. The very sound of it
stirs up our missus and she
hits the roof whenever the word
is said,

So please watch your five-
letter words when you visit, as
looking after ahome andthe Ward
off-springs demands a momma
with both feet on the ground,
rather than in orbit.

There was a time, mind you,
when sugar was a sweet word
bandied about in a loving way
in the household. In our odd mo-
ments of gaiety and affection we
would sometimes call out ‘‘hi,
Sugar,’’

But that, of course, was in the
‘good, old days’ when sugar was
7¢ a pound. And those days, curse
the spectators, are gone.

No more can wecallour sugar,
‘sugar’. Nowadays if we want to
say something sweet it has to
be ‘honey’.

And if speculation sends honey
costs soaring too that will mean
another five-letter word that’ll be
taboo, Indeed, sweet words that
are acceptable are rapidly be-
coming as rare as a kind word
from a boss during negotiations.

Day by day ‘our way of life’,
it seems, gets harder andharder
to afford. ‘Sweet’ words we once
used turn pretty sour, Even the
word ‘dear’ now rings up the
image of a cash register, rather
than our ‘‘dear, sweet’? wife—
four-letter words by the way thai
Amy has long demanded should
never reach the tender ears of
the children.

re eee

It seems passing strange to
us that all of the politicians
who but a few months ago were
pledging they would ‘‘protect the
People’s interests’? are now so
Silent on the Great Sugar Rob-
bery. ‘*Nothing can be done about
it,”’ said a high-ranking govern-
ment official.

Then he went on to explain
that sugar prices are set on the
world market and that some-
where in England sugar stocka-
teers, well refined gents, mind
you, are stirring up the price-
gouging spree,

The way we look at it this is
just leading Canadian consumers

—with due apologies to Robert Service

and our Grade VI grammar teacher.

down the garden Redpath. With
all due deference to British high
finance we have our own sugary
agents whose stcky little fingers
are picking up millions of extra
bucks at the public expense,

It is hardly a well-kept secret
that millions of pounds of sugar
were stocked in Canada at the
‘old price,’ and that sugar, even
stacked on super -
shelves; doubled in price almost
overnight, Indeed, the trend in the
market-place today is to have
more employees running around
marking up than waiting on cus-
tomers. A ‘ service’ of com-
merce, if you’ll excuse the term,
that consumers can well afford to
do without.

ET Ae aT":

We don’t pretend to be an
authority on trade but it occurs
to us that if the ‘world market’
is causing the highway robbery
price of sugar then Canada should
get out of it,

There’s a béautiful Carribean
island called Cuba that produces
plenty of sugar. There are beau-
tiful Canadian prairies that con-
stantly produce a_ surplus of
wheat,

So why not barter Canadian
wheat for Cuban sugar AT A

FIXED PRICE!
ESS AOR ete

Ain’t that sweet?
Cuban sugar for Prairie wheat.
Now I ask you very confidentially
Ain’t that sweet?

* * *

If you agree that this is, in-
deed, a sweet idea, it just might
be a good idea to drop a letter to
some of those upholders of ‘our
way of life’ who voted them-
selves an $8,000 a year raise
and thus mightn’t have noticed
that the price of sugar has sky-
rocketed.” Letters to editors
might point out the good sense
of cents the consumer could save
by shopping in Cuba instead of
with the crooks who operate the
sugar counter in the world mar-
ket,

One thing is very obvious!
What is needed today is a Cane
Mutiny, for it is high time that
the sugar speculators were given
their lumps.

‘BOB WARDis a regular
columnist for U.E. News

Sugar bonus for consumers
demanded by prices group

The Winnipeg Committee for
Fair Prices has written a letter
to B.C, Sugar Refinery president
F. Rogers, urging that ‘‘since

your profits have been greater .

than normal this year, you also
give a special bonus to the con-
Sumers in the way of a reduction
in the price of sugar.”’

Signed by the chairman of the
committee, Mrs. Doreen Plow-
man, the letter draws attention
to the letter recently published
in the Pacific Tribune and raised
in Parliament by NDP leader
Tommy Douglas.

The letter sent by Rogers to
BG, Sugar Refinery employees
told them they would receive a
Special bonus because of the
year’s unusual profits.

A recent statement released by
Arthur E. Beeby, executive vice-
president of Salada Foods Ltd.,
Said that ‘‘The recent series of
increases in sugar prices cannot
be explained on the basis of sup~
ply and demand.”’

He added that ‘‘There is no
world sugar shortage, At the start
of this year there was a large
surplus. At the end of this year
there will still be a surplus, al-
though a reduced one.’’

Beeby said that ‘‘as a major
Canadian buyer of refined sugar,
we are forced to the conclusion
that the rising costs of this staple:
food item on world markets do
not result from demand, but from
speculation.’’

market’

|NATO parley reflects

By DANIEL MASON

The NATO Ministerial confer-
ence in Paris recently was a
reflection of the pressures
throughout the world today for
peaceful coexistence and disarm-
ament, The call of Secretary of
State Dean Rusk for the NATO
governments to explore all ways
of arriving at agreements with the
Soviet Union was a prime indi-
cation of this. Rusk’s linking of
this approach to an espousal of
the USSR in ‘the dispute with
China was at best clumsy and at
worst mischievous.

But that does not negate the
significance of Rusk’s statement
to the NATO parley, especially
since it followed a vehement if
veiled threat by West German
Foreign Minister Gerhard
Schroeder to the U.S. and other
NATO members if they dared to
move for agreements with the
Soviet Union to relieve interna-

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Kamb in L’Humanité (Paris)

tional tensions and to clear the
way for further steps toward
disarmament,

It is important to note that
Rusk’s NATO speech came after
the Soviet arms cut ‘move and
after President Johnson had de-
clared more than anything else
he would like to solve the peace
issue. The President had made
this statement to a group of
officials for the U.S. Disarma-
ment Agency at a White House
conference as they prepared for
the UN disarmament conference
resuming soon in Geneva. John-
son told disarmament officials
of his personal support for their
efforts in this regard. It was
then he had declared that the most
memorable accomplishment of
the Kennedy administration was
the partial test ban treaty.

Rusk is reported to have told
the foreign ministers of Britain,
France, West Germany, Italy and
the other NATO governments
that he and his government did
not consider peaceful coexistence
the ‘‘ideal’’ relationship with the
Soviet Union. But he then went
on to stress the need to con-
vince the USSR that the West
was interested in peaceful co-
existence,

The startling thing about all
this is the fact that it was being
discussed at NATO at all. After
all, NATO had been established
by the Truman administration
for the whole purpose of plan-
ning anti-Soviet military action.

The friction of the NATO alli-
ance, the rivalries that have de-
veloped over the past couple of
years, the dissatisfaction of
Washington’s West European
satellites with their roles, were
all swept under the rug, while
the discussion ranged around the
possibilities of agreement with
the Soviet Union. In two full
sessions this was the main topic
of every speaker.

The only speaker to adopt a
completely negative approach
was West German Foreign Min-
ister Schroeder. It was obvious
that he and his regime have be-
come worried over the possibil-
ity of peace breaking out allover
Europe. The stability of the pres-
ent West German government of
neo-Nazis and monopolists is
based on the continuance of the

KAMB cold war and the maintenance

of an anti-Soviet stance by

With this first issue of the New Year we would like to wish
all our friends and customers and all ‘PT’ readers a

HAPPY AND PEACEFUL 1964

JENNIE’S CAFE

335 Main St.

DISPLAY OF CHILDREN’S ART
FROM THE UKRAINE

at

AUUC HALL, 805 E. PENDER
January 2nd, 3rd, 4th & 5th

Hours: Afternoons 2 - 5 p.m.
Evenings 7 - 9 p.m.

The Exhibit contains oils, water-
colours, embroideries and wood-
burning on the theme of Shevchenko,
done by children 9 to 16 years of
age, which will be of interest to
adults as well as children.

Explanatory tour of works provided.

NO ADMISSION
EVERYONE WELCOME

Washington.
* * *

Therefore, Schroeder spent his
whole time at the Paris NATO
parley attempting to convince
Rusk that the Soviet Union had
become more dangerous since
the Cuban crisis, But he appar-
ently did not succeed.

Most insistent if the foreign
ministers was British Foreign
Secretary R, A. Butler. His Tory
government, tottering on the
brink of defeat, wants an agree-
ment with the Soviet Union and
wants it fast, Butler and his con-
ferees are convinced that only a
move of this sort can possibly
win over the British voters, who
are eager for peace.

Butler pressed for a non-ag-
gression pact between NATO and
the Moscow Pact nations. While
this was not agreed to, the con-
ditions are present for an agree-
ment if enough pressure is en-
gendered,

Reactions throughout the
world make it clear that what
most people want are peace and
disarmament, And the govern-
ments of the Western powers are
beginning to realize that they
will have to do something about
it. The New York Herald Trib-
une, on its front page, Sunday,
Dec. 1, reflected this in the open-
ing paragraph,

**Peace is not only wonderful,
it’s cheaper than war. And in
modern industrial nations striv-
ing to keep worldwide commit-
ments, reach into space and si-
multaneously keep the home
folks contented, the preparation
for a complex, automated war
costs too much,’’ |

The Canadian government in-
dicated last week its understand-
ing of this, when it began some
Significant if as yet small cuts
in its arms commitments, in-
cluding reductions in _military
personnel, closing down of mil-
itary bases and depots and scrap-
ping of some costly arms pro-
jects.

This occurred about the same
time that Secretary of Defense
Robert McNamara was announc-
ing the scrapping of a number of
military bases in the U.S, and
abroad,

But, of course, these two ac-
tions were dwarfed by the So-
viet announcement of a 600 mil-
lion ruble cut in its arms bud-
get to be followed by reductions
in military personnel. This move,
undertaken as Soviet Premier
Khrushchev emphasized, to re-
duce international tensions, has
already been given serious at-
tention by the leaders and people
of most countries of the world.

There are indications that, as
a result, other countries may
begin thinking in terms of fur-
ther cuts in arms, In the US2

‘demands are mounting for a re-

examination of the arms and
foreign policies of the nation.
The most recent demonstration
of this was the conference in
New York City sponsored by
some of the most important or-
ganizations in the U.S., which is
reported elsewhere in this news-
paper.

In Congress, too, there is ris-
ing serious consideration of a
peace economy. Recently, Sen.
George S. McGovern (D.-S.D.),
introduced a bill to set up a Na-
tional Economic Reconversion
Commission to work out plans for
changing from war preparations
economy to a peace economy.

U.S. WORKER,

January 3, 1964—PACIFIC TRIBUME—Page 7