Tory strikebreakers

Y steam-rolling legislation
B through the House last week-
end to deprive Canadian railroad
workers the right to strike, the
Diefenbaker Tory government has
earned i itself the lable of a
shameless strike-breaker.

In Diefenbaker the Wall Street
bankers, who own most of the CPR
and the watered stock of the CNR,
have found an accommodating Joe,
ready to throw the recommenda-
tions of his own appointed concilia-
tion board into the Tory waste
basket, and clap a six-months’
wage “freeze” upon the rail work-
ers in this way compelling the
non-operating railway workers to
subsidize the rail barons until the
latter can gouge a few more mil-
lions of profits out of Canadian
farmers and other shippers.

Diefenbaker put forward his
strike-breaking legislation under
the flimsy pretext that a ‘royal
commission’ now studying freight
and other transportation rates, will
bring forward a “solution” to the
railway crisis; a solution which,
whatever else it may contain, won’t
threaten the fat profits of the rail-
Way tycoons and coupon clippers.

While the railway bosses were
shouting blue ruin and bemoaning
the 14-cents an hour wage increase
recommended by the government’s
conciliation board (which still left
railway shopmen far below the
wage levels of other comparative
industries), and while Dief was
cooking up his strike-breaking leg-
islation with the aid of a battery
of corporation lawyers, the CPR
was reporting a net profit of $25,-
406,265 for the year. A slight drop
from its boodle of the previous

‘year, but still more than enough

to have met the modest demands
of the rail workers — and with
plenty left over for the profit
leeches.

In its shameless haste to serve
the railway monopolists by “freez-
ing” the wages oi ratiway workers,
the Diefenbaker government hasn’t
only accepted the role of an open

Pacific Tribune
Editor — TOM McEWEN

Associate Ediuror — MAURICE RUSH
Business Mor. — OXANA BIGELOW

Published weekly at
Room 6 — 426 Main Street
Vancouver 4, B.C.
Phone MUtual 5-5288
Subscription Rates:
One Year: $4.00
Six Months: $2.25
Vanadian and Commonwealth
countries (except Australia): $4.00
One year. Australia, United States and
all other countries: $5.00 one year.
Authorized as second class mail
Post Office Dept., Ottawa

strike-breaker, but has set a new
precedent for Tory policy; a “policy
of freedom for the capitalist ex-
ploiters, and brutal dictatorship
over the working people.” A com-
plete negation of our new and
much boasted ‘Bill of Rights.’

Even now when the Diefenbaker
dictatorial wage “freeze” is on,
there is much labor can do to wipe
this strike-breaking edict off the
statute books of Canada. To swamp
Ottawa with protests and demands
for its immediate annulment, and
to begin in earnest to build that
form of broad labor-farmer unity
which will guarantee that strike-
breaker Dief and his monopoly-
dominated gang will be swept out.

When governments and big bus-
iness (whether Liberal, Tory or
Socred) use parliament for strike-
breaking, as in the case of the non-
operating railway workers, it is a
sure sign they are planning new
betrayals and new economic burd-
ens for the working people. Labor-
farmer unity can push back this
new offensive on their living stand-
ards — and still win the wage
increase a conciliation board
awarded railway workers.

HE announcement last week by
the Public Utilities Commis-
sion (PUC) that from now -on in,
that body would take a ‘close look’
at B. C. Electric book-keeping be-
fore authorizing further rate hikes
by B.C.’s electric, gas and transit
octopus, is good news indeed. If
carried out rigidly it could mean
more money in the pockets of the
average householder and less in
the profit coffers of the B.C.
Electric.

Almost since its inception and

regardless of personnel changes,
the PUC has been regarded, and
with good reason, as little more
than a B.C. Electric rubber stamp,
designed to facilitate power and
transit rate hikes.

Following a Supreme Court of
Canada ruling that the B.C. Elec-
tric could boost its rates at will,
just so long as it did not exceed a
stipulated 6.5 percent rate of “re-
turn” on its investment, the PUC
announced it would hold a’ hear-
ing on whether to withdraw the
1952 regulations governing the
“rate of return: Hitherto the PUC
had paid little heed to the fact that
modern monopoly book-keeping can
show that two-and-two don’t al-

PUC on right

Soa

track

ways make four, and that net
boodle can sometimes be shown as
a “loss.”

Hence the recent announcement
that the PUC intends to observe
“due regard to the protection of the
public from rates that are exces-
sive,” and to look beyond the 6.5-
percent curtain in determining the
exact rate of boodle collected by the
B.C. Electric, is welcome news in-
deed. To consider each rate or fare
hike demanded on the basis of its
merit, coresponding to actual com-
pany profits and utility services
rendered. By recinding the 6.5
stipulation, B.C. Electric appeals
for rate hoists can now be con-
sidered by the PUC, (if a good
examination job on the company
beoks is done) on actual rather
than mythical monopoly “returns.”

Had this procedure been insti-
tuted years ago the public might
have been saved millions of dollars.
But ‘better late than never’; if
strictly adhered to by the PUC, it
can still mean a big saving for the
B.C. Electrified householder on
power, gas and transit costs.

A final. word of advice; better
withhold ‘hurrahs’ for the PUC
until the ‘savings’ begin to show.

Tom
McEwen

battle with the challengers.
inquiring into the
business,”

being dumped

bulk of it is a mass of “‘literary”

the gangster, sex and_ coldwar
gutter of U.S.. “culture.”

Hence, the opinions expressed in
opposition to this U.S. “literary”
garbage, which not only fouls up
the Canadian cultural atmosphere,
but chokes off the production and
promotion of Canadian publica-
tions and writers.

Since some of our hoary-headed
pontiffs of conformity are unable
to see what stares at them from
every bookstall in the province,
they barge into debate with their

HEN some issue crops up
which looks like a challenge
to the status quo, be it ever so
mild, the ‘home guard” of con-
formity swings into action to do

The present “royal commission’’
‘publications
with special emphasis
upen the tonnage of U.S. news-
papers, magazines and books now
into Canada, is
turning up a goodly body of
opinion which holds that, if not
an end, at least a very restrictive
curb be piaced upon this massive
import. More so since the greatest

pot-boiler filth, dredged up from

motheaten stock of pro-U.S. nos-

trums.

Mr. James K. Nesbitt who
churns out a ‘Capital Column”
for the Vancouver Sun regaled us
in a recent edition with his
“opinions”. On Canadian publica-
tions Nesbitt applied the pontifical
touch on what we in Canada had
to do in order to be up-and-coming
literary garbage conveyors. “Don’t
restrict U.S. magazines,” says Nes-
bitt, but ‘‘study them with a view
to bettering publications in this
country.” In short, don’t restrict
U.S. literary garbage, but “study”
how we in Canada can make a
“better”? mess.

Mr. Nesbitt also opines that
Canadian writers are too much
subjected to the editorial ‘“blue-
pencil.’ The Victoria oracle wants
Canadian writers to have more
“leeway,” more ‘freedom to ex-
press their own personalities, more
“individualism.”

We don’t know what length of
an editorial cow-chain the Sun
allows its “Capital” columnist, but
whatever the yardage Nesbitt’s
problem (and scores of others like
him) is not one of “leeway,” but
rather that of a docile bell-weather
which never strays outside ortho-
dox pastures and “baa’s’ to see
that no one else does.

‘“T.et Canadian publications com-
pete on an equal footing with U.S.
publications” bleats Nesbitt, and

. ‘Sf they’re as good they’ll have
nothing to worry about.” Sounds
fine, but it is only “sound.” In his
anxiety to go to bat for the U.S.
‘literary’ monopolists, Mr. Nesbitt
deliberately misses the whole

point of the issue; not only the
quality of U.S. literary filth, but
its vast volume which chokes
Canadian bookstands, Canadian
writers, and Canadian publications.

In another column the Sun’s
ecclesiastical ‘expert’? gave voice
to views similar to Nesbitt’s, mak-
ing the point that without such
U.S. publications, his education
would be “incomplete.” That we
have no difficulty in believing,
but it is scarcely a valid reason for
flooding Canada with Hollywood’s
sex and gangster orgies.

To top off his tout ensemble on
U.S. literature, Mr. Nesbitt falls
back on the old cliches of ‘“free-
dom”; “freedom of thought,” free-
dom to “buy the best”; and the
“best”? in Nesbitt’s stereotyped out-
look ‘“‘comes from the U.S.”

We don’t know what the final
recommendations of the royal com-
mission investigations may be, but
we have an idea a vast majority
of the Canadian people would ap-
prove of two main points: first,
measures which would assure
greater opportunities for Canadian
publications and writers, and sec-
ond: very definite restrictions
against the imports of scores of
U.S. magazines and “pulp” publi-
cations which ‘‘glorify” gangster-
ism, vulgarize sex, and make a
‘virtue’ out of U.S. coldwar
propaganda.

Neither of these propositions
would affect the import of good
American books by writers who
have something to say, and Cana-
dian publications would have a
chance to breathe.

December 9, 1960—PACIFIC TRIBUNE—Page 4