By BERT MARCUSE

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SUT CC en See

HOW Much is YOUR Food
Budget? This is the title
Of a food budget compiled by
argaret E, Smith, for the
Health League of Canada. The
Udget represents minimum food
Purchases for a family of four
and jit costs $109.72 a month.

_ Basis of the choice of foods.
IS “sound. nutrition” (provided
the man of the family isn’t do-
Mg the type of, heavy work that
Tequires additional calories).
Food prices are based upon To-
Tonto, April 1952, prices which
{re somewhat lower than B.C.
Prices.

Even so, it will be obvious
pet for any worker earning
€ss than $219.00 a month take-
Ome pay the year round, food
alone will eat up 50 percent or
More of the family’s monthly
Neome,

Figure out for yourself how
Much will be left over to divide
tween ail the other mneces-
Sities such as housing, clothing
82d medical and dental ex-
prises. Then deduct the amount
Pent on food and other neces-
Sities from your income. The
Test can be used for ‘luxuries’
SUch ag education, vacations,
transportation, insurance,

Susehold furnishings, news-
Papers, tobacco, entertaining
ad recreation.

Is it any wonder then, that
°rganized workers are demand-
hg enough wages for an ade-

Wate standard of living?
®

But let’s have another look
at Miss Smith’s food budget. It
Teveals some unpleasant facts.

Potatoes, for example, once
he humble vegetable even the
Owest paid income groups
‘Ould afford, had increased 441
Percent over its 1939 price.
Stew-meat, a staple food in the
depression years is now an
fagerly appreciated . treat —

four and one-halfl times its 1939
Drice,

Incidentally, Miss Smith is
No dreamer. ‘The most expens-
ve meat in her budget is bone-
®8s pot roast. Even ’ minced
‘ound steak is too great a deli-
Caey for her family of four (the
“Urrent price in Vancouver is
0 cents a pound). The other
Meats on her budget are pork
(not calf) liver, pork sausage,
Stew-meat —- and for Sunday
Mornings the family is allowed
Aree-quarters of a pound of
bacon (the entire weekly al-
OWance). s

The family is allowed 6
Marts of whole milk and 6
Quarts of skim milk a week.
They gon’t eat margarine but
Must confine themselves to two
Bounds of butter a week (one
alf-pound per person per week
Which was Canada’s wartime
Tation).

Miss Smith doesn’t pretend
that her food budget is more
an a minimum. She states
that careful management will
® required — and how right
She is, *

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he-high cost of
atin

A Thanksgiving turkey, a
Christmas roast or a T-bone
steak for dad on his birthday
means the family eats beans
for the next fortnight (up 240
percent in price).

Ag for entertaining these out-
of-town friends or giving grand-
father a change from the starv-
ation diet of an old-age pens
joner these social amenities are

almost out of the question.

What's more, mother has to
pe something of a genius. She
has to be a master chef (with
insufficient tools), she has to
pe an ‘expert manager and she
should have a diploma in home
economics. And in the spare
time she has after pounding the

emt!
- pavements for food bargains,

she can keep house and 100k
after the kids. Naturally, no
value whatsoever is placed upon
her twelve to gixteen-hour day.
Mother has become the modern
twentieth century slave,

®@
For too long now, every time

the workers approach the boss
for a wage increase they are
met by the shocked statement,

“But your wages have kept up to.

cost of living increases!” “So
what?” the workers say, ‘“may-
be our wages have even gone

_ up more than the government’s

phoney Cost of Living Index —

but we still don’t get paid
enough to live decently!”

The staff of the Trade Union
Research Bureau now refuses
to argue with employers about
the DBS Cost of Living Index.
Hither we, nor the unions we
represent, are interested in a
phoney, inaccurate index which
is not a living cost index in the
first place but merely a survey
of the price increases in cer-
tain selected and often unrep-
resentative items which make
up part of our living costs.

What we argue for today is
an adequate standard of living
—the required to
maintain a worker and his
family in good health and de-
cency.

earnings!

Wages tied to a distorted
Cost of Living Index at the best
condemn a worker to a static,
never improving standard of
Actually wages which
merely keep pace with the: DBS
Cost of Living Index result in
constantly dropping purchas-
power. Because of the inac-
curacy of the Cost;of Living In-
dex, because of the ‘increase in
taxes, a worker whose wages
have exactly kept pace with the
Cost of Living Index is actual
ly worse off today than he was
in 1939.

living.

The time has) come when
unions must refuse to even dis-

@

EUUETYICY YPN ATI A

cuss the DBS Cost of Living In-
dex. Instead they must demand
a Canadian Standard of Living
Index — one which will pro-
vide Canadian
their families with everything
meant by ‘the word ‘‘health”’
as defined in the constitution
of the World Health Organiza-
tion where they state:

workers and

“Health
plete physical, mental and so-

is a state of com-

cial well-being and not merely
the absence of disease or in-
firmity.”’

Surely, this is not too much
to ask’

PURSE SNATCHER };

sample of

Slovakia
striding
forward

BY S. HARRISON

A striking feature of the pro-
duction Jeap in Eastern Eur-
ope acknowledged recently by
the UN Economic Commission
for Europe is the share taken
in this advance by former
“depressed areas.”

Slovakia, eastern part of the
Czechoslovak Republic,, depress-
ed in every way for centuries
past. has just been counting
up its achievements in the eight
years since the anti-Nazi up-
rising.

The entire record is an ex+
“farther behind —
faster forward,’ now a general
rule, to be observed in East
European development.

Rising industrial output this
year alone will equal the total
production of 1937.

Factories, houses and power
plants are going up at a pace
70 percent higher than the
overall rate of expansion for the
repubile.

When the metallurgical giant
near Kosice is completed in
1955 steel output per head in
this former poverty-stricken
backyard of the Hapsburgs, and
then of Western capitalism.
will be above the current level
per head in Britain.

Bethlehem Chapel. where the

Czech people first heard preach-
ing in their own language and
the revolutionary sermons of
John Huss, which shook 14th
century feudal Europe to its
foundation, has been rebuilt.
_ After Huss was burned at the
stake in 1415. the Jesuits took
the chapel over. Then it was
used for stabling* and later
mostly pulled down to build
surrounding houses.

It is nearly 50 years since the
site of the chapel was estab-
lished and a few walls and
Gothic windows unearthed.

The prewar governments. not
greatly interested in this shrine
of the nation’s freedom, left
the matter there) But in 1948.
on the initiative of Professor
Nejedly, the art historian. a pro-
ject to rebuild it in the exact
original style was taken.

This month the chapel, which
held congregations of 3,000 in
the stirring Hussite days, will
again be open to the people of
Prague.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — OCTOBER 17, 1952 — PAGE 9

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