Thad 1 Your Deparfinent Editor, Pacific Tribune: ee Ms nice reading Jean x Son's article ‘Housewives have © intention to go back to de- oe diets’, (Pacific Tribune, al ® 6). Edith Adam’s $15 a fi budget for a family of teh “ certainly not good enough he Canadian people. a tried feeding my own family, . ee growing children, on this nate and it did not work. At ee end of the week my daugh- fi Was sick, and it cost me Ve dollars for a doctor. ae it not better to give the Baty ren plenty of good whole- Rage food, rather than try to all, ne a slim budget? After at ebad Children are an as- thtrs the nation. Not long ago eA were advertisements in the Br and on the street cars, § us that Canadians should aa Several servings of fruit mille vegetables, and a quart of ; a day, to keep healthy. ae items cannot be purcha- weer any quantity for $15 a j for a family of four. Vv (MRS.) M. THOMAS. ancouver, B.C. - A ‘stag’ affair? Editor, Pacific ‘Tribune: bea with amazement and Be ief that six delegates are to ©» fom B.C. to the Youth Con- Write What You Pleate. gress in Czechoslovakia, all of them males. Why is this? Are we to infer to our comrades in Europe that our B.C. girls are so nit-witted and silly as to be unsuitable for such a mission? Does this pur- port to show the world that _N.F.L.Y. is only a ‘stag’ organ- ization? The least that can be done, in my opinion, is for this organ- ization to withdraw the least capable three of this delegation and replace them with girls. If they have difficulty in finding these, we will be glad to start the nomination with the editor of the Women’s Page of the Tribune. : This is the most glaring . ex- ample of unimaginative stupidity I have seen in many a day. : CLAUDE DONALD, Vancouver, B.C. En ‘Man with the hoe’ Editor, Pacific Tribune: I was very much amused at, Ol Bill’s comments on the Sen- ate, or what he calls the best equipped, most comfortable Old Man’s Home in the Dominion. J have no doubt but what it is, anda their after-dinner snoozes are being disurbed by the ’ spectre of communism. I happen to be an inmate of an Old "Man’s Home, not the red cham- iene monopolists and their “8comb coalition. “Bin 39 wasn’t so bad. . .,’ ? — |s it a frame-up | ‘THE arrest of Danicl O’Brien, prominent Vancouver labor- ite and regional director of the Canadian Congress of Labor li it week on a ‘morals’ charge, tical frameup—an art in which some of our powerful Cana- A political stooges are not un- acquainted, The ‘weight of evidence’ as the legal fraternity would say, all point in this direction. Less than two weeks ago the annual convention of the - BC. Federation of Labor, at which O’Brien was re-elected _ ‘President, decided to unanimously work for the elimination fe pil 89—and the defeat of the reactionary tory-liberal coali- | tion that gave it birth. This decision placed the BCFL in the forefront as the ‘spearhead of a united effort of labor and the people to challenge the Hart-Anscomb coalition, and its incipient-fascist labor legislation. . All political elements within the BCFL convention — CCF, LPP, Liberal, and non-party, endorsed the fight against Bill . A 1i-man committee was set up to work out a formula _ for labor unity at the polls, which, if and when a provincial election occurred, would facilitate the defeat of the Hart- Prior to and during the BCFL convention, O’Brien was Cutspoken in his opposition to en, as a representative of (AFL) were called to Victoria (separately of course), to ‘con- fer with Minister of Labor Pearson. The outcome of these Conferences’ were not made public, but the daily press quoted in a post-conference interview to the effect that Was not barren of Coalition-desired results. O’Brien’s presence and active work in the Nanaimo Laundry strike and on the macket line—the first test of Bill 39 as a union-busting instru- Con” speaks for itself. There, as president of the BCFL and LL regional director, O’Brien was loyally -8ress policy—not as a politician, but as a trade unionist. often eanized labor is the first to condemn the nature of the ised with which O’Brien is charged. On that score there is na Can be no reservations. But labor is also the foremost Pholder of that axiom of justice which holds that a man 48 innocent until proven guilty. The circumstances surround- g the arrest and charging of O’Brien, coupled with rumu:y emanating from police and certain political circles, indicate at the arrest of O’Brien is a smear-prelude to a further _ attack against the B.C. Federation of Labor and its officers. While such a ‘charge’ may simplify the job of picking off & leader of the BCFL who refuses to ‘come to heel,’ as some L misledders of labor did, there is no assurance that other leaders of the BOFL who effectively challenge Bill 39 anu ‘Coalition government’s anti-labor policies, will not be sim- ly apprehended, charged, and smeared. Adept at the game ot eup, reaction knows only too well the value of a ‘morals’ charge, and the consequent stigma which remains, Yegardless of guilt or innocence. Ps | _ The real target in this case is the B.C. Federation of Labor; that is why labor must see to it that O’Brien is pro- | Vided with every facility to defend himself, and in the pro- ‘| ess, safeguard the labor movement against any and all such efforts to smear labor’s personnel ard organization. | neces has all the earmarks of a po- \ Bill 39. It is rumored that the CCL, and. R. K. Gervin cating that one ‘conference’ out Con- FRAY, JUNE 20, 1947: ber kind, but the kind where capitalist society (or what is generally called these days ‘Free Enterprise’) send the aged and worn-out workers to snooze *away their last days in so-called perfect bliss. Like the home in Ottawa where they send their elderly statesmen suffer- ing from senile decay, nothing ever happens here. What dis- turbs our dreams very much is not the spectre of communism, put how are we going to ged something better to eat! We haven’t got a gentleman usher of the Black Rod here, whatever kind of a too] that is, but we do have the ‘Man With the Hoe’ Edwin Markham’s famous poem fits him just right. “Bowed by the weight of cen- turies he leans upon his hoe and gazes on the ground, the empti- ness of aves in his face, and on his back the burden of the workd.’ He is not like the old man in the senate who wants $6,000 @ year for his work as the Black Rod man, but the very modest demand of an extra pound of baloney a day. The point I want to make is this. It doesn’t matter whether the aged stay in an old man’s home or in a home of their own, if they own one. The measly pen- sion they get just keeps them on the bare subsistence level— that is their reward of a life- time of useful toil. Let the younger generation take heed, and as time stoops to no man’s tune, they will grow old, our fate will be theirs. However, don’t let these few words de- press you, we have reasons to rejoice, socialism is on the ‘march. JAMES GIBSON. Victoria, B.C. / BCER neurotics 6 Editor, Pacific Tribune: ‘Dr. Grauer of the B.C, Elec- tric shows a distinctly violent form of neuroticism, when his hatred of progress leads him in- to making the childish implica- tions, that desires for economic conditions which would ensurdé security and abundant life for all people, are prompted by psy- copathic conditions. The editorial in your last issue is right when it states that citi- ‘zens commuting over a long pe- riod in BCER rolling stock are likely to become unbalanced. The ethics of their profession is forcing medical men to denounce — the economic conditions that are causing disease to spread at. such an alarming rate. Knowing _ the terrible effect on the human body of harsh grating noises, the medical profession will yet shout from the house-tops de- nouncing the rumbling, tumbling, jerking and jolting, thunder-clap door slamming of BCER rolling stock. ‘From time to time your paper publishes very important articles on health problems from the pen of Dyson Carter. The latest article dealt with the disease provoking nature of coal smoke. ‘He pointed out that the Ameri- can Medical Association listed coal smoke as directly respon- ‘sible for a growing percentage “of cancer, tuberculosis, bronchi- tis and other diseases. -Red-baiting neurotics standing on the shore of time trying to hold back the tide of progress and health for all people, will be ruthlessly swept aside. BE. MARSH. Vancouver, B.C. . \ UU Short Jabs E_ATTTNMN y y ol z Bill aE this column recently we have had occasion to refer tg the practice current in the capitalist press of ‘coloring the news,’ or, in forthright working class language, plain, ordinary lying. In spite of the fact that the management of the Vancouver Sun newspaper Pe, So Sep has been given a clean bill of health by the Distortion Local No. 1 Vancouver Newspaper Guild, the issue of June 10th contains one of the most blatant pieces of distortion of a great man’s historical] writing that has ever appeared in any newspaper or magazine in this or any other country, at this or any other time, one that gives the lie to all their claims to impartiality and objectivity in writing. It is a ‘quotation’ from the contributions of Marx to the New York Tribune of nearly a century ago with the banner headline “The Bear may be Red but it is the Same Bear.” Perhaps we should not say that this is a quotation, for it an eclectie production, being eleven quotations, written at different times in different issues of the paper, but strung together as if Marx had written the con- coction as it appears in the Sun—put up that way purposely to fool the Sun readers. ~ Marx hated the political Russia of that time, Tsarist Russia, for the reason that the Russian Tsar was the center and moving spirit of all European reaction. In 1848 and 1849 a revolutionary wave swept across Europe and in 1855 Marx outlined in the same paper one of the reasons for his hatred. “It was the Slavonians,” he wrote, “that ‘saved Austria from destruction and enabled Rad- etsky to advance on the Mincio and Windischgratz to conquer Vienna. And to complete the drama, in 1849 the Russian, army had to descend into Hungary and settle the war for Austria there.” Notwithstanding the purpose of the Sun, the denunciation of Tsarist Russia and its imperialistic aims by Marx were thoroughly. justified and are endorsed by every Marxist today, but for the Sun to attempt to bemuse its readers into believing that Tsarist Russia of Nicholas the First is the Soviet Russia of today, is a literary and political crime. The worst misrepresentation in this faked Marx article is the insinuation that American intervention in the Eastern Question, welcomed by Marx in 1853, is the same as the American inter- vention in Turkey today. The Sun’s quotation reads, “It is cheer- ing to see the American intervention in Europe beginning just with the Eastern Question.” ~ In the original, the sentence preceding that passage in the Sun explains something the Sun apparently desires to hide from its readers, for Marx wrote, “At Beirut, the Americans have ab- stracted another Hungarian refuge from the claws of the Aus- tralian eagle.’ Then follows the passage quoted in the Sun. The incident was one of which Marx wrote in several issues of the Tribune. A Hungarian revolutionist named Koszta had taken refuge in Turkey from the bloodhounds and man-hunters of re- actionary, imperialist Austria. However, they caught up with him in Smyrna, arrested him and took him aboard an Austrian cor- | vette in harbor there. N American frigate, the St. Louis, was in that port at the time. Her captain, Ingraham by name, interested himself immediately in Koszta’s arrest. He set his ship in battle dress, went aboard the Austrian warship and not only demanded that the Hungarian be set at liberty, but secured his lib- Everything changes! erty by threatening to sink the Aus- tralian vessel. This action of Cap- tain Ingraham, in taking up the cudgels on behalf of a European revolutionist, was so popular in the United States that the Tribune commented editorially, “Captain Ingraham, had he sunk the Aus- trian. corvette, in Smyrna harbor, as it was but a chance he did not, would certainly have been the next president of the United States.” i Not only is Russia of 1853 different from the Soviet Union of today, but the United States of 1853 that protected Euro- pean revolutionaries from the merciless reaction whose leader was the Russian Tsar, is not the United States of today whose organized might is being used to destroy all who are trying to build a better world—and which has assumed the position of leader of reaction once held by the Tsar. In 1853, the United: States was hailed as a friend by those who were fighting feudalism and cursed by the reactionaries who saw their privileges slipping from them, as “the Yankee who is half a buccaneer and half a backwoodsman and no gentleman at all” which was the way one editorial in. the Vienna ‘press’ de- scribed them. Today the reactionaries bless the same Yankees and the people who are striving to make a better Europe are learing to hate them. : ; When President Truman proposes to Canada to standardize the arms of both countries and set up a Joint Board for Defense to protect both countries from aggression, that is hailed here as statesmanship. When the Soviet Union makes a similar pro- posal to Turkey—that the Black Sea countries should assume the joint defense of the Dardanelles—that is aggression, it is an outrage in Truman’s eyes. Ana the Sun, with its distortion of Marx is one of the ve- hicles for making people see Truman’s way, the wrong way, if we desire a peaceful and happy world. 22 is one of the dates we cannot forget. If Hitler were = alive he certainly would not. Six years ago on that day he made the fatal mistake of his career. On that day he launched his hordes against the Soviet Union. I remember remarking to an 5 a ie ie old friend of mine the day afterwards The turning point’ that Hitler must want badly to com- . mit suicide. That -was the ultimate outcome as far as Hitler was concerned although a world of suffering was inflicted on the whole of the world’s people’s in — the interval between. . On this sixth anniversary, a good way to keep the memory of that date alive will be to see the Stalin Prize Film, ‘The Turn- ing Point,’ which opens on that date at the State Theatre. It is a picture of the defense of Stalingrad, not of the actual fighting so much as of the strategy that turned the fortunes of war and drove the first nails in Hitler’s coffin. : Sees PACIF5C TRIBUNE—PAGE 5 —