EDITORIAL PAGE

TOM McEWEN, Editor — HAL GRIFFIN, Associate Editor — RITA WHYTE, Business Manager.
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Comment

Authorized as second class mail, Post Office Department, Ottawa

Tom —
McEwen

‘{oMernss a story is worth retelling
sth : hese columns, if for no other rea-
a &n to remind ourselves how far we
hn pime along the road of racial tol-
4 fe and understanding — and how
We have yet to go!
loty i. Rae eats a column or two of
obsery M in the Daily Blah about the
ance of some “Brotherhood” week

or . (
te other, and on the very next page the
abou

8S of some bourgeois spouting
* immediate reaction among all de-
“som People is one of disgust and shame,
netimes mingled with a strong urge
Commit mayhem. :
' every an “free” dog-eat-dog way of life
Rr tity and town has its Snob Hill
holier oop by a profit-grubbing
cu 2 an-thou snobocrasy. It is ‘the
insist po ORE these dollar devotees to
aS a a any new public building such
be nan ‘ool, auditorium, bridge, or other
ibe: Med after one of their bigoted
claim poneyally some tycoon whose only
Toh a fame is (or was) his ability to
o% Pa ue Took ‘his fellow men!
Dey uke Tribune readers will remem-
taming” these morons howled about
oe Re 4 new school in Winnipeg after
herp Canadian Second World War
- -Rame Andrew Mynarski, V.C. “Such a
“itseye, Yelped Snob Hill, “does not lend
they: 0 the name of a school.” No doubt
a Uke pate have preferred sométhing
ans ‘ bitibi Arthur” or “Igor Gouzenko”
‘SOldien © of the name of a Canadian
Valor 3. holding the highest award for
ust the service of his country.
Ry oe few. weeks ago Calgary’s Snob
the awed in a similar uproar about
Btessive of a new school. The pro-
hame th folks of Calgary wanted to
tian mare school after the great Cana-
Crowe, 22 Chief of the Blackfeet, Chief
one of ¢ — sometimes referred to as
lng the. anada’s greatest statesmen dur-
,. © Riel rebellion in 1885.

Object Winnipeg, Calgary’s Snob Hill
Rds «& loudly and its spokesmen wail-
Children Members wouldn’t want our
the nat be called Indians because of
my Me Of the school.”
Name suggested by Snob Hill
© an insult to any stray mongrel
Say nothing of Calgary — or
BR children; the Richard Bedford
Rg Can School! Just imagine subject-
Dightmn. adian children to the continual
anagae’, Of being reminded daily of
ber of §,!0P_millionaire tory belly-rob-
Canad’ On shyster lawyer who “loved”
the aNaee much he got out of it when
; “Nadian people gave him and his

Ye ses Tory party the boot in 1935.

Heay Soul The Richard Bedford tron
With th Nnett Baron of Calgary school,
NU the 4 baronial coat of arms engraved
the insig ‘A Stone, a bathtub cushant with
Uon 428 of the $ sign superimposed
Chita, ae Prostrate form of a: hungry
A tite Makes one shudder.
ore. Mdian lass, blood relation of

 Steat
{chool

: “at this is an example of the

1.
long jo tainly glad that I shall never be-
Nn Rete bigoted race.”
: Rot ant Sister, you are wrong. That
CS ang aample of your Canadian bro-
reeds rt Sisters of all colors, races and
Wy Snob oe into one Canada. That is
Which h Hill speaking; a decadent class
Patriots ho tolerance, no brotherhood,
lit 1smM, nothing of the illustrious
S of your people.

t the “superiority” of his breed,

me Hungry Thirties. A CPR

Chief Crowfoot, wrote from.

& + ’ “
aM en t”’s tolerance and’ brotherhood,

"Well, let us go to the top level and tackle him."

NPA gets whitewash ready

N this ‘best-of-all” social system

of ours it is customary, when
something goes wrong, to set up
some body or other to take a close-
up look at 'the effects of the wrong-
doing, but seldom if ever at the

causes.

In such cases two basic rules ap-
ply. If what has gone wrong af-
fects a lot of “little” people, we put

them in the pillory of public odium,

skin them alive, “throw the book”
at them, then sit back with a virtu-
ous sense of justice having been

properly served.

Ii, however, the wrong-doers stem
from the upper crust of our “best”
people, that requires some tactful
caution, not too deep a probing,
some public demonstration having
to do with the enforcement of the
higher virtues — and a goodly quan-

tity of whitewash to cover up the
dirt of causation.

The old homily “to err is human,
to forgive divine” may hold good
for the average citizen, but not. for
Non-Partisan administration at City
Hall. When that clique of political
tricksters sees error striking too
close to home, “divinity” finds its
highest expression in a goodly sup-
ply of well-stirred whitewash.

All the signs at 'the moment in-
dicate these Non-Partisan defenders
of the sacred right of “get-it-while-
the-getting’s-good” are busily pre-
Paring an extra large supply of
whitewash for the “preservation”
(Non-Partisan style) of Vancou-
vers virtues—and their own cor-
rupt regime at City Hall come next
election!

Whitewash, as Webster says.
“restores reputations” as well as it
covers dirt,

_ We can win new readers

i

T may just be the summer “dol-

drums” when most of us feel like
taking things easy for a time, but
whatever the cause the situation is

getting serious and something has

to be done about it.

This paper is not in the habit of

‘

blinking at the facts whether good

or bad, and at ‘the moment a bad

situation exists. In brief, the cir-

culation of the Pacific Tribune has

been falling off during‘the past three

months. No doubt such a situation
will be cause for some whoops of
pis in the camp of reaction, but
their joy will be short-lived.

As part of the preparation for a
big circulation drive beginning next

month, a province-wide PT confer-
ence will be held in Vancouver on
September 11. This conference will

not only tackle the problem of re-

gaining the ground we have lost
during past months, but of adding
hundreds of new subscribers to the
PT family.

While it is generally agreed that

building circulation is a year-round |

job, it is also.agreed that the pre-

parations for this press conference

_ and its success can only be spelled

out in one way, viz, by holding all

the subscribers we have — and add-

ing hundreds more to the total.

That in turn means taking the PT
to the people.

Hal
Griffin

FTHEN years ago, when the King

government banned The Advocate,
neither the Vancouver Sum nor the Van-
couver Daily Province wrote even the
mildest of editorial protests. These two
dailies, always ready to invoke the free-
dom of the press whenever they con-
sider their own interests infringed upon,
were silent when the suppression of a
small labor weekly required them to
defend the principle.
dt isn’t ‘surprising therefore, to find
great British newspapers like The Times
celebrating the centennial of press
“freedom” — a freedom that they did
nothing to win. ;

One hundred years ago, on June 29,
1855, the British government was com-
pelled to abolish the stamp tax. This
was one of the “taxes on knowledge,”
as they were called, designed to keep
newspapers out of reach of the “ig-
norant.” |

A tax was placed on each copy of a
paper (in 1830 it was fourpence), a duty
on every advertisement, another tax on
the paper itself.

The struggle for repeal of the stamp
tax was not won by such papers as The
Times, for the tax, by crippling opposi-
tion papers, gave The Times a virtual
monopoly. It was won by a host of small
radical papers which openly defied the
government.

Perhaps the most famous of them was
The Poor Man’s Guardian, published by
Henry Hetherington in 1831 under the
slogan, “Published in Defiance of the
Law, to try the Power of Right against
Mighi,” and sold for one penny as com-
pared to sevenpence for The Times.

The popularity of the unstamped
papers eventually became so strong that
the legal papers themselves were forced
to demand repeal of the stamp tax to Tre-
tain their own position.

These restrictions on freedom of the
press had their parallel in own own
country, from the use of “libel,” as
against the editor of the Canadian Free-
man in Upper Canada and the editors of
the Vindicator and Minerve in Lower
Canada, to the heavy postal tax placed
on papers.

xt xt

If- it is ironical to find The Times
celebrating the centenary of a victory
it did nothing to win, it is also strange
to note its comment on the centenary
that competition “for mammoth circula-
tions has led in some cases to a dis-
graceful lowering of values. The baser
instincts are being pandered to. . .
Irresponsibility is rife.’ And this, The
Times admits, is the result of “turn-
ing of the press into ‘a predominantly
business enterprise. . . .”

The same thing was said by William
Cobbett, publisher of the Weekly Politi-
cal Register, as long ago as 1807, when
the observed: “Some papers . . . are the
property of traders or speculators. The
thing is regarded merely as a money
speculation, is to be made the most of,
and, of course, the most profitable poli-
tics will always be preferred”

The truth is that the daily press in our
country today not only voices the policies
of big business, it is itself an integral
part of big business. It is no more con-
cerned with real press freedom than
was The Times a century ago.

Now, as then, the only real press free-
dom lies in those papers published by
the people themselves — and there is a
direct line between The People’s Paper,
directed by Ernest Jones, the Chartist
leader, maintained by collections among
the workers, and the Pacific Tribune,
sustained also by its readers.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — AUGUST 19, 1955 — PAGE 5__