aes

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Labor,-farmers unite
around wheat demand

OTTAWA

The country’s leading trade union centres have joined with five provincial farm unions
in an unprecedented display of farmer-labor unity. Together they are demanding that the

there’s no storage space for it.

_ federal government make cash advances to Prairie farmers for grain stored on farms because

(Farmers get nothing for their grain until it is delivered).

Premier T. C. Douglas launched a powerful

. _ attack last week against his Li I
Speech debate in the Saskatchewan legislature.

Workers are calling the U.S.

_ €xecutives ride,” is how an Avro

+%

i ‘of lavish publicity in Canadian
_ Papers placed by big U.S. plants.
Ih a single month 40 Avro en-

4 Vocating increased family allow-
_ &Nces in preference to help .for

It is evident that the CCF

REGINA
counter-
beral opponents in the Throne

intends to make a main issue

of the McCarthyite attack on government officials last December

by Alex Cameron, Liberal MLA
for. Maple Creek, and right hand
“Man of Liberal leader A. H. Mc-
Donald.

(Cameron demanded the dis-
Missal of Deputy Labor’ Minister
Avs. Elkin, and of Dr. M.S.
Acker following the participation
of these two senior government
Officials in arranging a meeting
in Regina to hear Helen Sobell
speak on behalf of her husband,
Morton Sobell, now serving a 30-
year term in, Alcatraz on the dis-
Credited atom spy charges.)
_:The premier took particular ex-
ception to Cameron’s suggestion
that “it *is hardly .becoming for
any Canadian citizen openly to
criticize the justice of the United |
States courts.” —* :

“Has it become treason to criti-,

cize any court?” the premier ask-
ed. “Are the courts always in-
fallible? Has no innocent man
ever been sent to jail? Has no
innocent man ever been hanged?
“Have we forgotten Tom Moon-
ey, the Billings, the Scottboro
boys, Sacco and Vanzetti, the
Tolpuddle martyrs? Are the
courts only wrong 100 years later
and perfectly right today?
“The Liberal party has set its
feet along the trail of black re-|
action which leads to McCarthy-

lism and the eventual destruction

of all those freedoms for which
men have struggled over the
past 2000 years.”

So far the Liberals have not
attempted to, defend their posi-
tion on this question in the leg-
islature. f

Avro workers bitter

4 >

Engineers

TORONTO
*“€adillac Yanks” is what Avro

€ngineers imported to work at
the jet aircraft plant near
Toronto. They ask and get
twice the pay of Canadians doing
the same work, and are called
“Cadillac Yanks” because they
drive up in flashy cars, “the kind

Company official put it.

__ While this goes on at+ Avro, |
 Canadiarf? skilled engineers are

being drained off to work in
U.S. plants under the influence

‘Sineers quit for work in the U-S.
cause company officials re-
fused to pay Canadians anything
slike the rates offered U.S. help. |
__An informed unionist told the

Canadian Tribune:
“A roving company from the
is travelling across the,

length and breadth of Canada oy

fering its service$ in Consulting

‘Cadillac Yanks’ —

called

and designing work. They ad-
vertise themselves as a bunch of
specialists. :

Bins the past year and half
some 200 have come to Avro.
They get double the Canadian
wage that runs between $80 and
$125 a week. In addition they
received a per diem allowance
of $5-7 which brings their total
possible wage close to $300 a
week.” ; : Mik) ve

He pointed out that this was

“way out of line’ and should
be changed if Canadian com-
panies wanted to keep their skill-
ed engineers at home. :
' Avro~ management was also
rapped for failing to set up a
proper apprenticeship _ program
to take care of future demands
of the aircraft industry. —

The Association of Professional
Engineers reported that Avro
was getting its share of Cana-

| dian engineers “who are just as

capable.” But a spokesman
thought there was nothing alarm-
ing in the situation reported at
the aircraft company..

The leaders of more than 1,200,000 organized workers and 200,000 organized farmers

Douglas hits Liberals
on McCarthyite stand

thus have put their combifed
weight behind the assault on the
government bill now before the
House of Commons which §in-
sists that the farmers should bor-
row money from the bank at 542
percent interest in order to get
the cash they need.

When the Farm-Labor Econ-
omic Council met here February
19, it brought together Claude
Jodoin and A. R. Mosher, top
men in the Trades and Labor
Congress and the Canadian Con-
gress of Labor; J. L. Phelps,
chairman of the néw Council;
Jack Schultz, leader of the inter-
provincial farm union council,
and leader of the farm unions in
the three Prairie provinces, Brit-
ish Columbia and Ontario.

'The unity conference not only
decided on the pressing need for
cash advances. It also agreed:

w *That farmers are entitled
to parity prices on their pro-
ducts. i:

mM That a _ shorter work-
week should be enforced by
law to protect industrial work-

ers from lay-offs due to auto-
mation.

~ That minimum wage ley-
els should be raised, especially
in depressed areas.

And it decided to meet again
shortly after the April merger
of the TLC and the CCL to put
the farm-labor council on a per-
manent basis.

Meanwhile, in and out of par-
liament, there has come into be-
ing a national campaign to force
the government to rétreat from
its “borrow-from-the-banks” po-
sition and heed the demand for
a system of cash advances. Trade
Minister C: D. Howe, speaking
for the government, together
with Agriculture Minister Gar-
diner, are doing their best to de-
fend the government’s position,
but finding the going increas-

ingly difficult. g

In. Saskatchewan, the Labor-
Progressive party has launched
a post-card and petition cam-
paign which puts forward a 5-
point, program “to meet the
growing crisis” on the Prairies:

{—Interest-free cash advances
on all farm-stored grains, to be
paid through the Wheat. Board.

2—Trade for sterling.

3—Trade with the
countries.

4—A guaranteed floor price to
the producer on all wheat of
$2.05 a bushel.

5—Take 25 percent of the fed-
eral arms budget to establish
credits with countries desirous
of buying our wheat}

socialist

George F. Edwards, president
of Senior Citizens’ Association of
British Columbia, hit out this
Week at Angus MacInnis, MP

(CCF, Vancouver-Kingsway) for}

his “attitude on pensions ‘for
anada’s aged. vas
In a speech in parliament ad-

Senior citizens, MacInnis implied
at greater consideration should
© given to the children “who

8re the future citizens of Canada.”
“This attitude is very dis-

€Ppointing to the members of our
€nior Citizens’ Association, and,
sais \ Stoke

undoubtedly, to all those who
are attempting to live on an in-
adequate pension,” wrote Edwards
in a letter to local newspapers.
“Surely the’ contribution made
by the generation of senior citi-
zens now living—or trying to—
on an Old e. Assistance pen-
sion justifies them being given
priority over any other form of
social assistance, including a
national health program,” con-
tinued Edwards. /

“The parents of children ar
at present receiving fairly sub-
stantial bonuses which senior
citizens did not receive when

t

MacInnis’ pension stand assailed

they ‘were raising their families,
and a great ‘majority of the
parents of these children are_in
receipt of good incomes...

“It is doubtful if many. child-
ren in Canada are suffering from
malnutrition, while undoubtedly
many thousands of pensioners
are, and the statement of Mac-
Innis that pensioners are prac-
tically through with life appears
to be a callous disregard of Can-
ada’s obligation to the generation
of senior citizens who laid the
foundation of all the prosperity

and development of which we}.
so proud.” |

.

boast and are

“

Ra

Hero of

Winter Olympics

¥.

\ Hero of the Winter Olympics ‘was Toni (the Kid) Sailer,
handsome six-footer from Austria, who won three gold medals

. in skiing events. Sailer, nicknamed “Little Abner” by Nerth
Americans, was beseiged for autographs by fans from all

countries.

Gert Whyte's

SPORTLIGHT

WHE dream of. every manager

in the fight game is to dis-
cover a potential heavyweight
champion somewhere in the
sticks, sign him up with ‘an
ironclad contract running for

a lifetirne, and then pilot him

to the top, where the gravy runs
thick and juicy.

Ex-fighters with managerial
ambitions are among those who
seek hardest for a Golden Boy
to fleece. Generally they are
poor judges of ring potential,
and their carefully nursed pros-
pects. collapse before getting
beyond the semi-final Stage.

For some years Jack Demp-

sey has helped to promote

heavyweight elimination tour-

‘neys in various cities, with the

hope that sooner or later he
will ‘strike pay dirt and dis-
cover a young giant who can
box, hit, and take it. Previous
tournaments. have uncovered
characters who. could box but
couldn’t hit the floor with their
hats, others who could hit but
possessed glass jaws, and a few
who seemed to have everything
but somehow didn’t pan out.
This month Dempsey has his
eye on an elimination tourna-
ment in Toronto. No great
fighter has ever come up this
way, as far back as I can re-
member, but Jack still dreams
that the miracle will occur.
After all,,there’s no charge for
dreams. 3
* * * .
It had to happen, and it did.
An American has discovered, by
applying a mathematical for-
mula proposed by’ another
citizen of the Excited States,
that the USSR didn’t come
“first” in the Winter Olympics
after all. Austria did, sez he.
Under this U.S. “system” .01
point is taken off for each mil-

lion population of the country, .

and a_ 10-5-4-3-2-1 scoring
method is used. Since the Soviet
Union has 220 million people
and Austria only seven million,
he found that Austria “won”
the team fitle by 77.46 points
to the Soviet Union’s 71.20. The
U.S. finished seventh.

There is an almost invisible
borderline between sanity and

MARCH 2, 1956 —
‘ : es

insanity, I've been teld. Per-
haps it is the 49th parallel ?

Remember, it was the Am-
ericans who invented the
“points” system, at a time when
the United States were consistent
Olympic winners in unofficial
standings.

Olympic officials vainly tried
to convince newsmen that gold,
silver and bronze medals were
the only recognized awards,
given on the basis of individual
performances.

Many sane Americans are
disgusted by the screams of the
U.S. press that “Russia is win-
ning the cold war through the
Glympics,” and “The U.S. is
made to look a sueker im the
Games.” : haat

Typical of the viewpoint of
the average, decent: American is
that’ expressed by Barbara
Smith in the current issue of
Sports Illustrated. She. writes:
' “Iwas a specator at Cortina,
and nowhere at’ any time did
I hear this kind of talk or reas-
oning. Cortina to all who were
present was a magnificent spec-
tacle of individual athletic per-

“formances, a wonderful sports
celebration. :

“Both spectators and competi-
tors were too awed and fascin-
ated by this occasion to care a
straw about any ‘policia} sig-
nificance of the 50-kilometer
cross-country.’ This kind of

* talk and emotional response is
found outside the stadium, never
inside. I and millions of others
all over. the world do believe
in this ideal of amateur sports.
Let’s keep politics out of the
stadium and not make politicians
out of our athletes.”

These are good general senti-
ments, but of course there was
politics in the air at ‘Cortina —

- the politics of peace, arising
out of Geneva. The very fact
that “cold war politics” was ab-
sent in the stadium at ti
demonstrated the great Political
gains made in the. past year by
the peoples of the world who
fought on all fronts, in-
cluding the sports front, for a
relaxation of international
tensions and a growth of the

Spirit of brotherhood and co- :
existence,

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — PAGE 11