U.S. interests drain
- Peace River wealth

Below a young reader of the Pacific Tribune, Bert Nilsson, gives his impressions of
the Peace River country and describes some of the problems created for Dawson Creek by
the boom which began when the town became Mile 0 on the Alaska Highway.

By BERT NILSSON

If you want to see an example of how our natural resources are being dominated
by U.S. capital, the northern interior of our own province is a fine example.

My father and I have just returned home after a week's trip which took us through
the Cariboo and over the John Hart highway to Dawson Creek. Our purpose for going

on the trip was to look for build

the wake of the enormous boom
that we hear so much about.

When we were considering the
possibilities of constructing small
homes for the influx of job seek-
ers whé are arriving daily, we
became aware of many facts as
we talked to various people.

The land-grabbing speculators
have already bought up many sec-
tions of farm land encircling
Dawson Creek and they are ob-
viously going to hold back sell-
ing until they can make a lucra-
tive profit by sub-dividing the
land.

This practice has already paid
big dividends to many specula-
tors who bought property for
around $100 per acre or less and
are now selling it for $1000 and

up per acre and even as high]:

as $3000 or more per acre
if it is suitable for residential
lots.

The town has been unable to
keep up with the demand for
water mains, sewers and other
services with the result that
less than half of the homes have
running water and little more
than the business section has
sewers. A shameful situation
has developed in parts of Dawson

Creek because of completely in-.

adequate building restrictions
that existed until recently so that
parts of the town are built up
with shacks and shanties or poor-
ly built homes. 2

The whole strength of the
present boom lies in the oil and
natural gas development along
with the lumber industry and the
building of the gas pipe line and
the extension of the PGE into
the Peace River country.

There is not yet much em-
phasis on the oil industry but
it appears that there are fairly
large reserves of oil in the area.
A small oil refinery will soon
be in operation in Dawson Creek
that will provide local needs.

The natural gas pipe line from
Fort St. John to the U.S. via
Vancouver is the centre of. at-

traction at Dawson Creek. A large
gas purifying plant is about to be
constructed and all the feeder
pipes to bring the gas to this
centre from the gas wells.

A great variety of secondary
industries could be developed
around a gas purifying plant
but so far the only concern has
been to get the gas into the U.S.

*

The lumber industry for 100
miles around Dawson Creek is
dominated by the Fort St. John
Lumber Company, with the con-
trolling interest owned by the
Broderick Lumber Company of
Pennsylvania.

This company buys up nearly
all the timber that is put up for

-sale and then it lets out the log-

ging and sawing of the timber to
small operators. These small
operators deliver the lumber to
Fort St. John’s planing mills
where it is planed and graded
and then loaded into box cars
and shipped to the U.S.

We visited a sawmill during
our trip and spent some time look-
ing over the operation.

We asked how much of each log
is used and how much is waste
material. We were surprised to
learn that about 60 percent of the
log is completely wasted,

This gave rise to the question,
why are there no pulp and paper
mills in the Interior to make use
of this appalling waste? We still
haven’t found a reason why this

waste should be allowed to con-

ing opportunities which we thought would be inevitable in

This is the Peace River Bridge, 2100 feet long, 35 miles
_north of Dawson Creek on the Alaska Highway.

tinue without some effort on the
part of our governments to solve
the problem.

The grain farmers around Daw-
son Creek are probably the only
people who are not filled with
illusions of prosperity.

Even though the land is as
good as one can find anywhere
and even though there have been
consistently good crops, the
farmers must still face the fact
that so far only 38 pecent of last
year’s crop has been sold and
they must begin to spend money
to put in another crop. The
higher freight rates in the Peace
River country plus the rising
cost of machinery certainly isn’t
making the farmers feel that they
are sharing in the boom.

It appears to me that this so
called “boom” in our northern
interior is more or less a tem-
porary affair brought about by
U.S. need—and greed—to exploit
Canadian resources. For the
moment, Canadians have the il-
lusion of prosperity — while the
long-term benefits accrue to
foreign interests.

Attack on labor

Belated action on the part of
federal authorities in sending in-
vestigators to visit the Fisheries
Association of B.C. was termed

“a fig leaf which cannot conceal
misuse of the Combines Act to
attack labor” by the general ex-
ecutive board of United Fisher-
men and Allied Workers’ Union,
which has been harassed by in-
vestigators for more than two
weeks. :

Text of the UFAWU statement
read:

The federal government seems
determined to turn the Combines
Act upside down as well as twist
it beyond recognition. After two
weeks of interference and harass-
ment of our union, they finally
got around to sending the investi-
gators to visit the Fisheries As-
sociation of B.C. On May 25,
union counsel pointed out in
Supreme Court that whereas the
federal investigators had raided
the union offices but had failed
to raid the “untouchable” can-
ners’ offices this was ‘obvious
discrimination.”

On May 29 the two investiga-
tors who previously claimed to
be in a hurry, left the union of-
fices in the middle of their raid
to start a search of Fisheries As-
sociation files. A few days earlier,
they told us that as soon as their
search of union files was com-
plete they would leave for Ot-
tawa with our documents.

This token investigation of
the Fisheries Association ob-
viously is nothing more than a
blind to quell the public sus-
picion of a plot to break the
fishermen’s union.

If it is not a cover-up and if
the federal government is truly
seeking to expose a combine or
monopoly or merger or trust
which may be operating to the
detriment of the public, why
didn’t they go after big business
and leave the union alone? Big
business firms and not the unions
set the prices on the market,

Why did the government wait
until a public outery had arisen
before dropping in on the can-
ners’ association? Why did they
in effect give the canners two
weeks advance warning by raid-
ing the union first?

How do they expect two fed-
eral investigators to do a proper
job of checking the Fisheries As-
sociation and 13 individual firms
if they telegraph their punches?
Are they shadow-boxing with the
companies and striving for a
knockout against the union? Why
didn’t they send at least 28 men
to start simultaneously on the 13
fishing companies and their as-
sociation? -

The United Fishermen and Al-

|lied Workers’ Union has never

Gov’! misuses act
fishermen charge

had any say whatever in respect
to prices of fish at the wholesale
and retail level. We are amazed

at the manner in which the Com-
bines Investigation Act has been
distorted by the government.

We urge all unions and every
person with a sense of fair play
to demand action by the minister _
of justice to stop the illegal in-
vestigation of our union. The
fact that the investigators are
now looking through the Fisher-
ies Association files should not
blind anyone to the manner in
which the Act has been subvert-
ed for use against a union of
working men.

The UFAWU general executive
board does not mean to imply the |
fish companies are guilty of com-
bining to fix the wholesale prices
of canned salmon. However, if
Ottawa has such suspicions they
certainly have wasted a gréat ,
deal of the taxpayers’ money in
a fruitless search of the union
files and agreements. :

Our union is not in the sam

league as Crown.Zellerbach or
Standard Oil or B.C. Packers.
The search for combines, mon-
opolies, trusts, or mergers which
is the stated object of the act
should be directed where it will
benefit the public and not be
used as a weapon against org-
anized labor.

Ottawa’s expressed fear of this
investigation backfiring seems to
have prodded them into sending
out an ante-dated search warrant
to look into the actions of the
Fisheries Association. This fig
leaf can scarcely prevent expo-
sure of the misuse of the Com-
bines Act to attack labor.

Persecution
act dropped

WASHINGTON

The Eisenhower administration
has abandoned its efforts to strip
old age social security payments
from employees of the Commun-
ist party or alleged ‘(Communist
front” organizations.

Peter J. Hoegen, referee of
the appeals council of the Social
Security Administration, announc-
ed the action in Washington re-
cently by ordering restoration of
social security benefits to 13 per-
sons cut off the rolls.

: Hoegen, who conducted hear- —
ings on the issue in New York
last month, made the ruling on
technical grounds, He ruled that
the government waited too long
before’ depriving the Communist
Saree of their old age bene-
its.

_One of those affected is Wil-
liam Z. Foster, 75-year-old chair-
man of the Communist party-
Another is Jacob Mindel, 73-year-
old Marxist educator now serv-
ing a Smith Act prison sentence-

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FRID

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AY JUNE -- 15 -- 8 p.m.

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PROVINCIAL PICNIC * GRAND OPENING * CHILDREN’S CAMP - WEBSTERS CORNERS -— JUNE 24°

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‘June 8, 1956 — PACIFIC TRIBUNE — PAGE 2

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