_ fon leaders believe,”
editorial, “that would ‘be a na- |

WHO provides the capital the

bosses use to exploit their
workers? Let’s see what the
bosses say about it.

A copy of one of these propa-
ganda sheets known as house or-
gams came my way a few days
ago. It is named the “Sumner Co-
operator” and
is put out by
the Sumner
Iron Works,

Among a few
blurbs for the
products of
the company,
some personal
squibs about
members of
the “staff” and
a column of
near - smutty ‘
— is one editorial.

This editorial expounds’ the
heart-burnings, in the usual ‘wail-
ing style of the corporations, big
and little, at the possibility of
their workers being so foolish as
to demand pay-hoists at this par-
ticular time.

The workers are to be the “co-
_ @perators” presumably, by not
asking that their wages be in-
creased out of profits, which even
if it could be done, “as some un-
says their

oe be aa es -
“The nied for enlarging and im-

cA proving the plants of Canadian in-

- dustry is urgent,” it goes on to
Say, “and the encroachment of
Wages on profits would deprive

industry of its largest source of
funds for expansion.’

The Sumner Iron Works is not
unique in thus demanding that
their workers provide them with
the necessary capital to expand
their plants. It is'a general policy
of the whole class of exploiters
and always has been although
they are more baltant about it
today. It looks naive but is ac-
tually shameless.

The MacMillan Export Com-
pany had one of these “goodwill”
ads in the local press a few days
ago. They came right out openly
with a headline that read “5112
jobs grew from earnings saved
and re-invested.” They are having
a new pulp mill built at Nanaimo
at a cost of 13 million dollars. The
ad says “more than half of this
money will come from past earn-
ings,” and the other 19 million
dollars of their capital had the
same origin. What did not come
from past earnings will come
from future earnings—the sweat

_and toil of their workers. This is

the gang that owns the Iron River
Logging Co. (Iron Heel) where
the IWA strike-breakers are “‘co-
operating” with the company to
break a loggers’ strike.

The Buzzard too, takes the
same line; in fact, the B.C. Col-
lectric has enforced it in the past
year, although not from their own
workers alone, but also from the
other workers who have to pay
toll to them. “267 new _ busses,”
only on condition that the pas-
sengers pay for them.

Tom McEwen

“Las weekend we ran into one

‘of those “there's-two-sides-to-
ce ieespsentioa lads, a sort of
eross breed between a CMA town
booster and a right-wing social
democrat. You know the type.
They exude an ‘odor of stale meta-

: show that the CPR really needed

another big hoist in freight rates,
_ because in September of this year
they only made a measly $1,340,-

“722 more than in September last -

_ year. Barely enough to keep the
shareholders. off the unemployed
‘rolls!

Our new scutes wasn’t
eonvineed. “It's allright to talk
about profits, but what about the
-eost of running a railroad . . .
have you considered that side of
‘the question”? Frankly (since we

don’t own a railroad) we hadn't
given that side of it much
thought. From the profit angle it
looks like a good proposition.

*
We got onto the situation in

_ China. In fact we gave him “two

sides” to that one. Sol Bloom,
new chairman of the U.S. House
foreign affairs committee says, “I
am not going to vote to give
Chiang another gun or dollar for

~ War purposes. That Chinese gov-

ernment has corruption coming
out of its ears ... and their so-
called army is the worst offender.
And furthermore,” cracked Bloom,

“we ought to stop those phoney

American observers who go over

» to China for a month and then -

come back and tell us either what
we already know—or only what
Chiang wants us to know.”

“Sounds like communism to
me,” growled our double-barrelled
democrat.

So we tried arfother tack. Ex-

Senator Clark of Idaho is “rarin’
to go” and wants the U.S. to pour
billions of dollars into China. The
old republican Congress sent
Clark to China as an “observer”
and he came back full of fizz and
vinegar for Chiang Kai-shek. The
big metropolitan dailies gave the
senator a real spread.

_ Published Weekly at 650 Howe Street
By THE TRIBUNE PUBLISHING COMPANY LTD.

Telephones: Editorial, MA. 5857;

Tom McEwen .

Business, MA. 5288

“Free en- -

Short Jabs

ee

And now comes the spokesman
for the whole boiling of exploiters,
the C.M.A. In a brief released on
the 14th Dec. and circulated by
the Canadian Press, they state,
“Even if profits were iarge
enough—and they are not—the
payment of higher wages from
profits would deprive Canadian
industry of its largest source of
funds for expansion ... The por-
tion of net corporation profits
after taxes not paid out in divi-
dends, is vital to the growth and
expansion of business upon which
the employment hopes of most
Canadians depend.”

They estimate that Canadian
manufacturers have spent one-
and-a-half billions of dollars in
new plants since the end of the
war. That is a billion-and-a-half
that the workers donated to their
bosses. They went without butter,
and ham and eggs, and corn beef

vand cabbage; when they got beef

steaks they came from right be-
tween the horns or close to the
hoof; their kiddies went without
shoes that they should have had:
some of them lived in dog ken-
nels and chicken coops and rab-
bit hutches because they could not
dig up the price to buy houses.
But out of their generosity they
gave the bosses a_billion-and-a-
half in less than four years since
the alleged end of the war. ;

They provided the new plants
but the boss owns them. Yet the
comedian of the B.C. Federation
of Trade and Industry, R. J.
Templeton asks, “Who owns a
socialized es

terprise versus “Communism.”
went over big.

What didn’t go over so big
was the fact that Senator Clark
was a Partner in a law firm
which was paid over $100,000 by
T. V. Soong, Chiang’s brother-
in-law, for services in securing
“aid” to China!

Our “two-sided” friend lodked
stoically out to sea, perhaps
thinking of the pop-guns thate
wouldn’t be in Madame Chiang’s
stocking this Xmas if Bloom: had
his way and Clark hadn't.

We came back to domestic prob-
lems and their many “sides.”
From comments on Xmas window
shopping, which is rated very
good this Yuletide, we got onto
the subject of potatoes. Potatoes
as everybody knows, come in very
handy, to fill the gaps in lieu of
roast beef, plum pudding, turkey,
or other top level menu items.
Our friend seemed unimpressed.

“You will be happy to know,”
we observed “that the government
is shelling out between four and
five million dollars to Prince Ed-
ward Island and New Brunswick
potato grewers for potatoes they
cannot sell under our free enter-
prise system and which are to be
fed to cattle or dumped back in
the fields to rot. Even at top prices
4-million dollars worth of pota-
toes is a lot of spuds in anybody’s
language. A lot of people in Bri-

tain—and Canada, could use those

potatoes. In fact,” we added as
an after-thought on potatoes, “in

Britain the question of food is -

now described by The Manchester
Guardian as a national obses-
sion”!
Our “two-sides - to - every - ques-
tion” pal had gone to sleep, with,
an-expression not unlike that of a
well-scrubbed PEI tubor. —

‘Peace on earth
«6 DEACE On wraith. | Scodwil. howard Met. With erch

succeeding Christmas that centuries-old hope burns anew. Men
pause for a brief moment in the mad scramble for survival to wish
their fellow men “‘Merry Christmas.”

Even this one short day with all it symbolizes teaches us that
when people think, talk and act in the spirit of peace and goodwill,
the mass transformation is almost miraculous. For one brief moment
throughout the year the flood waters of human kindness break through
their artificial dams. Even the Scrooges of high finance and industry,
who alone profit from fomenting hatred and war, are swept into its
irresistable stream. On this historic day the power of peace is such
that even the venal press, skilled in the art of provoking human dis-
cord, piously editorializes on scripture!

“Peace On Earth, Goodwill Toward Men.”’
Canada’s Minister of External Affairs, L. B. (Mike) Pearson

has just returned from the United Nations general assembly in Paris.
Mike is quoted as saying that the UN sessions were ‘‘exhausting, de-
pressing and frustrating.’”’ With a foreign policy the exact reverse
of peace and goodwill, it is little wonder that the man who presumes
to speak for the common people of this country in the UN should
find the proceedings as he describes them. ~

It must be difficult for the Chinese people to accept the Mosquito
bombers and TNT explosives from Canada as symbols of peace and
goodwill—almost as difficult as for the Canadian people to believe that
the maintenance of the corrupt Chiang regime is essential to Canada’s

“‘defense.”’

Equally so with our export of war materails to bolster up Dutch
imperialism in its brutality against the people of Indonesia, or our
similar “‘aid’’ to Greek fascism. This brand of “‘goodwill’’ accom-
panied by official claptrap about preserving “democracy,” “‘security,”’
““defense,”’ “‘peace,’’ has become threadbare in 1948.

When our predatory imperialists mutter “peace on earth’ they
think of new Hiroshimas and greater profits, while their concept of
“goodwill toward men’”’ is based upon the thought control of a police »
state to implement their interpretation of “goodwill.”

Little wonder “Mike” Pearson found his UN task ‘ ‘exhausting,
depressing, and frustrating.”’ The common people here in Canada
and elsewhere are making new and mighty efforts to build peace and
goodwill—which cuts across the “‘exhausting”’ conspiracies and witch-
hunting of the war mongers.

It is with the hope for continued growth of a mighty peace move-
ment and the inevitable defeat of the war incendiaries that we say to
all our readers and friends at this time: A Merry Christmas and the,
triumph of all who work for a people’s eave in 1949,

“Papa says we just ‘can’t have pum kin p
; i Xmas
says it’s Tall of microphobes,” Nee. cag :

Looking backward

(From the files of The P 1
Under the slogan “Keep aod ee eects ao re mgt
ment for an embargo on war shipments to Japan is a ae
im the province this week. Main center
is Vancouver. Featured by Wednesday’s
ganized by the Embargo Council and
thousands of people, the demand for an
by opening of a drive for one million
sentation to the federal government,

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — DECEMBER 24, 1948 — PAGE

,