Ol B Bill

N another pit of this paper
you will learn that there is a
drive on to place the Pacific
Tribune on a debt-free basis.
This is one of the unfortunate
_ phases of conducting a news-
paper or magazine that functions
solely in the interests of people
who are the victims of the
monopolists.

ATT E

The  main-
tenance of any

paper is a
_matter for the
class it serves.

The people
who make mil-
; lions in profits

do not put
Ff any of their
millions into
papers that
carry on the
: fight for econ-

Bill omic and poli-
tical justice for the exploited
workers who make these vast
profits.

That is quite natural. It is
just as natural then, to expect
that those. who produce the mil-
lions of profits should support
a press which serves only their
best interests. The readers of
the Pacific Tribune know that
it is just-such a paper.

e ;
"THE papers that get the green
light from the monopolists

G BRUCE HILL, president of

_ “** of the Canadian Chamber of

Commerce, has a 4point recipe

to cure Canada’s economic and

social ills. During his recent tour

of B.C. copious doses of this poli-

tical snake oil was fed to local

Chambers of Commerce, Boards

of Trade, Rotarians and similar

bodies, ;

Hill’s 4-point

cure- consists

‘of: more. im-

migration

(cheap labor);

_ (b) e onomic

_ stability (main-

tenance of

profit levels

and the devil

take the rest);

(c) curb com-

munism

stock pretext

for cracking

down on labor standards); and
(da) world trade.

You may have guessed it al-

ready, but when medicine-man

Hill dishes out his Chamber of

- Commerce snake oil, he uses the

_ one-horse-one-rabbit formula for

_ making rabbit pie, e.g., the “curb

communism” ingredient equals

all other three in point of ratio
and importance.

_ here are three generally rec-

ognized rules in compiling what

our powers-that-be call statistics

—“lies, damned lies, and statis-

ties.” Medicine-man Hill adheres

strictly to the second classifica-

tion. a

_ For instance, if you have diffi-

culty in getting a roof over your

head under capitalism, just re-

‘Published Weekly at 650 Howe Street ©

‘them to pay huge

Ce

are those whose papers are used
to blast every effort of the work-
ers to better their conditions.
High-priced advertising, largely
of a misleading character, is pro-
vided for them, not only to keep
them out of the red but to enable
profits. In
return for this they color such
news as they print. They change
a word or a sentence here and
there or they rewrite it entirely
or even make it out of the whole
cloth.

One sample of this was lately
foisted on Vancouver people who
are not above reading scab
papers by the Vancouver Prov-
ince. Since I don’t read the
Province, and won't until the
owners come to terms with the
ITU, I only learned of this par-
ticular sample through a reprint-
ed leafiet that a friend of mine
had handed to him in the office

of a lumber outfit that made ~

seven million dollars profit last
year.

This is a reprint of a series of
articles on Communist activities
in BC. unions which ran
through six issues of the Prov-
ince. Most of the data is taken
from a series of articles which
we published in our paper a few
years ago with some additional
material gleamed from _ stool-

member how much harder it is
under socialism! “Stalin has five
palaces for his own use” but the
poor Russian worker cannot
“own his own home.” With this
auspicious start, Hill recites a
table of “statistics”, illustrating
how much longer and harder a
Russian worker must work for a
loaf of bread, a pound of veal, a
woollen suit or a bottle of beer
than we do! (We covered Whit-

ney’s Board of Trade beer rhap- .

sody last week, and the Hill ly-
rics are a close parallel.)

All this C-of-C tripe is supposed
to “prove” that “socialism won’t
work,” One might ask, if social-
ism is such a dismal failure as
the C-of-C medicine men make it

out to be, why the emphatic in: |

sistence on the need to “curb
communism”? All the answers to
that question can be found in a
little pamphlet written just one
hundred years ago by Karl Marx
and Frederick Engels, entitled
the Communist Manifesto. —

WE have referred a lot in

these pages during recent
months to the rising tide of red-
baiting, anti-communist slander,
distortion and misrepresentation,
which has become the stock-in-
trade of reaction everywhere.
Barely a week passes that the

Financial Post, sections of the

daily press, current reactionary
publications like Time, Life, Col-

_lier's, Maclean’s and other sound-
ing-off organs of big business do

not carry an anticommunist har-
angue. Sometimes it is from the
pén of a so-called “captain of

rea i

UE . if 2.
SUINIENS

Venues

HM =

By THE TRIBUNE PUBLISHING COMPANY LTD.
- Telephones: Editorial, MA. bess Business, MA. 5288

Tom McEwen.

ave: Gubsoription Rates: 1 Year, $250; 6 Months, $1.36.
"Printed by Union Printers Ltd, 650 Howe Street, Vancouver, B.C.

FRIDAY, MARCH 5, 1948

pigeon files of anti-labor outfits
like the Stuart Research and the
CMA. :

Trade union leaders who are
members of the LPP are de-
nounced as a “small group that
has always put the interest of
the Communist Party ahead of
the welfare of the IWA member-
ship they pretend to represent.”

While on the same day they
state that Pritchett, Dalskog and
Melsness “are skilled negotiators,
expert in getting the most fav-
orable terms possible in bargain-
ing with employers. The fact
that they are active members of
a political party subservient to
a foreign power is obscured by
fatter pay cheques and shorter
hours.”

They lie about the subservience
to a foreign government, but
they are compelled to speak the
truth about the fat cheques and
shorter hours,

In this part of the worid the
Pacific Tribune is the leading
paper in coumteracting these
lies and it must be kept alive.
That $15,000 must be forthcom-
ing. Our column has under-
taken to raise $200 of it. Will
you help? I know you will
So send your donations to Ol
Bill at this office.

TT TT (UCL Tl

industry,” sometimes a politician
seeking popularity ... and votes,
sometimes a “revelation” (dress-
ed up by a professional ghost
writer) over the signature of a
lumpenproletarian. This latter
Marx and Engels describes in
the Communist Manifesto as “...
the social scum, that passively
rotting mass thrown off by the
lowest layers of old society ...
a bribed tool of reactionary in-
trigue.”

The Hiaduns, Sullivans, Bu-
denzes, Gouzenkos, Kravchenkos,
Valtins, numerous social-demo-
crats and Trotskyites, belong to
this “lumpenproletariat”’ catego-
ry, extremely valuable to the
Chamber of Commerce medicine
men, because they bring to the

C-of-C anti-communist grist mills

a special brand of mental poison.
Having fouled their erstwhile po-
‘litical nests, they find their ex-
cretion a saleable commodity to
reactionary big business.
'The current issue of Time
contains a masterly distortion of
the 100th anniversary of the
Communist Manifesto and its co-
authors, Marx and Engels. In
four and a half pages of typical
Time distortion what does it all
boil down to? A Hitlerite hymn
of hate against the USSR similar
to that produced in the late Goeb-
bels’ propaganda factories. “To-
day . the West faces ...
Russia and all Communist
parties throughout the world.
Against them stands capitalist
democracy. . .” etc. and so forth.
@

REDBAITING is a sure and
certain indicator of moral
and political bankruptcy. Those
who resort to it are compelled to
do so to cover up the rotting de-
cay in the “way of life” they es-
pouse. It is also a poison—the
poison of hate, designed to con-

fuse and disrupt the only class_

capable of solving the social and

economic problems of our day—

the working class. The working

class of Canada must see it in

this light - and strike back
. hard. Lee

Reject the sales tax

t Soe days before the opening of British Columbia’s 2ist
Legislature the Coalition turned loose a few trial ballooms
marked “Sales Tax.” The reaction of the public to these
trial balloons was ‘‘cagey,” to say the least. They portended
another substantial hoist in the cost-of-living.

The carefully-worded speech ftom the throne neatly
sidesteps mention of sales tax legislation, but gives every
indication that the Coalition has this new nuisance tax in
mind. There is.Jittle doubt in the minds of those who have
noted the Coalition’s subservience to monopoly interests,
that in finding the necessary revenues to finance education,
hospitalization and other public services, the aim of the
Johnson-Anscomb government would be to hit the pockets
of the lower income groups.

When the Union of B.C. Municipalities adopted the idea
of a sales tax to finance municipal needs, it had in mind that
the full amount levied would go to the municipalities. Now
that the Coalition is thinking about pocketing two-thirds
of-a three percent levy, with only one percent going to the
hard-pressed municipalities, the latter are talking about
“Coalition pirates.”. An apt description when one remembers
the recent Coalition deals in streetcar fares and gasoline.

The bulk of the people are opposed to the sales tax in
any shape or form. Not only has it, merited being called a
“nuisance tax” wherever it has been tried, but it bears most
heavily on an already overtaxed working and middle class
population. As we have often repeated, educational cost can
be borne out of consolidated revenues—and these can be
further consolidated by taxing the monopolists in accordance
with their excessive profits and low taxation privileges.

Organized labor and all progressive forces should again
make this known to the Coalition, registering their opposi-
tion to the sales tax proposals in a flood of protests. In
effect, the sales tax is just another trick whereby the gov-
ernment gets out from under its responsibilities to the
municipalities, and penalizes the tax-burdened citizen in
the process.

~

“y will permit an employees’ association in the plant but
no more. Can’t you convince our workers that unions are.
monopolistic organizations, out to destroy free labor?”

Looking backward.

(From. the files of the People’s Advocate, March Srd, 1938)

The year-old padiock law of the Quebec provincial government
which Premier Maurice Duplessis is using as his chief weapon in a
campaign to smash the trade union and progressive movement of —
Quebec will be fully dealt with by R. L. Calder, K.C., vice-president
of Montreal Civil Liberties Union, and Malcolm Mackenzie Ross,
Sree arte pha" Saas ier 2 gc slaw galadeee meewapendatas
wher they speak in Vancouver next week. Rae

Many B.C. trade unions and progressive organizations have
already sent resolutions to the federal government demanding. dis-
allowance of the act, under which private homes have been raided,
halls peas os and newspapers | banned.

* z * * /

MONTREAL—Both the Federation ge Catholic. Workers and the
Catholic Syndicate have joined the international labor movement i
protesting two amendments passed by the Quebec legislature. “The
amendments make closed shops in the province illegal and exempt

af Preemie surecnmient) pestis, wilt trons. pievjou Take walks
ors ies ialay anc aes

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—PAGE §

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