A ANY lawyers here have a
‘middle name. The initials
may be different but the name is
always the same, “gall.” One of
that category made the headlines
in the local press last week with
the absurd plea that a lawyer is
not a business
man and should
not have to pay
the business tax
imposed by the
City Council.

Service,
Heffernan, at afi.
City Hall court of revision,
lawyer named Novak maintained
that, “Lawyers are in the same
category as ordinary laborers. We
are hewers of wood and drawers
of water. We don’t sell service, we
sell labor-”

Two things might account for
this burning desire to get a share
of the social honor that is due
only to the workers, besides the
hope of getting a cut in the busi-
ness tax. Heffernan has been sit-
ting in on the negotiations be-
tween the IWA and the Stuart Re-
search Service. The consistently
high standard of debate displayed
by the horny-handed loggers and
mill workers has no doubt im-
pressed him to the extent of in-
structing his lawyer to make him
out to be one of their number.

Or, it may be that lawyer No-

Tom WiecEvoun

"THE monthly journal of the

Canadian Chambers of Com-
merce reveals a considerable dith-
er in the dove-cotes of high fin-
ance. Recent election returns in
Ontario, plus three byelections
across the country, have complete-
ly upset Cham-

bers of Com-

merce algebra,
To them “free
2snterprise”
equals “prosper-
ity”, and should,
by all their
rules, equal a
nation” of con-
tented people!

Extreme “perplexity” is express-
ed by the journal at “the gains
made by Canadian Socialists in a
period of unprecedented prosper-
ity and full employment. . . . So-
cialists are gaining ground in an
environment which should be dis-
tinectly favorable to free enter-
prise.” In short, the journal is
sorely disturbed by what it calls
“the rising tide of anti-capitalism
in Canada.” —

Happily, we can record that
this bourgeois perturbation is not
of recent origin, nor confined to
the Chambers of Commerce.
Back in 1848 Karl Marx wrote
in the Communist Manifesto that

NRA A

IUUTNTUVOUUAGISTOUGUEEUEEUGU SEE CAEL

vak has been reading what. Adam
Smith has to say about the divi-
sion of labor in society, forgetting
that Smith admits to be “labor-
ers” only those, in capitalist soci-
ety, who directly ‘contribute to
material production.

Or again, it might be that, know-
ing how easily the City Council
members are buffaloed by the B.C.
Collectric, they might be imbeciles
enough to fall for his unique line.

: * * *

On the same day, another report
brought fame (no, that is the
wrong word) to the Benchers of
the B.C. Law Society. That aug-
ust body, which exercises a sort
of dictatorship of the proletariat
over the lawyers of the province,
actually distinguished itself by
discussing the barring of a couple
of applicants who applied for per-
mission to practice law here. Ap-
plicants for membership in their
union (100 percent closed shop),
must be of good moral character

and satisfy the Benchers as to.

their fitness for membership.
The two applicants, it appears,
admitted they were Communists,
which admission on their part was
made the basis for the objectféns
to their enrolment in the society.
To one who has never been
tested as to his fitness for mem-
bership in the Law Society, it
seems a highly moral act on the
part of these two young men, in
the face of the obloquy that at-
taches to Communism as a result
of the fierce red-baiting campaigns
that have been kept hot since the

.

the specter of communism.” Now
it haunts the boudoirs and the
counting houses of Western mon-
opoly capitalism.

We can readily understand the
fears of the Chambers of Com-
merce. “Prosperity” ag indicated
by the super-profits, indices of big
business, does not extend to the
people as a whole. In fact, quite
the reverse. To the extent that
profits and dividends from un-

' earned increment spiral, the real

wages and living standards of the
Canadian people decline. One
need only glance at the current
cost-of-living increases — the ab-
sence of decent low-cost homes,
the growing threat of mass unem—
ployment — as compared with
spiralling corporate profits, to see
the wide margin between Cham-
bers of Commerce and prosperity
and the economic plight of wage
earners, and low-income groups
which the moguls of high-finance
would have us believe are en-
joying their “prosperity”!

Hence the present “perplex-
ity” when the Canadian people
manifest a desire to have done
with the old-line Liberal and Tory
parties of big business, and elect
CCF and labor representatives in
preference to the political stooges
of “free enterprise” and ersatz
“prosperity”.

e
l NLIKE the financial editor of
the Toronto Daily Star, we do

Published Weekly at 650 Howe Street
By THE TRIBUNE PUBLISHING COMPANY LTD.
Telephones: Editorial, MA. 5857; Business, MA. 5288

Tom McEwen ........-+++-

eke Pha eek eet ky Editor

Subscription Rates: 1 Year, $2.50; 6 Months, $1.35.

Printed by Union Printers Ltd.. 650 Howe Street, Vancouver, B.C.
.

Short Jabs

LARA

end of the war, to stand four-
Square for their political belief
and to deny that it has any bear-
ing on their fitness to be accept-
ed as lawyers.

The polities of a man, Liberal,
Tory, or what-not, should not be
a bar to the practice of law, but
their moral conduct undoubtedly
should be above reproach, If this
were sO, we would not see the
scandal of a labor-hating K.C.
acting for the Crown in appeals
against law court decisions involv-
ing the labor laws of this prov-
ince.

Some of the leaders of the legal
profession never miss an oppor-
tunity to tell their hearers of
the duty imposed on the lawyers
of protesting the heritage of civil
rights of the people, of acting as
a barrier to the inroads of tyran-
ny or despotism, in fact of being
the social institution that guaran-
tees orderly progress from bar-
barism to civilization.

This case is one to test that
claim. If political differences are
to be used to deny membership in
the Law Society to any body of
people it must be driven home
to the minds of the whole profes-
sion that such a method of at-
tempting to secure unity of opin-
ion can only end in failure.

That is the considered opinion
of the U.S. Supreme Court render-
ed in a celebrated decision—the
Barnette flag salute case. The
Court ruled, “Compulsory unifica-
tion of opinion acheives only the
unanimity of the graveyard.”

not believe that the Chamber of -

Commerce have got down to ask-
ing themselves “some soul-search-
ing questions” about the trend
leftwards, will ultimately see the
“error of their ways” and make
the necessary readjustments to-
wards prosperity for the many in-
stead of the few.

Th_ hard-boiled attitude of big
business,. whether it be the boss
loggers of British Columbia, the
piratical shipping companies of
the Great Lakes or the textile
barons in eastern Canada, indi-.
cates that they are not, not only
to increase their prosperity (read
profits), but to smash every trade
union and labor organization that
stands in the way of their attain-
ing and maintaining their super
profits. And in this they have the
open and unashamed backing and
support of Liberal, Tory and
coalition forms of old-line govern-
ments.

The sheer hypocrisy of crocodile
tears shed by the Chambers of
Commerce for the “rising tide of
anti-capitalism”, when all us or-
dinary people are supposed to be
wallowing in “prosperity”, is fur-
ther underlined by the scramble
for leadership in the Liberal and
Tory stables. The old guard in
each party, taking orders from
the Chambers of Commerce, are
more interested in picking a
“leader” who will continue the
Bennett-King traditions of reac-
tion and intrigue, than in choos-
ing one who might accidentally

_ Possess some notions of economic

and social reform, Capitalist poli-
ics being what they are, it could
not be otherwise. \

"The only thing we of the work-
ing class are sure of in the
months ahead, is that the “ris-
ing tide of anti-capitalism” will
continue to rise. We are that
_ tide, destined to engulf the pro-
fiteers and their political pawns,
regardless of party labels.

The Liberals and the seamen

HERE are two conferences in Ottawa this weekend.

One is the National Liberal convention and the other
is the conference of labor leaders called by Percy Bengough,
president of the Trades and Labor Congress, to deal with
the “national emergency” of the Lakes shipping strike.

The Liberal government, its retiring leader and its new
leader, come before their convention with blood on their
hands, the blood of innocent Canadian seamen shot in defence
of labor’s rights and the laws of Canada.

Latest statements by Labor Minister Humphrey Mitchell
and Transport Minister Chevrier make it clear that the
government Has actively collaborated from the first in the
companies’ plot to tear up the government’s own collective
bargaining laws, drive union seamen off the Lakes with a
reign of terror, remove the leadership of the Trades and
Labor Congress, and install in Canada a rule of the trusts
through brutal, naked violence.

Chevrier’s wild charges that the Canadian Seamen’s Union
is preparing a deepsea strike for November and wants to
destroy the shipping industry, show that the plot extends
even further—that the government is actively involved in
a step by step plan to destroy the entire CSU.

The piratical companies could not move an inch in their
plot without the government. They could not sail their
ships undermanned withoht Chrier’s blessing. They could
not man their ships with scabs without RCMP escorts. The
RCMP also joins in arresting hundreds of union pickets
who are asked fantastic bail in hopes of bleeding the union
white. Critically wounded seamen are arrested while the
company official who shot. them leisurely completes his
journey. The government joins the red-baiting with which
the companies seek to screen their crime. Finally, for four
months Labor Minister Mitchell has been refusing to compel
collective bargaining.

The whole nation must move to aid the seamen, save
free labor. The public demand for taking over the com-
panies must be extended, reinforced. And labor will stand
by for whatever further moves are necessary in the struggle
that labor. has to win,

a Pk Bot

“How much should we tip the pilot?”

Looking backward ©

(From the files of the People’s Advocate, August 5, 1938)

on BUTTER, Montana .
annual Convention of the International Union of Min Mill
and Smelter Workers held here this week gave lengthy cofddneas
tion to the question of organizing hardrock miners in British Colum-
ime a Laie of the organizational drive now being conducted
y the on in S province was pled
of tke union’s executive board. iad bres aan aaa an:
Arthur Evans, recently appointed sub-district organi
zer for the
Sea yeem ee of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers, represented
“C. a € convention and, in an able speech, outlined th ems
confronting the union in this province, f ee
‘While mining was a key
tively little organization am
‘the role British Columbia’s
in supplying the Japanese

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—AUGUST 6, 1948—PAGE 8

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