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Vancouver, British Columbia, Friday, February 18, 1949  ~<<q2"

Mitchell, Carson under fire

B.C. NEEDS A PUBLIC

Price Five Cents

WORKS PROGRAM NOW

SS

Free the imprisoned seamen

Dramatic presentation of the issues involved in

the fight to free 60 imprisoned CSU members was
Staged in Toronto last week by members of the
Canadian Seamen’s Union. Appearing before down-
town offices of the Canadian Steamship Lines dressed
in ‘prisoner’s garb, three seamen attracted wide at-

tention to their placards exposing the “Boss” justice
which resulted in the arrest and imprisonment of
tle seamen.: Sponsored by the National Seamen’s
Defense Committee, groups of prison-clad seamen
have also appeared at plant gates in Toronto and
Windsor, and plans are being made to reach factory
workers throughout Ontario.

"ite

British observer

—NEW YORK

First of a number of important foreign ob-
Servers expected to observe the trial of 12 U.S.
Communist leaders, indicted for advocating
Marxist beliefs, has arrived here. He is R. H. a.
Whitty, member of Britain’s Haldane Society, a
lawyers’ organization affiliated to the Labor Party
‘nd headed by Sir Stafford Cripps.

Whitty was presented to Judge Medina by
Osmon G,-Fraenkel, vice president of the Nation-

at trial of “12”.

al Lawyers Guild and an outstanding civil liber-
ties attorney associated with the American Civil
Lhberties Union.

The Haldane Society has sent Whitty to ob-
serve the trial, according to an announcement
accompanying his appearance in court, because
“the issues in the case seem to involve important
questions of civil liberties, particularly in that
the prosecution is based upon a statute making
it a crime merely to advocate political doctrines.”

(See also story on page 9)

There are some 40,000 unemployed today in British Columbia.
And the bleak prospect is that their ranks will increase as basic indust-

ries feel the full impact of markets—and jobs—lost under the Mar-
shall and Abbott plans.

Former Pnme Minister Mackenzie King, writing in Canadian
Welfare, states: “Only recently has it come to be recognized that of
all resources, human resources are the most important.” But the
government he headed until recently has still to discover that fact.
It is too busy turning over our natural resources to Yankee exploitation.

At Ottawa, federal Labor Minister Humphrey Mitchell tells the

House of Commons that the government has no responsibility for the
thousands of unemployed in Vancouver who have exhausted their
unemployment benefits. “‘British Columbia is a nice place to spend
the winter,” is the cold comfort he offers to men who are worrying
over feeding their families and keeping their houses warm.

In Victoria, E. C. Carson, public wotks minister in the Coalition
government, tells a delegation, representing the Ratepayers’ Associa-
tion, Chamber of Commerce, School Board and Village Commissioners
of Lake Cowichan, that ‘“‘the present unemployed are obviously the
most inefficient and incompetent and are probably unemployed for that
reason.”’ And when it is pointed out to him that all logging carhps in
the area closed down long before Christmas, so that most loggers have
worked for less than six months, he retorts that loggers are notoriously
improvident, that he cannot see what as a group they have ever done
for the province, and that in any case they went on strike when they
did have a chance to work.

In their callous indifference to the hardships and needs of the
unemployed, Mitchell and Carson, and the governments for which they
speak, are the political heirs of former Prime Minister R. B. Bennett,
whose answer to the jobless men and women in the “hungry thirties”
was that he would not put a ‘“‘premium on idleness.’” Unless they are
moved, or removed from office, by the organizations of labor and the
people, their policies will also bring privation and hunger to the jobless
and low wages to those who work.

Prime Minister St. Laurent, and before him Mackenzie: King;
has promised that the federal government will embark on a huge pro-
gram of public works when unemployment becomes a serious problem.
But unemployment is already a serious problem on the Coast and the
only action the government has taken is to institute an inquiry ‘‘under
instructions to proceed as expeditiously as is feasible.”

Similarly, Premier Byron Johnson paints a bright picture of future
industrial expansion in his policy speech to the legislature. But he has
no detailed outline of what his government intends to do now to meet
the problem of unemployment. And action is needed now, both federal-
ly ‘and provincially, to implement post-war promises—to launch public
works programs, to increase unemployment insurance benefits and con-
tmue them over the entire period of the recipient’s unemployment.

You can help to secure these demands:

@ By raising them in your organization and advancing a practical
program for providing work. (In Vancouver the Marine Workers
and Boilermakers’ Industrial Union is urging construction of ships for
a Canadian merchant. marine and the Woodworkers’ Industrial Union

is calling for a housing prigram and lumber bartering agreements with
Britain. ) “

® By demanding action of your MLA and MP. (The delegation
from Lake Cowichan is asking Sam Guthrie, MLA, to arrange a
meeting between its members and the provincial cabinet.)

The issue, in Mackenzie King’s own words, is to put human
resources first—to put public works and trade policies which will pro-
vide work for the people before the squandering of public funds on
war projects to destroy them.

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