Why wages must be raised

sé E had to go back to 10 cents a cup,” the

/ waitress told us apologetically for the
muddy looking fluid misnamed “‘coffee’’ she served

us,

Our “ground steak,” once known as hamburger,
has also taken an up-and-down turn for the worse,
as a result of Abbott’s rob-the-baby budget. The
price has gone up in almost exact ratio to the
quantity and quality going down,

Should we want our bread slightly burned
{toasted is the polite term) an additional cent has
been added by commercial eating houses to take
care of an imminent increase in the price of bread.

And never let your wife bet with you she can
carry home $10 worth of groceries from the corner
store in her handbag. She can—with some cargo
capacity 'to spare.

_ “One of the SEEN troubles with this guns-before-
butter business,” a housewife told us with some heat,
: “js that the guns can eat much more than we do.”

How much more they can eat is statistically
told in the September 9 edition of the Financial
Post, an organ dedicated to the preservation of
profits and “free enterprise.” Of course, it is not
told to support the justifiable indignation of an
average housewife, but rather to justify the systematic
robbing of her. family budget. .

The war profiteers used to do very well’ in
the early forties by selling the government a .303
rifle for $27. Now they get $43 for it. A radar

set in those days used to cost “‘the people’? $75,000.
Now it costs them $125,000. A training plane
used to be put in the air in 1939 for $41,000.
Now it costs $60,000. As for heavy bombers and
jet aircraft, these run into millions of dollars. There's
enough money in the cost of one bomber to build a
whole residential area of low-cost homes. Similarly
with modern mobile big guns. Enough to guarantee
the whole community social security from the cradle
to the grave,

In “‘cold-war” peace time our “defense” bud-
get is nearly half-way to the spending level of the
decisive war years of 1944-45! Yes, those guns-
before-butter vultures do have big mouths.

All ‘of which brings us to the important key
question of wage increases, Despite the noisy efforts
of a handful of labor “‘leaders’” to evade -this
burning issue behind a smoke-screen of anti-commun-
ist hysterics, the iron law of necessity compels work-
ing men and women to step into the wage arena,
prepared to do battle for substantial wage hikes to
meet spiralling living costs. A united rank-and-file
labor movement, geared for all-round wage increases
is the need of the hour.

Profits and prices are at an all-time high, and
the guns-before-butter vultures are eating off work-
ingmen’s tables. Organized labor, unable to live
on “red-bogey” propaganda, must reverse the pro-
cess and go after wage objectives to meet the
budgetry need of the day—giving precedence to
bread and butter, before guns.

y

HIS Sunday, September 24, at 8 p.m., Tim
Buck, national leader of the Labor-Pro-

providing Vancouver citizens with an opportun-
ity to get at the real truth of what is going on
in the world. ; ,
Tim Buck spent several months in Europe
this summer, in Britain, France, Hungary, Czech-
oslovakia and the Soviet Union. He saw social-
| ism rising triumphant from the ruins of war. He
- met and talked with men and women who are
representative of the millions inspired by one
great urge, the desire for peace and the oppor-
tunity to build a new life, free from the scourge
of war and want.
‘There are people in Canada, Tory, Liberal
and CCF spokesmen, who would like to see Tim

Tim Buck brings the truth

gressive party, will speak at Exhibition Gardens, .

* their fulure—for peace.

of these self-proclaimed “‘democrats’’ whose every
utterance reveals his fear of real democracy. In
the language of an Al Capone, Goode has pub-
licly declared himself out to “get” Tim Buck—
to make it impossible for Buck to travel abroad
or speak to the Canadian people. ‘‘Red propa-
ganda;” snorts this vest-pocket real estate agent
become MP on a minority vote of the people of
_ Happily the people of Vancouver can dis-
cern between the cold-war propagandists of big
business with their mythical “‘iron curtains,” and
the real truth of rising socialism in Europe, dedi-
cated to peace and progress. The great majori-
ty of people in this city, no less than the cities
of Europe, want a future directed toward peace
and progress, not war and destruction.
Their presence in thousands at Tim Buck's
meeting will be a convincing demonstration of
their desire and determination to shape the future

~ Only Hitler is missing.

EACE” with Germany—Western Germany
—has been semi-officially proclaimed by the
- “Big 3° foreign ministers. Acheson, Bevin and
Schuman have spoken. The Potsdam Accord on
the future of a democratic, peaceful Germany be
damned. And anyway, according. to the Women’s
Christian Temperance Union convention now in
- session in Denver, Colorado, the “Stalin crowd drank
“our representatives under the table at Potsdam, so
the poor souls didn’t know what they were “conced-
The “‘Big 3°” have settled all that. “Hands off
“the Reich’ they scream, through the medium of press
headlines, in a new anti-Soviet provocation.
What a
‘The new “Big 3 Reich” is to become a full-
fledged member “‘of the community of free nations.”
Manpower and resources (with Potsdam restrictions

tossed out) are to be developed “to facilitate the

defense effort of the West”, a diplomatic language

~ Of course the “Big 3 Reich” will not be “‘per-

witted to form a German ‘national army—just a
mobile police force for “defense emergency” purposes

only; a “‘police force (similar to that which Mikado
MacArthur directs against the Korean people) which
will be “‘integrated’’ with the “Big 3” occupational
forces now in Western Germany, for the preservation
of peace, order, and good Wall Street government. A
reservoir of steel, armaments,
against the peoples and countries of triumphant
socialism. pete

Behind all the planning of the “Big 3” for a
new German Reich there lurks the sinister war plans
of American imperialism. All previous covenants of
Yalta and Potsdam are reduced to the proverbial
“scraps of paper”. The “Big 3” thave achieved a

_ new tragical caricature of Versailles, destined to an

even more tragical end, _

‘

- Peace for the people of Wester Germany
(or any people) cannot be realized when it is based

upon imperialist and anti-Soviet conspiracies for war..

Nor can it be realized when the nation which fought
many Stalingrads, and whose ‘sacrifices for victory
over fascism, equalled and surpassed the combined

“with which the peace-loving peoples of the world are _ total of all other Allied Nations, are deliberately

excluded from the peace table.

Br ey alone ns pasoh abl euchibe ieededs hat

the “Big 3 Reich” has been consumated for war
—not for peace. Proof that a new batch of war
criminals are in the making.

and cannon-fodder _

TOM McEWEN

As We See lt

HERBE’S no doubt about it, the daily press sure enjoys howling
about “fronts.” When any new movement of the people comes
into being for the promotion of progressive policies and ideas, and
develops to the point where it becomes a challenge to the social
evils of our time, it is promptly labelled (with the full smear treat-
ment) as another “communist front.”
All this hysteria about communist “fronts” has a very specific
purpose behind it: to take the eyes and ears of the people off the —
: real fronts set up by big business and their gov- ~
ernments against the people. i
Prior to 1939, many good trade unionists
would often ask the question: How was Hitler
able to transform the great trade union move-
ment of Germany into a Nazi “labor front’? The
“how” was simple enough, and clearer perhaps to
thousands of Canadian trade unionists today than —
it was 16 years ago. Hitler managed it because
he let German labor retain remnants of its old
structural forms and slogans—stripped of their
working class ideological content. And in pre-
Re paring the destruction of trade unionism he had
the fullest collaboration of top-level German social democracy.
Perhaps those Canadian trade unionists who were searching for
the answer to their question during and after the Second World
War, may now find it fully rounded-out in the “front” policies
clamped, upon them by the recent Trades and Labor Congress con-
vention policies dictated, not by rank-and-file trade unionists across
Canada, but by the warmongers of the US. state department and
and its governmental “yes-men” in Canada.
Instead of striving for the unity of social democratic, Communist
and non-Communist workers against the menace of Hitler, the
German social democrats buckled under to Hitler’s “Ted- DORE Ys
hysterics and pitched in to help (“temporarily,” of course ?).
Russia! “The Men of Moscow who seek our destruction . r,
wheezes Bengough in a Labor Day “message.” The same “message —
is recited by “Roly” Gervin in his fraternal spiel to the British TUC
convention. Up in Banff the fat boys of the Canadian Chamber of
Commerce warbled the same refrain, and drank a toast to the “safe
and sane” fakeration of labor, ‘
“Russia in this war has defended civilization to the point that
it assures our peace. There are two entirely different economic
and social systems and the war has shown it is possible for them
to co-operate. In fact, it has shown that co-operation is indispens-
able.” ; , ;
_-'That’s what the TLC Jubilee convention of 1944 said. It said
much the same thing in 1948 in defense of its affiliate, the fighting
Canadian Seamen’s Union, when that organization faced the combined
attacks of the organized ship-owners, the King-St. Laurent gov-
ernment, the -Frank Hiall AFL union-wrecking crew, and the U.S.
state department.
But in 1949 the anti-Communist pattern makers for a North
American labor “front” was so well advanced that all the Bengough

”
.

_ (political) machinists had to do in 1950 was to follow !U.S. state

department blueprints and, presto, the job was complete. I

Our new minister of labor, General Gregg, knew whereof he
spoke when he “congratulated” the TLC convention on its union-
wrecking job of barring the Communists or alleged communists.
“You have done a better job,” the General is quoted as saying,
“than the government could ever hope to do,’ a compliment only
equalled, but not excelled by Hitler, when in 1936 he congratulated
Robert Ley, Nazi Labor Front leader, “You have put German labor
to a new use—the service of a greater Nazi Germany.”

It may be noted that the Bengoughs, Greens, Murnays, Moshers,
et al, “fronting” for the warmongers, for a shooting war against
Communism, also pack along their “domestic” programs for housing)
greater social services, claptrap about price and profit “controls,”
etc. In their blind fear of militant trade unionism (which they call
“communism”) these labor “fronters” for imperialist war adventures
affect an ignorance—or forgetfulness—of the iron laws of a “guns
before butter” policy. What profiteering industrialist or financier is
going to be satisfied with a fat profit building homes or hospitals
or schools, when he can triple the effort with a nice juicy, wal
contract on a cost-plus basis? Hitler’s labor front stooges made
the same promises. “Der Feuhrer says when victory over the enemies
of Germany is won, a National Socialist millenium of prosperity
which will last for a thousand years will follow.”

And we used to say, “It couldn’t happen here”!

The summer of 1950 saw another “front” taking shape among
the top strata of CCF social democracy. In the current issue of
the CCF News (September 13), William Irvine, former MP for
Cariboo, “explains” this transition. he

“World events” says Irvine, “have conspired to drive om0-
cratic Socialist movement into an ahaniemnbees position (a Has nee
derstatement) in that it has had to take sides temporarily with on@
of the two prevalent world ideologies, . . .” nes

“Which side are you on?” runs that rollicking song. The CCF
national convention gave the answer, and Bill writes a pseud0-
soothing apologia. rg ;

’ We are not interested here in some of the fine hair-splitting
“socialist” theories Irvine advances to whitewash the OCF’s “tem
porary” alliance with the warmongers, nor do we expect his e%-
planations will sound any more convincing to penuine CCF socialists —
than they do to us. The main admission in Irvine’s “Take Sides
For Democracy” refrain is the shameless emergence of top
brass, running neck and neck with the TLC trade union (burocracy>
in their abominable efforts to transform Canadian labor into #
“front” for the exploiters and war profiteers of St. James and Bay —
Streets, _ tate ‘ e : ;

“Temporarily”! The effect of treason “fronts” in the ranks of
labor is very permanent for the participants, and can only be expunge?
by the anger, unity and mass action of the rank and file, And that

unity and mass action is as inevitabl i : Lt
y } e as rain in Vancouver Ane

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Tom McEwen ; . Editor *
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PACIFIC TRIBUNE—SEPTEMBER 22, 1950—PAGE