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Sauce for the goose...

NE of the first decisions made by the new city council
O upon taking office was to move for a substantial sal-
ary increase for the offices of mayor and aldermen. The
salary of the Hon. Senator Gerald Gratton (Guts) McGeer,
K.C., mayor, will be hoisted from $5,400 paid the last in-
cumbent, to $7,500. Aldermanic stipends will be boosted
from $1,800 per annum to $2,000, with representations being
made to the coming session of the legislature to hoist the
aldermanic maximum to $3,000. Until this change is made
the aldermen will have to scrape along on a mere 25 percent
salary boost, but doubtless that obstacle will soon be over-
come to enable an approximate 50 percent hoist to be: made.

With prices skyrocketing daily we have no kick against
the city fathers voting themselves a substantial salary boost.
By so doing they have set a fine precedent which should be
regarded as a happy augury for several thousand she
ployees who have been asking a 25 percent wage increase
for some time, but with little result. The recent convention
of the International Woodworkers of America in Victoria
unanimously endorsed the wage demands of civic employees
and thousands of other ‘white collar’ workers, whose needs
in wage and salary increases are long overdue.

Having done well by themselves in the establishment
of a good 1947 precedent for wage increases, labor has a
right to expect that the same, sympathetic understanding
of the need for all-round: wage increases will be shown when
its own case comes up for settlement.

Get tough’ not healthy

ARD on the heels of the resignation of Bernard M.
. A Baruch, chief of the U.S. atomic control commission,
comes the news of the resignation of James F. Byrnes, U.S.
Secretary of State. These resignations indicate a shake-up
in U.S. administration circles and a tacit recognition at
least that a foreign policy based upon a ‘get-tough-with-
Russia’ premise is bad for the political health of any cap-
italist nation or its leading spokesmen.

Byrnes’ resignation is publicised on the grounds of
‘failing health.’ That of course is for public consumption.
The actual reasons go much deeper than the ‘health’ of an
individual, although we fully concur in what both Byrnes
and Bevin are finding out—that it is ‘unhealthy’ to attempt
the double-crossing of a valiant ally in war or peace, es-
pecially when that ally happens to represent over one-sixth
of the earth’s surface under a socialist order. Lacking pop-
ular support, it was a perilous political course, as witness
the Wallace ouster on foreign policy, which served to arouse
U.S. public opinion on the danger inherent in such a policy,
and the mass pressure now developing in Britain, spear-
headed by the British Trade Union Congress, for the retire-
ment of Bevin for similar reasons.

Millions of peace-loving people in the U.S. and else-
where will welcome the resignation of the atomic-diplomat
Byrnes, just as they will welcome the appointment of his
successor, General George C. Marshall, whose experiences
in China have taught him one basic lesson at least—that

the Communists are part of the democratic movements of

peoples everywhere and cannot be blotted out, ignored, or

trampled upon, no matter-how much tory-imperialist die-

hards in London or Washington may desire to ‘get tough’

_ or to bolster semi-fascist governments that lack the confi-
dence of the common people.

The road to lasting peace cannot be found in a ‘get-
tough-with-Russia’ policy, but in a realization, which should
have been learned by some people during the hard years of
war, that Russia and socialism symbolize the future of
mankind, and that those who seek to obstruct this future
must sooner or later suffer a major breakdown of their

political ‘health.’

_. A woman corsetiere is quoted as advocating corsets for
men so that they will not bulge in the wrong places. Well,

she might start on the King government—Donald Gordon,

for instance, who needs stiffening to hold his price lines.

_ PACIFIC TRIBUNE — PAGE 4

‘son

“cell

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As we see it

HT By Tom Mc Ewen

HOULD a broker, financier,
cleric or other pillar of ‘our
way of life’ land in the peni-
tentiary—which they frequently
do, but to our way thinking,
not often enough, they are in-
variably granted a special sta-
tus by the powers that be. '
This- status is characterized
by the granting of ‘preferential’
treatment through the privilege
of ‘special jobs within the pen.
The two top ‘preferential’ jobs
consist of working in the pri-
library and the church
‘choirs.’ Both jobs give the ‘pre-
ferred’ cons the full run of the
blocks, This enables the
privileged job-holder to indulge
in homosexual practices, engage
in petty intrigues with other
‘sons,’ and most important for
the prison administration, stool
on all and sundry. Privileges
in Canadian pens are accorded

' that class of prisoners whose

training and qualifications make
them ready and apt stool pig-
eons. For these services to the
prison authorities, homosexual
practices and other forms of
degeneracy are tacitly over-
looked. Much of these penal
evils were brought to light in
the report of the Archambault
Royal Commission ‘on penal re-
form, but like the reports of
most royal commission on the
numerous social and economic
evils of our day—stop there.

All of which brings us_ to
the nub of our topic. The nazi
general Kurt Meyer, killer of
Canadian prisoners of war, has
arrived in Dorchester Peniten-
tiary, N.B., and according to
reports has been posted to work
in the library. This ‘privilege’
wilt enable the nazi butcher
Meyer. to indulge in. the homo-
sexual degeneracy for which the
nazi ‘super-race’
As his knowledge of English
progresses, he will also become
a star stool pigeon, since that
profession stands high in nazi
ideology.

Moreover we learn that Meyer
was brought to Canada in the
uniform of a Canadian private;
thousands of our Canadian boys
died for that uniform and all
that it represents. Fortunately
for the dead, they didn’t know
that it would be used by Cana-
dian authorities to cover the

are notorious. |

identity of a nazi butcher, whom
the brass hats of Canada’s mili-
tary tribunals were hell bent on
saving, A ‘privileged’ prisoner
indeed.

No one need be surprised that
if, in a short timeswe read that

due to ‘good behavior’ or other -

services, Kurt Meyer has been
set free.

Compare this preterential
treatment of a nazi killer with
the political persecution of Fred
Rose, M.P. Montreal-Cartier, and
you will readily grasp the fact
that while “military fascism has
been destroyed, its foul germs
are being painstakingly preserv-
ed by a class whose concept

of democracy is but a_ thin
veneer covering their fascist
sympathies,
¢
Ednam burglary, where

the duke and duchess of
Windsor lost half a million dol-
lars or more in- jewels has
quietened down. According to
rumor quite a lot of Wallie’s
jewels were of a_ kind that
could be disposed. of without
much trace. Remodelled and re-
cut, so to speak, But the duch-
ess is well known to _ have
possessed jewellery of another
type that cannot be made over
so easily. It will. be recalled
that just before the duke’s ab-
dication of the throne (for the
woman he loved chirruped the
“society” scribblers) he is al-+
leged to have given his duchess
a lot of priceless family heir-
loom jewels, declared to have.
been the property of Queen
Alexandra, and which caused
much eyebrow lifting in court
circles at the time. “Gad, it
isn’t just done you know old
chap, what!” In some not-too-
close-to-court circles, the sudden
playing-down of the Ednam rob-
bery is taken to indicate that
it was an “inside job,” executed
by posh members of the old-
school-tie fraternity, who like
Churchill resent seeing the em-

' nagling

pire being liquidated by indis- -

criminate disposal of royal
“Jools,” even for a second-hand
duchess, and who set about re-
trieving the royal heirlooms.
While we no not suggest that
Britain’s aristocrats have joined
the burglar fraternity, it is a

t

matter of record that some of
the scions of our ‘best families’
were no amateurs in the porch-
climbing game.

; e
URING the 1946 strike of the
International Woodworkers

of America for wage increases,
the 40-hour week and union se-
curity, the Stuart Research and
kindred outfits set up a howl
to high heaven anent the IWA
strike ‘crippling building ma-

terials.’ It was a fine piece of

skullduggery and _ served to
cover up the black market fi-
in lumber, which was
the ‘main cause of shortages in
B.C. and throughout Canada. A
veteran couldn’t get materials to
build a modest home—blame the
IWA. A householder couldn’t se-
cure a few boards to do a
reeded home-repair job — blame
the IWA, It was a great game.
Under a steady barrage of anti-
IWA press and radio ‘propa-
ganda the lumber trust man-
aged to amass additional profits
in a huge black market racket
(for which not a major lum-
ber company has been as yet
brought to book by Donald
Gordon’s WPTB apparatus . for
authorizing price increases).

Now we get another picture.
The Forest Branch of the pro-.
vincia} government has just re-
leased figures which show that
in 1946 lumber and sawmill
workers produced an _ increase:
of 53 million board feet of lum-
ber over the 1945 record. In
poles, piling, and cordwood the
1946 cut was far in excess of
1945, in some cases such as
poles and piling, almost double.

Obviously in the coming wage
struggle which the 10th annual
convention of the IWA has just
signalized in a concise and rea-
listic program, and which is
fully justified in the light of
continuing skyrocketing prices,
the lumber barons will have to
seek other and more convincing
arguments against the IWA.
The ‘lumber - shortage -due-to-.
strikes’ gag won’t serve any lon-
ger in face of the governments”
1946 lumber production totals.

The $64 question, unanswered
in 1946, still remains: Where
did the record lumber cut for:
1946, needed for home, gc to?
The Stuart Research with its
elaborate anti-union machinery
should be able to answer that.
ene,

FRIDAY, JANUARY 16, 1947: