Excerpts from the biography of
'Ol' Bill’ Bennet, written
by TOM McEWEN

to be published this week

ILL BENNETT came to Ganada in the year 1907, and he came
direct to Vancouver. For 42 years Vancouver and British
Columbia was his “home.” He came like most working class
immigrants, poorly equipped with “material” goods, but, as his
old comrade Jack Butler once said, “well heeled with mental
baggage.” Obviously this was not the type to whom the tycoons
of the Chamber of Commerce, in pursuit of a cheap labor surplus
of jobless immigrants, directed their glowing advertisements.
As with every immigrant to the “Last Great West” in those
days, the problem of a job thrust itself to the fore. The reality
had little in common with the vision of a land of plenty held out
by the CPR and other transport and immigration agencies which
coined fortunes out of the immigration racket. Jobs were not
easy to find in this country of opportunity, where supposedly
wealth and affluence could be had for the taking. The spread
between the wages offered in Britain and other European count-
ries and what Canadian bosses called the “going wages,” held out
by the transportation sharks as a lure to unwary immigrants, was
often wider than the gap between commercial newspapers and

obvious truths. But Ol’ Bill was soon.stropping his razor in barber
‘shops down on the skid-road, and learning the new tonsorial
- techniques undreamed of in Glasgow in those days.

In the old land the usual “tuppeny” haircut and the “penny”
shave were simple, and somewhat crude operations. In a haircut
the barber went over the scalp with a pair of hand,.clippers in
a close-cut, two-minutes flat. operation, leaving only a tuft of
forelock to be adjusted as the customer might, or might not see
fit. A shave was an even more speedy operation. Sitting rigid in a
straight-back chair, the customer had a community towel wrapped
around his neck. An “apprentice” boy went down the line of
chairs, armed with a huge mug of lather and a big brush. Swish,
swosh, down one side of the face, up the other. Soap in the
customer’s ears, eyes, mouth or nose, was strictly his own lookout.
Next came the “journeyman” razor wielder. Scrape, scrape, up

- one side, down the other. “Damit man, yer razor’s dull th’ day,”

the customer might complain, and the barber's reply might be,
“Now, now, it’s yer face that’s tender, Jock. That’s a’. Dicht yer
mou’ an’ awa wi’ ye.” In some shops there was a community
basin where the customers could wash off superfluous soap if
he had a mind to. In others there was just the single rub of a
soggy towel and the operation was complete.

Ol’ Bill appreciated the advanced techniques of Vancouver's
barber shops, and remembered the advyice.of the SLP ‘Anderson
Branch secretary, that a barber shop was “a fine place to talk
things ower wi’ folk,” especially when they were comfortably
spraddled out in.a well-padded, new-fangled collapsible barber
chair. .

But for Ol’ Bill barbering was really only a means to an
end—to provide the economic sustenance with which to carry on
the larger job of winning converts to socialism. “"Tis the final

conflict”—history was calling, and OI’ Bill needed no urging to.

“stand in his place.”

British Columbia in 1907 was the stronghold of the Socialist
Party of Canada. Two of its leading members, Jim Hawthornwaite
in Nanaimo and Parker Williams in Newcastle, held seats in the
legislature, while a third seat was held by Bill Davidson, B. Cc.
board member for the Western Federation of Miners (forerunner
of the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers),
who‘won Slocan in the 1903 provincial elections with the help
of the Socialist Party. naave een

Not very familiar with the issues of the election campaign
that was in- progress when he arrived in Vancouver, O!' Bill took
little part in the 1907 elections, in which Hawthornwaite and
Williams retained their seats, and John McInnis, who nearly 40
years later was to sit in the legislature again as the CCF member
for Prince George, took the riding of Grand Forks from the
‘Conservatives. _ : Pl ed

“The Socialist Party ran 21 candidates in that election and
there were also three Labor candidates,” Ol’ Bill related in later

years. “The showing we made seemed pretty impressive at the

time, but looking back at it now it didn’t justify the optimistic
report written for the International Socialistic Review by Weston
Wrigley. He headed his article ‘Another Red Spot on the Social-
istic Map.’’”, vetab le
By 1912 Ol’ Bill’s work had earned him a nomination, his
first, as one of the 18 candidates named by the Socialist Party
in the provincial elections of that year. Together with Bill

: : Prichard, one of those arrested and jailed in the Winnipeg

‘General Strike of 1919, and later one of the founders of the CCF
‘and editor of the ill-starred Commonwealth, contested the old

/ancouver constituency which in those days sent five members
to Victoria. “I forget ‘how many votes we polled, Ol’ Bill once

-°said, “but I know the Conservatives swept the province. In 1911

He wrote for us

@ “Arthur Evans (to his friends he was always ‘Art’ or ‘Slim’),
carpenter, miner and ;Commniunist, the man who had written one
of the finest péges in Canadian labor history, died in February,
1944 from injuries received in a traffic accident,’ Tom McEwen

in his fine biography of “Ol Bill’ Bennett. “His death left
his wife and daughter almost penniless, with a home heavily mort-
gaged © . . . OL Bill personally organized and led the com-
mittee . . . ., for what became known as the ‘Arthur Evans Memor-
dial Fund.” . In this picture taken from the Pacific Tribune files,
O? Bill is shown handing Mrs. Ethel Evans a cheque for $3,029.-

06, the amoufit collected.

the Vancouver Island branches split away from the Socialist
Party and formed the Social Democratic Party. They re-elected
Parker Williams in Newcastle and elected John Place in Nanaimo,
and those were the only two séats the Conservatives couldn’t take.
The Liberals didn’t win a single seat and neither did we.”

A study of the files of the Western Clarion, official organ
of the Socialist Party of Canada, around the years 1910-11-12,
reveals a preponderance of abstract theorizing, far removed
from the daily activities of working class life. And in their heavy,
full-page dissertions on “The Science of Socialism,” “Property,”
“Education,” the “Dismal Science” of political economy, “God
and Réligion,”’ no writers ever displayed greater unconcern for
the living conclusions of their mental labors.

Ol’ Bill never tired of repeating that a study of the science
of socialism. is a life study, only fully learned in the teeming
struggle of daily life—never learned nor understood by the
pedantic “socialist” in his ivory tower. One may learn by rote
the nature of a commodity, but unless one is prepared to do
something about it, the knowledge so gained is so much useless
claptrap. Doubtless many of the learned writers of the Western
Clarion were capable theoriticians and exponents of an abstract
Marxism, but the pages they left to posterity show an appalling
dearth of action. Its pages are replete with the brilliant writings
of able men—divorced from life!

For example, in the Western Clarion, of January 28, 1911,
the question is posed, “What is Socialism?” A prolific theoretical
contributor to the paper, Walter Gribble, who describes himself
as ... ‘one who is supposed, at least, to know something about it,
being an authorized exponent,” sets out to explain:

“Socialism may be, and is, invariably defined. Deville, a
great French writer, defines it'as “The theoretical expression of
the contemporaneous phase of the economic evolution of society.”
Agreeing that such a definition may be a little over the heads
of the proletariat, Comrade Gribble simplifies it a shade. “I
may state here that Socialism, strictly speaking, has nothing to
do with the future. Socialism, like other sciences, deals with
what is, and the future never is. While Socialism may venture
to predict in general ways what system of society will replace
the present, no one worthy of the name Socialist, that is a more
or less well-informed and earnest student of the science of
Socialism, will presume to go into details of the future state
of society .. .” Fea

As OI Bill would have said, the foregoing from an “author-
ized exponent” of the science is something less than what the
reader had a right to expect! To a socialist, reared in the active
theatre of Clydeside struggle, the exclusive ivory tower approach
to socialist science held little attraction, and only served to
anticipate the historical validity of Joseph Stalin’s famous obser-
vation: “Theory without practice is barren . . . practice without
theory is blind.”

$5,560 in - -
- $2,500 fo go

The National Party Fund,
due to close December 15,
has begun to roll. Websters
Corners, Haney, Mission, Al-
berni, Courtenay, Port Kells,
Trail, Victoria, North Van-
couver, ‘Correspondence, are
all over the top.

What about it, New West-
minster, Nanaimo, the Crows’
Nest?

‘Competition is keen to see
which Vancouver section will
be the first to go over the
top. Burrard is in the lead
and indications are that they
will make it before the end
of the -week, unless some
runners-up, Burnaby and
Hastings East in particular;
get there first. Rumour has
it that South Vancouver, too,
plans to come jn with a big
splash at the weekend.

A little extra push and we
can make it—let’s do it.

LPP NATIONAL
PARTY FUND

donation

to the LPP Fighting Fund.

T. enclose $0

(Name)

Send to: Labor-Progressive
Party. 503 Ford Building,
Vancouver 4, B.C.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — DECEMBER 14, 1951 — PAGE 5