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—STORY ON THIS PAGE

Price Five Cents

BUSINESS REVIVES DEPRESSION PHILOSOPHY

Do YOU need a recession?

aed day how you may expect to read some-
: ng like this in your daily paper: ‘These are
fally good times ‘but only a few know it.”

(Th

ke New. York. Times wrote that on March
?s, 1931.)
Der those workers in: this province already laid
°f by closing down of logging camps and pulp
saree and others who may expect to be out of
is Job when the summer’s rush of construction work
Over, statements like these are poor substitutes
is trade policies which would put them back to
F ork. But they're already being made—and you
an expect more of them.
ow, wr economy is still strong and healthy. Our
“0 people insist upon the maintenance of pros-
Baty and will not tolerate a. depression,” de-
ared President Truman this week. (Between
‘ptember 1948 and May 1949 1,664,000
ue production workers lost their jobs and
“S Production fell by 11 pereent.)
stare” Compare this with Herbert Hoover’s
atement on October 25, 1929: “The funda-
autal business of the country, that is production
Na distribution of commodities, is on a sound
Prosperous basis.””
KS teady the spokesmen of big business are
Ying to fasnion your thinking in preparation for
e developing economic crisis. Thus, Barron’s,

i)

es

the influential U.S business and financial publica-

tion, wrote on June 20:

““Recessions and depressions are unpleasant. No
one likes to see stock prices going down, busi-
nesses cutting dividends and losing money, and,
worst of all, working people losing jobs. But
there are times when recessions are needed . . .”

And, as a happy afterthought, it adds:

“Layoffs are painful, but they do. induce those
who are still on the job to work harder; and they
also tend to bring the working force of the nation
down to where it includes only those who really
want jobs. It weeds out the temporary and
casual workers, and those who are normally ex-
perimenting with jobs.”

If you can be brought to believe that ‘‘there
are times when recessions are needed,”’ then you're
not likely to support those who hold that only
the big monopoly and financial interests, which
benefit from them, need a recession. You'll just
work harder for longer hours at less money,
Unless, of course, you have no job to work hard
at, in which case you'll be classified as one of
those who don’t really want to work.

Continued on Back Page
See RECESSION

Civic Reform Association is

Effie charges deficit
| Matter of bookkeeping’

Committee. The

and Airport

i

ming system which ap-

£00.09 to show a deficit of $1,+

ch. last year, whereas the

of DOs made a_ profit
400,000.

E;

Rela Jones, President of Civic
Fhtin Ssociation, which _ is
UDpine BCE’s application for
oA to 10
* Made this charge, and
up her contention with
Eh figures, as she launched
1¢ Campaign against the
electric

of transit fares

monopoly

firing its opening - salvoes by:

, ® Writing to the Public Util-.

ities Commission asking recogni-
tion as an interested party and
‘demanding the right to appear at
public’ hearings to grill BCElec-
tric officials.

@ Advertising in the personal

columns of the daily press for
citizens opposing the fare hike to
rally behind the Civic Reform

campaign.

®@ Distributing postcards to 1000°

citizens, who will mail them to

Ald. Alex Fisher, chairman of-

Harbor, Utilities

the council’s

postcard’ message will call on city

council to fight against the fare
increase at the PUC public hear-
ings.

@ Arranging a citizens’ protest
rally for Sunday, July 24, at 4
p:m. at Powell Street Grounds,

where Effie Jones and Elgin
Ruddell will speak.
BCElectric’s main argument

for the fare increase is that the
company’s revenues last year fail-
ed to meet the “‘cost of service.”
The deficit, allegedly, was $1,-
600,000.

Continued on Back Page
See BCELECTRIC

EFEND UNION RIGHTS

——

LONDON

Sweating and grimy, British soldiers this week
loaded and unloaded cargo from “hot” ships in the
great port of London, strikebreaking under orders

from a Labor government placed in power by organ-
ized labor, ;

The government of Prime Minister Attlee has
been led into gpen conflict with a rapidly growing
section of its own supporters by its efforts to help
the Canadian government, itself violating its own:la-
bor laws and hard-won. trade union rights, to smash
the Canadian Seamen’‘s Union. Asa result, refusal
of British dockers to unload vessels tied up by CSU
crews has now developed into a struggle between
British workers determined to maintain fundamen-
tal trade union rights and a Labor government in-

tent upon violating the very principles it was elect-
ed to defend.

By BERT WHYTE
The strategy was global, and carefully planned. The aim—to

smash the militant Canadian Seamen’s Union, and thus open the door

te drive all fighting unions to the wall and attack Canadian workers’
living standards. The conspirators were East Coast shipowners, the

Canadian government. Close allies were the American and British
governments.

Four months ago the plan was put into effect. In the midst of
government conciliation proceedings between operators and the CSU,
the shipping bosses, with federal approval, signed a back-door agree-
ment with the Seafarers’ International Union, thus precipitating a CSU
strike. America began to fulfil its designated role—the export of
SIU sea-scabs. Cops, goons and gunmen. drove CSU pickets back
from the Montreal and Halifax waterfronts, allowed the scab-manned
ships to sail for foreign ports.

Then the strategy backfired, for the seamen and dockworkers of
the world sprang into action to assist their striking Canadian brothers.

Britain became the focal point of the strike: the great port of
London the heart and nerve-center of ‘the world-wide struggle. The
spark lit by-the CSU awakened the smoldering, long-time resentment
of the overworked, underpaid London dockers against the Attlee Labor
government. They defied a government edict to work scab-manned

a: vessels, downed tools in protest, tied up 135 ships at London
ocks. ; ’

Prime Minister Attlee, heaving socialist principles overboard,
called upon the king to proclaim a state of national emergency, and
sent thousands of reluctant army troops to unload food vessels.

This week Attlee’s government is facing a political crisis. In-
stead of bowing before the rule of bayonets, London dockers are
walking off the job by their thousands—at press time more than
14,000 had joined the spreading sympathy strike. Dockland was
under the iron rule of the Emergency Powers Act, applied for the
first time since the 1926 General Strike, yet labor strength was mount-
ing hourly.

Across the Channel,-some 35,000 stevedores in the French Na-
tional Federation of Ports and Docks refuse to unload British ships
out of sympathy for striking British dockworkers, and are boycotting

Continued on Back Page
See SEAMEN