WHAT GOVERNMENT'S GREEN BOOK SHOWS

ree.

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By WILL PARRY

oe a crackling long distance
ore wire last weekend
ae Ken Hinchey of Anchorage,
ca, told about plans of com-
“ad and. civic leaders in his
: eee od the first enon
" Beat ae history from Alaska
iberia.

Mayor Hinchey said it is hoped
Send “20 or 30” Alaskans on
tour, and to host a similar
Sation from the USSR.

pesponse to the plan, first an-

os Ced in an eight-column ban-

headline in the Anchorage

Y News has been terrific, the
Yor said. :

to
the
dele

A ‘We could rustle up 200 people
- 80 With us,” he said.

aoe Said he hopes sponsors of
Plan, including himself, City
Atto Cilman Jack White, City
They John Bader and School
~@td Member Clifford Groh,
stangements in time for a trip
Year © sometime in June of next

ee takes plenty

Stand,” he said.
ae there ever been a good-
fro, Wclegation sent to the USSR
®m “Alaska ?
“No,”
Never

of time, I un-

the mayor said. “There
has been one. We don’t
are anything about them. We
“© either at war or at peace,
d We'd like to find out.”

mie
Yn the
trave]
Mayor
{ke to
Utlines

8roup would like to “stay
Siberian side,”’rather than
across the vast country,
Hinchey said. They would
see Vladivostok, just 1200
ch miles .to the west of
ang Orage, then go further north
ar west from there, but not too
to’, 0 find a town comparable

ours,” he said.

“Th, e
-Jere have been some sug-

gi
ig tions to have them (the Rus-

29 3) Send an aircraft over with
us «2 Then we'd trade ten of

Vong. ten of them. In other
Bens We'd send an American

Sach back with ten people from
our penntry and they would be
thro worber tourists to take us
Ugh their country.

tin, We'd do the same thing for
Hin their people in Alaska.”
-°vey wey made it plain, how-
been hat this plan had not yet
definitely decided on.

Sr One or © RE
One of

th
sig Alaska delegates, Hinchey
With | Ould be trade possibilities
Siberian ports. :
er ae hope to be able to discov-
my, mething about their econo-
Ween they are doing, in the
what of power development,
trag, {Be Possibilites are of
duets 42 minerals, paper pro-
ties” Pulp and other commodi-

Dosey ust don’t know what the
ting ities: are and we'd like to
Outer sj : :
inten’, Alaskans are also deeply
Roble €d in Soviet. construction
farming’ road building, and
“Wa ve ‘problems, Hinchey gaid.
TarkapeeTstand they’re doing re-
t le things in agriculture

Alaskan city plans
USSR goodwill trip

able to clear up all the,

the major interests of,

Anchorage is only five or six
hundred miles from the nearest
point in Siberia, he estimated.
But he declared:

“We in Alaska have never
been too concerned about the
possibility of a war starting—
not so much as other places that
I’ve travelled in the States. We ©
‘don’t feel we’re any nearer to a
potential war than Chicago or
Philadelphia.”

With pride typical of leaders
in this pioneer teritory that has

statehood, Mayor Hinchey em-
phasized that “we’re just as en-
titled to go to Russia or anywhere
else as anybody in any part of the
country. We’re Americans, too.”

He said he thought that there
might be some element of danger
in the trip (he didn’t elaborate),
but he added:

“We might get results. We
might be able to help keep the
door open on, the Siberian side.”

Councilman White was quoted
in the Anchorage Daily News as
stating:

“I think that since we are the
closest American citizens to the
Russians, right next door to them
you might say, we should join
into this exchange of visitors and
show our good will.

“Maybe we could promote
some trade between Alaska and
these people,” White said.

City Attorney Rader said he
felt the trip would do much to
improve relations between the
two: countries.

“T think our group can be ex-
panded to include others who
would be extremely interested
in the agriculture in Siberia, for

been fighting for years to win}.

one thing,’ Rader said.

ne million earn below

‘After all, we’re neighbors’

Nation-building projects ©

This cairn at Craigellachie, B. C., marks the spot where the
last spike was driven to complete the CPR on November 7, 1885,
to carry through the great nation-building project of the last

century despite U.S. intrigues.

Once again, U.S. intrigues,

centred around Trade Minister C. D. Howe, are at work striving
to’prevent Canada from carrying out the nation-building project
of qur own times, the all-Canadian natural gas pipeline. In this
struggle labor can play a decisive part by joining those who

favor carrying through of
owned utility.

the gas pipeline project as a publicly-

cast for Vancouver.

classroom space is still at a pre-
mium. Hundreds of elementary
| ing ‘split classes’ —two grades in
one room. Our high schools are

flow in the next five years.

“The number of pupils per
classroom has been increased on
orders from Victoria without any
protest from the school board.

schools have cafeterias. In the
elementary schools, it is only be-
cause of the efforts of the PTAs

rooms are in operation.

; bere» he gaaed

“Dental services do not extend

bulging and in danger of over- |

“Only half of the city’s high)

that a limited number of lunch-,

Blumes contests board
on school needs issue

Dr. Joseph Blumes announced this week that he will run as an independent candidate
for school board in the December 14 civic elections. Last year he polled nearly 23,000 votes.
“A ‘city like Vancouver should aim to have the best school system and services in all
of Canada,” said Dr. Blumes. “In the past few years many fine schools have been built but
this does not really take into proper consideration the tremendous population growth fore-

beyond grade one despite the

“Despite what has been done, | fact that according to the school

beard’s own report for 1953 ‘over

.90 percent of school beginners

'school children are still attend- | require treatment.’

“Bducational authorities recog-
nize the importance of pre-school

but in Vancouver

education,
dergartens accomodating no more
than about 300 children.

“JT have not forgotten the need
for free milk in .the schools, an
issue which the school board con-
tinues-to ignore.

“T am running for election on
December 14 to ensure that these
issues are. placed on the agenda

of the school board,”
\

there are only eight public kin-|°

DR. JOSEPH BLUMES
School needs’ are still not being
met. ,

$46 week

“ By MARK FRANK

Only 250 people, enough to
crowd into a good-sized board
room in a downtown corpora-
tion office, belong to the $100,-
000 and over income bracket—
hardly a fraction of the total of
3,389,530 taxpayers reported in
1953 by ‘the Department of
National Revenue. .

But way over at the other ex-
treme there are close to two
million Canadians — to be exact
1,858,530, over a third of those
who file income tax returns, earn-
ing $3,100 or less a year — less
than $60 a week.

Unionists in current, negotia-
tions are citing an approximate
$80 a week minimum as the rate
of pay that would be consistent

with human decency. Yet hun-
dreds of thousands of Canadians
are obviously living under. this
minimum health standard.

These details from the Green
Book, issued yearly by. Ottawa,
cover the year 1953—most recent
available data on the subject of
Taxation Statistics.

The Green Book is a little coy
about reporting above the $100,-
000 mark and the number of
millionaires newly -hatched or
well-established is not indicated.

But enough has been said al-
ready to puncture the myth that
every Canadian is just loaded
with pay-dirt.

Despite rosy reports about our
GNP (gross national product)
which may be zooming and
booming no end, and the feverish
newspaper headlines recording
new highs in 1955 company pro-
fits — there are these grim in-
escapable figures just released
from Ottawa.

These are figures of those who
pay taxes. They are just 60 per-
cent of the total labor force. There
are hundreds of thousafids who’
simply do not earn enough to
file tax returns at all.

They show the seamier side of
the capitalist economy — the one
government apologists cover up.
They reflect the truth of the
Marxist proposition that under
capitalism there is, despite what
appears on the surface as a
healthy development, a real in-
ternal and absolute deterioration
of living standards.

Over 1,000,000 Canadians who
filed income tax returns had
incomes of $2,400 or less—an
average of less than $46 a week.
Significant was the fact that

where there are strong unions as
in Trail and Rossland, B.C. (Mine-
Mill), average income was report-
ed at $3,554—the highest in the
group of cities, with over 5,000
taxpayers.

But where unionization was at
a low level and where French-
Canadian residents of Hull, Que-
bec are subjéct to lower pay
rates than the rest of the coun-
try, there were the lowest an-
nual incomes in the country av-
eraged at $2,864.

Of the 3,389,350 taxpayers, 26
percent were making $5,000 or
over. Ten percent had $10,000
or more. Only 7,310 were in the
$ 5,000-$50,000 a year bracket.
And a‘nice tight little community
of 1,700 pulled in the gravy be-
tween $50,000 and $100,000.

Business and financial execu-
tives were in this big money sec-
tion of the economy.

At the bottom of the list were
nurses averaging only $1,883—
hardly a move in three years
running. Farmers were also
pretty stationary at $3,869.
Fishermen were averaging
$3,703. Doctors were making
income amounting to an average
of $11,258.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — NOVEMBER 18, 1955 — PAGE 3