This is
Wute

Something phoney
Editor, Pacific -Tribune.

Sir: I feel it my duty to write
a line that will be printed and I
don’t think it would be printed
in the capitalist press, so I
would ask you to pass it on to
the woodworkers’ paper as well.

In view of the breakaway from
the IWA and the position taken
by the present leaders of the
Westminster local, I want to tell
what happened to me in New

Westminster when I was working

there.

I was a shop steward for the
mill I worked in. There were
two members when I went to
work there and I finally got the
crew signed up.

It wasn’t long before a couple

of the men wanted to know why
they were not being paid the five
cent differential for the night
shift. I took up the fight and it
finally ended up with the union
officials and the company agree-
ing to pay up. One man had- $40
‘coming for this breach of con-
tract by’ the company.

When I went back on_ the
night shift a week or so later
these same two men wanted to
know why they were fired. I
said I didn’t know, and asked
what excuse the company had
given. They said, smoking in
the boiler- room. I said that
somebody must have _ reported
it. My cross shift’ partner said
he did, so you can well imagine
what I hhad to say and do.

I had these witnesses and I

HAVE vou MOVE

CHANGED YOUR
_ NAME SINCE 1943?

.eif so fill out this card
before October 3Ist

Refundable Savings cheques for

1943 and 1944 will

be mailed by March 31st, 1949.

Make sure that yours arrives

these instructions.

4.

safely by following

If your name and address are the same as in
1943 DO NOT MAIL an address card... your

cheque will reach you in March.

2.

If you have changed your name or address
since 1943 go tu your Post Office, obtain a

special “Change of Address” card, fill it out
and mail it AT ONCE.

3.

Even if you mailed an address card last year,
you should complete one this year if your

name or address has changed since 1943.

ad

DEPARTMENT OF NATIONAL REVENUE

Taxation Division

Ottawa

fon. & § icGank MD:
Minister of National Revenue

Yow vt Department

al You Pleate.

wrote a letter to George Mitchell,
the business agent.. I admit the
letter contained language such as
stool pigeons deserve and Mitch-
ell said he couldn’t call this man
‘before a meeting and read this
letter, so I said, bring hirh before
a committee or executive meet-
ing and let me read the letter.
But that also was out.

As far as I know that man is
still there reporting between the
boiler house and office and if I
ever have to go and work in the
woods or mills again I certainly
wouldn’t join up with men like
him to call them brothers.

“I guess when this is published
I'll be branded as a communist,
but it wouldn’t make any differ-
ence to me if it were CCF, Liber-
al or any other party as long as
a thing is right. Right is right
and this certainly wasn’t good
policy for men who profess to be
fighting for the benefit of the
workers. I offer to debate this
any place with Mitchell.

I may as well mention it wasn’t
very long before I got the gate
as well. The bosses in the plant
seemed to be getting away with
anything and the men were get-
ting in such a state they were
afraid to make: any complaints.

is also reported on _ the
Tee here that the bosses are
telling the men if they drop from
the IWA they needn’t come back
to work. At one time they would
fire you if you belonged to the
IWA and now they will fire you
if you don’t. Something sounds
very; very phony.

Yours for faithfulness, truth
and trust in the leaders of organ-
ized labor.

yt NELSON DEAN.
Nanaimo, B.C. — poe

Which is it?

Editor, Pacific Tribune.

Sir: This sudden board “hike”
in the logging camps is a revela-
tion which may serve as a boom-
erang on the companies who per-
petrated this doublecross on the
workers — “in good faith” no
doubt!

_ Hither this represents an ad-
mission that the camps are mak-
jing a profit on the workers’
board; or else that it does take
$2.50 a day to feed a man alone,
Allow even $2 per head for wife
and family and figure out what
remains from his wages to cover
rent, clothing, fuel, light, insur-
ance, entertainment and emerg-
encies even in. this, the highest

_ paid of all industries.

What then of the lower paid
industries and the families- which
must subsist on their wage
scales? What of those in ~un-
organized occupations who even
at this date work at 50 cents per
hour;and in case of many self-
supporting women at even less?

It will take some fast work on
the part of Stuart Research, Bob
Morrison and their colleagues of
the CMA to talk themselves out
of the repercussions of this one!

BERYL M. WHEELDON.
Departure Bay, B.C.

Se a
HIGHEST PRICES PAID ro:

‘DIAMONDS, OLD GOLD
* Other Valuable Jewellery

STAR LOAN CO. Ltd.

BST 1905
na Robson St. — MAr. 2622

Upstairs
720 W. Hastings
PA. 8059 ,

‘at bay,

FILMS, AND PEOPLE

Box othee ‘Hamlet’

IN AN ¢

ATMOSPHERE of press faniares, boiled shirts,

superlative adjectives and autumn fashions, Laurence Olivi-

ers. “Hamlet”
have been duly impressed.
the neighborhood houses, if it
ever does, some of the glamor will
have worn off, and a less hysteri-
cal judgment”"df the latest British
super-film may be possible.

It can be agreed at the outset
that the stagecraft, lighting and
protography are all that is claim-
ed for them, and the music of
William Walton is worthy of
comparison with Prokofief’s score
for Alexander Nevsky.

The only disturbance ‘in the
general presentation is the ana-
chronism of actors in Elizabethan
costumes strutting about a Nor-
man castle in which there is ap-
parently no means of heating or
of keeping the wind and weather
and only an occasional
servitor on hand with a hot toddy.
In J, Arthur Rank’s Elsinore the
reason for Hamlet’s lethargy is
obviowsly that he never really
gets warmed up for the buginess
in hand, and the super-athleticism
of the duelescene has a more ob-
vious explanation than appears in
the text. ‘

* * * ti:

BUT WHAT OF the play? For
those familiar with the drama, it
is possible to re-insert ‘some of
the more drastic cuts, but others,
including the rising generation,
must wonder what on earth the
young man is maundering about.

With difficulty they may. con-
clude that unstable love for
Ophelia complicated by preoccu-
pations with his mother’s bed in
some way holds Hamlet back
from settling accounts with his
dastardly uncle. The real problem
in Hamlet’s mind as to whether

the ghost is a. heavenly or an in-~

fernal visitant never gets a look
ins @

The longer ‘masterpieces of
Shakéspeare are abbreviated in
performance nowadays on _ the
plea that no audience has four
hours to spare—except perhaps
for romantic rubbish like Gone
With The Wind—but to cut the
very heart out of Hamlet’s con-
flict to suit American box-office
requirements, and to superimpose
a dubious wash of psycho-anal-
ysis, is a combination of vandal-
ism and sillyness that not even
high prices and super-profits can
excuse.

Naturally, Hamlet’s speech on
the curse and folly of war, and his

has come to town,

and all the “best people”

By the time it gets round to

acid reference to Osric’s landlord-
ism are eliminated to avoid the
risk of the Prince of Denmark
being hauled before the Un-Ame-
rican Activities Committee, and
the relegation of, Rosencranz and
Guildenstern to the wings must
have cut the wages bill to some
extent, even if it left all but un-
explained Claudius’ fears for his
safety, and, alas, we have become
accustomed to an _ insubstantial
Fontinbras, :

OF THE ACTING it can be
said that Olivier gives a sound
masculine performance within the
Freudian limitations he has set

/ himself, and he is a welcome re-

lief from the troupe of male-im-
personators who have toyed. with
the role in recent years. His face
lacks mobility, and his voice,
when he not whispering or rant-
ing, is limited in color, During
moments of high tension the en-
gineers augment the tone-control
to enable him to scream his head
off—a mannerism that became so
tiresome with repetition in his
Henry: V.

The Ophelia is good as every
Ophelia who remotely looked the
part. The King and Queen,
though they handle their lines
with ease, do not suggest that
their villainy or their wantonness ©
ever seriously over-steps the re-
spectable suburban.

Laertes has youth and ardour,
Horatio has neither; he appears

to be no more concerned than the,

casual observer of a street .acci-
dent.

Polonius is gloriously mis-cast.
As the wise counsellor he is ex-
cellent; ‘as the meddlesome old
fool, his fidgety scamperings sug-

gest nothing so much as those of

a dignified and much-loved pro-
fessor vainly trying to catch the
Macdonald bus.

It has been claimed for this pro
duction that it finally proves the
film to be an adequate medium —
for the presentation of the great-
est in dramatic literature; it —
proves even more conclusively
that on this continent in this era
no major work of art can be
brought before the people to whom
it belongs unsullied and unemas-_
culated by the primary consider-
ation that somebody has to make
a substantial profit out of it.
JOHN GOSS.

e

GUIDE TO GOOD READING

Behind the headlines

WRITTEN A YEAR AGO, Russian Zone: is as timely

as the latest newspaper headlines on the Berlin crisis.
a matter of fact this eye-witness report of the Soviet occu-
shows

pation zone in Germany

present-day headlines on
many.

Ger-

You wouldn’t know from the
capitalist press that in one sec-
tion of Germany, which has a
population of nearly 20,000,000 the

= basic goals for which we fought
the war against Hitler have been

attained.

Schaffer, a British journalist
found no iren curtain there. But
such a curtain has been erected
in the western zones to conceal
the tremendous democratic trans-
formation that has occurred in
the Soviet occupation. *

Schaffer travelled freely, spoke

to countless Germans in towns
and villages and makes an honest
thorough report on what he saw
fna nt é cge

Two “reforms stand out above
all in that zone. One is the break-

As

what’s wrong with most-
ee:

ing up of the feudal Junker eS
tates. The distribution of that |
land to the peasants removed fol
ever one of the most dangerous
sources of German  militaris™
and fascism. Secondly schaffe?
found that the big monopolist
concerns which financed and
sponsored the Hitler regime wel? —
broken up and turned over to the
people,

Published originally in Britai™
the American edition of this boo |
has just been issued by the mas?
zine Soviet Russia Today.

Germany cannot be kept in the
Status of a colony Schaffer’ warns.
It is a bleak reminder to us th®
colonization of Germany by wall
Street breeds the same one
‘consequences which followed th BH
first World War. — JOSEPY

’ CLARK.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—OCTOBER 15, 1948—-PAGE !°