QQ ea a> Kootenays boost Tribune Editor, Pacific Tribune: The first regional convention of our party in the Kootenays will be held on February 15 and 16 in Cranbrook. It will mark a great step forward for the labor movement of this prov- . ince and help to bring forward the importance of this rich area in the economic life of our prov- ince, Perhaps there is no place in British Columbia where the crushing hand of monopoly has lett Such searing scars. tremendous: wealth of this area Ras had little benefit for the People and the contrast between me enormous profits gouged by the CPR and its subsidiary the Tonsolidated Mining and Smelt- ing Company stands in sharp Contrast to the hand to mouth existence of the creators of this Wealth, the working men and Women. The CPR through its Subsidiaries, the Consolidated enn the West Kootenay Light i Power (not to mention their Uck and freighting lines which me Squeezing out the small Tansfer business which used to flourish here), gouge and pune profit from almost every - Ctivity in the life of the peo- Ple of this corner of B.C. és However, the people are waking P. Organizeq labor has made Tapid strides in the past few oe and the strike of the lum- Re workers last year held big €ssons for the people here. The Tapidly rising cost of living is Insufficient income of the com- ~™0n people to the extent that _ Workers are calling, for a two- Way fight (1) to up their wages; nd (2) to reestablish price E Ceilings, : Tae _I would like at this time to Dney. tribute to the great role me Pacific Tribune is playing : explaining and clarifying the “sues of the day to the people. herever I go throughout the Cotenays I find the Tribune pee: read. It is read by all aie of people with varying po- ical beliefs. It is recognized Y the common people as their paper: The paper that gives the Race and translates the news n terms of the working people. ae can be sure that one of 7€ major objectives of our re- Sional organization will be to This : Witte The ~ making inroads on the already spreaq the circulation of the Tribune. We recognize that this paper is one of the best or- ganizers we have, We know that it can reach more people with up-to-date explanations of cur- rent events and Marxist inter- pretations of international, na- tional and provincial issues, than can be done by any other method. : The Tribune Drive will have a prominent place on our con- vention agenda. We would be glad to have a_ representative of the paper present. From my own experience I know how dif- ficult it would be for any of the staff to undertake such a long journey at this time. How- ever, if you find this impossible, I hope you will send a message to our convention. , We are determined to make our convention the _ starting point for a new upsurge of united labor action in the Koot- enays. We realize that to be successful it must an all-out effort to increase the circulation and lend financial support to the only paper serv- © ing the true interests of the common people of our province —the Pacific Tribune. The new regional committee of the Koot- enays, with its formation intends to set a mark for accomplish- ment for the rest of the prov. ince. This includes the press. Wishing you and your staff every success. CHUCK SAUNDERS, Kootenay Organizer, LPP. Mackenzie King’s ‘new order’ Editor, Pacific Tribune: According to statistics recent- ly dished out from Ottawa, the cost of living is falling. Could it be that the Dominion govern- ment is preparing the ground for refusing to grant an ade- quate pension to our senior citi- zens, when that burning ques- tion comes before the House? Every housewife knows that the cost of living is rising now, and has taken an upward leap since the lifting of controls. Rapidly going are the days of- . prosperity, which the war gave to this country. As the people’s savings are being exhausted and purchasing power is diminishing un As we see it "Narra ists, through the medium of 8 _ ‘Tee press,’ Wm. Brown-Forbes, 4 well known Toronto newspap- &r reporter got an assignment is write a factual article on € Labor-Progressive Party for © magazine. Since he was as- Sured by the editor of the ‘New World’ that the article would € presented without political iPS and unchanged, the author ad the fullest cooperation from he leaders of the LPP in the Presentation of his facts. When ae article appeared it was un- Xtelligible to the author and a Bs ical CMA smear upon the °mmunists, ‘nto the national pattern of the rttacks of Big Business against ete under the. guise of ‘expos- aa _ the ‘communist network’ Toughout Canada. The whole me picture was exposed in _ ie February 1 issue of the Ca- ‘Radian Tribune. | The lesson is pointed and con- rete—that there are no limits tr which Big Business and _ its red lackies of an alleged ‘free | Press’ ‘will not go in the busi- "ess of lying distortion to ach- FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 1947) dovetailing nicely - ieve it ends—the weakening and ultimate destruction of the labor movement, @. AMN those ‘Russians! Another proféssor, one Dr. Jerome Namias, tells us that he has discovered that the wintery bliz- zards and cold which has swept Canada and the USA _ during the past month, came direct from Russia. This discovery should warrant an extended sit- ting of the Taschereau-Kellock- -RCMP-Gouzenko commission to see if something cannot be done about it, It was all right for the Russians to win the war for us, but this winter stuff is just a little too much. First, according to CMA authority, the Canadian proletariat would be as content- ed as the notorious Borden cow Elsie, were it not for ‘commun- ism’ which every worshipper at the CMA shrine knows comes from Russia. Now they inflict cold weather upon us. Of a truth Gouzenko must be recalled from the U.S. without a moment’s de- lay to cope with this new sub- versive phenomena. oa ’ also mean _ or Departrneat You Please. as the result of rising prices, we are face to face, not with ‘full employment’ and ‘a new world order’ as promised by Prime Minister King, but the same old order of unemploy- ment, depressions, malnutrition of children, bad and insufficient housing, finishing off with a woeful lack of doctors, nurses and hospitals. Due to the latter ~ condition, many people are de- _prived of adequate medical at- tion. The shortage of hospitals is little short of criminal in a land teeming with wealth of all descriptions, : 4 é ' If these things constituted a threat ‘to our extinction as a nation, as diq the war, money would be found to remedy them. Cynthia Carter’s article in the Pacific Tribune of Janu- ary 17 goes deeply into the question of housing, the remedy for which might perhaps also be dealt with from another angle—to press for an amend- ment to the Municipal Act em- powering the municipalities to build houses to be rented at the cost of construction and main- tenance. And to meet the prob- lem of families with children, to whom landlords refuse to rent, some houses could be especially designed to meet the require- ments of this king of tenant. A. CHEVERTON. White Rock, B.C. Archbishop Duke vents spleen on communists Revelation by the Pacif- ic Tribune of Roman Cath- olic plans to seek an af- filiated college at the Uni- versity of British Colum- bia has caused consider- able stir in both educa- tional and religious cir- cles. Following publication of the story, a group of-grad- uates, alarmed at the pros- pect of sectarian education, circulated the article to their. members together with a memorandum urg- ing them to state their reaction.. In a news page story. dated January 30 the Van- couver News-Herald inti- mated that plans for the college had been dropped following indications that the University Senate and graduate groups were op- posed. It was claimed that the stand of these bodies was backed by govern- ment and legislative mem- bers. Catholic authorities were reported to be plan- ning to raise the present parochial boarding scltol, Vancouver College, to full university status thus cre- ating two universities — One non - sectarian and state supported, the other a church institution. However, recent state- ments by Archbishop Duke > of Vancouver indicate that the hierarchy has not giv- en up its intentions in re- gard to the university. In spite of the absurdity of the charges that the News- Herald story was “inspired from Communistic quart- ers” it is apparent that a continuing struggle over sectarian control at UBC may be expected. the | That is the theory! States. Short Jabs by Ol’ Bill OBERT BURNS, Scotland’s peasant poet, knew the newspapers and what to expect from them. Returning some newspapers that had been loaned to him, he sent along a little note with them typical of that gentlest of men who was a master of sarcasm. Part of it read: “The papers are barren of home news or foreign—no murders or rapes worth the naming.” ] The newspapers have not changed much since~ the days of Burns. They still pander to, and excite, the lowest instincts of the ; race, for the same reason as any other pander; A scandal they play up the sensational.and the morbid m the same measure as when Burns made that scathing comment and for the same reason all the time—the profit that’s in it. - .. .. Lith “SH ak Ree ee --When Capone, one of the worst scoundrels who ever cheated the . hangman, was dying in Miami, the press and radio carried daily bulletins on the state of his health and quite & lot of space was wasted on him when Auld Nick took a round turn on him and hauled him off to where he should have been long ago. Capone was imported into Chicago from New York by another gangster, Johnny Torrio, as a gun-toting bodyguard for the lord of the brothels, of the Levee district, Big Jim Colosimo. When some rival degenerate planted a business-like and timely slug of hot lead between Colosimo’s eyes, Torrio took over his despicable job and Capone became chief torpedo for him. : we The grafters who milked the Chicago people before Capone took over, were just plain “boodlers”, like Bathhouse John and Hinky Dink. They grabbed all the money they could get their claws on and they financed their political parties, Democratic and Republican both, from the same sources, prostitution, gambling and liquor, but they drew the line at murder. 5: ‘ There was talk- of deporting him to Sicily once, but it came to nothing. Only Reds are deported by American democracy! The deportation was demanded by the best elements in the States and the reason why he was never deported is probably that he never came from Sicily at all, but was a native of New York, a typical product of Tammany politics. : When he died a few days ago, his corpse ‘should have been thrown into a grave of quicklime like any other criminal. But per- haps the owners of the capitalist press, and their partners in crime — feel grateful to him and don’t wish to be too hard on him, for didn't he, during the Hungry Thirties, utter the famous phrase: “We must not allow the Communists to destroy our American way of life.” ; ‘ T IS ultra vires or infra dig, or e pluribus unum or something like that, to criticize a judge and his decisions. The “good” citizen ‘in the democracies must look upon the judge, who is supposed to put aside his personality with his top-coat when he dons the Middle Ages robes of his office, as a symbol, a personification, of the all- _pervading might and exalted majesty of the state, of which the Hee “good” citizen himself is accused: of being a part. Judicial — So the words of wisdom that come from the lips of the judge are alleged to be sacrosanct; he is comment most learned and his decisions are beyond the criti- cism of the layman and can only be reversed (and: often are), by a group of “more learned” owls of his own breed. c But there ate quite a lot of people, uncouth © and unlettered, who do not know anything about the theory of the law, who maintain that such a theory is, in their-own language for-* they are mostly loggers, boilermakers, longshoremen and such like, “a lot of hooey”. i These ignorant bumpkins ‘cannot see any valid reason why the judge’ who pronounces the death sentence should be looked upon almost with reverence, a reverence once accorded only to the priests, while the hangman, who executes the judge’s senténce of death, is’ ’ treated with scorn and contempt, with horror in fact, and has to keep himself hidden from the public gazé like the Russian traitor, Gouzenko. There was a time too, in the not-so-long-ago when he actually wore a mask for that reason. : The people who don’t fall for the theory expounded by the lawyers have a mass of evidence on their side, in fact they have all the evidence, to show that the judges are tools of the class that rules in society; that they do not perform a social function but a class one and their legal code is in the same box. P The latest accretion to this evidence comes from the United One of the Federal judges named Picard, rendered a qe- cision in a recent case, that according to the laws of the United States employers must pay their employees wages from the moment they enter the employers’ gates and until they leave the gates a the end of the day’s work. : This decision has come to be known as the Portal-to-Portal issue. What such a decision would mean in B.C. can be seen in the woods where loggers sometimes spend three or more hours travelling in the crummie from the camp to the works, coming and going. That time is not paid for, but it is as much a part of the day’s work as the hours spent in actual production. | The response to this decision was instantaneous, from both sides. The CIO has piled up a bill for back wages, amounting to almost five: billion dollars, that the organizeq workers in the states _ have been gypped out of during the war years and the bosses’ reply was to get the opinion of the nine old men in the marble tomb known as the Supreme Court. That body referred the matter back to Judge Picard and asked him to reconsider his decision. The government and the employers also urged Judge Picard to reconsider his decision because the amounts involved were trivial, so he decided to take fresh testimony “to help him to decide.” . é On that basis he reversed his decision, bréaking the law at the demand of American Big Biz. The reason for this reversal makes one think the same kind of decision might have been arrived at if Capone, for instance, had been chargeq with the murder of ‘one of his many victims and the case was thrown out on the grounds that he should have been charged with mass murder—_ one murder is “too trifling’ for punishment. The law is not altered by the venal judge (most judges are). In spite of all the nice theories about the law embracing society and — being applicable to all its members, the law is made for a subject class and the judges are in the pay of the class that rules... Being a judge is a job like ditch-digging. However, it is much easier on the back and pays better money, Portal-to-Portal. ae. PACIFIC TRIBUNE — PAGE 5