EDITORIAL New Year message s 1967 draws to a close and the- New Year just a few days away, it is customary for weisenheimer pundits of one sort or another to give vent to their views on the ‘‘old’’, with a few wild guesses on the ‘‘new”’ thrown in. Such views go under the general heading of ‘‘New Year Messages’. The year 1967 as everyone knows marked the 100th anniversary of Canada. It opened amid loud hozannas of “affluent prosperity” in perpetuity — and wound up groaning of impending ‘‘inflation’’, with no end of political homilies on how to cure it. These cures follow the usual diagnosis of the political quack doctors of Big Business monopoly. No increases in wages or salaries: curtail government spending (but only on the people’s needs), produce more, and demand less, etc. and so on, all of which, it is promised, will advance our “‘competitiveness in the world’s markets”’. On this ‘‘more production’’ political cackle, the workers of B.C. have been doing just that during 1967, according to the government’s own figures — which don’t always correspond with reality — or vice versa. é Its monthly bulletin from the office of Trade and Industry Minister Loffmark sets forth the fact that in the latter half of 1967 *‘mining registered good gains” while crude oil production as of August 1967 topped August 1966 by 17-percent. During the same period ‘natural gas output was up 40-percent over the same period of 1966. Coal shipments for a nine-month period also showed an increase of 12-percent, while September 1967 showed a 28-percent jump over 1966. We hadn’t heard of the miners getting a corresponding boost in their pay envelopes to meet skyrocketting prices on milk, bread, meat or other essentials to decent living. Lumber and forest production, despite lengthy breaks by fire season closures, enforced work stoppages; strikes, etc., show production and value increases, rising by anywhere from 6.5 to 24-percent, while longshoremen on the Vancouver waterfront upped their production increases by 7-percent increase in cargo loaded and 2-percent increase of cargo unloaded. In evaluating this and other achievements, it should be remembered that these increases in production were attained by the labors of working men and women, and not by ex-parte court injunctions, which also scored an all-time high in Canada’s now fading Centennial year. Obviously, from the Socred’s own reckoning ‘increased production” norms are already well ahead of corresponding wage increases — and the latter far behind the prices racket spirals. — It therefore follows that the prime objective of organized labor and the people in the New Year of 1968, is to cut the cackle about inflation, deflate the inflationists, and unite to make the worker's pay envelope meet the family needs; to make the monopoly profiteers disgorge, in order that the basic consumer — who also-happens to be the producer, be able to enjoy more of the fruits of his (or her) labors. With that kind of message for 1968, which puts workers pay- envelopes before monopoly profits, four-fifths of Canada’s people will feel that it can be a Happy New Year. For the rest — why worry? Tom McEWEN ae column will mark the those 2l-years their helpful end of a 21-year continuous criticisms and ideas, plus the t