OT long ago we were
reading Betty Mac-
Donald’s book, The

Egg and I. If you’ve read it,
you probably. found it as
amusing as we did. The story
of our relations with the egg,
however, is not amusing, par-
ticularly since those relations are
not our own private business but
involve our serious dealings with
the feed monopolies from whom
we buy and’ the people who buy
our eggs. It’s hard to take a
light view of a problem that
presents you wth the necessity
of getting a higher price for
your product when you know
that the people who buy your
product will--have to cut down
their consumption because of the
bigher price.

We ‘have before us now a
statement put out by Bucker-
feld’s, the feed monopoly whoss
rame is‘ familiar to every house-
hold in the Fraser Valiey and
with whom every one, even the
cooperatives, is obliged to deal
because it is a monopoly.

The figures in that statement
will tell you little or much, de-
pending on how much_ you
know about the poultry indus-
try, but they won't tell you the
full story. It’s like being pre-
sented with a problem in arith-
metic with the question put in
chickens and eggs and the an-

swer required in dollars and
cents.
:
&
UPPOSE you are a small

poultry farmer, like ourselves
and scores of our neighbors in
the Fraser Valley. The chances
are that you won’t have much
of a ‘house for yourself, indeed
it may be only a shack, but
you'll, have an imposing layout
for your chickens, ;

You must have well ventilated
and dry hen houses, with drop-
ping boards and sufficient roosts,
feed troughs and laying boxes
or nests, shell hoppers and water
troughs. And to get the best re-
sults from your hens you must
have electric lights.

Acceraing to the experts, a
flock of a thousand hens shculé
provide a living for a small fam-
ily. So you need a pen 20 by
180 feet. You need 96 feet of
mash trough, 720 feet of roosts
and 216 laying nests. You also
need a well-constructed brooder
house, say 20 by 20 feet, and a
brooder, electric, oil or coal, and
other equipment. .

Quite a layout, isn’t it? And,
we should point out,
investment, particularly when
you have to start from scratch.

It's no wonder you've little left —

for yout own house.
6

. Sa next problem is to force
your chicks to roost, and if
patience is not one of your vir-
tues you will either acquire it
during this process or quit. This
stage alsc provides you with an
opportunty to cull out weak or

puny chcks and the few cocker- ,

els that were missed in sexing.

quite an”

The es _
Sethe"

All in all, this a busy period
and while you may or may not
learn patience you will certainly
learr what it’s like to go without
sleep.

After
transferred to range pens —
shelters with screened-in sides,
good roofs~and adequate roost-
ing space usually placed in a
field where there’s plenty of
green feed—you can take things
relatively easy, Just see that
your growing chicks have mash
and water before them all the
time and feed them wheat once
a day. :

Now your chicks are around
five months old, approaching the
time, you fervently hope, when
they'll begin to earn their keep.
But first, they must be treated
for worms, and you dip into
your pocket again or count your
eggs before they’re laid, de-
pending on the state of your
finances, for the necessary medi-
cines.

.

 — hens are now ready to
begin their life work of pro-
ducing eggs. Each one of them
has already cost you approxi-
mately one dollar to rear and
if you have a flock of a thous-

_ A Reuther-Hearst hoax exposed _

By WILLIAM ALLEN
—DETROIT,

HE Hearstian bubble about the

“mysterious disappearance of
Soviet engineers” working in the
Clark Equipment plant at Bu-
chanan, went up’ in smoke when
Eddie E. Adcock, district direc-
tor of Immigration and Natural-
ization, scoffed at such reports.

“Our reports shows that the
Russian group at the plant in
Buchanan, Mich., has varied from
four to 20 persons,” Adcock.
“Every one of them ‘was there
lawfully and was complying with
the provisions of his pe t. These
men are engineers and technical

advisors whose job it is to. ac-.

quaint themselves with the use
of machinery being manufac-
tured under contract with the
Russian government,”

The Russians, said Adcock,
constitute no problem. “They
keep to themslves and we have

found no instances, nor have we
received any complaints that any

your flock has _ been:

by BOB and GLADYS FERGUSON ~

and, you’ve spent $1,000. So,
from the time each hen starts
laying until she goes into her
first moult, she must produce
enough eggs to cover the cost
of her feed and return the ini-
tial investment, to say nothing
about the value of your time.
The money has to come out of
the eggs she lays, for if - you
decide to dispose of her after
her first year of laying, she'll
bring you the handsome price
of 16 cents a pound—if she’s a
grade A bird weighing around
four pounds.

Modern industrial methods
have, to some extent, entered the
poultry industry, but no one
has yet succeeded in breeding
hens that will lay grade A eggs
unfailingly every day. If your
flock is laying on an average
of 65 percent, that’s considered

political activities have been in-
dulged in.”

Behind this news lies a story
of the combined efforts of UAW
President Walter Reuther and
his cohorts, aided by the De-
troit (Hearst) Times and its
special correspondent Paul We-
ber, former editor of the Wage
Earner, official organ of the
Association. of Catholic Trade
Unionists. °

Weber tried to exploit the an-
gle that Soviet engineers work-
ing at the Clark Equipment
plant under a contract with the
company, approved by the US.
state department took jobs of
plant employees and “when ex-
posed, mysteriously disappeared.”

Both unauthenticated charges
have been smoked out as phon-
ies.

HE “disappearance of Soviet
agents” was scoffed at by the
_ immigration department. The
‘taking of American workers’

Get Your Christmas Cards NOW!

THE LPP PROVINCIAL OFFICE

OFFERS YOU A CHOICE SELECTION |

$1.00 a dozen

é

with your special greeting, $1.50 a dozen y

i

Mail or phone your orders to 209 Shelly Building, West Pender St., Vancouver, B.C, TAt. 1451

& we ise Se pate

_ FRIDAY, NOVEMBER

4, 1947

good. We don’t consider it good
unless our flock is laying on an
average of 75 to 80 percent.

-Buckerfield’s neglected to men-

tion in its statement that there
are seven different grades of
eggs and the largest percentage _
is not grade A. When we do get
a price increase, it is usually on
grade A eggs. Last week our
eggs sold at an average price
of' 31% cents a dozen.
Buckerfield’s is now advising
poultry farmers to cull their
flocks and dispose of all hens!
that don’t lay 40 percent. That’
you'll find, is one of the trou-
bles of. being a poultry farmer.
The monopolies that create so
many of your problems either try
to force their own. opinions on
you, claiming to speak for you,
or they insult you with gratui-
tous advice, that being all they

do give away. Our hens get the

jobs” ballooned by Hearstling
Weber was also exposed as a
phony when the company stated
that the workers would be paid
average earnings for the few
hours Soviet engineers operated

the machines in the plant. On
that ground the carefully built
up “strike issue,’ obviously a
figment of Hearstling Weber,
okayed by Reuther’s regional di-
rector William McAuley, interna-
tonal representative Tom Flynn
and UAW President Walter P.
Reuther, collapsed like a prick-

‘ed balloon,

@
The “strike” was called off
after the threat served its pur-
pose, which was putting the Reu-

and us —
8 See

best care we can afford to give
them, as a matter of business,
but we keep a cat for a pet,

AS we see it, the solution for
our problem is for the gov-
ernment to restore the price
ceiling on coarse grain and main-
tain the subsidy to poultry far-
mers.

Unless these steps are taken,
poultry farmers will be forced
to sell their flocks, their incomes
will be cut to the vanishing point
and depression conditions will
prevail throughout the industry.
At~a time when they should be
producing as Many eggs as our
own people, the British people
and the people of other coun-
tries can consume, production
will be cut,

Labor, too, has a stake in solv-
ing our problem and helping us
to get our subsidy back and the
price ceiling restored, for the
working people in the cities are
our biggest consumers. If the
price of eggs rises to 60, 65, or
75 cents a dozen, they will suf- —
fer and so will we.

If those of you who work in
industry were told that you'd
have to take a 25 percent pay
cut, you’d come out fighting.
Well, that’s how we felt the
other day when we heard that
the government had lifted the
ceiling on coarse grain and end-
ed our subsidy.

ther local; regional and nation-
al leadership in a favorable light
as champions of workers’ rights.

“The need for the coverup was
that after a 10-week-old strike
in the Clark Equipment plant
here last summer for the na-
tional wage pattern of 18% cents,

the Reuther-McAuley-Flynn clique
signed q contract for 10 cents
an hour and no paid vacations
such as were won in hundreds
of -plants.

Therefore, to recompense the
loss of face and establish a cheap
reputation for militancy (with —
the aid of Weber and the Detroit
Times) the Buchanan-Soviet
scare was concocted.

R. J. Thomas (left), vice-president of the CIO United Auto
Workers, and Walter Reuther, president, are shown during 2
three-hour debate before 2,000 union members at Flint, Mich.
Both Reuther and Thomas have been critical of each other’s
leadership in the largest trade union in the. U.S. and the
battle for leadership of the union was continued at this month’s

- convention,

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—PAGE 10

3