OPEN FORUM Farewell to friends ROY LAWRENIUK, en route to USSR: I wish to take this op- portunity. to convey my sincere thanks to the many Vancouver friends and acquaintances who came to the station to see me off January 29. Returning to my native land, the USSR, I leave with the deep- est feeling of love for the people of Canada and particularly the people of the city of Vancouver, where I lived and worked for Many years. My special thanks to those members of my union, Civic Employees Union, Outside es, who came to see me off. It is my earnest hope that friendship between the people of Canada and the people of the USSR will live and continue to ew srow with the years, Company union setup “HB, Vananda, B.C: I was talking to a friend of mine who is employed on the Black Ball ferries on the Powell River end. He was telling me of an organ- izer for the Seafarers Interna- tional Union who had visited them and urged them to join the ‘SIU for job protection, as the union was recognized by the com- pany. Initiation fee was $65 and dus $4 a month. My opinion, based on the past record of the union, is that it is simply a company union. Return that nickel NO NAMES, NO PACK DRILL, Vancouver, B.C.: Did you notice the B.C. Telephone Company’s report on page 8 of the Vancou- ver Sun, February 16? This would seem to be a good time for some organization to re- quest that calls from pay phones be reduced to a nickel again. After all, 1,240,000 calls a day represents a lot of money. That puts it well over $3 million a month on a 6-day basis only and not counting long distance calls. Why should we pay a dime? EVERY SIGNATURE A BRICK IN THE WALL ERECT A WALL THAT 15 IMPREGNABLE . Od Ge (Saas aN t aan f . SCIENCE By WILLIAM KASHTAN Rank-file should establish basis of Canadian trade union merger _ Ney that the AFL and CIO have spelled out the terms for merging into a united feder- ‘ation of labor, what about Can- ada? How soon will a merger take place here? ; What will be the basis of the merger?. Will it be all-inclusive and unite all sections of organiz- ed labor? Will it decisively strengthen the autonomy and the sovereignty of our trade union movement? These matters require immedi- ate consideration. Such basic policy questions cannot be left to the Jodoins and .Moshers—or to the so-called labor “experts” of the capitalist press. © | The rank-and-file must settle these matters and ‘settle them in the interests of the labor move- ment and the nation. This intervention is badly need- ed. It was bad enough to wait passively for an agreement in the U.S. instead of taking the. initia- tive here. But it would be even worse to merely accept the con- ditions adopted in the U.S. as the basis for a merger in Canada. Not that some of the terms of the merger in the U.S. are unac- ceptable. The industrial form of organ: ization which provoked the split in the first place is preserved in the proposed new federation. There is agreement to discon- tinue raiding although many loop- holes remain. There is the intention to step up the drive to organize the un- organized. aS ; There is recognition of the in- New theories about origin of Earth explain many questions A FEW years ago, all the text- & books were quite sure about the origin of the earth and how it had evolved since then. There might be some quibbling about details, but substantially the -pic- ture was this: another star had come along and side-swiped our sun, pulling out masses of molten matter, which gradually condens- ed into nine clusters, the planets. Our earth thus started out as a fiery ball of molten and gase- ous matter, which then cooled down over the ages and was still cooling. While it was still mol- ten, the heavier parts had sunk to the centre while the lighter parts had, floated’ out on or near the surface, giving a core of: heavy iron surounded by layers _ of ever-lighter rocks. ; But even as thousands of us dutifully committed to memory _ the details of this process, and puzzled over some of the prob- lems it raised, research was go- ing on in various parts of the world, which was slowly under- mining the very basis of all we studied, until today it looks like another case of a beautiful theory killed by ugly facts. Nevertheless, this theory of the origin of the earth had con- _ tributed much to our under- standing of the universe, and has inspired many investigations and studies which have made a per- manent contribution to human knowledge. The very difficulties it raised *- -Roupied with new knowledge -has laid the basis for newer and (we hope) better theories which in their turn will undoubtedly im- prove still further as time goes on, and perhaps give way in their turn to radically different theo- ries at some future time. § A scientific theory is like a human life. If it is a good and fruitful one, it.makes a lasting contribution even though it ulti- mately dies. mt te Let’s look at some of the evi- dence that is shaping the new conception of the origin and evolution of the earth. It can be divided into two parts: evidence from the study of evolution of the solar system, and evidence derived from study of the ge- ology of the earth. As I have already noted, there were certain difficulties in work- ing out the details of the old molten-mass theory of the solar system. It was assumed these would work themselves out, but ihe more detailed the investiga- tions became, the weightier the difficulties came tod seem, so that a certain number of astronomers were always looking about for an alternative. ‘ The discovery that the space between the stars were not a pure vacuum empty of all matter, but filled with “cosmic dust,’ — swarms of dust and gas particles — led a number of scientists in Britain, the Soviet Union, / the U.S. and other countries to take a new approach to the theory of our solar system’s origin. They Started from the assumption that the planets had been formed by the slow condensation or com- _the sun got there. ing together of a cosmic dust cloud surrounding the sun. They found that the difficul- ties of the old theory could be eliminated and ‘many ‘unexplain- ed facts could now be explained. So a picture is now evolving of the planets slowly forming from the cold cosmic dust set into rotation by the rotation of the sun, and gradually condens- ing into small accumulations un- der the influence of gravity, which then combined into larger bodies, until planets formed. The many small meteors that fall on earth all the time are thus the tiny late ‘stragglers in this pro- cess, which was substantially fin- ished several billion years ago. % $3 os There are still differences over the details of this theory, notably as to how the dust cloud around The work of Schmidt and Fensenkev in the Soviet Union thas given the clear- est picture so far, indicating that the cosmic dust is not the result of some super-accident, as Hoyle in Britain thinks, but comes from the normal processes by which the very stars themselves are formed. ~ This theory seems open to one serious objection. How did this cosmic matter which is incred- ibly cold, come to form an earth Which we know to be warm? This is where the new evidence from geology comes in. Instead of getting progressively colder, tegrity of each affiliate. Important as these agreements are they are not the most im- portant to the Canadian trade union movement. o renee aus Unity must have an aim, an ob- jective. What are to be these aims and objectives in Canada? How can the labor movement be- come a powerful and united force able to change government poli- cy? What policies does it need to hammer out so that full em- ployment, an expanding Canadian economy, unrestricted ‘trade and peace, can become a reality? The truth is that wherever Canadian workers turn they come up against the basic fact that U.S. domination and stands:in the way of the achieve- ment of their demands. The first and most important problem to be resolved in effect- ing a merger in Canada is the hammering out of truly Canadian national policies around: which labor and its democratic allies -can unite. os a be aaah A truly Canadian national poli- ey requires a united Canadian trade union movement to fight for it. The merger ought to settle ac- counts with this problem. Hasn’t the time arrived to est- ablish ‘a united labor federation having complete sovereignty, able - freely to determine its own poli- cies while maintaining the closest fraternal relations with the trade union movement of the U.S. and elsewhere? Shouldnt: we spell out the autonomous rights of all affiliates control ~ of such a united body and end once and for all the subordinate and. subservient relationship of unions in Canada to the USS. bodies? Isn’t it time to end this one- sided and unequal relationship which has plagued the trade union movement here and hin- dered it from becoming a power- ful force not only on the econ- omic front but also in the politi- cal life of the country? “Cooperation ever, domination never’ must become’ the corner- _ Stone of the merger. And it must be buttressed, built and reinforced by its all-inclus- | ive character. The Catholic Syn- dicates, the railway brotherhoods énd the independent unions should be included in the merger from the beginning: so that all may play their full role in ad- vancing labor’s interests. The issue resolves itself to this: — shall there be unity on the basis “of support of U.S. .imperialist aims and the cold war? Or shall it be all-inclusive unity directed towards advancing the real in- terests of labor and the nation? These and many other ques- tions need careful study by every man and woman in the trade union movement. who built the trade union move- ment in the first place need now to help formulate - the . policies which can ensure that labor. can meet the great tasks history places before it. I would welcome hearing from trade: unionists throughout the country on how the fight for such a united Canadian trade union movement can be: achieved. ace . ra = The earth as photographed from a rocket 100 miles out in space. the evidence now indicates the _earth has been warming up. The _ self-condensation of a mass of matter has a heating ef- fect. In addition the discovery of large quantities of radioactive materials in the earth indicates that the atomic energy from ra- Gioactive processes has been con- | stantly heating up the earth. To- day in fact it is an open question whether it is now losing heat faster by radiation into space than it is gaining it by the above processes, ofir vice versa. How about the hot iron core of the earth, and its surrounding rock layers. This idea too, is be- ing discarded. The inside of the earth is undoubtedly much dens- er than the surface, but high- pressure experiments, such as — those of Zelinsky in the Soviet Union and Bridgeman in the U.S., have shown that matter under high pressure can reach fantastic densities and shows all sorts of new properties. At 30,000 - times the pressure of the atmos- phere, for example, parafin is harder than steel. These new properties serve to explain the behavior of earth- quake waves as they travel deep in the earth, with which the earlier theory that the earth had a hot iron core had conflicted. So the inside of the earth is prob- ably not too different in compo- sition from ordinary rocks, just in a different physical state due ~ to the huge pressures, with all the implications this has for si ‘mineral and oil prospecting. " —JOHN STACHEL - ML The workers .