ee

|

-.down five coal mines
Breton,” thereby throwing an ad-

Open the door, Tom

MAxoR Tom Alsbury and the
} city’s Board of Administration
decision to hold its meetings in
secret has boomeranged on its pro-
moters, and rightly so.

‘One of the worst features of
modern big business government
today (and at all levels) is the

~ “mahogany-backroom” method of

doing business; of cooking up
political deals, then facing the pub-
lic with a ‘fait accompli,’ whether
#t be an increase in the mill rate, a

mew car for the mayor, or a natural

tesoutces giveaway to a big mon-

'oply. At municipal level the prac-

tice is most reprehensible.
_ The specious arguments advanced
by Mayor Alsbury in support of

board secrecy just won’t stand up.

Civic business is always most ex-

- peditiously carried out in the in-

terests of all the citizens, when the ©

public and press have free access
‘and are’ fully informed and able
to voice their opinions on any given
issue.

While some of the board’s mem-

Contrast ! °

eerie WEEK the Dominion Steel

and Coal Company (Dosco)
Siuntly announced it was “closing
in Cape

ditional 4,000 Nova Scotia miners

‘and their families into Canada’s

jobless army.
.“INo markets, no profits,” say

. Bosco,

Last week too, Nikita Khrushchev
told the 21st Congress of the Com-
mumist Party of the Soviet Union
(among other important things),

‘that the new Seven-Year Plan re-

quited a vast expansion of steel
md coal, and that new thousands
cf workers would be required to
master these new objectives of soc-
ialist production.

To. put .it mildly, the contrast
is staggering. With monopoly at
the. controls, “no markets, no

. profits,’ no jobs. Under socialism

an_expanding market, rising: living ©
and cultural standards, no unem-

. ployment, and the people reap the

profits.
Who said “socialism won’t work?”

Pacific Tribune

Phone MUtual 5-5288
Editor — TOM McEWEN
Managing Editor — BERT WHYTE
Published weekly at
Room 6 — 426 Main Street
Vancouver 4, B.C.
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vd

bers appear to be getting somewhat
lukewarm on their secrecy ruling,
Mayor Tom Alsbury, with charcter-
istic mulishness, lectures the public
and those who disagree with him in
the press and elesewhere, much as
he would lecture a group of Grade
1 youngsters who have commited
some minor breach of school be-
haviour. In the cla’s room this
may be quite proper, but in the
mayoralty chair it is a symptom of
something which doesn’t belong
there, and which the public does
not and will not approve.

Despite Mayor Alsbury’s homilies
addressed to Alderman Evelyn
Caldwell (Penny Wise) and other
critics on how well Vancouver’s
jobless hundreds are “sheltered”
under the mayoral wing, we feel
reasonably sure that in reopening
the administration board’s door to
the public, the danger of the “Krem-
lin” getting in (or wanting to get
in) is about as remote as Mayor
Alsbury seems to be from public
opinion on backroom strategy!

Better open the door Mayor Als-
bury — before the ratepayers take
it off the hinges!

Discipline the sabo teur

0% OF THE perennial argu-
ments advanced by Chambers
of Commerce and other employer
organizations in their attempts to
put a dog-collar on labor, is that
strikes are inimical to the “public
welfare.”

Last week no less a person than
James Muir, president of the Royal
Bank of Canada, put the finger
squarely on those people (and
their cold war policies) who stand
in the way of “public welfare.”

Reiterating his views on the ur-
gent need for Canadian’- Chinese
trade, the Royal Bank president
outlined three main points which
all sensible Canadians readily agree
with. He described our “strategic
goods” list, as laid down by Wash-
ington and slavishly followed by
Liberal and Tory governments

alike, as being “ridiculous.” He ~

urged Canadian businessmen to go
to China and begin trade deals;
and he declared that “corporations
that refused to trade under condi-
tions advantageous to Canada”
should be disciplined.

In this he could have added the

Diefenbaker government, plus a

hard-core Tory falange of indu
trial tycoons (including the Alum
num Company of Canada), whe
sabotage of Canada’s great poli
tial markets in China. and ol
countries of Asia and the ¥:
world, not only calls for dis
pline,” but a complete break
cold war policies dictated by. Wash
itgton; policies which, for the |
‘decade, have been and are hight
inimical of the public welfare
this country. a
Muir repeated what this pap
has stated on numerous occasioh
in pressing the need for nm
Canadian-Chinese trade and
matic relations: “That the fitst
sideration is the people who lt
here and their livelihood.” E
Thus instead of lecturing 4
branding labor as a threat to ,
public welfare, employers’ org
tions and their subservient govem
ments in Ottawa and Victor
should look into the mirror
up by oné of their own kind —
see who really endangers the p
lic welfare by the deliberate :

tege of markets, trade and jobs!

Tom
~ McEwen,

J PPE time has come, the Wal-
T rus said,
To talk of many things ©
Of shoes, and ships, and sealing
wax,
And cabbages and kings.”

It sure has. While the Socialist
world, and first and foremost
the Soviet Union chalks up new
achievements and vast new per-
spectives for human wellbeing,
we of the “free West” sink deep-
er in a capitalist morass of eco-
nomic crisis and H-bomb “brink-
manship.”

It’s certainly time for a
change; that is, a real change.

* for a St. Laurent or a Bennett
for another piebald politician
from the same Augean stables,
but for the people of factory,
farm, school and laboratory to
“take over,”

Look at it this way.-.B.C. has
a great lumber industry. So great
indeed that H. R. MacMillan

e

Not a swapping of a Diefenbaker ©

pockets over $8 million profit for
the last three months in 1958,
while hundreds of jobless lumber
workers wonder where their next
meal is coming from — the

.charity soup kitchen or Diefen-

baker “promises.”

Does any mill worker, faller
or bucker, high-rigger, cold-
decker, cat-man or whistle punk
require a MacMillan, a Zeller-
bach, a Weyerhauser or what
have you, to show him “how” to
do his job?

Not on your life. The workers,
in lumber and in all else, supply
both the muscle and the know-
how. Harold Pritchett was tell-
ing me the other day of a boss
who hung up a notice in the mill
indicating some change in ‘plant
operation, and signed it “The
Brain.” :

We'd hazard a guess that any
six lumber workers now pound-
ing the skidroad in jobless fu-
tility, could produce more brains
in running B.C.’s lumber in-
dustry for the general wellbeing
of the country than any score of
top brass executives in the plush
offices of the lumber trust.

What goes for Jumber can ap-
ply in all fields of production. Do
hard rock or coal miners require
a boss, often resident in New
York, London, Ottawa or else-
where, to tell them how to dig
and process rich ores, coal or
other minerals?

The old “labor needs capital’ s
gag is played out. With hard rock
and coal miners digging for their
own class, there would be much —
less “blood on the coal” and ore; _
more in the miners’ pockets and__
on their tables; limitless markets
for the products of their toil,
and not a jobless worker on a
“ghost” town anywhere — not
even a ghost with a “suspended
sentence” — like, Britannia.

With the growing impact of a
socialist world around them,
workers are beginning to think,~
and “thinking” workers is always
bad medicine for the exploiters
and their “promising” politicians.

The idea of “fix-it-yourself” in-
stead of leaving it to a Diefen- ©
baker or a Bennett is catching
on, The “feel’’”’ of socialism is in
the air, and the lengthening lines
of jobless workers, subsisting ~
on the stagnating promises of a
capitalist “prosperity just around
the corner” sharpens its tang. “If
the Russians and Chinese can do
it” say these workers, “why not
us?” A very good, and very time.
ly question. Why not? c

A good long look at this
question by any group of work-
ers in any industry anywhere in
Canada, will produce an almost
unanimous opinion: “Sure, why
not? We work for a boss, when
it is “profitable” for him that we
do work. Why not try working
for ourselves for a change?”

February 6, ‘1959 — PACIFIC TRIBUNE—PA