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Bennetts bonfire

he burning of the mortgage is
always an event for rejoicing.
When this usurious fetter goes up
in smoke the modern man has the
fine feeling of a world being lifted
from his back.

Socred Premier W. A. C. Ben-
nett’s bond burning ritual last
week amid the beautiful environ-
ment of Okanagan Lake at Kelow-
na, staged with much fanfare to
symbolize a “debt free” province
a la Social Credit, will probably
rate as a classic event in political
skulduggery, but little else.

John Taxpayer, through -the
media of municipal debt and taxes,
government-owned agencies and
enterprises, starved school dis-
tricts and what not, will still be
carrying a grand total payload of
some $400 million debt.

Quite a load, and roughly just
about twice the $191 million bonds
which went up in smoke. How-
ever in Socred monetary hoopla
that debt load will now be labelled
“contingent liabilities” rather than
debt <— but that won’t make it any
easier to carry.

No one to our knowledge, not
even in the top circles of the Soc-
red “Sacred Cow” cult, has ever
managed to give a sane and simple
explanation of the tortuous intric-
acies of social credit. We recall
the late Aberhart of Alberta with
his first (and only) issue of “funny
monéy,” accompanied by the theo-
retical dissertations of one Major
Douglas, the alleged “inventor” of
Social Credit.

Mostly, however, we recall that
Alberta’s unemployed, who had
been issued this “funny money”
instead of the real thing in lieu of
“relief,” soon found it wasn’t legal
tender for a cup of coffee any-
where in Sunny Alberta.

Nevertheless, it was a big day in
Kelowna, a regular Barnum and
Bailey circus. with: Premier Ben-
nett starring in the role of ring
master, sleight-of-hand perform-
er, bandmaster and “pied piper’.
Speeches _galore _on _the super
prowess of Socredia, with empha-
sis on its “debt-free” shell game to
charm the gullible.

Pacific Tribune

Phone MUtual 5-5288 -
Editor — TOM McEWEN
Managing Editor — BERT WHYTE
Published weekly ait
Room 6 — 426 Main Street
Vancouver 4, B.C.
Printed in a Union Shop
~ Subscription Rates:
One Year: $4.00
Six Months: $2.25
Canadian and Commonwealth
countries (except Australia): $4.00
one year. Australia, United States and
all other countries: $5.00 one year.

The $191 million in bonds were
all there, all stacked up for the
premier’s flaming arrow. “Sym-
bolically’” enough, he missed the
target, but a willing hand applied
the toreh. One hundred and ninety
one million up in smoke; the
crowning triumph of seven years
of Social Credit. B.C. is “debt
free.’ Now all we have to worry
about is “contingent liabilities,’”
which amount to more than twice
the volume of the burned “debt.”

Premier Bennett’s bond-burning
bonfire made a fine political
smoke-screen to obscure Socred
stewardship. In it spiraling
wreaths his government’s vicious
anti-labor Bill 43 was lost sight of.
So also was the Socred sellout of
B.C.’s rich natural resources to
home and foreign monopolists.

Missing, too, from the Socred
cabinet “orchestra” accompanying
the bonfire was exminister Som-
mers, but the timber barons who
paid off for a chunk of the peoples’
forest resources still hold what
they paid for — and cheered to the
echo.

Better delay “rejoicing” about
the Kelowna bonfire until a later

date! 2 sath:

Comment

Socred strike-breakers

hen the Socred government

at the behest of powerful em-
ployer organizations brought down
its new Trade Union Act (Bill 43)
it was already fully aware of the
ultimate consequences of this vici-
ous anti-labor legislation.

Nevertheless, in concert with
employer organizations, the goy-
ernment decided to embark on a
policy of large-scale strike-break-
ing. Bill 43 was Bennett’s “mu-
tual aid” to the employers, oblig-
ingly supplying the “teeth” de-
manded to put the bite on organ-
ized labor.

Hitherto in its infantile years
the Socred government had made
the pretense of consulting with
labor on all matters pertaining to
labor legislation. Now it cynically
disregards labor, having chosen to
throw in with the bosses in an
orgy of “legalized” strike-breaking
through the media of Bill 43.

The historic emergency conven-
tion of the British Columbia Fed-
eration of Labor last weekend took
some far-reaching and important
measures, (See story on Page 1),
to meet this continuing threat of
government-employer attacks upon

labor’s right to strike and picket?
a threat highlighted by innumet-
able employer injunctions and €X-
treme court penalties. The BCFL
centered its attention and decisions
on the mobilization of maximum
unity and struggle against Bill 43,
and against the government which
spawned it to enable employers t0
harass and (they hope) destroy
labor.

Bill 43 gave the bosses the
“oreen light” to intensify their at
tacks upon labor’s standards (na
tion-wide in its scope). Its service
to the bosses is already well evid-
enced in the many “legal” restric
tions and penalties imposed by el:
ployer injunctions. It is designed
primarily to weaken and destroy
labor unity, to cancel out the im
herent class strength of the work-

~ ingclass.

The BCFL emergency conven-
tion and its decisions to preserve,
extend and utilize this working-
class unity against Bill 43 and its
government - employer initiators,
will ultimately triumph. That
much is already evident in the
unity being spurred along by Bill
4

Tom
McEwen

HEN the power loom. dis-
placed the hand loom in
the early years of Britain’s indus-
trial revolution, it simultaneously
destroyed the livelihood of count-
less thousands of textile workers.
Every new perfection of the ma-
chine spelled out more jobless.

At one period the workers re-
taliated by attempting to destroy

“ the machines which (they thought)
had deprived them of their jobs.
History records this workingclass
opposition in ‘‘Merrie England” to
the early beginnings of automa-
tion as the ‘Luddite Movement’
(1811-16), named after its inspirer
and leader, Ned Ludd.

That was nearly 150 years ago.
Automation. has travelled a long
way since, and today we can see
its progress and effects in two
world systems; a vibrant and grow-
ing socialist world, and a decadent
and dying “free enterprise” capit-
alist system. Under capitalism,
automation has become an instru-
ment for the extraction of greater
profit and gain for the few—
through higher production levels

and the displacement of human
labor.

Under socialism, automation is
the science of making the machine
work for the common good; to
lighten the burdens of manual
labor, to provide greater leisure
time for the social, intellectual and
cultural advancement of mankind.
That is the “profits” of automation
under socialism. Under capitalism
it is' a growing derelict human
scrap heap!

Just a few of its apparent effects
upon the wage and salaried section
of our capitalist way-of-life.

In the modern business office
intricate automatic machines that
do most everything except think
are displacing scores of hundreds
of clerical workers. The pretty

, stenographer must now give way

to the electronic duplicator.

Out in the white-tiled washroom
(or the one not so white) the use
of automation - produced paper
towels, napkins, etc., put a terrific
bite on laundry workers, while
modern laundry enterprises install
automatic equipment which can
launder a score of shirts in less
time than it takes Mama to put
one through the domestic wringer.

In the woods and sawmills of
B.C. automation has helped the
timber barons eliminate thousands
of workers from the industry, and
still reach new record production
levels—and profits!

The diesel locomotive has not
only gone through a recent elimin-

-controls — the people or, the : ¥

ation of its operational yards staff,
but has “revolutionized” railroad-
ing to the extent that several
thousand less rail workers now
haul a greater pre-mile-per-man
tonnage. than ever before. 5

The same with coal mining and
other. key industries. Automation
boosts the production norms and
eliminates the working man. Coal
tonnage output per man-is higher
today than even before. So also
is the human slagheap of displaeed
and idle miners.

Automation in eating hasn’t as
yet reached its zenith, but in many
American cities it is well on the
way, eliminating cooks, waitresses,
dishwashers and other staff per-
sonnel by the score. Automatic
restaurants serving your “ham-
and” with slot-machine precision
—and taste.

There is a theory that ‘‘ultimate-
ly” all will benefit from automate
capitalism. The machine will work
for man, and man will be trained
to master the machine!

To a permanent and growing
army of jobless workers “ultimate-
ly” is a long time. Not only do
they have no opportunity for such
“training,” but find themselves
“automatically” deprived of the
elementary necessity of eating
regular.

Automation, like atomic power,
can be a blessing or a curse,,All .-
depends on who is at the switch |

a

profiteers. , if ‘nus OF See

BriiShGs

August 7, 1959—PACIFIC TRIBUNE—Page 4