demonstration, the government won quick approval in July, 1931 of a resolution giving it wellnigh dictatorial powers for the next nine months. Incorporated in the Unemployment and Farm Relief Act, it empowered the government to rule by order-in-council “to provide employment, farm relief, and pre- Serve peace, order and good government.” Penalties for whatever the government defined as peace and order were fines up to $1,000 and prison terms not exceeding three years. Public works projects, which required Provincial and municipal governments to pay half the cost, were little more than a Screen for the real purpose of the Act. Across the country the numbers of unemployed and destitute continued to grow, augmented by farmers over large areas of southern Saskatchewan whose land had been transformed into a dustbowl where clouds of grasshoppers descended on parched crops. Freight trains swarmed with men — and some women — riding the rods from city to city in search of work. And, as Van- couver civic officials complained, in winter they came to the coast. In the cynical view of the jobless it was “the only part of the coun- try where you could starve before you froze to death.” _In Vancouver they constructed their Jungles’ from whatever they could scrounge in the False Creek wasteland beneath the old Georgia Viaduct. ; Stan Lowe, a Young Communist League leader in the’30s and one of the early unem- ployed organizers, today recounts how he and others started organizing in jungles sane the CPR railway line to Kamloops in He can remember no organization of sin- gle unemployed when he came to Van- couver from the Prairies in 1930, although married unemployed had formed an organ- ization and here and there, desperate people faced with eviction were being aided by neighbors who carried furniture in by the back door as fast as harassed bailiffs carried it Out to the street. It was the beginning of what became known as the block system. ““We used to hang around carnivals, pass- ing lists from one to the other of places you could go to get a handout,” Lowe recalls. “For instance, you went to A.E. Morris, the tobacconists on East Hastings Street, on Tuesdays and they gave you 50 cents.” In 1931, when the newly organized National Unemployed Workers Associa- tion set up quarters at 60 West Cordova Street — “The Wobblies were upstairs,” he remembers — Lowe, Curly MacDonald from Glace Bay and another man rode the Tods to Mission to begin their organizing tour. “Tn Mission we held a little meeting down by the railway tracks,” says Lowe. “We recruited a few and gradually our ranks grew along the line to Kamloops where we Set up our headquarters under the railway bridge. “We were there for weeks, recruiting every day, and everyone became a member of our association. Our meetings were Organized. We had a chairman and a secre- tary. We set up committees for clean-up, for bumming, some to go and get vegetables, others meat. : “We educated people through talks and discussion. It was like a school. I remember the theme — you couldn’t get anywhere by begging, only by getting out and fighting for It.” oe Keenly aware that widespread discontent with its policies was taking organized form, the Bennett government struck in August, 1931 to demonstrate to its corporate backers that its concept of order did not Include ill-paid workers striking under Workers Unity League leadership for higher pay and better conditions or imple- Menting the demands of national unem- Ployed conferences. Invoking Section 98 of the Criminal code, RCMP raided Communist Party offi- ces in Toronto and the homes of Tim Buck and other Communist leaders. Nine were arrested and the Communist Party was out- lawed, Section 98, under which the nine were charged, was an amendment to the Crimi- nal Code passed into law in July, 1919 at the end of the Winnipeg General Strike. And to make it consistent with other provisions, the Union government of Sir Robert Borden had repealed Section 115 which specifically defined the right of free speech to mean that no one who inteded in good faith to point out mistakes of government should be deemed to have a seditious purpose. The broad definition of sedition in Sec- tion 98 made the outcome of the trial a foregone conclusion. Of the: nine, seven were sentenced to five years, one to two years at the end of which he was to be deported, and one was freed ona technical- ity. The second blow in thé government’s offensive to crush protest fell on striking coal miners at Estevan, Sask. on Sept. 17. In what was manifestly a pre-arranged trap, RCMP fired on a miners’ parade, killing three and wounding S50. This country’s history counts many instances of troops and police being used to break strikes, as in the Fraser River fisher- men’s strikes of 1900-1 and the Nanaimo coal miners’ strike of 1912-14. But this was a calculated policy of repression, to be used against striking furniture workers at Strat- ford, Ont., miners at Flin Flon, Man. and miners at Anyox, Corbin and Princeton after 1931. Bennett was earning the prefix “Iron Heel” conferred on him by his victims. History also records the names of labor leaders murdered — Frank Rogers at Van- couver in 1903, Ginger Goodwin at Camp- bell River in 1918. But when shots were fired at Buck — he bore the crease of one on his Top, Richard Bedford Bennett, a corporation lawyer and the owner of the Eddy Niatch Co., was elected prime minister July 28, 1930. He is seen here with his sister Mildred. Below, 2,000 people march on the legislature in Victoria in February, 1932 in a Hunger March against unemployment. Some 65 forehead — during disturbances at King- ston Penitentiary in Oct. 1932, fuel was added to the fire of public outrage. The Canadian Labor Defence League carried its campaign for release of the impri- soned Communists up and down the coun- try. In November, 1933, a petition bearing 459,000 signatures was presented to Bennett by a delegation headed by A.E. Smith, its secretary. Not only did Bennett reject it, Smith him- self was indicted for seditious conspiracy. In the outcry that followed, the jury acquitted him. Within a year, the seven Communists still in jail were freed. Increasingly the Bennett government was under siege. The CCF had been founded out of various regional Socialist and Labor parties in 1933 and the thousands respond- ing to its Regina Manifesto gave it the char- acter of a grass roots movement. foreground. Bennett promptly expanded the “Red “menace” to include the CCF, despite the anti-Communist stand taken by the pre- dominantly right wing leadership. But working people could no longer be diverted from the real issues by scaremongering. In the provincial election that same year, B.C. voters ousted the Tolmie Conservative _government and elected seven CCF members in addition to returning Tom Uphill, the veteran Labor member for Fer- nie. As its five-year mandate ran out, the Bennett government was in disarray. The rise of Hitler in Nazi Germany and Presi- dent Roosevelt’s New Deal in the U.S. had given disparate new dimensions to the international scene. In January 1935, when Bennett announced his own New Deal, it was like a political death bed repentance that lacked credibility. organizations were represented, including the National Unemployed Workers’ Organization which pioneered in organ- izing the single unemployed. Title photo, facing page: the breadline at First United Church, Rev. Andrew Reddan in The police attack on the On-to-Ottawa trekkers in Regina’s Market Square on July 1 was the final act of a hated government, a hatred Bennett must have felt when he was booed for an hour at his Vancouver election rally in the old Arena. After the ballots were counted on Oct. 14, ‘ the Conservatives had gone down to crush- ing defeat, retaining only 39 seats. The Lib- erals, promising repeal of Section 98 and a contributory unemployment insurance scheme — the Communist Party had initiated a national campaign for non- contributory unemployment insurance in the months leading up to the election — had won an overwhelming majority of 171 seats and King was again prime minister. In 1936, his government’s repeal of Sec- tion 98 symbolized the victory for demo- cracy won by united action of the working people. PACIFIC TRIBUNE, ON-TO-OTTAWA SUPPLEMENT e 3