OL’ BILL ~ SHORT JABS HE cold war was moved up a peg last week and has extended its front line closer to home with the arrival at the UBC of a new professor with the un-Russian name of Hans Roinmois. His presence here is made possible by Rockefeller money to the tune of $90,000. That should explain much. He is touted by the Vancouver Sum as an “authority” on Soviet economic planning and as Russian- born. But everything born in a stable is not a horse and in any case( whether that is a desirable characteristic or not remains to be seen, There have been some Russian-born: people the world would have been better without. Isaac Don Levine, for instance, and if my memory serves me well, all the tsars were Russian-born, at least after Ruric down to the last Nicholas. The new professor’s first blast, capitalized by the Vamcouver Sun, is that children in the Soviet Union have never seen an ice cream cone. Well! Isn’t that just too bad. Its just as though Pravda or Izvéstia printed a scare headline telling the Soviet people that children in Canada had neyer seen a spoonful of caviar. But the inference behind the shortage of ice- cream cones in the Soviet Union, is undoubtedly ‘ what the professor wants to put over. There is no doubt about that, and it is that youngsters in that country can’t have icre-cream cones so that the government can stock-pile atom- bombs (pardon me), armaments. This is an impudent falsehood for the Soviet Union is the only major nation which has made the elimination of war part of its program. : The claim that this man, falsely called a teacher, is an authority or expert on Soviet economics and planning reminds me of a couple of passages in the book by the American girl, Annabelle Bucar, who worked in the U.S. embassy in Moscow and quit in disgust at the intrigues’ and spying activities of the whole diplomatic and consular service. She was so much in earnest that she became a Soviet citizen. She writes that “the anti-Soviet clique in the state department of the U.S. government seek to recruit their agents among the degenerate types and the scum of Soviet society who have inherited a slavish worship of ‘Western’ culture.” Again she writes that “the Voice of America uses Russian White Guard elements, not only as radio announcers but also as experts on Russia and consultants on radio broadcasts. It is not difficult to imagine the type of consultation the ‘Voice of America’ receives from these experts who specialize in systematic provocations against the Soviet people. . . One cannot deny that the U.S. state department has quite ‘liberal ideas’ as to what it takes to make a Russian expert.” : She shows at length, too, that the economic data on Soviet in- dustry collected by the U.S. embassy is a tissue of lies manufactured by the employees on the embassy payroll who stand to gain prestige (and what goes with it in the way of cash) by giving an anti-Soviet slant to all the reports they send in to the state department. It is these fabricated figures that are used by “experts” (such as this professor) to prove the failure of socialism in the only place where it has been given a trial. This new front of the cold war imposes a task on us, as readers of the Pacific Tribune, for the Canadian workers are the target, not the Soviet Union alone. Last week you must have read that we have started a six-week drive to increase our circulation by 2,000 new readers, That, of course is a proposal that I take seriously. I have been asked if. ean get 25 subscriptions in the drive. Well, I’d like to make good, in fact I’d like to get 50. But I can only do that with a lot of help. When I was sick in the hospital recently, I was bouyed up by the many expressions of sympathy and goodwill that came to me. Now here is a chance to convert these expressions of goodwill into sOmething tangible. If all those good friends of mine will dig in and help in this drive I am sure OP Bill’s column will come out on top. . Every day we read of some new enemy who is out to fight Communism, that is, to fight the workers. One day it is some rat who has eaten his way into the AFL; another time it is some wrecker in the CIO or the CCL who takes his orders from Rome. These are the borers from within. i Then there are the bludgeoners- who work from the outside. Archbishop Duke, Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent, and Fisheries Minister Lionel Chevrier and, of all people, I note lately that the Dalai Lama of Thibet, who says his prayers by means of a prayer wheel, is also out to fight Communism—and he’s starting young too, because he is only 12 years old. - _ But we must not let them do all the challenging. We must fight back and we cannot have a better weapon to do it with in this corner of the world than the Pacific Tribune. The Rockefeller Foundation will not give us a grant of $90,000 to help to increase our circulation. Only we ourselves can build up our paper. That is why I am appealing to all my old friends on the high- ways and byways of British Columbia and the North, In Atlin; the Yukon; the Skeena country; in the fertile valleys of the Okanagan and the Fraser; in the mines and diggings of the Cariboo and the Slocan and in al] the town and villages in between; to get in and help ‘me and we will make that 2,000 sure. ee ‘Union Made G-W.G, Work Clothes | Guaranteed Pre-Shrunk Look Better Last Longer BLUE OVERALL BIBS” $4.60 BLUE OVERALL SMOCKS $4.60 BLUE “COWBOY KING” PANTS KHAKI COVERALLS | $7.50 IRON MAN PANTS . $5.60 Operation of insurance scheme termed ‘racket’ Angry citizens demand probe into hospitals The husband was worried. possible operation,” the doctor had told him five weeks before. By BERT WHYTE “Your wife must be sent to hospital, soon, for examination and @ An. application for a bed had bees made at that time; now the day had come for his wife to enter hospital, and no bed was available. The husband took out his Hospital Insurance Card and looked at it. The words, “1949 an- nual premium of $24 paid in full” were plainly printed on the front, along with the instructions: “This card must be presented to the hospital admitting office when hospitalization is required.” He turned the card over and read: “Persons registered on this card are entitled to necessaly services provided by hospitals on public ward basis .. . hospital ad- mission must be authorized by a qualified physician ... this is to certify that the registered holder of this card and dependents as listed are entitled to benefits under the B.C. Hospital Insurance Act.” “But I am entitled to a bed for my wife,” he protested to the wo- man behind the desk. “It says so on my card. My doctor applied for a room several weeks ago. My wife requires an operation at once. You must find room for her.” “Sorry,” said the hospital admis- sion clerk, indifferently, “but we have no beds in a public ward. However, I can put your, wife in a semi-private ward. It will cost you $2 a day extra; you will have to pay for a full week in advance. Do you want it?” ; The man was bitter. “I don’t want it, but I have no choice,” he replied, pulling out a well-worn pocket book and counting out the money. “What a racket this Hospi- tal Insurance scheme is!” * * * Yes, what a racket! And appar- ently there is no end to it. Latest holdup move is to jack up premium rates sharply: the man and wife who paid $24 for services they didn’t receive in 1949 will be com- pelled to hand over $338 in 1950, with no guarantee that the situa- tion will improve! to Hon. George Pearson, minister of health and welfare, last week lamely answered the deluge of pro- tests against this latest autocratic order of the insurance administra- tion by promising “action” against the badly-managed hospital direct- ors who are squandering the peo- ple’s money, but almost in the same breath he attempted to jus- tify increased premiums on the jgyound that “higher wages for staffs” upped hospital operating costs and made the premium rates boost imperative. This is dangerous nonsense. Dangerous, because it seeks to turn public wrath against the underpaid hospital staffs—which are working short-handed in most hospitals for this precise reason, that wages are far too low and consequently men and women are not attracted to hospital jobs. Nonsense, too, because a govern- ment-sponsored investigation of hospital costs indicates shocking cases of financial hooliganism on the part of local hospital boards. Pearson recognized this criminal squandering of the public’s money in a speech at Vernon last week, when he warned that continuance of the practice may lead to gov- ernment management of hospitals. “Some boards are quite indifferent to our efforts to control costs,” he said angrily. “If that situation con- tinues we will have ‘no alternative but to take over the management of hospitals.” Pearson’s wrath was short-lived. Somebody must have cracked the whip and told him to pipe down on the “take over” theme. So he hastily called a press conference and changed his tune. , He an- nounced that B.C. hospital costs are lower than in U.S. western] states (a silly comparison, devoid of meaning) and charged that higher wages and salaries of hos- pital personnel were the main cause of the increase in rates. * * * The “hospital racket” has been operating in British Columbia for a long time, Far too long. It must be stopped, and now is the time to Stop it. — First step must be a demand that the government make public the findings of the Hamilton survey on individual hospital administra- ‘tions. . Pearson has stated that he has lic no intention of letting the public read these reports “as a matter of policy.’ Presumably he con- siders some details too damning to bring out into the open. Citi- zens paid for the survey, but they won't be allowed to see what they paid for. Citizens must pay more money next year, but they mustn’t know how all the money they have al- ready paid in was spent. So says health “czar” George Pearson. But the people haven’t had their say yet. : Why is it that whereas in the rest of Canada the tuberculosis death rate per 100,000 Indians is 14 times the death rate per 100,- 100 “whites”, in British Columbia the Indian death toll is 21 times that of the “whites”? t Why has the cancer death rate in B.C., which averaged 90 per 100,000.population in the 1932-36 pe- riod, soared to 112 (1947 figures) ? Why is it that in 1921 this prov- ince had one physician for every 861 people, but after 26 years of growth in population and wealth, showed no advance but a slight de- cline in 1947, with only one phys- ician for every 870 people. Why hasn’t the government done anything about the shameful lack of beds in mental institutions ™ our prdvince? At December 31, 1932, British Columbia had 2,795 patients in mental ‘institutions. By 1947 this figure had risen to 4,248: Yet bed capacity at the end of 1947 lation in mental institutions ove bed capacity was 39 percent. : Why isn’t something done t@: ease the bed shortage in B.C. public hospitals? Two years 2£° . total bed capacity in the province ” / was only 5,841, or 5.59 beds per: 1,000° population. With a sharp increase in population during th® intervening period, the situation is probably much worse at the present time. aa * * * The public has a right to know the facts. Pearson’s “hush-hush” policy must end. A government probe must rip the lid from the hospitals’ cover-up racket and show how every citizen’s dollar is spent- Incompetent hospital heads must be fired. If cases of flagrant squandering of public funds aré uncovered, the culprits should be made to face criminal charges. The “hospital racket” Stopped : TAM WN LLL PRINTER’ 4 FOR 39 a “I contributed my fair bought the paper. Southams took over. my job. ‘ printers. ference table in good faith.” “Until I was forced on the picket line by the Southam > Co, in June, 1946, I had worked in the composing room of the Daily Province for 25 years. : —. ~=6- Province, and I worked there long before the Southams of Montreal moved into Vancouver with their millions and There never was any trouble until the “Southams rewarded my lifetime of service with 939 months on the picket line, obtained a court injunction, sued members of my union for damages in the Supreme Court and imported individuals from all over Canada to take “I am still on the picket line with my We will be there until the Southam Co. will abandon its union-wrecking policy and sit around the con- | ASK YOUR SUPPORT W. H. A. NICHOLSON 25 Years’ Service | HAVE BEEN ON THE | eu PICKET LINE AROUND THE DAILY PROVINCE MONTHS share to the building of th fellow LT.U. n ptt PACIFIC TRIBUNE — SEPTEMBER 23, 1919 — PAGE a is was only 3,039; the excess of popu- must be.