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TOM McEWEN, Editor — HAL GRIFFIN, Associate Editor — RITA WHYTE, Business Manager. ’
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Tom
McEwen

[E'TERs to editors of the cold war

ra press pleading for sanity and

Hae Instead of H-bomb threats and

edit Preparations generally land in the

fae absurdity well garnished with
ei, humor and it’s sure to’ hit the
ttorial pages. :
ae 80-year-old veteran of the labo
not Ment in Californie, George Shoaf,
ee baal writes his monthly stint for
fair{ essive thinking, but turns in a
eee score of letters to the edi-
uh the big dailies“in his state. In
« cent letter to me, Shoaf comments,
Ten If I write sense, it is ignored; if
ca nonsense, it is printed. Comment
R. €cessary.”’ .
alin aoa? amid. all the H-bomb “evacu-
Ses Pallyhoo in the U.S., Shoaf wrote
slieeesice. ‘how-to-get-away” letter. He
selves. ed that all citizens equip them-
Shi With a bicycle, preferably a tan-
* hola Which they could load up and
With readiness for a quick take-off.
take cue, andem one could: not only
plies a a lot of baggage and sup-
neigh ut probably load on one of the
Kas spots as well. Shoaf described
with his tandem could be built at home
Wheel. few pieces of 2x4, a pair of
ained. and other essentials, mostly “ob-
from the county dump.”

a nee not only got well display-
a bage € Los Angeles Times, but brought
letter v{ of fan mail to Shoaf, including

Ts from cycling clubs and other de-

v

ae of’the ‘open road.’ One fan
World that he had “sold tandems in
Woul War Il, as folks sort of felt they

d need one if the Japs came.”
wlat peter “evacuation” genius congrat-
Paper Shoaf in the columns of the same
‘ and recommended something even
home. anole and economical than a
sort wilt tandem, a “pogo” stick, a
Spring, Vaulting polé with an old bed-
an a a on the end to give the “evacuee”’
invent, €d boost along. This “pogo” stick
0 Or wrote: “Anyone can build a
and os out of some old bedspring
any room handle, and I believe that
Wi emze American grandmother
Zallon ot clothing, bedroll and a 50-
back drum of water strapped to her
time’ Should be able to make excellent
are she’s hit the open road.”
Mistie a closed his letter with an opti-
Or bel I am leaving on my bicycle on
the “Wore the big bomb busts” which
Los Angeles Times apparently
Spinett was the right “evacuation”
foo] pant which he describes as “the
Ing you see printed.” .
Alon xt xt ee
comm, § about the middle of March the
in “cal ‘press was busily engaged
sa qecating” “purging” and other-
Malenigee sins of Soviet leader Georgi
; fol ‘The Vancouver Sun of March
“execitie ne hard on the heels of an
Hearst On” squad set up by the Yankee
x ee hdd Malenkov in Siberia
Quotes), Mspection tour’ (the Sun’s
30 ae She paper reported on March
168 er the headline, “Malenkov Exe-
that M Hat Given by Moscow Radio,”
ed” ee €nkov “may have been liquidat-
from Son he had “suddenly dropped
The es in the Soviet capital.”
“nyste Pril 4 edition happily ended the
Was stil, about whether he @Malenkov)
i alive, by reporting under the
at Pang fading “Malenkov Alive, Seen
Celebrar? that he had attended a big
Rivergarn tit ‘honor of the 10th an-
_from he of the liberation of Hungary

Cept y..WaS no mystery, of course, ex-
Pregg ries Invented by the commercial
he Keep the cold war going. It

by the ©S to fill the space left vacant
News the dailies don’t print.

‘Orial waste basket. But, write some:

=a"

YEARS OF

A rich man’s budget

a HE majestic equality of the
law,”’ said the great Anatole
France, ‘‘forbids the rich as well as
the poor to sleep under bridges.”
Something of this ‘‘majestic equal-
ity’’ is contained in last week’s
federal budget brought down by
Finance Minister Walter Harris.
The 10 percent income tax re
duction applied to rich and poor
alike will ‘‘save’’ the average wage-
earner (with two children) in the
$3,000 bracket, the magnificent
sum of around $7 annually. But
the big business tycoon in the $40-
50,000 bracket will get $600 or

more out of it. The 600,000 able-.

bodied unemployed will “‘save’’
nothing.

This, the government maintains,
will stimulate industrial expansion,
boost consumer buying and in-
crease employment.

What are the facts? All the

ENDEAVOUR.

taxes on consumer goods which
most directly affect the lower in-
come brackets remain unchanged.
A few trifling excise tax reduc
tions on automobiles and tires are
all to the good, but they will make
no appreciable difference to work-
ers’ living costs.

Labor in British Columbia is

generally of one opinion on Harris’

first budget. It differs in no es
sential from other budgets present-
ed by the St. Laurent government
in being heavily loaded in favor of
big business.

Big business, with doubled pro-
fits, gets ‘“‘equal’’ relief with work-
ers and farmers whose income has
consistently lagged behind living
costs. .

The budget, in short, tosses a
few crumbs to the people in order
to give big business an even larger
share of the loaf. .

Alsbury should change doctors

\ THE repeated hysterical outbursts

of Tom Alsbury. president of
Vancouver Trades and Labor Coun-
cil, indicate that he, like a certain
former unlamented U.S. Secretary

of State, is increasingly becoming

the victim of his own obsessions.

Were Alsbury a dope addict or a
confirmed alcoholic, compelled to
adopt the role of a vest-pocket Mc-
Carthy as a means of satisfying his
craving, his current ravings might
make some sense. But Alsbury is
none of these things.

On the contrary, he is regarded
by some as an “intellectual.” He is
a prominent leader in the CCF, a
school principal by profession, and,
in his more rational periods, a good
solid middle-of-the-road-left-of-right
trade unionist. His constructive
address last year to the British
Trade Union Congress on peace,
world trade, and the need of de-
veloping good international rela-
tions, are proof of his latent abili-
ties.

But Alsbury goes berserk when
he sees “red.” Now he wants to

“wipe the floor” (politically speak- |

ing) with the leader of a union he
himself tried hard to wreck — and
failed. On such occasions, he throws
out challenges for “debate” or for
some one to accompany him “to see
a good psychiatrist,” insisting that
“my family physician says I am
physically well.”

In the interests of the ‘Trades
and Labor Council in which he oc-
cupies an honored position, and on
behalf of his CCF colleagues who
are becoming alarmed at his anti-
Communist raving, we would sug-
gest that Alsbury change his doctor
—and seek more rational paths to

| fame,

Anti-Communist hysterics at a
time when the burning need is trade
union unity serve mo one except
those who profit by discord and dis-
unity in the ranks of labor!

Hal
Griffin

LL this week our phones have been
x busy and the calls had every indica-
tion of being an organized campaign.
Most of them’ were from people who
objected to our report of Mrs. Lydia
Arsens’ meeting last week at which she
openly espoused the cause of the anti-
fluoridationists and food faddists. The
callers, many of whom professed to be
supporters of the labor movement, claim-
ed we had been “unfair” to Mrs. Arsens
and had presented only one side of the
case.

I have no intention of entering into a
debate on vegetarianism, which has
claimed its adherents in the labor move-
ment since the earliest days. As T. S.
Jackson records in his biography, Solo
Trumpet, commenting on the various
trends in the pioneer Socialist move-
ment of Britain, “There were those who
thought the Great Change of Heart could .
be accelerated by the wniversal adoption
of vegetarianism — and the exclusive
use of wholemeal bread... .”

But there is a difference between
those who practice vegetarianism, as
many of the Fabians did and some pro-
gressives do today, and those who as-
semble a strange assortment of fallacies,
fads and pseudo-science into a “health”
ideology and seek to impose it on the
progressive labor movement as part of
the science of Marxism.

I recall some 20 years ago, when I was
one of the editors of the old B.C. Com-
monwealth and very new in the labor
movement, the late G. N. W. “Geoff”
Webster, the paper’s associate editor and
a fine man, invited me home to supper.
I mistook his address, got off the car at
Central Park and having only enough
for return carfare in my pocket, had to
walk to New Westminster. I arrived
two hours late and hungry enough to eat
a steak. :

“We’ve saved some supper for you,”
said Geoff, and put before me a plate of
cabbage stewed in goat’s milk. That was
how I learned he was a vegetarian, part
of his Fabian upbringing.

> % os

The present day food faddists are not
so reticent. They seek to convert others
with a zeal worthy of a better cause. Let
any one mention illness, and they launch
into a denunciation of the medical pro-
fession and offer their faddist diet as
the answer.

Nor do they stop there. As one of our
callers said when I suggested that the
greatest concern of most working people
was to get enough milk, meat and bread,
“They would ‘be a lot better off if. they
didn’t eat those things.” Food faddism
becomes a refuge from struggle and an
obstacle to progressive action.

Those who take up food faddism find
themselves in a strange company op-
posed to every scientific advance, wheth-
er it be the Salk polio vaccine or fluo-
ridation. They open the ideological «
doors of the labor movement to alien
ideas, and anti-communism flows in with
the rest, as Mrs. Arsens demonstrated.
_ “But tell me, gentlemen,” wrote Stalin
in Anarchism or Socialism: “Where,
when, on which planet, and which Marx
did you hear say that eating determines
ideology?” It is still a good question. -

The irony is that in denouncing the
food and medical “rackets,” the food
faddists fall into the trap of self-styled
naturopaths who trade on the gullible
and are themselves operating a big
money racket in “health foods” and
phoney cures. The faddist zealots be-
come their agents and the agents of
those who use this avenue to weaken
the progressive labor movement.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — APRIL 15, 1955 — PAGE 5