LIVING STANDARDS

RISE

Tie 9

—MOSCOW

Prices of consumer goods in
the Soviet Union were sharply
slashed for the second time
Since the war ended by a
Sovernment decision effective
March 1.

The price cuts, effective
throughout the country, take 10
percent off the cost of bread,
fish, butter, canned goods and
cigarettes. They take 12 to 30
percent off the price of most
clothing items, watches, kitchen-
ware, typewriters, pianos, radios
and television sets. Living
Standards are expected to rise
quickly as a result.

In countries with a competitive
profit economy, prices generally
decline only when production
and employment are falling too,
when purchasing power declines
and manufacturers can no long-
er. sell at the old rates. The
Soviet price cut, on the con-

trary, followed on a 24 percent
to 45 percent increase

in the

Not only are consumer

are being provided.

Prices slashed again
in all Soviet stores

output of the slashed items.
There is no unemployment in
the Soviet Union. Its indus-
trial production has never yet
been able to catch up with the
demands of the population.
The first overall postwar
lowering of Soviet prices took
place in December 1947, when
wartime rationing was abolished
and old currency exchanged for
new. By keeping wages in the
new rubles at the same figure
previously paid in inflated war-
time currency, the current in-
come of all workers was sharp-
ly boosted. The Soviet treasury
recouped itself partially by ex-
changing old currency hoards
for new notes at the rate of
10 to 1. This measure struck
mainly at war profiteers and
black marketeers who were
afraid to bank their savings.
Banked savings were exchanged
at various rates ranging from
one-for-one for smaller savers
to three-for-one for the richest

goods becoming more plentiful,
and ‘at lower prices, in the USSR, but” greater facilities for
free services, like the free maternity hospital shown here,

citizens.

een

Guerilla division named
for murdered Greek leader

The Provisional Democrati

isters_ the illa- of the country,
ee for the murder of General Secretary

vention in Greece of responsibility

emetrios Paparigas of the Greek Federation of Labor.

vas found hanged February 20 in
the prison cell where he had been
Kept for months by King Paul's

US-aided royalist government,
Which described his death as
Suicide,”

The Suerrilla Free Greece Radio

also announced February 23 that

. new formation of the guerrilla
‘©rces will be named the Papari-

_-ATHENS

c¢ government of Greece, which admin-

has accused U.S. inter-

Paparigas

division in honor of the dead
enon leader. The division will be
composed of industrial workers. It
will include all working men and
women who enlist in the guerrilla
forces between February 20 and
April 20, and who come from the
cities of Athens, Piraeus, Salonika
and Volos. -Voles is the town
where Paparigas was born.

JAWAHARLAL NEHRU
Thouands of Indian workers in
jail.

Indian gov't
raids unions

—BOMBAY

The government of India, under
Premier Jawaharlal Nehru, has
moved to smash the 85,000-strong
All-India Railwaymen’s Federation
before the start of a strike set for
March 9. Nehru’s police began
raiding railway stations, union
halls and workers’ homes in many
cities in mid-February, dragging
over 400 unionists off to jail, and
by the end of the month the num-
ber of those arrested ran into the
thousands.

Demands made by the railway-
men included increased basic wages
and cost-of-living allowance to
compensate for the steep rise in
prices. More than half of India’s
rail workers now receive basic
wages of from $10 to $15 a month,
another 40 percent get from $40
to $50 and only the top 10 percent
of administrators get higher pay.

To remedy these conditions, the
AIRF planned a general strike as
long ago as 1946. This failed to
come off, although the South In-
dian Labor Union staged a month-
long walkout in’ transportation.
Government police killed five strik-
ers, injured many more and arrest-
ed hundreds before the walkout
ended.

The vote for a strike March 9
was taken by representatives of
all rail unions in Calcutta on Feb-
ruary 12. The Union of Post and
Telegraph Workers has voted to
go out on the same day. Despite
the arrests of many of their lead-
ers, the railwaymen are _ going
ahead with strike plans.

Warlike moves of
U.S. explain why,
peace ‘subversive’

By ISRAEL EPSTEIN

The danger of World War III is again increasing.

It would not

be just another conflict. It would be as much bloodier, longer and more
destructive than World War II as World War II was bloodier, longer
and more destructive than World War I.

Under the circumstances, one
would expect the leaders and press
of America to make every effort to
avert such a catastrophe—to un-
tiringly discuss and explore, every
possibility of settling issues and
reducing armaments mutually with
other countries. More particularly,
one would expect them thoroughly
to investigate and. condemn all
propaganda actually advocating a
third world war.

Instead of this, people who talk
about World War III as though it
is already on are regarded as pat-
riots. People who say frankly that
they see no reason for such a war,
and would try to stop it if it came
are called “traitors’ the minute
they open their’ mouths. That they
continue to speak even when it
means loss of jobs, public denunci-
ation and probable prosecution is
not held to mean that convictions
so deeply held deserve a hearing.
On the contrary, it is denounced
in millions of words as evidence of
the deep perversity of the speakers
—so deep that they deserve to be
destroyed.

Persons holding the highest posi-
tions of trust and responsibility that
the American people have to give
resort quite frankly to misquota-
tion and hedging.

When U.S. Communists stated
that they would oppose an ag-
gressive U.S. war, President Tru-
man said they had declared their
intention of helping a Soviet at-
tack. When newspapermen asked
U.S. Secretary of State Dean
Acheson to explain clearly whe-
ther the U.S.-sponsored Atlantic
Alliance was a war pact, Acheson
parried that it “was necessary to
speak obscurely before one could
speak clearly.” When will the
time for clear speaking come?
When war is a fact?

Important personages other than
Acheson have, however, spoken
clearly enough. Douglas MacArthur,
in a Tokyo interview March 1,
said the U.S. would “certainly de-
fend” Japan against any attack but
added that “he did not believe Rus-
sia would attack Japan.’ Then he
bragged that his Okinawa airfields

can bomb the daylights out. of all
East Asia, including: the Soviet Far
East, and that “now the Pacific
has become an Anglo-Saxon lake.”

The USSR, like the U.S., China
and other countries, has a Pacific
coast. How would Americans react
if the Russians said the Pacific

was their “lake?’ What sort of war
is MacArthur preparing for?

In Europe, French Prime Minis-
ter Henri Queille said it would not
be enough for the U.S. to give a
pledge, under the Atlantic Pact, to
promise France aid if attacked.
“The question is that France and
western Europe must be spared an
invasion,” he said.

To spare an invasion, which no
one has yet accused Russia direct-
ly of planning, means to put U.S.
troops right up against Russia’s
borders without delay. This might
easily provoke a war that might
not otherwise take place at all.

Over in the Middle East, the
U.S. has just negotiated for per-
mament occupation of Dharan
airfield, in Saudi Arabia, which
commands some southern ap-
proaches to the Soviet Union.
The king of Saudi Arabia lives
on U.S. oil company royalties,

What of Russia? The Soviet gov-
ernment’s newspaper Izvestia was
quoted as follows in London Febru-
ary 15:

“Would not an adjustment of re-
lations between those two influen-
tial United Nations members—the
U.S. and the USSR—strengthen this
organization? Would not gradual
disarmament facilitate the creation
of that atmosphere of international
cooperation—the foundation of the
UN? And finally, do direct negoti-
ations between the USSR and the
USA run counter to the principles
of the UN Charter if they aim at
stabilizing peace—the same goal
that brought this international or-
ganization into being?

Washington has not taken Mos-
cow up on this. Its answer is the
Atlantic Pact, concerning which
UN Trygve Lie said February 11:
“If people generally accept alli-
ances as substitute for genuine,
worldwide collective security, then
the hope of a lasting peace would
be greatly endangered.”

out by defense counsel to support
their charges of jury rigging.
When Judge Harold Medina shut
off testimony about Duncan’s giant
financial deals he did so to protect
Judge John Clark: Knox, the senior

judge of the district court, as well
as the jury czar.

Both Knox and Duncan appeared
as witnesses during the argument
over the federal jury system and
defense contention that selection
of juries is rigged in favor of the
rich.

Knox and Duncan have worked
closely together for several years
in a peculiar deal involving the

$25 million 40-story Equitable of-
fice building in New York, of

Jury czar’s ties with cartels
exposed in U.S. Communist trial

—TORONTO

The embarrassing facts exposed by lawyers defending the 12 Communist leaders now on trial in
New York, charged with advocating Marxist theories, help to explain why Canadian dajly papers have de-
voted so little space to a trial which was expected to produce a new spate of anti-communist headlines.
Among these facts are those relating to the financial ties of Jury Commissioner

J. Donald Duncan, brought

which Duncan was appointed trus-
tee.

He was
Knox.

Judge Knox, in fact,’ has since
become a director of the Rocke-
fellers’ Equitable Life Assurance
Society itself,

Duncan himself is a big inter-
national capitalist, with interests
in Franco Spain, Germany, Italy,
France, Belgium, and other coun-
tries.

He testified in court that his
law firm of Hooker, Alley and

Duncan is engaged “solely in cor-
poration practice.”

Some of Duncan’s biggest cor-
poration clients, such as the Sofina
Company of Belgium, with big

appointed by Judge

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — MARCH 11, 1949 — PAGE 3

electric utility holdings in Spain,
Germany and Rome, were active
Supporters of the Rome-Berlin
Axis,

Duncan is a director of Sofina
today, and also a director of two
other electric power and transit
companies in Franco Spain.

Knox appointed Duncan as his
jury commissioner in February,
1941. Duncan still ‘holds that key
post, with power to pick rich men
for jury panels and reject the
poor,

Duncan picked his jury panel
names from such sources as
Poor’s Directory of Directors,
where the jury commissioner
himself is listed as a director of
14 corporations.

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