Ol’
HE technical aspects of gov-
erning by what is known in
the United States as “democracy”
is one of the great mysteries of
modern times to people who are
used to the simple form of ma-
jority rule, and to a great num-
ber of people who live, and suf-
fer, under such a democracy in
that country itself.

One of these technical factor
is the turning 4
over to “com-
mittees” of both
¢ On gressional
bodies the draft-
ing of bills. The
party in power
in the Senate
appoints the
Senatorial com-
mittees. The
House of Repre- F_ i :
sentatives committees are in turn
set up by the party that rules the
roost there. Each of these com-
mittees has as a chairman a mem-
ber of the party with the biggest
vote.

These committees are supposed
to investigate the detail matters
around which legislation may be
pending, either immediately or in
future. Appropriations are made
for each committee by Congress
and at the end of their “labors”
they submit bills to the House

HTT

TUTTE

Ss Tom

"TBE Benchers of the Law So-
ciety of British _ Columbia
have rejected the application of
Gordon Martin, UBC law student,
to the bar. Their reasons for so
doing, are set down in a docu-
ment of 11 pages, The best that
can be said about this document
_ is that it will make a worthy ad-

and Senate which they suggest
be made law.

These “committees are empow-
ered to hire “experts” and pay
them for their services, This is
one of the ways by which the
party hacks and heelers can get
into the pork barrel with both
feet, hog fashion.

When any of these committees
do a creditable job it is buried
in the Congressional Record and
no action ever taken on the re-
commendations made. Such was
the fate of the Kilgour Committee
report on cartels and the LaFol-
lette Committee report on prison
reform.

One of these committees pres-

ently holding forth is an off-shoot
of the Taft-Hartley Committee—

the Special sub-Committee of the -

Committee on Education and’ La-
bor. It has been “investigating”
the Fur and Leather Workers’
Union, hunting for, Communists
and trying to destroy the union
and bring back the firetrap and

Sweat-shop conditions that ruled _
in the industry before the union

was organized.

Along with 15 other members
of the union, Ben Gold, the presi-
dent, was “investigated” Ben is
one of the finest trade union
leaders in the U.S. He played a
leading part in organizing the fur
and leather workers from a most
mercilessly exploited group of jm-
migrant workers, toiling for a

aim, with a dash of condemnation

oc the Keds trom the recent CCL
and police chiets’ conventions
thrown in to round it out. While
the CCL convention is implied ra-
ther than stated, the fact that the
Benchers saw fit to put the Mosh-
ers, Halls, Conroys and Millards in
the same anti-Communist cate-

i iii ac

ut ISA ac

a

As We See lt

UIUC

100 years ago, the Benchers were

*

‘Marshall Plan’ ‘markets

NANADIAN agriculture in all its branches, stands on the
edge of a precipice Before it lies the prospect of crisis,
deep and catastrophic. Already the leaders of farm organ-
izations, and those so-called hardheaded economists, whose
forecasts sometimes grace the pages of our financial and
business journals, are raising warning signals.

Canada has an abundance of farm produce and grains to
sell. The world has millions of hungry people. Between
potential buyen and seller ‘hangs a huge “sword of Damocles”
in the form of a Yankee dollar. ‘The countries who urgently
need our farm produce cannot buy because they haven’t
got this Wall Street medium of exchange. And if they
have ... they have strict instructions to buy guns instead
of bread, butter or bacon! We on the other hand kave
strict instructions not to sell—except upon Wall Street’s
terms. Seems fantastic, but only too true.

Britain has cut her imports of our bacon in half—not
because our British buddies don’t like our ‘am,’ but because
the ‘socialism’ of Bevin and Cripps has taken on a ‘made-
in-the-USA’ new look, which in polite circles is called
“austerity.” Weare also experiencing some of its monstrous
stupidities.

For the first eight months of 1948 our flour exports drop-
ped by 43 percent below 1947, The head of the Saskatchewan
Wheat Pool, J. H. Wesson, reports that rye prices dropped
from $4.79 in, May to,$1.63 per. bushel in August of this
year, and that “the sime thing can happen to wheat.?
Surveys show a surplus of 10 million bushels of, flax in
Canada which cannot be sold, because there: is also a surplus
in the USA, and the Marshall Plan-ERP-ECA, or whatever
initials they attach to this Wall Street formula for economic
strangulation, has the very strict stipulation that “surplus
American foods must be sold before ECA funds are used
to buy the products of other countries”!

In short, if you want Marshall greenbacks, sign on the
dotted line. You must give guns instead of food priority,
but if you must have something to eat, you must take what
we have (at our prices) before you deal with other neigh-
bors. Otherwise . no Marshall Plan. “aid”! ;

Result: Canada’s world markets are disappearing, and
our farmers are left holding the bag. Already the fruit
growers of B.C are seeing the handwriting on the wall—or
rather on thousands of tons of under-graded fruit on which
they have taken a whacking loss.

The agrarian crisis is on, and all its manifestations
points up to one brutally clear fact—that the Marshall Plan
is not a ‘great humanitarian act’ to help post-war recon-
struction, but the Wall Street harbinger of economic crisis,
fascism and war.

Short Jabs

mest grasping gang of money
grubbers in sweat shops for
wages as low as $17 a week—a
work week that sometimes meant
80 hours. “ While guiding these
workers in building their union
Ben Gold was attacked and beat-
en up more than once by thugs
and gangsters hired by the boss-
es. But the union, under his lead-
ership, grew until today the work-
ers have a 35-hour week and
$1.20 an hour as the lowest wage
on the scale.

Before this committee Ben
Gold was the real figure of the
America of the future. He an- '
swered all the insinuations and
smears of the bosses and their
stools. He described how the un-
ion was built and why; told of the
improved standard of living they
had won,

But always, after every ques-
tion, the committee came back to
“Communism”, How many Com-
munists were there among the
leaders of the union, to which
Ben answered that he would not
tell them if he knew, not being a
stool pigeon.

Regarding himself, after telling
them them it was none of their
business, he said he did not mind °
informing them what everybody.
else knew. He was a communist
and had been for 25 years.

American workers need have no
fear of the future as long as they
have leaders like Ben Gold!

of the. Canadian people—who will
themselves decide the changing
relationship of property to human
well-being. ©

By sticking to the strict letter
of “property” as it is set forth
in the Conimunist Manifesto of

; dition to the ar-
. chives of anti-
-. Soviet hysteria
and _ incipient
fascism. It has|
—- fittle in keeping
with the mythi-
cal halo of wis-
dom which is
usually associat-
ed with top
_ stratas of the
legal profes-
sion,

Although the Benchers are not
bound to give “reasons” they
thought it “proper in this case.”
Why they “thought” so is obvi-
‘ous from a cursory study of their.
_ stated “reasons.” The yardstick
used by the Benchers to deter-
mine the “good character and re-

_ “pute” of Martin is a novel one.

_ It consists of an historical distor-
‘tion of the Communist Manifesto,
"a few excerpts from Kelloch-
“Taschereau Royal Commission

_ (Espionage Inquiry of 1946, in

which the courts of the land ex-

_ onerated over half of the Cana-
dian citizens indicted by this
alleged inquiry) on the “leyal-

ties” of Communists, a couple of
hysterical warmongering out-

bursts from .the social-demoerat

- Spaak of Belgium and_ the
- social democrat Bevin of Brit-

gory as the Assistant Commis-
sioner of the RCMP is more than
a passing coincidence.

The Benchers were deeply con-

cerned with the sacred rights of
private property, and. greatly
alarmed at how Marx and Engels
set down their views on this mat-
ter in the deathless Communist
Manifesto of 1848. We must point
out here that the Benchers of the
B.C. Law Society are not the first
group of bourgeois legal watch
dogs who have growled a bit at
the ideas of Marx and Engels on
“property”, nor are they likely
to. be the last. It served their pur-
pose in debarring Martin from his
chosen profession, to which as a
war veteran, a citizen and a Can-
adian, he has every right of claim;
to pervert and distort the histori-
cal development implicit in the
Communist Manifesto; to ignore
the fact that “property” under
Socialism is also held sacred —
when it is not used for the exploit-
ation "of humanity—and that the
Labor-Progressive Party Consti-
tution sets forth the fact that
when Socialism comes to Canada
it will not come about by ukase
from the Benchers nor from a
“nlot” of the LPP,but by the will
and determination of a majority

ff! ea |

SaaS

Published Weekly at 650 Howe Street
By THE TRIBUNE PUBLISHING COMPANY LTD.
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Tom McEwen

Editor

tees

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| ‘Printed by (ulon Printers Ltd. 650 Howe Street, Vancouver, B.C.

Sable to arrive at the Marshall-
planned conclusion that Martin
could no more take the barris-
ter’s oath than “a professing athe-
ist - be admitted to Holy
Orders’?

The solons of the B.C. legal pro-
fession conveniently forgot that
Martin ... and many others hold-
ing similar views, took the oath
to serve King and country in
World War II, discharging that
oath with honor, up to and in-
cluding the supreme sacrifice.
These jearned gentlemen also con-
veniently forgot that one of the
contributing reasons for their
still being Benchers in a democ-
racy instead of yes-men to a Hit-
ler is precisely because the Red
Armies of Socialist Russia sus-
tained four-fifths of the death
and destruction entailed in the de-
feat of the Hitlerite regime they
now ape by such decisions.

One could write a hefty volume
on the legal profession, and deal
only with that preponderant seg-
ment of the fraternity which the
common layman generally refers
to as “shysters”. The old Euro-
pean peasants in their rich native
idiom, used to allude to this spe-
cies of legal shark as a “con-
science for hire’, The English
poet Shelly was even more ve-
hement in his descriptive color-
ation. {

The Benchers of the Law Society
have issued a document which
establishes .a dangerous prece-
dent—thought control by political,
vocational, and economic perecu-
tion. It is fascism in the making
- +. Mo more palatable when serv-
ed out by the highest body of a
Law Society than it is when
served out by a Hitler,

Z

thrift and hard work, That is the

6c

+. . thrift my boy,
Sure road to success!”

Looking backasavd

only

ment and release of all those sentenced
way abt ana retaliatory méasures, —
heat cut off from the cell blocks, blankets and even mat-
ea ao vie taken away, and tobacco allowances withnetl: :
everal prisoners have been badly beaten, according to reports reach-
ing headquarters of the Relief Project Workers’ Union. .

The daily papers have carried very. little information on the
affair, the only news being received through prisoners released, eee

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — NOVEMBER 12, 1918 — PAGE 8 _

*