Review

Tom
McEwen |

FEW days ago a neighbor of mine
A came up with a grievance which
hitherto I had never paid much atten-
tion to, despite the fact that not so

long ago it was a subject of public con-
troversy around these parts. You re
the editor of the Pacific Tribune, aren t
you ?” he asked. “Well, why don’t you
people do something about exposing
this funeral racket?” ~ :

At that particular moment my mind
was on the problem of the $20,000 sus-
taining fund campaign to keep the
paper rolling, rather than on funerals
... although I saw something of a con-
nection between the two — if we fail
to reach the objective. :

Long ago in his brilliant classical
folk story on the question, “How Much
Land Does A Man Need?” the great
Leo Tolstoy brought it down to the
prescribed “six-feet by two.” ;

‘My neighbor was very emphatic on
the subject and not a little indignant.

He went into some arithmetical de-
tail on the subject of land question.

“Just figure it out for yourself,” he
stormed. “Seventy-five dollars — and
some people pay a lot more — for a
burial plot. That gives these modern
Burk and Hares (eighteenth century
English grave robbers) well over $20,-
000 an acre. That kind of real estate
really pays off.

“Then there’s the casket — anywhere
from $150 to $1000 and up. The labor
and materials can’t be more than fifty
dollars, maybe a hundred. Then the
headstone business, in which a lot of
these burial land sharks also get a
‘cut’ on a stone costing anywhere from
$200 and up.

“T tell you it’s a racket, and most of
it is extracted when people are cunder
& severe emotional strain, willing to
accept almost any expenditure as a final
obligation to a loved one they've lost.

“Just take a good look at some of
these big monopoly funeral outfits in
this town, ‘morticians’ they call them-
selves. They’ve got extensive layouts.
They plaster the billboards with their
ads about how they ‘serve’ the people
in their ‘hour of grief’. The whole damn
racket makes me see red. You fellows
call yourselves socialists . . - why don’t
you do something about it ?”

Re Rete

Frankly I felt a bit stumped and had
no immediate or satisfactory answer
or solution to my neighbor’s “beef,
otger than to agree that it did appear
to be a very vexing, and because of its
nature, a very well covered-up, prob-
lem, :

It could be that it is one of those social
problems in  our-way-of-life which
should be “socialized” at municipal
level, where each municipality would
set up a burial department, acquire
control of the land and equipment
Necessary, and operate the whole at
cost. That would certainly be one way.
. Meanwhile we've got to get that $20,
~ 000 sustaining fund now, since it would
seem that printers have one thing in
common with undertakers — skyrocket-
ting prices.

< Pacific Tribune

Published weekly at
Room ‘6 — 426 Main Street
Vancouver 4, B.C.

Editor — TOM McEWEN =
Associate Editor — HAL GRIFFIN
Business Manager — RITA WHYTE

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EDITORIAL PAGE

This month the city of Vancouver is 70 years old, grown

Comment

poss

in three score years and ten — the span of a single lifetime —

from a clearing in the forest to a sprawling city. Levelled by fire in June 1886, the young city built itself anew from the
ashes and the picture at left shows how Cordova Street looked five weeks after the fire. Vancouver’s first city hall worthy
of the name is shown in picture at right . The building stood between Columbia Street and Westminster Avenue (now Main

Street.

.

CCF should match words with deeds.

Tr British Columbia-Yukon sec-
section of the CCF ended its
three-day convention in Vancou-
ver last week, with an atmosphere
of ‘‘marking time’ prevailing
throughout the deliberations.
Perhaps it was this atmosphere
which prompted provincial Liberal
leader Arthur Laing to issue his
public invitation to the CCF to
throw in its political fortunes with
his dwindling party, in order that
together they could oust the Social
Credit government. The CCF con’
vention rejected Laing’s invitation.
Robert Strachan, member for
Cowichan-Newcastle, was elected
CCF provincial leader, . replacing
Arnold Webster, who will return
to his school principal’s desk retain-
ing only his seat on Vancouver
Parks Board. As an aggressive
rough - and - tumble ‘“‘firebrand”’
socialist, Strachan will be looked
to by many convention delegates
and CCF supporters who have long
opposed the writing off of the social-
ist principles implicit in the Regina

Manifesto to match deeds with
words in his new capacity.

The CCF convention gave a flat
rejection to the Labor-Progressive
party's letter ‘urging a greater
measure of unity to halt the sell-out
of British Columbia’s resources by

the Bennett government. Instead,

the CCF decided to “‘go it alone’
as in the past, despite the alarming
reports on its falling support, finan-
ces and press circulation given to

the convention.

CCF convention décisions for
the ‘‘public ownership of natural
gas and oil’ can only be welcomed
by all who are interested in seeing

that. these resources do not pass

into the hands of the big U.S. and
home-bred monopolists. But its
heated “‘to-be-or-not-to-be’’ debate
on the “‘socializing’’ of the provin-
cial lumber industry, coupled with
its rejection of any measure of unity
on the left, served mainly to re-
call previous “‘decisions’’ to take
over the B.C. Electric — only to
find former CCF provincial leader

Harold Winch, now M.P. for Van
couver East, supporting the B.C.
Electric in its franchise renewal ap-
plication. Such academic discour-
ses, stripped of the broad unity re-
quired to give them effect, remain

nothing more than meaningless
gestures.

The decline in CCF influence
and organization would _ indicate
that Strachan has a big job ahead
of him. With the desire for greater
unity and a fighting program, the
CCF during the coming months
before the next provincial election
can build up a formidable alterna-
tive to the Socred government.

Retaining the narrow sectional
and sectarian atmosphere of its re-
cent convention, CCF political
fortunes will continue downwards.
The lack of unity in the ranks of
progressive labor and others is pre--
cisely why we have a Socred govern-
ment, and, by the same token, the
only way it can be speedily retired.

In its election perspectives, the
CCF might well absorb and apply
that lesson.

Hal:
Griffin

ELEBRATION of Vancouver’s
C seventieth birthday this month is

overshadowed somewhat by concern
over increased assessments and taxes,

in mind than getting the figures on
the city’s early tax rates. Not un-
expectedly, the irrepressible city ar-
chivist regaled me with a story of
our first years which, if it departed
at times from the approved version,
was undoubtedly more authentic.
When the city was incorporated
there was no assessment roll and no
money for administering the affairs
of its estimated 600 inhabitants.
“The first thing they had to do
was to hold an election,” said Major

and when I called Major J. S. Mat- —
thews this week I had nothing more”

Matthews. “There was no voters’ list,
but they got around that by appoint-
ing Jonathan Miller, the chief con-
stable, as returning officer. The as-
sumption was that he knew every-
one and. would be able to see the
election was run fairly.

“Tt didn’t work out that way. Some
of the voters came early and voted
often. But at the end of the day there
were 10 aldermen to run the affairs
of 600 people — we now have eight
aldermen and 220,000 people on the
voters’ list.”

The new council held its first
meeting in the chief constable’s din-
ing room — “There weren’t enough
chairs so they got some from the
jail” — and the first and most press-
ing question was how the council
could get the money to pay the city
officials appointed at the meeting.

Until an assessment roll could be
prepared and a tax rate struck off
there were two immediate ways of
raising money. :

One was to license the new city’s
few business establishments. The
other was to pass bylaws and then
fine citizens for violating them,
whether or not they knew about the
bylaws.

“The bylaws were passed and the

chief constable was instructed to
clean up the city,’ Major Matthews
continued. “Then the mayor sat as
magistrate and fined the victims $20
apiece. That brought the city around
$400.”

kk Ok

In 1887, the young city of Vancou-
ver had a population of 2,000 and its
assessment roll totalled $2,639,077.
The following year the population
was 6,000 and the tax roll had in-
creased to $3,463,605: The tax rate
was 12.5 mills. The population, as-
sessment roll and tax rate have been
going up ever since.

_ Vancouver has come a long way
since those early years when Isaac
Oppenheimer, chairman of the board
of works, observed with pride, “We
have now for lighting purposes 60
electric lights scattered throughout
the city.” Now, 70 years later, Gran-
ville Street is known around the
world as the “Neon Mile.”

But the city’s pattern of govern-
ment has not kept pace with its
growth. The early abuses have
grown into the fastening of a mon-
opoly rule upon the city which more
than anything else stulifies its de-
velopment and prevents the vision
of its pioneers from being realized.

APRIL 13, 1956 — PACIFIC TRIBUNE — PAGE 5

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