gor was feelin’ mighty good when he made Gene Debs and He didn’t have anything else to do all day.”

This tribute to Eugene V. Debs by the poet James Whit- Combe Riley expressed the love millions of U.S. working peo- ple felt for one of their great- est leaders. Railroad - workers, Shopkeepers, newspapermen, writers, businessmen, corpora- tion presidents, prison wardens, even the president of the United States — all at one time or another succumbed: to the sim- ple humanity and compelling charm of Debs and acknowle- dged him as a great man.

He could have become a man of wealth and respectability, but all his life until he died 29 years ago, on October 20, 1926, at the age of 71, Debs remained faithful to his allegi- ance to the workers and his belief that some day the wealth they produced would belong to them. ;

His first clash with the forces of “law and order” came in 1894 during the epic Pullman strike. The newborn American Railway Union, organized by

union for all rail workers was in a head-on battle with the Pullman Company.

Driven to desperation by a long, hard winter of firings, wage cuts and hunger, workers in the company town of Pull- man, Ill., flocked into the ARU and voted unanimously to strike.

A bitter commentary on the

came from one striker: “We were in a Pullman house, fed

the Pullman school, catechised in the Pullman church, and when we die we shall be buried in the Pullman cemetery and go to the Pullman hell.”

After the Pullman workers had been out for seven weeks, while the company tried to starve them into submission, the ARU. issued an ultimatum. Either the company agreed to arbitrate or a nation wide sym- pathy strike would be called.

: Pullman would not arbitrate.

On June 26 the U.S. saw its

first big nationwide strike. Tens

- of thousands of railroad work-

ers walked off their jobs. The

1 country’s transportation was at a standstill.

A week later President Grover Cleveland ordered out federal

Attorney General Richard Ol- meyy a. corporation lawyer, issued a drastic. injunction that

Debs to provide one industrial.

slavery of Pullman workers -shown serious concern

a the Pullman slop, taught from

troops to smash the strike, and.

| a EUGENE DEBS: Drawing by Art Young | | All his life he held that workers should get the wealth they produce

tied the strike leaders hand and foot.

Debs was arrested. Federal grand juries began turning out mass indictments of strikers. On July 20 Debs was sentenced to six months in jail. A month later the strike was completely

broken. *

Debs’ experience with govern- ment strikebreaking and its subservience to the _ trusts molded his strong belief in socialism, which was to lead him to his second and even more serious clash with the govern-. ment some 20 years later.

It was June 1918, and for more than a year Debs had seen many of his closest friends and co-workers jailed on charges of sedition because they opposed U.S. participation in the First World War. . Debs himself could not remain silent.

Addressing a crowd of 1,200 persons in a public park in Can- ton, Ohio, he declared:

‘J would a thousand times rather be a free soul in jail than to be a sycophant and coward in the streets. They may put those boys in jail— and some of the rest of us in jail—but they cannot put the socialist movement in jail.”

In eloquent . terms Debs spoke of the sufferings of work- ing people, of the profiteers who paraded as super-patriots and drove the nation to bloodshed.

“The master class has always declared the wars, the subject class has always fought'the bat- tles.. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and all to lose—especially their lives.”

For these remarks Debs was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Before sentence was imposed Debs spoke these words to an enrapt courtroom:

*

“In the unceasing struggle be- tween the toilers and the pro- ducers and their exploiters, I have tried to serve those among whom I was born, with whom I expect to share my lot until the end of my days.

“T am thinking this morning of the men in the mills and

New Zealand has a

ANADA is not the only coun-

try with a shortage of teach-

ers—part of a growing general crisis in education.

Low pay and bad conditions for teachers threaten an under- staffing crisis in New Zealand schools.

The New Zealand Secondary Schools Association, represent- ing school principals, has sharp-

‘ly drawn attention to the in-

creasing shortage of teachers, especially in secondary schools.

If there is no change in the rate of recruiting, many classes will be without teachers by 1965.

The Federated Farmers’ con- ference recently protested against the lack of houses for country teachers.

Other organizations have over education. The unity of prim- ary and secondary teachers, which defeated a government attempt to deny them a public service wage increase, can be a foretaste of broader action still. :

At a time when commercial radio stations call hourly for army, navy and air force re- cruits, nothing is being done by the government to advertise the real need for teachers.

There won’t be a real increase

in the number of teachers with- .

out a real wage increase. The recent increase varied from $70 to $224 a year — but the starting point for men and women is $1484 and $1274 re- spectively — lower by about ‘$280 than a private in the regu- -lar army. Top salary for a “rank and file’ male teacher is $2898. To these salaries shoyld be added a marriage allowance of $168 a year plus an allowance of up to $168 according to edu- cational qualifications, Compare these with the earn-

ings of doctors, lawyers, den-

tists and other professional groups. New recruits for teaching

must be won in competition with these sections if highly

‘qualified teachers are to be ob-

tained — and that means wage scales equal to the $4200-$5600 income a young doctor may ex- pect.

It does not pay to spend four years at the university to be- come a teacher. About 200 bur- saries are offered yearly for teachers (on a fairly generous basis compared with most bur- saries), but only three-quarters are accepted, and only two- thirds of those taking bursaries eventually become teachers.

The shortage of women teach- ers is particularly acute. The average $210 gap between men and women teachers is a big factor. A good~ stenographer

can earn $33-$45 a month more

Poor schools in a beautiful countryside

factories; I am thinking of the women who, for a paltry wage, are compelled to work out their lives; of the little children who, in this system, are robbed of their childhood...I can see them dwarfed, diseased, stunted, their little lives broken, and their hopes blasted because in this high noon of our 20th cen- tury civilization, money is still so much more important than human life. Gold is god and rules in the affairs of men...

“J never more clearly com- prehended than now the great struggle between the powers of greed on the one hand and upon the other the rising hosts of freedom. I can see the dawn of a better day for humanity. The people are awakening. In due course of. time they will come into their own.”

Debs had a fine sense of irony and a splendid scorn of august judges. Of his own case he re- marked: é

“Great issues are not decided by the courts, but by the people. I have no concern in what the coterie of begowned corpora- tion lawyers in Washington may decide in my case. The court of final resort is the people and that court will be heard from ‘in due time.”

And it was heard from. It was heard from when almost one million Americans voted for Debs for President of the United States when he ran as the Social- ist candidate while in Atlanta Penitentiary in 1920. It was heard from in the hundreds of thousands of signatures affixed to petitions demanding amnesty for Debs.

The people were heard from and on Christmas Day, 1921, Debs was freed after serving two years and eight months of his 10 year sentence.

|’ Canada in 1887, between

Canedian firsts

ELECTRIC RANGE The .worid's first elec- tric cooking range was developed in Canada in 1893. bos Bos 3 ELECTRIC TOASTER North America’s first electric turnover toaster was built in Canada in 1914. ‘ Oe gee, 22 TE 7: os TRANS-PACIFIC CABLE Sir Sanford .Fleming, a Canadian engineer, laid the first cable across the Pacific in 1887. F 5e3 re a - TRANSMISSION LINE ' The first high-voltage transmission. line in the British Common- wealth was pioneered in

St.. Narcisse and Three Rivers, Que. se bes a FIRST TO USE PHONE

Hugs C. Baker of Ham- ilton, Ont., was the first man in the world to make use of the telephone, in 1877. :

bos os Bos NOW US IMPORTS FIRST

More than 420 com- panies in Canada’s elec- trical manufacturing indus- try are capable of pro- ducing practically all Canada’s. electrical re- quirements, but ...in 1953, nearly 50 percent of ali refrigerators. and freezers sold in Canada were im- ported from the U.S.

teacher shortage too

than a woman teacher receives on commencing.

New Zealand teachers’ organ- izations are now going on re- cord for pay on an equal basis — though with some reserva- tions. ©

As in British Columbia, the shortage of teachers is most acute in rural schools. ~

There is a shortage of houses, .

and no extra payment for teach- ing in the country.

Some incentive is needed for the young teacher to give up studies, friends, family contacts and social life in the cities.

A salary bar is now used to

compel teachers to go into the’

country — no promotion unless two years are spent out of city schools. Many young teachers

resign from the service rather |

than leave the cities. Teachers are demanding pay- ment of a country service al-

e

lowance of not less than $280 a year. ;

The housing shortage in the country is second to salaries as a bar to better education.

Cases- are cited of teachers paying high .board rates in houses having no form of light- ing or heat supply (except wood’ stoves), and where transporta- tion is a matter of guesswork.

Jobs in Maori schools are often attractive because they are more likely to have a house.

So, many two-teacher schools have several changes of staff: every year. = :

Many give up teaching be- cause of the conditions under which they have to work. :

It is common for teacher to’ have classes in corridors, in shelter sheds or even in the - open air.

Prefab classrooms , which cover a third or more of class- rooms being built now, are hot- : houses in the summer and re- frigerators in the: winter.

All school building increas- ed in value by 166 percent from 1949-50 to 1953-54, but defense housing jumped in the same period by 2329 percent. - :

Government expenditure this year will be about $17 million on school buildings and about $70 million for defense.

All of these problems have been known ever since the Na- tionalist government of Prime Minister Holland went into of- fice in 1949. . :

'It was known, too, that school rolls would increase by at least 100,000 by 1960. No one but the government can be blamed if the situation worsens. °

Higher wages, and more and better school buildings, and houses for country teachers — these are demands which must be taken up by all who want a genuinely democratic educa- tion in New Zealand.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — NOVEMBER 4, 1955 — PAGE $ \