‘Get the Picture?’

FLASHBACKS FROM THE COMMUNIST PRESS

50 years ago...

WORK FROM 4:30 a.m. to 9 p.m.

BORDEN — The prairie har- vest hand requires no: “daily dozen” to keep himself in trim. Here is his daily working menu:

Up and at it, 4:30 a.m., to feed, water and harvest teams; break- fast at 5 a.m.; 6 a.m., in the field until 11:30, when one hour is al- lowed for dinner, then at it again until 4, when five whole minutes are allowed to gulp down a cup of tea or swallow a leather pie crust. This extra is given as a “receiver” and the re: juvenated hand is then expected to make the pace until 7:30 or thereabout when supper is serv- ed, and after fixing the team for the night he “calls it a-day” about 9- p.m. '

A stone is as soft as a pillow for a weary body, and on this principle the harvest hand is al- lowed to select his choice sleep- ing spot on the quarter section of land, and he lies down to plea- sant dreams of the coming day.

The Worker, Oct. 10, 1923

25 years ago...

ALBERTA PRICES STILL GOING UP EDMONTON — Living costs are still soaring in Alberta. Hair- cuts in Edmonton and Calgary will be increased by 10 cents and shaves by 15 cents.

Calgary gasoline prices have gone up half a cent a gallon (it seems that the more oil we find in Alberta, the higher goes the price of gas). Calgary bread prices may increase one cent a loaf due to the blanket permis- sion given by the WPTB. (At pre- sent bread sells from 10 to 13 cents a loaf.)-

Milk in the Crows Nest Pass and in Drumheller Valley (both coal mining areas) has gone up two cents a quart and now sells at 21 cents.

Calgary weekly streetcar and bus passes have gone up from $1.25 to $1:50. These are only a few of the increases in the cost

of living that took place over the

last few weeks. Tribune, Oct. 11, 1948

Worth quoting:

“Since the source of violence rests with reaction, whether or not it will appear depends not so much on the will to use it but rather upon the capacity to use it. This is why, in the history of Marxism, there have been differing evaluations, at different times, as to the possibilities of the peaceful or relatively peaceful transition to social-

I SS

*“, .. violence is not an organic part of the definition of the process of revolution, and that conventional presentation which equates violence with revolution is false. And we conclude that the conven- tional view places the onus for the appearance of violence in con- nection with basic.social change upon the advocates of such change

is altogether wrong...

—Herbert Aptheker, The Nature of Democracy, Freedom and Revolution

Editor — MAURICE RUSH Published weekly at Ford Bldg., Mezzanine No. 3, 193 E. Hastings St., Vancouver 4, B.C. Phone 685-5288. Business & Circulation Manager, FRED WILSON Subscription Rate: Canada, $5.00 one year; $3.00 for six months North and South America and Commonwealth countr‘2s, $6.00 one year. All other countries, $7.00 one year

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PACIFIC TRIBUNE 12> FRIDAY OCTOBER 12, 1973 —PAGE'4

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Editorial Comment...

Support day of prices protest

Efforts to straitjacket Canada’s work- ing people, with living costs pushed to unbearable heights and interlocked with the smothering of wage increases, are revealed in the federal govern- ment’s own statistics.

The National Anti-Poverty Orga- nization warned on Thanksgiving eve, “there are many people (in Canada)

who just won’t make it this winter. They'll starve to death.”

The Canadian Labor Congress (with 1,800,000 members), in an Oct. 3 re- lease, was “greatly concerned that wage gains are being wiped out by rapidly rising living costs . . .” Its conclusion: “The time has come when wage earners, in order to protect themselves and their families, must become much more mili- tant.” With that statement must go the assumption that the CLC will back up such workers with its full strength.

Statistics Canada’s figure, a damning indictment of the anti-labor forces, at that, speaks only of the highest-paid half of the work force, whose average weekly wage is $161.32. Millions of working Canadians earn less; and those on fixed incomes are nowhere in sight of such statistics.

Even this best-paid section of work- ers fell behind the soaring cost of liv- ing, Statistics Canada admits. The mealy-mouthed denial by Finance Min- ister John Turner’s office, saying “peo- ple are at least holding their own,” is not worth the spit it takes to cover it.

Back in May, the Communist Party of Canada, in a Marxist, not a bour- geois analysis, stated that wages were falling behind the inflationary price rise. There was a chorus of denials.

Now, a non-government analysis

quoted in the Toronto Globe and Mail, says workers who earned that $161.32

in July this year, had $12.42 less pur chasing power from it than in July 1972. Average increases, it said, were

$11.64. So if you got $161.32, and if you”

were in on the average wage increase, you fell behind by 78 cents a week.

Canadians by the provinceful were swept back far more than the full $12.42-a-week loss in purchasing pow- er. And never mind the ifs, productiv- ity and profits are soaring: Canadian workers’ purchasing power should be

_rising.

* * *.

One of the weakest links in mondis oly’s conspiracy is food prices. Literal

ly millions of Canadians now agree:

Food prices must be stopped in thelr tracks and rolled back!

Groups united in the Coalition 0 Roll Back Prices will answer with 4 Canada-wide Day of Protest, Oct. 16. Along with people from distant points a truly massive turnout from Ontarl0 and Quebec is needed, on which the gov ernment may judge whether or no consumers are serious.

Back home, local anti-inflation pro tests should include no-nonsense 1 structions to MPs before their retur? to Ottawa.

The Ottawa demonstrators rely 0” a tremendous backup of local demo: strations, telegrams to government, am the harvesting of massive support for showdown battles with the profiteer® and their parliamentary hirelings.

With every method available—every voice heard on the Day of Protest, oF 15, will be counted a blow against hig prices.

—_—

No contradiction in ‘fighting’ for peace

What is peace? — an armistice, a quieting of guns? Even that is far from achievement on a world scale.

But the word peace implies more. Can people know peace under the yoke of colonialist oppression practiced by Portugal, under armed occupation of their homelands, as Israel has occupied

‘Arab lands for many years?

Is peace possible for people ravaged by fascism in Chile and Greece (to name but two), or by apartheid in South Africa? Would any of us live at peace with that?

A state of peace implies human ful- fillment, human progress. Some think it a contradiction in terms to “fight” for peace. But the striving for peace is no tea party. Peace must be fought for politically, economically, socio- logically, and sometimes militarily, as the people of Guinea-Bissau were forc- ed to prove.

Fighters for peace have to withstand the blows of all the forces of back- wardness, who insult and label us, im-

prison-us- —-whe exploit humans -to -

. peace the-world over. « so.0.,

their last spark of life in the quest for profits and power.

All these considerations will find oy pression in the most representatl¥ meeting ever of people from all wa

of this planet’s life — the World Com

gress of Peace Forces, in Moscow, tober 25-29.

Such a Congress of: 3,000 to 4,004 delegates, including several Unite Nations commissions, can as never fore, unite the world’s millions 0? ” minimum program to open for humé g kind the opportunities of all-embrac!? peace.

To work at-peace, to fight for peace -

demands making the Congress findin€” and directives a part of daily routl! Millions of Canadians dependent on Oa men’s media, and so deprived of real essence of the Congress, have right to be informed. And peace fi ers have a duty to inform them.

That duty extends to recruiting 0 fighters for peace, to speed the, nc? when mankind battles with ee against sickness, with ideas in the # to conquer space and the elements, nis when no oppressor will dare raise ot hand against the powerful millions ~~ ape

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