FRIDAY, APRIL 17, 1959

Nigel Morgan begins B.C. speaking tour

: Immediately following a public meeting in Pender Audi- torium here this Friday, April 17, LPP provincial leader Nigel Morgan, who recently returned from a three months tour of the Soviet Union, Poland, Hungary and Great Britain will leave to address a series of meetings throughout the

province.

Morgan will begin his tour

.on Vancouver Island, with a

house meeting at the home of Hjalmar Bergren at Cowichan Lake, Saturday, April 18 at 8 p.m.

On Sunday, April 19, he will address a public meeting in the CCF Hall at Nanaimo; Monday, April 20 at the Trade Union Hall, Campbell River; Tuesday, Apvil 21, at Courtenay.

On Tuesday, April 23 Mor- gan will speak in the Wil- liams Building Auditorium, 749 Broughton St., Victoria.

Returning to Vancouver, the LPP leader will speak Friday, April 24 in Lonsdale Hall, North Vancouver; Sat- urday, April 25 at -a house meeting at Harold Pritchett’s home, 5245 Empire Drive, Burnaby; Sunday, April 26, 2 p.m. at a Burrard constituency meeting in Harmony Hall,

1655 West Broadway; and that same evening at a meeting in Clinton Hall, 2605 East Pen- der, at 8 p.m.

A series of meetings at in- terior points is also being arranged,

May Day parade

planned this year

For the first time in several years a May Day parade will be held in Vancouver this year.

The May Day Committee an- nounced this week that plans had been completed to have the parade form up at Powell St. Grounds and march to Exhibi- tion Park, where a rally will be held. Date of the May Day celebration is Sunday, May 3.

Theme of the rally will cen- tre around protest against Bill 43, for jobs and world peace.

HOW THE SOVIET UNION WILL SURPASS THE U.S.

“

Seven-Year Plan,

Union” same price.

Pe rh the Soviet Union intends to surpass the nited States economically. ... To surpass America’s

level is to surpass capitalism’s supreme achievement.” é es ee

“The USSR will have the shortest work-da and the shortest working-week in the world, with a shnilecesons rise in the living standards.” All the detail ry. ag the details appear in the complete, text of Nikita Khrushchev’s Report i the USSR’s

Price: 20c. By mail, 25 : : ; , 25c. (Plus tax). 124-PAGES OF THRILLING FACTS AND oe

Also Available “Decisions of the 21st Congress of the Soviet

PEOPLE'S CO-OPERATIVE BOOK STORE 307 West Pender, Vancouver ee EEE ee es cn ne tr ed

official

MU 5-5836

-ing,

FARMERS LOSE OUT, TOO

Packing plants rook the publi

By FRANK MARACLE »@

Agriculture Minister Harkness is now threatening to reduce the floor price on he because of increased marketings. ‘4 , I spent one day at Canada Packers on the hog grading committee of the Farmers’ Up

of Alberta. There we were given information by m government which is also available to Har

When asked what constitut- ed a surplus, we were told that when the price drops to the floor, one week’s supply enables the packing plants to declare a surplus and sell it to, the federal government.

Of course one week’s sup- ply is no surplus. It is hardly a safe margin, -and although it is true that preduction has gone up 19 percent it is also

‘true that the -population as

well as the per capita con- sumption of pork has increas- ed as well. The cry of surplus is designed to drive down the price of hogs to the floor while maintaining the whole-

sale price, thus increasing the .

spread between what the farmer gets and what the customer pays.

Hogs are graded as A, Bl, B2, B3 and C, Last year Al- berta farmers were receiving only 21.4 cents for Grade A. But the grading is only done on hogs. when the farmer sells them. The packing plants sell all these as grades as Grade A to the public.

The floor price is made to order for the packers. A farmer who sells his hogs at the public stock yard collects the floor price of 21.5 cents a pound less 35 cents for stock .yard charges and an average of .05 per pound for freight. But less than 19 per- cent of the hogs are sold at the public stock yard. The rest are sold direct to the packing plants, where there is no guarantee to the farmer of a floor price. And yet the packers themselves are guar- anteed the floor price, and as all the meat they buy is not graded they collect from Ot- tawa and full Grade A price for all the pork declared sur- plus, plus a charge for kill- ing, cutting, packaging and storing.

How much is paid for kill-

cutting, packaging and storage? When we asked, we

_ were told, “It’s a secret.”

It was also definitely stated to us. that the government~ never charged more for the meat when it sold, than when it purchased it. Most of this

surplus meat is sold back to the packing plants, at such times as it can be moved into the channels of trade. When we asked at what price it was sold, we were told that this also is a secret!

While running for election the Conservatives promised the farmers a fair share of the national income. Now what Harkness should do, in-

stead of lowerjng the floor |

price $2.00 per cwt. and talk- ing of deficiency payments from that basis, is to give the

by

arketing and grading officials of the fede; kness if he would but take the time to investig

farmers parity prices for their hogs by means of defici ency payments on a numbe of hogs limited to guara domestic supply. This wo hit vertical integration hard as any plan at pre proposed, , = Further, why not make money available to the farm ers’ co-operatives to ui their own processing plants?

\ Floor prices must be a y

‘tection for, the margina] farm-

er, not a racket for the

ing plant. es:

Continued from page 1

TORY BUDGET —

corporate taxes will certainly be passed on to the public un- less there is terrific pressure exerted to stop the monopo- lies increasing prices).

The budget does nothing to help along economic recovery, but the opposite. Yet this is only part of the wretched story. In the budget the tax increases are tied directly to the government requirements for providing the present level of social security. This directly strengthens the attack of big business on government soc-

ial security spending. Knock

down social security and there is a better chance of knocking down wages is the

. philosopy™ behind this.

There is much talk about the evils of inflation in the budget speech; but the budget itself will help to promote in- flation. 2

Military spending is main- tained at jits former colossal level, and it is the most im- portant cause: of inflation in Canada. It is also the source of the juiciest profits.

The increased sales (now 11. percent) and excise taxes (two cents more on a pack of cigarettes, etc.) will go directly into higher prices, and the corporations will pass their tax increase along, too, if they can. So the con- ditions are created for the monopolies to continue their

tax |

policy of raising prices which is the essence of flation. é

Budget figures up in the hundreds of millions and lions rather stagger the agination, when most of have never as much as held a $100 bill in our hands,

mM

This country is spend about $1,700 millions a on military affairs. The A: Arrow fiasco showed how ect

nomically crazy is this pour- ing of hundreds of milli

- down the drain not to spe

of the survival danger it volves for all of us.

During the last war slogan of the federal gove ment was that “what is phys’ cally possible is financially feasible”."The governor of th Bank of Canada supported that view. No one can den that it is physically possible to produce a better living fo the great majority of a dians. This is especially ob\ ous at a time when upwa of a million Canadians out of work and not prod ing, through no fault of own.

It is the duty of the fed government budget to financially feasible the be life that is physically possible, The 1959 Tory budget takes | long step in the opposite di rection, a

April 17, 1959 — PACIFIC TRIBUNE—PAi