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SS NL ec A i TIN

f ya all >i) J y wu Neds, SAGES ETN SEN

The ‘new comintern’

INE Communist Parties of Europe met in conference

last week to work out plans for the coordination of

post-war reconstruction between their various coun- tries, and to hammer out a common program of action to combat the encroachments of U.S. imperialism (Truman Doctrine) in the economic, social and political sovreignity of a number of European countries. :

The first reports of the world capitalist press gave the conference little attention . . . just another ‘communist con- ference’. In less than two days it was blown up into a full- scale resurrection of another “Communist International,” with all the ‘anti-Comintern’ labels of Hitler, Mussolini and Hirohito attached. It provided reactionary elements, skeptical of their Marshall Plan with a noisy excuse for its fore- doomed failure, and serves Anglo-American ‘diplomats’ m the U.N- with a handy excuse for the patent results of their ‘political conspiracies against the USSR.

Like Hitler, U.S. imperialism and its satellites need a ‘Conimunist International’ to justify their conspiracies against the peace of Europe and the world. They would like people to forget what the recent war was about!

For millions of people in Europe at least, the war— and the sacrifices to destroy Hitlerism are too recent to acquiesce in the rise of a new fascism. A fascism armed with dollars and the club of hunger as a political weapon, plus anti- labor legislation at home as a pattern for similar legisiation _ abroad, in order to destroy peaceful reconstruction anJ the desire of peoples to govern themselves according to their own lights. This is the essence of the European Communist conference upon which the imperialists now seek to erect “a new Communist International’ bogey.

egs er oe Coalition's Fifth Column HE trotskyite ‘Revolutionary Workers Party’ wants ‘action’. In an appropriately colored (yellow) leaflet circulated in Vancouver the ‘RWP’ calls for a 24-hour general strike to ‘show the bosses organized labor means business’, Seeking to capitalize upon the struggles of hun- dreds of packing-house, steel, furniture and other workers on strike . - . or who may be moving into strike action, these Trotskyite ‘leftist’ disrupters ignore reality, and ‘call’ on all and sundry to join in a general strike.

They call on trade unionists to “demand that your leaders” organize a joint AFL-CCL conference for this pur- pose. They demand the immediate repeal of Bill 39. it all sounds very ‘revolutionary’ if one happens to overlook the fact that the ‘RWP’ have sabotaged labor lobbies, have sought to torpedo efforts towards AFL-CCL unity on Bill 39, have opposed the convening of a special session of the legislature to deal with Bill 39—have in fact lauded Bill 39 as not being “a backward step,” since it would ‘make the workers fight’ and so forth. ;

Their yellow ‘call to action’ now is nothing more than an additional piece of evidence of irresponsible tactics, cloaked by leftist phrases, and calculated to sow dissention and disruption in the ranks of labor.

As aresult of the united opposition of labor in both AFL and CCL unions to Bill 39, the Anscomb-Hart Coalition is already ‘hanging on the ropes’. The latest trotskyite provo- cation could only serve to give the Coalition a breathing spell, and weaken labor’s determination to eliminate Bill 39. A united AFL-CCL labor lobby to the Coalition cabinet Je-

-™manding a special session of the legislature to amend Kill 39 wouid find the ‘RWP? trotskyites sabotaging the lobby. That is how they operate as a fifth-column of reaction, hiding their

_ multiple treason to labor behind ‘revolutionary’ verbiage.

The Chamber

Quebec City. High

the ever-present The Vancouver Board of ‘ a resolution to the CCC, askimg provincial and

: ts for “action patterned on’ labor laws of the States,” i.e, that any union to have legal standing (according

to CCC concepts of legality) must be made to testify that its members are “not Communists or communist agents.” In short, the big boys want a Taft-Hartley bill with all the anti-labor trimniings. : Tuesday they drew some encouragement from the social-demo-

cratic anti: which held the spotlight of one of the CCL convention. sessions. Later in the day things even looked better

for a nation-wide witch-hunt, when External Affairs Minister St.-

Laurent told the €CC that since Russia has made the Security

Council “practically unworkable” that “controls” such as the CCC

desires may have to be “resorted to.” 2 : We don’t know in detail what ‘controls’ the minister has in mind,

but from the way the CCC lapped it up, it bodes no good for Cana-

diam labor. In ‘ the communist menace’ the CCC and

— — stooges want all the democratic bars let down. So

iz 7

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 10, 1947

’ workingclass

_ guarding the

MAAN _UVUG=Z?UT T Tw. [iT cKnKNRGMANN :

As we see it

mm —— By Tom ‘McEwen : :

F one cares to go over

the files of the daily press during the days of the

I

‘Hungry 30’s’ numerous

cases will be found of starv-. ing workers sent to jail for_steal-°

ing a loaf of bread. Stealing, as all good citizens recognize, is a crime which even the pangs of hunger cannot extenuate. There- fore one loaf so purloined equall- ed about seven days in the hoose- gow.

Today the nation’s bread-basket is being robbed of millions of loaves daily by the grain, milling and baking monopolies, with the government an ‘accessory to the crime’ as the legal fraternity would say. The only people who land in jail are those who pro- test the robbery by striving for higher wages to keep pace with a ‘lighter-than-air’ loaf. Bill 39 is designed to take care of these and give the bread, meat and other monopolists plenty of el- bow room.

How is this bread robbery maintained? It’s all very simple and strictly legitimate in our praiseworthy system of ‘free enterprise’. The bakers say that ‘high wages, minus 2 govern- ment subsidy, will land them all in the’ poor-house unless the price of bread is upped, so up she goes three or four cents per loaf. What this means to thousands of families is of no concern. to the bread-basket plunderbund.

There are a lot of angles to this stealing the people’s bread that the official explainers of ‘free enterprise’ don’t explain. If there is too much clamor from the people against a gigantic bread-steal, the ernment will have one of its ‘indignation’ ex- perts make-a lot of noise about ‘investigating profiteering,’ ‘safe- public,” and so forth. The monopolists know that so long as the government confines itself to ‘investigation,’ the merry game of rooking the people can go on uninterrupted. It is a matter of record that in

_the archives at Ottawa there are

voluminous files of just such ‘in- vestigations’ compiled in 1923-36 which telk the whole story of the milling and baking racket. The parliamentary. librarian’ dusts them off periodically, but that is all that ever happens.

ESE files will show, among

other things, that between the years 1900-47 a very powerful monopoly came into being — a monopoly which takes a goodly slice out of your loaf at the coun- try elevator when the farmer de- livers his wheat, takes another sizable slice when the wheat is turned into flour, and as if that weren’t enough, takes a_e real slab off your loaf when it is ‘baked.

This triple robbery is managed by the combining of the grain trade (elevator companies), the milling industry, and the baking business into one huge inter-

ocking cartel.

Of course, we have free ‘com- petition’ in bak- ing as in other industries, but it is largely mythical. Take : any well known chain bakery, ‘Window Bakeries, ‘Mother’s Bread,’ ‘Westons’ Bak- ery,’ ‘Canada Bread,’ etc, each one of these is tied up through interlocking directorates and capital investment in the big milling companies, such as ‘Ogil- vies,’ the ‘Lake, of ‘the Woods,’ ‘Alberta Pacific,’ and so on. They in turn are inextricably bound up with the organized grain trade--- in fact they are the grain trade, who manipulate the “exchange” pits in Winnipeg, Chicago and Liverpool. So when your family baker says ‘wheat is costing the millers more, and the millers are charging’ us more for flour,’ what he actually means is that he is charging himself more, in order to gouge more out of the bread consumers. The 4 cents extra on the loaf of bread will just about triple the subsidy which the tax- payers were indirectly paying the milling and baking interests to keep from being rooked direct. The Canada Grain Act was designed to facilitate a slice be- ing taken from your loaf in its raw state. The steal was invent- ed by a system of wheat grad-

Tom McEwen

ing. The public were taught that.

nice white creamy loaves could only be made from pure No. 1 Northern hard wheat. Laboratory tests (all duly filed in Ottawa’s ‘investigation files) showed that

%

the best bread could be... and is made from wheat grade mix-

-tures with a preponderance: of

low grades.

And if the difference in price ©

between No, 1 and No. 5 wheat is, say, 30 cents per bushel, we can begin to appreciate what @ nice slice the grain, milling and baking. companies get out of the first cut. ' :

e 4 QUPPOSING you own a wheat farm, let us say three miles

from the nearest milling company

and 1,000 miles from Fort Wil- liam, and the good wife says,

“Look here, Hiram, I think we'll —

take our own wheat to the mill

and have it ground.’ So you take —

the wife’s advice and cart five bushels of wheat into the mill - for flour. If you pay for the milling in cash, you pay f.0.b. Fort William, plus the miller’s dockage (an old feudal custom). If you don’t pay cash and it’s all ‘dockage,’ you pay almost the” equivalent of one bushel of wheat. That represents a goodly slice eff the loaf for the milling com- panies. :

The modern baker ... and the big ones are all modern, jcan do some remarkable things with

flour. They are almost as adept —

at mixing flour as the grain companies are at mixing wheat

grades 3, 4, 5, and making St a

No. 1. Two or three scoopfuls % — potato flour; two or three scoop- fuls of powdered ancient eggs: two or three scoopfuls of skim-— med klim; two or three scoopfulé — of low grade ‘dark’ flour, and presto, anything from’a nice ‘al wheat’ .crunchy-wunchy loaf t? a wedding cake can emerge, And at prices of course based up ‘using -only. the. best’ flour.

And that, as we have said, coD- stitutes a goodly sized slab off your loaf, which explains i part’ how millionaire bakers like Garfield Weston can buy UP 435-acre islands and turn ther in a modern Shangri-la. (Among other properties Weston owns Samuel Island in the Straits of Georgia, where he has built # veritable paradise, and nets * gross yearly income from bis baking business of some $160,000

.

é

000, according to the Vancouver

”

Sun of August 11, 1947). Needless to say, that figure reP” resents ‘a hell of a lot of loave> and that is only the ‘take’ f° one of these monopolistic slice

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