Canadians are being robbed of their wage and salary dol- lars on an_ unprecedented scale, The monopolies, price- fixers, super-profiteers and money-lenders are bleeding the people to the point ofutter exhaustion, We have reached the limit of endurance, and grumbling must now give way to fighting on the broadest front.

The combined pirate crews of all history never even dreamed of the wealth which accrues to a relatively small group of people in the free enterprise system, the mod- ern price pirates, sheltered and encouraged by laws and lack of laws which elevate them to respectable pillars of society, instead of con- demning them for the crim- inals they are,

An individual who holds up a bank and escapes with a few thousand dollars, risks capture and imprisonment for a long term, The easy-money artists who with a stroke of the pen raise prices, and make millions, risk nothing, and as likely as not will be eventu- ally rewarded by appointment to at least a university board, if not the senate, and almost certainly to the Red Feather campaign, so his heart can bleed for those he has helped pauperize,

“Looks like things ore picking up!”

How to battle the price profiteers

The people can win against the price robbers only by acting together — through de- claring war on the price- fixers and profiteers. In such a war we can all join — there are no age or sex barriers,

What is needed is powerful consumer action, based on the wage and salary workers and their organizations, In this respect the trade union move- ment can play a vital and de- cisive role through accepting responsibility for providing leadership and resources in the building of broad com- munity consumer organiza- tions,

Pressue on government, and pressure on the profiteers should be the program of ac- tion, The government must be made to force the monop- olies, the wholesalers and the big retailers to publicly justify with facts and figures each and every price increase, Through mass public action, such as selected targets for boycott, the profiteers can be forced to roll back prices,

The people are fed up and if given leadership will take action, The trade union move- ment can and must provide

leadership, essential in its

own and the public interest. —George Harris, U.E. News

Huge Vietnam protest set for Washington May 15

Dr. Benjamin Spock, co-chair- man of the National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy, last week called for a massive turn- out for the Washington demon- stration of the Voters’ Peace Pledge on May 15,

A huge rally is planned in Potomac Park in the U.S, cap- ital on May 15 to protest the - U.S, action in Vietnam, Many _ prominent speakers will address the rally, including Dr. Spock,

socialist leader Norman Thomas, and cartoonist Jules Feiffer.

A huge turnout, said Dr. Spock, would dramatize national revul- sion to the “methods of whole- sale destruction now being em- ployed by the U.S. forces in Viet- nam.” It would, he added, support Congressional candi- dates who seek ‘‘de-escalation of the Vietnam war and a nego- tiated settlement.” Dr. Spock ‘described President Johnson’s Asia. policy as “brutalization,”

Carpenters charge Bennett with contractors

collusion

The Vancouver local of the Carpenters Union charged in a statement last week that Premier Bennett has allowed himself to become directly involved in labor negotiations in the construction industry.

“By accident or design analli- ance has developed between the provincial ,government and the contractors to take responsibility for the high costs within the con- struction industry with the trade union movement,”said a state- ment issued by J. Takach, presi- dent Local 452 of the Carpenters Union,

He said that the financial re- ports of the construction industry show that these companies can well afford wage increases, “Our union is being placed in the role of a scapegoat and we are being made to appear responsible for high construction costs when, in reality, it is government policy which has led to this fiasco, It is asking too much of our mem- bership to in effect subsidize the errors of others,”

Pointing to the provincial gov- ernment contracts let on the Columbia project, the statement

charges that Bennett is trying to ©

shift the blame on the union for the government’s underestima- ting of construction costs.

DONALD GREENWELL, prominent Van- couver community leader, was recent- ly elected general chairman of the Vancouver East Centennial celebration by a meeting of some 35 representa- tives of various community groups.

The statement adds that, ‘* When Public Works Minister Chant stated that construction costs jumped from 20-25% in 1965 over - the estimated costs, the Carpen- ters received only a small por- tion of the total increase as their total wage increase was only 5% last year,

“Our proposal for a reductior. in hours of work is just, as there is a high degree of standardiza- tion and mechanization in the construction industry which tends to eliminate jobs and results in unemployment, Our membership demand to have shorters hours implemented to create more job

opportunities,” says the state- ment,

It further points out that at present 14% of the Carpenter’s membership are unemployed. In 1964, when there was approxi- mately the same volume of work than in the boom year of 1957 there were 13,000 less fulltime jobs worked.

The union statement also makes this significant point: That in 1957 the wage share of the construction dollar was 34.8% whereas in 1964, despite wage increases, it had dropped to

33.8%.

ON U.S. CAMPUS:

‘Student revolt against war-orientated system’

Paul Goodman, noted American sociologist and author and town planner, spoke at a seminar of 75 University of B.C. students and faculty members May 1 at Marks College in Vancouver. His topic was, “The University — Assem- bly Line or Communities.” ;

In his first address he said that youth and particularly stu- dents were exploited by the cor- porate and state bureaucracies in America.

The Berkley revolt, he claim- ed, was a reaction to the de- humanized war-oriented univer- sity system of mass production, He went on to illustrate the relationship of the present uni- versity system to the war drive of the Pentagon and stated ‘that opposition to the war in the campus community could not be separated from the need to de- centralize and democratize the universities,

He cited an example of the San Francisco State College where the faculty and administra- tion were co-operating with a student-run ‘‘free university”, He

‘AN POBLACHT ABU’

said also that the faculty of tue San Francisco State College had refused to co-operate with the United States draft board in pur- suance of the Vietnam war.

Dr. McGregor, head of the Classics Department at UBC, and chairman of the student resi- dences, argued that Dr. Goodman did not know anything about stu- dents.

When challenged from the floor by student participants, Dr. Mc- Gregor suggested that most of the trouble on campuses was caused by “outside agitators like what’s his name,. Mario Lanzio” (sic. Mario Savio.)

Dr, Rowan of the Philosophy Department stated that Savio was a registered student and first class student at that, at Berkeley and he agreed with Goodman that the present educational system was sterile and dull,

A student panel met on the subject of how to bring about social change in North America. The Seminar was sponsored by the Academic Activities Com-> mittee at the UBC.

lrish leaders greet PI

In response to his tribute in the April 7 edition of the Pacific Tribune on the 50th Anniversary of the Easter Uprising in Dublin, Ireland, during’ the. Easter Week of 1916, PT editor Tom McEwen received the following letter from

Irish fraternal delegates attend- -

ing the recent 23rd Congress of the Soviet Union,

Under a Moscow dateline, the letter reads as follows:

“Dear Comrade McEwen: The undersigned delegates from Ire- land to the 23rd Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union wish to express our fra- ternal appreciation of your splendid article on the Easter Week Rising in *The Canadian Tribune,” of April 4th,

«:When we arrived here in Mos- cow we had our own plans for the celebration of that glorious event of fifty years ago; these have been fulfilled by means of broad- casts, articles in the Soviet press, and a social function in which your Canadian Party dele- gates, Bill Kashtan, Paulette Walsh, and Don Currie partici- pated, However your article

arrived the day before so in fact you were first in!

«Naturally, we are proud of the anniversary of our country- men’s revolt against Imperial- ism, They struck a blow when all the odds were against them, put they have left us a glorious anti-imperialist tradition — not only to the Irish people, but as your article indicates, to all who struggle for the cause ofnational liberation.

‘¢Next to being in Ireland, we find it most appropriate to cele- brate the Golden Jubilee in the land of Soviet Power. Lenin’s championship of their gallantac- tion has forged links between the people of the Soviet Union and Ireland, In this land, as you know well, on the basis of Socialist nationalist policy the “prison house of oppressed nationalities” has been razed to the ground, and a new edifice has been built in which all nationalities have full freedom, and the opportunities in which their national culture blooms in full blossom,

*As you have correctly stated,

®this great Easter Sunday drama in Ireland’s struggle for freedom and independence is today being played out ina different age and under different conditions in Vietnam, Asia, Africa, Latin Am- erica, and the Near East (Aden).”

“Once again, ‘Comrade Mc- Ewen, we express our apprecia- tion for your splendid tribute to James Connolly our great Irish Marxist; to Padraig Pearse the great radical nationalist: and to the men and women who fought — and fell in Ireland’s Easter Ris- ing of 1916, ;

“Please accept three hearty Irish handshakes! An Phoblacht Abu! (Up the Republic!) "

‘syours fraternally,

Michael O’ Riordan, Secretary, Irish Workers’ Party (Dublin);

Andrew Barr, : Chairman, Communist Party: N, Ireland:

Hugh Moore, Secretary, Communist party: N, Ireland (Beifast).

May 6, 1966—PACIFIC TRIBUNE—Page