Review

Jobs the now that the holiday season is behind us and 1958 away to a flying start, the problem of survival once again asserts itself. For wage earners denied the right to earn ike provision of jobs is absolutely

essential to a moderately “happy New Year!”

At the moment (and the figure is steadily increasing), there are nearly half a million able-bodied and skilled wage earners in this country deprived of their right to work. Add to this number their wives and children and the grand total might be in the neighborhood of a million Canadians who start 1958 with no means of livelihood other than sub-standard unemploy- thent insurance benefits, with thou- sands not receiving even that much. The long lines around missions and other charitable institutions are _ eloquent testimony of considerable _ destitution.

expressed growing concern at this alarming increase of unemploy- ment, and particularly provincial

and municipal governments.

But at Ottawa the Diefenbaker government reiterates its typically Tory formula, that unemployment is “serious but not alarming” and in the main purely “seasonal,” a car- ryover excuse the Tory “prosperity around the corner” days of the Hungry Thirties.

from

This Tory “prosperity’ translated at local level, urges upon all and sundry to “plan” home repairs now as a means of providing jobs. (‘Fix it now,” they say, which not only implies that a “job” may be found for the jobless worker, but done now, it can be done much “cheap- er.” This added incentive to chisel on the unemployed may be time- honored and sound Tory policy, but it is no solution for a half a

Pacific Tribune

Phone: MArine 5288 Editor — TOM McEWEN Associate Editor — HAL GRIFFIN : Subscription Rates: One Year: $4.00 Six months: $2.25 Published weekly at Room 6 — 426 Main Street Vancouver 4, B.C. Canadian and Commonwealth countries (except Australia): $4.00 one year. Australia, United States and all other countries: $5.00 one year.

Governments at all levels have:

EDITORIAL PAGE

first need

million jobless workers and their familes in the year 1958.

Large-scale construction projects under government sponsorship and aid must be undertaken without’ further delay. There isn’t a prov- ince in Canada which doesn’t re- quire hundreds of new schools, hos- pitals, new industrial development, new facilities for recreational and social services. Now is the time to begin, and on a scale in keeping with the need.

Labor and farm organizations and the working people generally, should make it known by united and concerted action that the time of Tory promises and “seasonal” speculations has ended; that these are no substitute for family in- comes. That the time has come for the gearing of central government policies to the urgent needs of the people, and that the most urgent need today is steady pay envelopes for able-bodied jobless workers.

* capitalist

around Western diplomatic circles describes the Russians as al- ways saying “Nyet’~ (No) to all Western peace and disarmament proposals.

Now the shoe is on the other foot and the people of this and other Western countries can see who has really been saying no to everything.

During the past weeks leading newspapers in Britain France and other European count- ries, and in the U.S. itself, have been demanding that U.S. Secre- tary of State John Foster Dulles come up with something more con- structive than rejection of every Soviet peace proposal. Our own Ex- ternal Affairs Minister Sydney Smith has been very forthright on the issue, and suggests a major change in approach by giving So-

‘viet proposals for peace and dis-

armament serious consideration.

In their post-NATO speeches

Comment

The real road to peace

LOW form of “humor” bandied

to their respective peoples, Prime Minister Harold Macmillan of Bri- tain and Prime Minister John Dief- enbaker of Canada both attempted te “sell” NATO's nuclear rocket site proposals, and to coast along with Dulles “diplomacy!”

In both instances they fell short of success. The common people of Canada, as of the whole world, are rapidly coming to realize that the billions expended for nuclear war- fare can only lead to total destruc- tion, while the Soviet proposals, if . discussed in conference, can lead directly to a lessening of tension and fears; to drastic reductions in colossal “defense” spending, and ultimately to lasting peace, and co- existence of diverse social systems in one world.

That is why the common people say, with an almost instinctive unity, by all means let us get together in a summit meeting with the Russians —that way we can all survive.

Tom McEwen

cous three weeks ago the CBC

TV program Front Page Chal- lenge featured the story of Can- ada’s No. 1 Bandit, the late and highly notorious “Red” ‘whose career was ended by a policeman’s bullet in a liquor store holdup at Sarnia.

The program gave a few details of Ryan’s short spell as a “respec- table” member of Toronto’s big business Tory elite; how under the protective wing of the Bab- bitry he functioned as a hote! manager, a Ford salesman, a ser- vice club glamor boy and orator, a top master of ceremonies at Toronto’s annual police sports. And finally, of course, the gory details of his exit.

What the Front Page Chal- lenge panel forgot to challenge (or did they?) was the brand of

est level in a Tory Prime Minis-

this gun-toting bankrobber and killer loose upon a law-abiding community.

The historic prison riot at Kingston Penitentiary in 1932 brought into public view the med- ieval harshness, political and moral corruption that charac-

Ryan, -

Tory politics played at the high-

ter’s' office at Ottawa that turned ©

terized administration of our penal institutions until that time under successive Liberal and Tory regimes. The whole sordid story and the need for drastic reforms are well documented in the report of a Royal Commission on Penal Reform. The. Communist party of that day not only vigorously pressed for this commission but added many pages’ to its evidence on the need-to make penal insti- tutions reformative instead of sadistically punitive.

The Tory government of R. B. . “Tron Heel’ Bennett, its policies already splitting at the seams at the time of the Kingston prison disturbances, had to do some- thing to “prove” that its penal institutions were truly places of “reform”; that Kingston Peni- . tentiary “was just like “a home away from home”; that the Com- . munists were “trouble makers,” “liars” and worse, and that gun- packing killers like “Red” Ryan were saints by comparison.

Front Page Challenge ignored all these important details. It also forgot that Bennett personal- ly visited the great prison to con- fer with Fathet Kingsley and other officials on the selection of a suitable desperado who could be turned loose to “prove” the Communists wrong. It forgot to — mention that the eight Commun- ists then held at Kingston were taken outside the prison until the “great man’”.had departed.

It even forgot that the Toronto Star assigned a “ghost” writer to tell the world in a series of ar- | ticles signed by Ryan what a great “statesman” and humanist Bennett was; what a well-order- ed “home” Kingston Penitentiary

é

~ chamber.

was and what a bunch of unmiti- gated scroundrels the Commun- ists were. Such forgetfulness in a panel of TV “experts” is as- tounding, to say the least.

be bes es :

I personally visited “Red” (at his invitation) in his new capacity as an “upright citizen” and pro- tege of Toronto’s Babbitry, and he certainly had all the opportu- nities, given to very few of his former class-mates, to remain “upright.”

‘Forget all that crap in the Star,” was “Red's” greeting as we sat down in his well-appointed “These birds. think they are playing me for a sucker. Help yourself to the drinks. They’re on the house.”

A most charming personality and host, intelligent, handsome and well-groomed, even in pris- on “Red” played the game of “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” close to the line. “When Bennett sprung me,” confided “Red,” “I knew °* I had played my hand good. He doesn’t know it... . yet.”

With blazing guns in a small Sarnia liquor store, a “job” that big-time “Red” would have turn- ed up his nose at in the hey-day of his career, Bennett’s “reform- ed” hotel manager, Ford sales- man, man-about-town and des- perado, went down for the final good or evil-— and Tory patron- count. He was a man, as I knew™ him, with great capabilities for age” tipped the scales in the wrong direction.

Front Page. Challenge didn’t distort the facts in this particular program. It simply obscured them —a very bad practice when fea- turing history.

January 10, 1958 — PACIFIC TRIBUNE—PAGE 5

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