Page Four Biss or WO RG Peer a we September 2. : BC Workers NEWS Published Weekly by : THE PROLETARIAN PUBLISHING ASS’N Room 10, 163 West Hastings Street - Vancouver, B.C. = — Subscription Rates — One Year SS 1 780. Halt Weare 1-00 Three Months __3 .50 Single Copy —— -05 Make All Checks Payable to the B.C. WORKERS’ NEWS Send All Copy and Manuscript to the Chairman of the Editorial Board —— Send All Montes and Letters Per- faining to Advertising and Circulation to the Business Manager. Vancouver, B.C., September 27, 1935 AN INCORRECT ATTITUDE Although the B.C. Workers News is sup- porting Arnold Webster, C.G.F. candidate in Burrard riding, against the labor-hating Gerry McGeer, we must say that his attitude toward the ravings of Tom McInnis, McGeer and others of their stripe, is neither dignified nor courageous. Instead of meeting their hysterics with the straightforward declaration that he wel- comes all support from anti-capitalist, anti- fascist forces to defeat McGeer, who is the tool of the big interests and a member of the corrupt capitalist Liberal Party, Webster is on the defensive in deference to the preju- dices of the bourgeoisie to whom the very word “Communist” is anathema. Naturally, Webster wishes to be elected, but he fears that open Communist support will alienate some petty bourgeois voters, forgetting that the Communist votes and the many who follow the lead of the Communists will more than offset those he may thus lose. Seeing his timidity, McGeer and his fascist cohorts have taken the offensive, and the de- fensive attitude of Webster plays into their hands. Political tactics as well as consideration of principle require of Webster that he cease catering to the Red Bogey ranters. If he wishes to be elected he must refuse to per- mit the McGeers and Tom McInnises to make the issues for him in the contest in Burrard. He must deal with real issues, and not repudi- ate the very people without whose support he cannot be elected. BENNETT’S ARENA MEETING The hostile reception received by R. B. Bennett in the Arena last Monday was some- thing unusual in political campaigns, and re- flects the growing impatience and disgust of the common people with the old capitalist parties. When even the Prime Minister is hooted and jeered by a large section of an audience which in other days would have hung on his every word, it is time that such political tricksters realized that the days of humbugging the people are coming to an end. And the real rulers of Canada, the ones who furnish the campaign funds, are realizing it; that is why they have trotted out Stevens with his fake Reconstruction Party to pre- vent the masses who are deserting the old capitalist parties from swinging over to the C.C.F. and the Communist Party. The capitalist press has been interpreting the hostile demonstration against Bennett as evidence of boorishness, as having been or- ganized, and blathering about free speech,— in a city where the workers are forbidden to hold meetings even in parks, by the man who used Section 98 to prevent free speech! The effort is being made to picture Ben- nett as a brave man, an Ajax defying the lightning, because he managed to eventually deliver his speech. There was no bravery in the exhibition Bennett gave. Beaten, petu- lant, angry and boorish, and with hundreds of armed police scattered throughout the building, he could well afford to show his teeth and hurl insults at defenseless people. He called upon his civilian supporters to throw the hecklers out. by physical force. Had they followed his advice there would have been a riot, and Bennett would have had a chance to gloat in another Regina massacre. Bennett, like all other braggarts, is a cow- ard; and his actions in the Arena stamp him as such. And yet, a feature writer in the “Sun,” waxing lyrical in his hero worship, compares Bennett, the lone man heating down the “rabble,” the ‘mob,’ with Na- poleon at Grenoble after his escape from Elba. The Sun writer in his gaping adoration overlooked something; Napoleon, alone and unarmed, faced the garrison of armed men, defied them to kill him, and won them over to his side. In the Arena situation the arms, the whole force of the State were on the side of Bennett. With his well known arrogance and overweening conceit, he tried for a few minutes to silence the demonstration and ig- nominously failed. Defeated, he used the force and violence at his command. Much rot has been written about the re- spect due the “leader of our people,” etc. The workers have neither admiration nor respect for the man, himself a multimillionaire and exploiter-of the people, who has strangled free speech and used the Iron Heel, who has forced Draconian laws upon the people, cut wages and instituted force labor in militar- ized Slave Camps, and who reduced the com- mon people to a condition of unprecedented poverty. The people have nothing but hatred and contempt for such a representative of the financial oligarchy, and the spontaneous demonstration against him and his effront- ery in daring to spew more lying promises in Vancouver is proof of it. Thoroughly discredited and despised by the people whose civil and democratic rights he has trampled under foot, finding that the old shibboleths have lost their potency, and that the devices on his Tory banners are being laughed at, he snarlingly, and with the people’s boot at his rear end, makes his dis- honored exit from the political stage with his money bags in one hand and Section 98 in the other, a sneer on his lips, and with the de- CLASS STRUGGLE HEROES Never was there a greater display of work- ing-class solidarity than that which was shown last week-end at Sardis Hop Fields when over 1500 hop pickers, men, women, youth and children struck solidly for a few cents more for their long day’s toil. Working from 4 o’clock in the morning till 7 in the evening for their bare board, liv- ing under the most wretched conditions, suf- fering extreme hardship, and without any organization, these workers lives are a refu- tation of the bombastic claim of Premier Bennett that “conditions in Canada have im- proved.” With the decision to strike, a few cents were collected and a wire sent to the Pro- vincial Liberal Government to assist them. The Government ignored their plea. Instead. they sent in three carloads of police to drive the workers back to their wretched slavery. The company, with the aid of the police, succeeded in breaking the strike, and five hundred of the strikers were given transpor- tation to their homes. Declarations of soli- darity from Mennonites at hop farms a few miles distant were brought to the strikers. The Japanese, which comprised nearly one- third of the strikers, were solid with the whites. The mistake was made in not staying solid on the property, and defying eviction. Besides exposing the real purpose of the government, that is, the protection of the in- terests of the capitalists, the strike has ex- posed the hypocrisy of such labor misleaders . as Jimmy Thompson who sits on the Liberal Government Board of Industrial Relations, and has plainly showed the uselessness of minimum wage laws where there is not a strong union to compel decent wages to be paid. It may console the Citizens’ League to know the strike was lost (if it can be said that there was anything to lose) but the consolation to be derived by the workers in- volved is that they have learned from bitter experience that capitalist governments al- ways take the side of the employers, and the workers’ main strength lies in organization. A RIVAL OF AIMEE “Those whom the gods would destroy they first made mad” is an old saying that fits the case of R. B. Bennett,—if we are allowed to add that they also make them ridiculous. The bumptious old Tory politician, speak- ing at Victoria and losing his head com- pletely under the heckling he received, stated that the Communists had plotted to kidnap him, and that the march of the unarmed Slave Camp strikers to Ottawa was for the purpose of overthrowing capitalism and set- ting up a Soviet government! Such a fantastic statement places Bennett in the same category as Aimee Semple Mac- Pherson. Aimee, in order to cover up some shady doings, said she had been kidnapped and taken to the Arizona, desert.—while all the time she was at Carmel-by-the-Sea. So Bennett tries to cover up his political of fenses against the people by entertaining them with melodramatic yarns of the Jack Dalton type. The story was so absurd that it only amused some people, while Bennett's obscurantist admirers shook their heads sadly at his degeneration. Bennett gave no details of the dark plot. He should have done so and made a real good story out of it. Aimee has it over him, for she furnished all the lurid “Steve’ and ee details in the best Hollywood thriller style. Bennett should get some of his ghost writers to work out the details, and when he is shorn of the premiership on October 14 he can begin a new career as a concocter of Hollywood serials. OBSCURING THE ISSUE Corporation Lawyer J. W. de B. Farris, ap- pearing for the Shipping Federation, and other lawyers for the same interests, are striving with all the legal tricks at their com- mand to turn the Davis enquiry into a Red- baiting farce and not a means of finding the causes of the waterfront dispute. They are digging into the structure and affiliations of the militant marine workers’ union in the hope that public prejudice can be worked up against the locked-out workers and the real issues obscured. The hirelings of the shipping interests made much of the strikes conducted by unions affiliated to the Longshoremen and Water Transport Workers of Canada, such as the strikes of the Log Export )Workers, Wheat Trimmers and Seamen, their obvious purpose being to make it appear as if the sole purpose of organizing workers is to cause trouble, wholly overlooking the fact that these strikers won better wages and condi- tions for the workers, and could not have been won without union organization. The strategy of the Shipping Federation is to cover up the causes of the lockout, which was decided upon as a means of destroying trade union organization on the Pacific Coast in order to bring more profits out of labor. The job in front of the representatives of the locked-out workers on the waterfront is to utilize the investigation to expose the ma- chinations of the Federation in spite of the tactics of the Federation lawyers, without putting too much faith in the enquiry which was instituted as an election stunt to appease the locked-out workers and their sympathiz- ers with the false hope that the Bennett gov- ernment desires to do something for them, for there will be no results from the enquiry before the election—unless it be a Red Scare roorbach on the eve of the election. Whilst using the enquiry to present the workers’ case ta the public, the successful outcome of the struggle depends upon the solidarity of the locked-out men themselves and the united front support they receive. risive laughter and curses of the people he deceived. starved, degraded and oppressed, ringing in his ears. fareh held sway, Some Of The Marauding Brigands Who Plundered Qur Vast Country By JOBRNNY WEL is a leader of that new generation of Canadian youth who are beginning to see through the hypocrisy of the Bennet, Stevens and King, who lead the present- day piratical crew that feast on the labors of honest people. These new leaders such as Weir are deter- mined to mobilize the people te win back their com- mon birthright, —Factual material taken from “History of Cana- dian Wealth,” by Gustavus Myers, and Saskatchewan C.C.F. Research Bureau. ~T WAS a prize outstripping all imagination. A coun- try equal to an empire, practically as jarge as the whole of Burope, and rich beyend the dreams of men: 3.729.665 square miles of jand—deep forests. broad prairies, fertile vales, high mountains, beautiful lakes, timber, minerals, coal, wheat, game, furs, fish. Four hundred years ago ours Was 2 Virgin country. inhabited by Indian tribes who lived by hunting and fishing and a very primitive mode of agriculture. They were on the same level of social development as the forefathers of the European invaders had been 4 thou- sand years before. The rifle. the Bible, and ‘fire water’ —rum and brandy—these were the weapons of the ‘‘civilizers”’ with which to subdue and debauch the natives and virtually steal their furs. VERITABLE ELDORADO. And the harvest was great: in the year 1696 the value of beaver Skins alone, gathered from the na- tives in Canada, was estimated at 4,000,000 livres. “Unto the victor belong the spoils.” But he would be mistaken who would think that the soldiers and settlers were the “victors.”” The “victors’’ were the ruling class in their respective countries, and they. divided the spoils up amongst themselves. In Lower Canada (Quebec) where the French mon- the lands were divided amone the favorites and officers of the king, the church, and the few merchants and other well-to-do in Canada. Previous to the British conquest in 1763, there were 7,985,470 acres of land given away. of which 2.096.754 went to the Catholic Church (including the . Island of Montreal) and 5,888,716 acres were divided among fewer than 400 seigneurs! Government survey in 1845 found that there were altogether 9,027,880 acres of land in Seignories im Lower Canada. Has history any parallel to this? HOW LAND WAS GRABBED. There was much to be given away. And the rulers of New France did well by themselves. They certainly were no “‘pikers.”’ What was the special “worth,” individuals were rewarded so royally? De Martignon was granted 159,312 acres-on October 17, 1672. because . . . well, because he was owed some money by Latour, his father-in-law. and the latter's estate was in danger of forfeiture. So that was “squared up” in this way- These feudal barons had all the rights of the feudal lords in Europe, the right of titles, of punishing their serfs, etc., And these rights were retained for them after the British conquest. It wasn’t until 1867 that the most odious of them were taken away—and then only after paying them over $10,000,000 out of the pub- lie treasury! : HOW THE SLOGAN “GET IT AT THE BAY” GRIGINATED. In 1670 Kine Gharles the Second of England looked around to see how he could reward his followers, who had aided him to come to the throne, So he signed a charter granting to his~ cousin, for which these Prince Rupert, and a few others, full powers and privileges. as the Hudson's Bay Company, to an ex clusive and perpetual monopoly in trade and com- merce of “all the seas. straits, bays, rivers, lakes, creeks. and sounds in whatsoeyer latitude they shall be” that lay within the entrance of Hudsoen’s Straits ‘together with all the lands, countries and territories” adjacent to those waters. Which, everybody will agree, was some gift! With one stroke of the pen a group of lords in England were given exclusive rights to all lands as far south as the Missouri and as far west as they could go! And they held it through the centuries and are still reaping profits on it today! Before tracing the history of that powerful com- pany, however, let us see what the Gritish conquest did in Bastern Canada. THE BRITISH BUCCANEERS In 1791 the British sovernment introduced the sys- tem of land grants. In the period between 1796 and 1809 fewer than 70 persons were in this way Siven 1,457,209 acres of the best Crown lands in Ontario. Tur merchants. who were the most influential class in Canada at the time, were thus transformed into ereat landowners as well. Names that are prominent in Canada today, figure also prominently in the list of those grabbing the country in that day. MeTavish, M'’Gillivray, Ellice. Richardson, Dunn, Frobisher, McGill, Caldwell, Milnes, Gale, Sewell—but. why go on?—sot tens of thousands of acres in this way. ‘ These fortunes were born of wholesale favoritisna and corruption. The prominent people in business and politics gave each-other and to themselves the best parts of the country and ruled with an iron hand. Graftine officials made fortunes also. Qne General Wunter was able, in a short time. to send enarly $150,000 to England! - Let us give the floor to Lord Durham, Goyernor— General of Canada, as he reported on the land grab- bine in Canada in 1838: Of 17,000.000 acres in the surveyed districts of Ontario, only less than 1,600,000 remained free in 1838. and of that 450,000 were reserved for roads, 500.000 had already been pledged, and the rest was of poor quality! In Nova Seotia nearly 6.000,000 acres had already been eranted and only 300,000 acres remained free! The whole of Prince Edward Island, about 1,400,- 000 acres, had been given away in one day, the ereater portion going to several individuals in Hng- land! : These several examples are sufficient to show the carnival of land grabbing that went on and which laid the base for the big Canadian fortunes cf this day, while others, being given to absentee landlords jn Britain, served to pile up a large section of the great fortunes in the Old Country. This is the fabled ‘‘thrift,’” “initiative,” “hard work” and “ability” that makes some men rich and millions of others poor in Ganada, as throughout the world! Land companies were formed ana brought tremen- dous expanses of land from the government at ridi- eulous prices. only to sell to farmers at tremendous profit. In this way the Ganada Company, headed by John Galt, got 3,500,000 acres of land in Ontario, making many millions of dollars in profit and still owning about 100,000 acres. The British American Land Co. did the same kind of profitable business in Quebec. Let us get back to the Hudson’s Bay Company and see how the “Company of Gentlemen Adenturers’ made out: (GConeluded next issue) — oviet Socialized Medicine Is Canadian --Banting Superior To TORONTO, Sept. 10.—(ALP)—Sir Frederick Banting, famed Canadian scientist, head of the Banting In- stitute of the University of Toronto, and co-discoverer of insulin, was “tremendously impressed” by what he saw in the Soviet Union and he thinks the people of the Soviets are “the most maligned in the world.” Dr. Banting has just returned to Toronto after attending the World Physiological Congress in Lenin- erad. “T would like to write a book about the Soviet Union,” he told this writer, “just to answer the lies and slanders about the people over there.”’ “JT found the people of the U.S. S.R. intelligent, enthusiastic for what they are doing and building, and ex- tremely courteous.” Scientific Advances Sitting in his laboratory in the Banting Institute, the institution named in his honor, the Canadian scientist described the hospitals and laboratories, the medical system and the general question of the advances of science under the Soviet regime. Before the revolution, he said, there were something like 13,000 doc- tors in the whole of Czarist Russia, or, with the increased population of today, about 19,000 doctors to care for 160,000.00 people. There should be one doctor to every thousand people, he said. “So what did the Soviet leaders do about it?—They proceeded to make doctors,’’ he said. In 1932, the last year for which Dr. Banting had fig- ures, there were 53,000 doctors in the country, still only one-third of the required number. The medical schools, which are of excellent rating, are turning out thousands of new physicians and surgeons every year in ever increas- ing numbers. The medical course is five years. Draws Comparisons “And after the doctor has been out in the field for three years,’’ Sir Frederick said, “‘they are brought back to school again for a six-months refresher Gourse. This is something we might well do in Canada.” Dr. Banting was impressed by the working of “‘systematized medicine” and pointed to its great superiority over the Canadian system which is wasteful of the doctor’s time. “In the Soviet Union,’”’ he said, “phy- sicians are attached to every factory and their working hours are from 9 in the morning toe 4 in the afternoon —unheard of hours for the ayerage worked-to-death doctor in Canada.” “wWVorkers in the factory,” he said, “so to the doctor and when they are sick they ¢o to the hospital. A doc- tor can attend and visit 30 patients in a hospital in the same time that eS. - os < - - Gt takes to visit six patients in the home.” “When a specialist is needed, the patient is sent to a man who is at- tached to the factory itself. Bach factory in addition to the ‘general practitioner’ also has specialists in the various lines attached to it.” . Boundless Enthusiasm Admitting that he had not time to go into the medical training very carefully so as to be able to accur- ately compare Canadian and Soyiet medical education, Dr. Gantinge be- lieves that the standards in the Soviet Union may be still a bit lower than in Canada. “But if they lack anything in train- ing they make up for it in energy and enthusiasm,” he said. It was this boundless energy and enthusiasm, seen everywhere he visited, that particularly impressed the Canadian scientist. “You have to be a real man to belong to the Communist Party there,’ he declared. “‘The standards for party membership are very high. For example, if a party member gets drunk in public or breaks discipline he is expelled quickly.” “The tempo with which new hos- pitals, Ssanatariums, laboratories, are being built and put into operation and the speed with which staffs have to be tarined for them would make one expect a low standard, but in- stead, the standards in these places are high and are developing.” Dr. Ganting spoke highly of Pavioyv, the great Russian plysiolo- gist and dean of Soviet science, and spoke of the splendid aid given to science by the government and peo- ple of the U-S.S.R. There, the whole people are vitally interested in the progress of science. Banting himself a physiologist. is Worker’s Theatre Grows PROGRESSIVE ARTS CLUB TO PRESENT PLAYS In every section of Vancouver where working-class questions are discussed, mention is made, sooner or later, of the group of left-wing amateurs who are soon to present the play called “‘Waitnme For Lefty.” This play is said to be the best drama so far written about a working-class problem. Recently, the play was produced in Moscow. The Progressive Arts Club, or, more briefly, the P.A.C., mtend to present “Waiting For Lefty” next month at the Ukrainian Labor Temple, on Friday and Saturday nights, Oct. 25 and 26. In addition to the main offering, a comedy by Chekoff will be given. (Continued from last issue) QUESTION: 7. When it is evidently the desire of the largest number of workers, small traders and farmers. to gain Socialism, but to avoid clashes where the unarmed workers are to fight the armed forces of cCapital- ism, by use of constitutional means until that time when we are deprived of such means, why deliberately lead the workers to be smashed down by military and police? ANSWER: The pacifist program of “no strug- ele” because of casualties, is a pro- eram of defeatism: There is not space here to deal with the ilu- sions spread, regarding building so- cialism within capitalism in con- formity with a constitution drawn for the perpetuation of capitalism. The every-day class struggle over wages and conditions, for adequate relief, ete. can not be carried on BRUCE ANSWERS QUESTIONS _ RE COMMUNIST SINCERITY Y eles we say that the magnificent strug- of the early trade unions of Eneland against child labor, the ten- hour day, and for the legality of trade unions, were of no avail? In earrying on the struggle. lives were lost, leaders were exiled and im- prisoned. But it was worth while, and history has decided so. Tt would be pleasant if the struggle could be conducted without casual- ties, but the Capitalists use their armed forces against the workers and that calls for greater unity and higher forms of struggle, not eurl- ing up and quitting- QUESTION: 8. Are not all the specific issues, asked of the C.C.F. by the C.P. in return for support, embodied in the C.C.&. Manifesto? ANSWER: Wo; the C.C.F. Manifesto is vague, utopian, and does not come to grips with the immediate problems of the people. It declares for socialism sometime in a remote future, while without casualties. Those opposed to struggle always point to those easualties as wrong tactics; but can eschewing struggle outside of parlia- ment, thus leading the workers to SHORT JABS By Ol’ Bill | OY Bill is writing this cole der difficulties this week—lyin - on a hospital bed, and is-con;” to think of the difficulties thay labored under while writing: greatest book of the 19th centy | fact, the greatest book of aij S the masterpiece in which hy bare the law of motion of cap : society— ‘Capital.’ ; Darwin discovered and proye clusively the manner in whicr: cies originate, the whole proc development, and the causes Ae logical changes, but this left gradations untouched. As the main study, man and societ the aggregate of individual 7 uncovering the motif of soci ganization and changes Marx } the weapon in hands of the rag will conquer all their difficniij As a historical document, * tal” is an analysis, a suide ;, prophecy. It is the crown ¢ philosophy, all history and alj omics; the work of the mos found thinker, the most stupe mind that the race has yet duced. Lenin’s practical success in lutionary activity is due to thi tha the consulted the works of on every problem that conf} him. We might say that Len rected the movement of the wm tionary forces with a copy of. in his left hand. And while- was writing this epoch-making he suffered from an attack of and carbuncles. ; His letters to Engels at thaf tell of his inconvenience, the x: he suffered, physical handicap. der which he labored because a Egyptian plague which laste years. Sometise he was unable down, at others unable to si his brain was never affected a) kept right on doing the sreate that has ever been done by one + * * = ‘é A trademark is a stamp tz seribes the goods that carry i may seem strange to talk of wa leaving a trademark, but itz that most of them do. Miners, for instance, carry marks on their faces and the black stains of powder-burn often pieces of coal or quartz; see a man with two fingers G hand and three on the othe conclude he is a shingle weave in order to procure a living; not quit when he lost the first’ boilermakers are all deaf ang terers grow a callous as big hen’s egg= on the left hand handling the hawk; the men’ railway running trades get By disease and smelter workers) their job all over; it is getting the woods that the trademark logger is an undertaker’s hear is therefore easy to understand why, when a body is pulled ; the Inlet, even though there ; clothes left on it, the press @: nounce that “The body of a yw man was found floating in let.’”’ = >= = * Liars should haye Sood me Our arrogant bullying Prim ister, R. B. Bennett, pulled Vancouver on a freight. Of | he didn’t make the journey ¢ as the camp strikers did. & he would not have to ride ti or the tops, or on top of the” he had his own special car ¢ on. Answering a question f him in Wicteria Jast Saturd cording to the “Sun,” he reference that “he had never a dollar of wheat.” He must have forgotten th at the Arena on Monday | while soft-soapinge th evoters meeting he spoke proudly oft that “the first ship from Vai to go through the Panama carried a cargo of grain in Ww had an interest.” English is a long way £ror a perfect language, but the statements are perfectly clea slightest smattering of logic sufficient to enable the dumb to place Bennett where he | >= = * = An old woman comrade ¥ been active in the labor m¢ for donkey’s years was told ear accident that sent the a1 this column to the hospital she heard that the car skid rolled over twice, she remark ereat feeling: “It should ha R. B. Bennett.” x = 4 * Red atrocities still get 1 headlines: ‘Reds hang fot row’? we read the other da monsters, we thought;! So © further to find out we hat an error as it was the sport and that it was the Cincin team had won four straigh Then we read of a Commit tack in the Oregon hop-fielk spiders eat hop vines.” A Harry Bridges, the Red agit: was squelched by the safe < Jeadership of the LL.A. h elected as leader of the *Fris shoremen by a 10 to 1 vote Bennett's ‘‘Freec In Practice OTTAWA, Sept. 26. —] from the civil service wa mended today by Revenue Lawson of an unnamed em’ the income tax branch as of an incident in which Lib sheets were circulated at a : ner of the branch. MRestr poltical rights is a sore many Civil servants and wl for union action to releg: government practices to | ages, where they belong- Better that Benr seared to death with bogey than our childre bed hungry. Freedom for all 1 passivility and inaction. » Unions.