THE PEHEOPLE’S ADVOCATE THE PEHOPLE’S ADVOCATE Published Weekly by the Proletarian Publishing Association, Room 10, 163 West Hastings Street, Vancouver, BC. Phone TRinity 2019. One Year . 2 =: $2.00 Three Months —._ $ .60 Half Year _________$1.00 Single Copy —_.- $ .05 Make All Cheques Payable to: The People’s Advocate Friday, May 12, 1939 Vancouver, B.C. WVieat Prices Must Come Down! NNOUNCEMENT of a consumers’ meat strike during the week May 14 to 21 in protest against high retail prices in Vancou- ver is a significant and commendable action. A long-suffering consuming public has, for the first time we believe, resorted to the boy- cott weapon in order to force retailers to re- duce scandalously high prices of staple com- modities. - So far the various government boards es- tablished by legislation, supposedly to protect both producer and consumer. have been of little or no value to the consumer. In fact, in most instances the only result has been in- ereased prices to the consuming public. This is true especially of the Potato Marketing Board. In these days of monopoly control of the Gistribution and sale of commodities no one will deny the need of government marketing boards to protect the primary producer and the consumer. However, if the consuming public is to receive protection, it is clear we must have legislative acts without loopholes and marketing boards with consumer repre- sentation as well as representation from the producers and distributors. It appears in this instance the Beef Grading Act has simply served as a medium for shame- fully imereasing prices to the consumer. In addition to prices generally being greatly in- ereased, the lower grades, C and D, which were formerly easily procurable, are now seldom stocked at all, while the higher priced Grade A meats monopolize the display coun- ters. The Housewives’ League should be con- gratulated for the initiative it has shown in launching the campaign against high meat prices. The twenty-eight women’s organizations of the city which are sponsoring the meat strike should receive the full support of the people of Vancouver. The Danger to Poland pt eeeR ‘the outcome of Berchtesgaden, Godesburgs and Munich taught the capital- ist newspaper editors nothing; or they are pretending ignorance. This is the only con- elusion one can come to in view of the amaz- ing alacrity with which they hailed the pro- posal of the Pope for a conference of European powers to “negotiate” the dispute between Poland and Germany. Only a few weeks earlier the Pope sent con- gratulations to the butcher Franco for the victory which “‘God granted to him.” Italian and German bombs which destroyed hundreds of thousands of Spanish Catholic men, women and children had nothing to do with the vic- tory of Franco, Hitler, Mussolini and Cham- berlain, according to the Pope’s congratula- tory message. Remembering the fate of what once was Czechoslovakia, Foland declined the invita- tion to be carved up. The immediate declara- tion of Hitler, Mussolini and Chamberlain of their willingness to take part in the proposed conference should have been enough in itself to expose the trap which was prepared. The delay, the evasiveness and maneuver- ing of Chamberlain in his discussions with the Soviet Union shows that he has no intention of building an effective peace front. No longer able to use the lie of Russia’s military weakness, Chamberlain is exaggerating the reluctance of the Polish and Rumanian gov- ernments to inclusion of the Soviet Union in the anti-agsression pact. The policy of Chamberlain, despite his shadow boxing in response to an aroused pub- lic opinion, is still a policy of appeasement. He is plotting to dismember Poland as a price to Hitler to expand toward the East and at- tack the Soviet Union. The “non-intervention policy and appease- ment have got Britain and France into a sorry mess, with a friendly Spain destroyed and a hostile fascist regime, a puppet of the Rome- Berlin axis, established. The national govern- ment will sacrifice Poland and every other border state to Hitler in an effort to turn him and Mussolini away from pressure against the West, ie., Britain and France, and against the Soviet Union. In this nefarious scheme he can rely on the pro-fascist Polish foreign Minister, Beck, and other Polish Fifth Columnists. But the tra- ditional love of national independence of the Polish people prevents Beck from assisting in selling out his country in the way that the Fifth Columnists of Austria and Czechoslo- vakia did. W’CULLAGH AND BLAYLOCK By H. J. LUNDGREN is untangling the plot of Canadian Big Business and reaction to usher in a pro-fascist government using as its vehicle the McCullagh Leadership League, some startling facts come to light, chief of which is that George McCullagh is no more the originator of the propaganda he has been feeding the Cana- dian people than the Leadership League is accidental. Comparing the radio addresses and the “program” of the Leadership League with the speeches made by Sir Edward Beaity and other reactionary spokesmen over the past two years, then we find that the blossoming into full bloom of the Leadership League is but an out growth of previous well-laid plans. And if we want to find the main representative in BC of the St. James Street and Bay Street fi- mnanciers, the eye is sure to fall on Mr. Ss. G Blaylock of Trail, president and managing director of the Consolidated Mining and Smelting Gompany of Canada: Here we find Beattys “Man Fri- day.”’ oe ET US for a momnet compare what Blaylock had to say in a speech before the convention of the Canadian Chamber of Com- merce in Vancouver that of re- eent pro n ouncements of McCullagh in order to gain a better knowledge of just who are behind Mc- GCullagh and what is in- tended by these indi- viduals. Depioringe the extent of taxation on the idle rich, Mr. Blaylock remarked: “It would be interest- ing to examine what percentage of the population pay no income tax whatever, and how much a one-half to two percent tax on this group woudl bring in to help bal- ance the budget. Such a tax would also give these citizens an incen- tive to refrain from demanding unnecessary expenditures.” Compare this with McCullagh’s remarks on similar questions: “.. The solution to most of our problems ilies in the expansion of private enterprise and industry ... This can be done only by ar-— resting wild government spending and making a substantial reduc- tion in taxation generally.” And again: “. . . If our tax bills were cut in half, natural spending would ereate sufficient industrial actiyi- ty to take up the slack and the accumulated effect would be the solution to our unemployed prob- lem.’’ e - HE PLAN of Canadian reaction is made quite clear here. Tax-the management. in 1937, to ation on the profits of the idle rich is to be reduced 50 percent and social services are to be drastic— ally cut if not entirely eliminated, the cost of government to be borne by imposing a sweeping income tax on all wage earners, farmers, small business men and profes- Sional workers. ne Again let’s listen to Mr. Blay- lock: : i “~.. iL am inclined to think that we are very much over-governed, and that it is necessary to throw a lot of things overboard which the governments have been doing lest we Sink the ship of Canadian in- dustry . . This is undoubtedly a problem for the executive man- agements of industry in this coun- try.”’ Back comes Mr. McCullagh: “Our governments must be dis- ciplined There is too much government. Rather than submit to the alternative of dictatorship it would be preferaible to restrict the franchise until discipline is learned, or surround it with con- ditions which will rule out de- structive forces.” In other words, Mr. Blaylock was expounding the plan of re— action some 18 months before Mc-— Cullagh came on the scene as the new “Messiah,” clothed to look like a benevolent “grandmother” while he tries to lure Little Red Riding Hood — the Canadian pec- ple — into the fascist fold of the Big Bad Wolf — Canadian reac— tionary finance. © HAT’S in line for the trade union movement if the Lead- ership League captures the gov- ernment? Blaylock supplies the answer. This individual has or- @anized and perfected over a per— iod of 19 years a system in the vast ©ME&S empire for which a counterpart can only be found under Hitlerism in Germany. This system is known as the Work- men’s Cooperative Committee, Similar to the “Confidence Coun- ceils” organized by Hitler’s labor officials. What was behind the organiza- tion of the Cooperative Commit tees? Blaylock declares as fol- lows: “. .. It is absolutely essen- tial that the men should at all times have implicit confidence in the honesty and fair dealing of . . The way How Lindbergh By SAM RUSSELL AZI Air Minister Hermann Goering and his underlings do not believe Col. Charles } smart young men of Tory re 1% action in British Columbia /#f! It is hard to say whether one should be astounded or dis- - Another clever young man, Cl Mr. Graham Towers, gov- ever Lad. ernor of the Bank of Canada, speaking the lines of Mr. Montagu Norman, told the House of Commons committee on banking and commerce last week, that Since the national debt “is an asset of the people, what would be the object in repaying it?” Tf the public debt is an asset, why is not private debt also an asset? Neither Mr. Towers nor any other banker will admit for a moment that their customers’ debts are assets of these same cus- tomers. Why? The national debt, however, is an asset to the creditors of the state who are the “people” in the eyes of Mr. Towers, the bankers, brokers and other usurers who grow fat on the wealth gouged out of “the common herd” by their tax-gsatherers. Marx knew this tribe well. In the first volume of Capital, he writes, ‘National debt, i.e., the alientation of the state—whether despotic, constitutional or re- publican—marked with its stamp the capitalistic era. The only part of the so-called national wealth that actually enters into the collective possession of modern peoples, is—their national debt. Hence as a necessary consequence, the modern doctrine that a nation becomes richer the more deeply it is in debt.” To drive this home he quotes William Cobbett’s remark that in England all public institutions are designated “royal”; as compensation for this, how- ever, there is the “national” debt. State bonds are merely certificates which give the holder a claim on the annual tax revenue. Con- sidered as capital, they are illusory, fictitious capital, a fact which is proven every time a government de- faults (and haven’t there been a lot of them since 1929!)- In volume three of Capital, Marx again speaks of the national debt He says, ‘““‘The capital of the na- tional debt appears as a minus, and interest-bearing capital generally is the mother of all crazy forms, so that, for instance, debts may appear in the eyes of the banker as commodities.” For my part, the governor of the Bank of Canada can have my share of this “asset’’ for one plate of ham-and-eggs with the trimmings and once on the corn-beef-and-cabbage—one days grubstake. Riding under the shade of 89 Years Chamberlain’s umbrella in Young. the Vancouver May Day parade, I heard many com- ments from the sidewalk. Although there was no inscription on the storm-wrecked bumbershoot, tattered and ragged after its encounter with the Wazi foreign policy of lying promises and broken pledges, everybody on the sidewalk knew whose gamp it was. Vancouver people know their um- brellas! This, however, was not what pleased me most about Ol’ Bill’s turnout. In our car we carried the oldest participant in the demonstration—not Ol’ Bill, but a physically wornout old worker of 89 years who was young enough in mind to want to miss nothing of the May Day celebrations and whom we were proud to have with us. a> The screaming indignation of A Subsidized Sir Edward Beatty recorded Railroad. in the press last week about unfair government subsidized railroad competition should be noted. If he is talking about the CPR, it certainly is a government subsidized outfit They had $140,000,000 up until 1935 and are now getting ocean liners built at the public expense for the Pacific runs. Subsidized, all right!