7

test of Its Kind in the World

By AL PARKIN
TOWERING spruce tree,
over 100 feet high and
S9sn thick on the stump,
®Says-a little, groans within
Sibres, comes down in a
ssping arc -to hit the
find with a crash that
®ils the dust and chunks

Nig.
esleek, lithe plane, distinguish-
fy its long-nosed fuselage and
prslunge engine nacelles,
eps in from the skies over
iipe to unload bombs that ex-
= with shattering roars on
“tareet for today.”
“tween the two scenes lies a
th
‘ithout that great Sitka
Ece, felled and bucked into
@ths by Queen Charlotte
Raids loggers, A-framed into
= water and made up into giant,
[going Davis rafts, then towed
nss the stormy Hecate Straits
south through the Inside
age to the sawmills at Van-
‘er, the famous “Mosquito”
B® ber, now being produced by
hundreds in Canada, would
be the successful, all-purpose
piter-bomber it is today.
for the “Mosquito,” designed
a built by DeHayvilland Air-
)iit of Canada, is made pos-
jie because one of the woods
-ed in its construction is the
icplane spruce from the Queen
‘iarlottes, the lightest yet
aghest wood known to man
at can be produced in com-
‘sreial quantities. And the
ory behind) the “Mosquito”
a stery of log production on
“par with any of the other
artime production feats that
€ made headlines in Can-
and United States.
@
WO years ago when the de
mand for airplane spruce be-
2 to really be felt, logging on
: Queen Charlottes was under-
Mg a crisis. Men were begin-
ig to leave their jobs for work
the big centers, fed up with
2 isolation, disgusted with a
vernment labor policy which
i0red their union, refused to
al with grievances, allowed the
erators to expel their elected
ion officers from the camps.
Et was at this point that the
<ernational Woodworkers of
nerica showed its capacity for
idership. Officials of the union.
ght have taken the stand that
© workers’ grievances, princi-

ily that of union recognition,
ould be guaranteed settlement
fore the manpower problem
uld be tackled. Instead, while
/atinuing to press for collective =

The loggers of the
Queen Charlottes
have done a job in
the production . of
vital airplane
spruce. They de-
serve recognition
and a new labor
deal from the gov-
ernment.

bargaining as the basic solution
to conditions in the camps, the
IWA declared that ‘production
for victory over fascism must
come first.”

It fought for and won a num-
ber of concessions, including bet-
ter recreation facilities and
bunkhouse accommodation, bet-
ter mail and hospital services.
And within a few months the
manpower situation on the
Islands began to show an im-
provement to the point where,
in 1943, with the Douglas fir sec-
tion of the industry showing a
sharp decline in production for
the first three months of the
year, Sitka spruce output con-
tinued to hit new heights.

That's why today, when log-
gers up on those northwest
island outposts of Canada read
of new raids by the “Mosquitos”
on a Nazi military target, they
feel a proprietary pride in the
accomplishment. For the “MMos-
quito” is in every sense as much
their own as it is the aircraft
workers in Toronto and Van-
couver who build it, or the
RCAF pilots who fly it.

T COULD be argued that there

is nothing especially heroic
about men staying on their jobs
—that they worked there before
the war and could reasonably
be expected to remain working
now. Such an argument over-
looks an important fact — that
before the war men working on
the Queen Charlottes, as in most
camps elsewhere, quit their job
whenever the fancy struck them,
or because of the traditionally
transient nature of their work-
ing lives, or because of the mon-
otony and isolation, or because
they wanted a vest from the
steady rain in winter and the
sumer heat and bullet-like flies
that can cut chunks from any
exposed part of a man’s anatomy.
More often than not, too, they
quit because wages, working con-
ditions and accommodation were
not of the best, and because since

‘5 world-famous De Havilland Mosqtito fighter-bomber, being produced in Canada of
‘idian materials. The only all-wood constructed plane in active service, it is establish-
Ssombat records that-rank it tops in the air forces of both sides.

they’ve Done A Job?

1934, when they first began to
organize their union, they have
been exposed to bitter opposition
from the operators.

To stay on the job, then, in
a country hundreds of miles
away from any kind of normal
social life, where even radios
are often of little use, and in
the face of stubborn opposition
from most of the operators to
tHfeir organization, required
more than the ordinary amount
of patriotism as well as de-
yotion to their union.

a @
EANTIME new projects are
under way on the Islands

to increase the flow of logs south-
ward. In addition to the estab-
lished operations, such as Mor-
gan’s, Kelley’s, Allison’s, Pacific
Mills, a new crown company
known as Aero Timber Products
has been formed, with hundreds
of men employed and hundreds
more on the way. Headquarters
camp of Aero Timber, managed
by R. J. Fillberg of Vancouver
Island’s Comox Logging and Rail-
way Company, is at Justkatla, a
modern establishment with rec-
reation hall, its own sawmill and
machine shops, and a hospital.

All this so that the “Mosquito”
—so termed by its designers be-
cause of its rigid-wing design
which permits the plane to per-
form hair-raising mosquito-like
manoeuvers that would tear other
eraft of its type to pieces in the
air—can be turned out by the
hundreds and thousands for duty
in the coming offensive.

Like its insect namesake, this
DeHavilland fighter-bomber packs
Inany a sting. In addition to four
.203 machine guns and four 20
mm. cannons mounted in its pro-
truding snout, the ‘“Mosquito’’
earries a ton of bombs, and many
a German target has felt the effect
of all three of its weapons. The
fastest of any fighter-bomber
now built, its two Rolls-Royce
engines drive it at 400 miles an
hour (diving speed close to 500).
it can fly non-stop from England
to the Soviet Union and return
in one day, and fully loaded can
streak along the route from Eng-
land to Tunisia in one jump.

There should be no wunder-
rating of the achievements on
the Queen Charlottes, achieve-
ments that are putting more

“Mosquitos” in the air every

week. Canadian workers have

been establishing increasingly
high standards for devotion to
duty in wartime, in most cases
in the face of extreme provoca-
tion, Let no man say that the

QCI loggers and their union
have not measured up to those
standards.

The’ Average Family”
-A Statistical Dream

FRONG the innovations wrought by this war, perhaps the
most amazing is the brainchild of the price-fixing and
cost-of-living index people in Ottawa, a creation they like to
call the “Average Family,” on whose supposed living costs
the cost-of-living index and bonus are based.
The origin of this mythical group is shrowded in mystery.

There are rumors that it is noth-
ing but the figment in the imag-
ination of a goverment official,
born the morning after an* even-
ing on the expenses that went
with his dollar-a-year. Whatever
its background, however, its way
of life is of the highest import-
tance to every Canadian worker,
because on its living habits he
must base his own, according to
the Dominion- Bureau of Sta-
tistics. Therefore, a brief de
seription of this Average Family
is presented below, as gleaned
from a remarkable document
known as “Table Two, Weights
Used to Calculate Dominion Cost-
of-Living iIndex’’ in the Labor
Gazette.

.

See Average Family consists

of from four to six people,
all rather peculiar. Mrs, Average,
the government would have us
believe, buys only one _ print
house dress a year. She buys
two pairs of woollen stockings,
but doesn’t even hint to Mr. Ay-
erage about a party dress, man-
aging to make her own from the
three yards of rayon the govern-
ment allows her — which leads

By CYNTHIA
CARTER

us to picture her a spry size
thirteen.

Mrs. Average is a remarkable
woman. Besides dressing on
practically nothing at all, she
has trained her family to re
strict their eating habits to the
point that they can make two
ounces of canned peaches last
a whole week.

Wo less amazing is Mr. Aver-
age. We picture him as the artist
type; he must be, because our
Statisticians tell us he gets along
on five hair cuts a year. He’s
easy on clothes, too, getting by
on one work shirt, two pair of
work shoes, one pair of overalls,
and eight-tenths of a suit. The
Averages are sun worshippers.
The Average children, in fact, go
around completely nude — at
least, the government ignores the
question of shoes or clothing for

children altogether. But their
rugged way of life pays divi-
dends, apparently, because Mrs.

Average buys only one bottle of
codliver oil a year for the entire
family.

Cut off from things as they
are (the Averages have no
radio) they have little use for
things like cutlery or table
cloths. They eat from oilcloths
(four-tenths yards per year)
and manage nicely by buying
two tumblers yearly and one
tenth sets of dishes,

@

Vee never known a family

like the Averages? Frankly,
neither have we. The families
we know are more like those
of a shipyard worker whose wife
came into our offices this weelk:.
In her hand she carried a nutri-
tion chart issued by the fovern-
ment.

“Maybe you ean make sense out
of this,” she said. “They try to
tell us the cost of living hasn't
risen. The government also tells

us to eat the foods on this chart.
But look at them: half of them
aren't even considered in the
cost-of-living index, and the ones
on which the prices have gone up
most are the ones which are left
out. It looks phoney to me!”
This is absolutely correct. In
this chart the most important
foods are not listed in the in-
dex. Neither are their prices
frozen. Green vegetables, yel-
low vegetables, domestic fruits—
ask any housewife. The govern-
ment may be able to ignore them,
but she sees their prices sky-

rocketing.
Is it true, then, that the cost-
of-living statisticians picked

only those articles for indexing
on which prices are relatively
stable? In the Labor Gazette
for April af much is admitted,
in an article which states:
“Some of the items chosen
form a comparatively small por-
tion of the average budget, but
are useful in measuring cloth-
ing price trends because of
their standard construction.”
The government, in other
words, is pleading ignorance. The
listing of foods and goods that
are seasonal, they protest, would
be too difficult because of “chang-
ing qualities.” Well, outside of
the obvious fact that we’re pay-
ing-our government to do a job
for us, and to do it well even if
it is a little bit complicated, it
might be pointed out that both
wood and sawdust are also left
off the list, both of which are
sold in uniform measures of rea-=
sonably even quality.
@
HERE is, therefore, every.
justification for the cry that
the index is phoney. It is ... def-
initely! And since so much de-

pends on its accuracy, this is a>

serious accusation. And there is
even 2 more serious aspect to the
queston, and that is whether
or not the index is intentionally
phoney.

Of course, it may have come
about like this. Perhaps the sta-
tisticians went about it system-
atically, though stupidly, and in-
terviewed a number of people.
Maybe they took their sta-
tistics on winter clothing from
BC, and went to the Northwest
Territories for a line on cotton
nightgowns. They caught a ship-
yard worker on his day off and
counted the number of work
shirts he was wearing, and asked
a vegatarian how many pounds
of sirloin he could get along on
for the next seven days. From
Nova Scotia they gathered fig-
ures on the number of BC apples
eaten per day; they asked a
prairie farmer how many fresh
Salmon he consumed; they caught
a government office boy, counted
his feet, and figured how many
pairs of work shoes a BC logger
uses. Then they put them alto-
gether, maybe, and they spelt the
cost-of-living bonus.

e

HAT may have been how it

happened. But BC workers
don’t think so. They think it is
a deliberate attempt to avoid
paying a proper cost-of-ilving
bonus. They believe it is a cooly
manufactured excuse against
raising wages to decent stana-
ards. And because they believe
this, they are protesting strongly
to the government about it,
through their trade unions and
central labor councils.