14 ‘It’s Cooking Fine’ Union Bookstore By ELIZABETH HAWES po™ publisher - interested in in Detroit. is about the price o know why prices are so high But they buy. need. Such orders are usually for. between $300 of books. rent book the plants He worked in the University North Carolina, social science analyst department of agriculture. Two years ago he came to the UAW as assistant research director. Last year he was made education director of the international. Levitt is anxious to answer the union membership’s kick on for the United States the membership through the efforts of the 800 and more locals, a UAW hook elub Should flourish from its inception. Since, like the book- shop, it would be non-profit making, Levitt figures he may very possibly be able to stop union members from kicking about the price of at least 12 club books a year. © Widely known as the author of Why Women Cry and Fashion Is Spinach, Elizabeth Hawes is now doing special work with the international education depart- ment of the United Auto Workers (CIO). This article first appeared in Publishers? Weekly. : Bookshop It opened in January this year and its cooking The shop, located on one of Detroit’s main drags but not in the center of town, is big. Fifty people can browse around lo) B a S) B jo} B is a ip ic) Sy) B Q — ot io) be} iy eS & 5 & ie Fh io) = Ee jo}; B v) 5 aa) oy ) iS) = If le) Fo i) =) E= the Canadian political scene, and a host of other subjects which the average bookseller shoves on his back shelves or doesn’t carry at all. What's more, they know that from Bill Bennett they can get accurate advice on which books to buy. at a time when the national best seller was the hoax Out of the Night, custom- ers of The People’s Bookstore were reading reliable, informa- tive works such as Palme Dutt’s India Today, and The Face of the Enemy, an expose of fascist forces. in Canada by Sam Carr. When, _ polls, the public mind could con- centrate on nothing heavier than serious subjects of Earl Browd- er’s Production for Victory and Stanley Ryerson’s Canada. the merchandise on his shelves, and takes a great trends shown. by his sales figures and order forms. works on basic problems.” declares. “The all-time best sel-_ jer, of course, is the Communist: Manifesto. The works of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin, in the inexpensive tions, the present time, with the great possibilities opened by the de- Even on moving day the customers were on hand ! (left) and his assistant Nellie McKean had their shelves the first rush of business began. In the EBooks for the By CYNTHIA CARTER ee customers who patronize the People’s Bookstore, gquenters in the city. A broad statement? Maybe. But based on fact.. Because the customers who come in ian Northwest. This interest in the north extends to the prob- lems of Canadian-Soviet cooper- ation in the postwar world, and books on the USSR, particularly those dealing with the Soviet worth, are popular.” He will tell you about his new bookstore, too. Now that the store has been moved down to Street level, with a large show window in the front, a main room big enough to display the wide stock and still leave customers elbow-room, an office at the back, and upstairs, a stock ‘reom where supplies will be kept, he expects the business to Srow steadily as it has srown in the past few months. : “Therefore, it is not odd that Readers Digest -acecording to national e@ PECPLE often tell Bill Ben- William Saroyan’s sacharrine- nett they are too busy to sweet The Human Comedy, Bill read. Bennett's customers were con- “There are too Many people eerning themselves with the how who Say they haven't enough time to read,” he believes. “Housewives Say they work too hard at home. Trade unionists Say they are busy with too many meetings, students tel] them- selves their ordinary studies are sufficient. The truth is that if anybody is too busy to read he is too busy to do a £0o0d job at Whatever he attempts? Among steadiest Customers at the store is an elderly woman who on each visit buys 10 copies of the Constitution of the Soviet Union. “Tm always getting into argu- ments,” she smiles, g to have some evidence to back French Bul Bennett likes to talk about interest in basic he “Mest readers prefer edi- At paper-covered are steady favorites. me up.” velopment of the Canadian north, A logger from the Queen y the general best seller is Hal Charlotte Islands, on his few 7 Griffin’s Alaska and the Canad- trips to Vancouver, stocks up Almost before Bill Benne} stock arranged on the shaciou foreground, looking over pamphlet on the center table, is John McPeake, chairman of 5000 Homes Now Commitie¢ which has just moved to new qu ters_at 420 West Pender Street, have the highest I.Q. of any group of bookstore { “and I like ~ convinced it will have the Peopk to buy books from Bill Bennett aren’t the Gr , Book of the Month Club type-of readers, Instead, they come to Bill beeai. i are the finest books on economics, philosophy, world politi with literature for the rest. | the boys in the bunkhouse — indian from the Interior dr: in for a bundle of pamphi every so often. Two high sch Sitls come in every other we after school and browse arow always taking something w them. Si ; A Chinese shipyard wort | reads everything he can lay =| hands on about his native Jar | A railroad porter, running frc | Vancouver to Toronto, drops | between trips to pick up a nt} Pamphiet: he’s Spending the Je hours on the Cross-country £ reading the works of Marx ai} Engels. = Besides Serving hundreds People who come into the Stor | the People’s Bookstore does jarge mail order business. Rea ing materials for men in logeir cemps, in canneries along) fi coast, on fishing boats in tt coastal waters goes out wii every mail. And with the opel; ing of new trade union librari¢ the bookstore has a new an important job to do supplyin # organized labor with the type ¢ literature so vital to its exis tence, yet unavailable elsewhe - That is why the People’s Book } store is important to the pre Bressive minded people of thi Province — because it offers + Steady supply of reading mater jal not to be found in othe). Stores, material of vital import } ance to the thinking man -anlg woman today. And because et fills this need Bill Bennett i @ Srow a