MAN works at his mac

ae of work to do. More work than th
nought continually recurs:

Volume 1, No..4, November 25, 1944

ostwar Employment |

A bold Dominion-Provincial-Municipal' program of large scale

construction to provide employment and maintain production at
as high or even a higher level than in the postwar period.

By H. J. Pritchett

hine; he is w

orking harder than ever before. There is plenty
4 er2 are people to do it.
When the war is over I may. be out of a job just as I was

But as’ he works the

iy dozen years ago in the days of the hungry thirties.’ The thought turns over in his

Fhe boys in our armed
=-ces, bending all effort te
jstroy fascism, are deter-
ined that with the corpse of
is world enemy, they will
.gio bury the menace of un-
; ipleyment. The gnawing
@ir of insecurity and pover-
™ must have no place in
ar postwar life.

'verywhere men and women
apprehensive of the lean
poueane days after the war.
ere does this fear conie
#n? Can there be great un-
>loyment after the war? If
fan. be avoided, what must we
[to avoid it? Lf we do not
Hid it, what are the dangers
us and to mankind? These

¥

if

Ewered soberly and with
cs, so that each man may
Bw what he can do and each
nan can know what she can
to banish this fear and help
d confidence in our future.

resident Roosevelt s aid,
eedom from want is eter-
yy linked with freedom from
©. We cannot have peace
hout economic security. A
Id haunted by hunger and
} mployment will generate in-
fiational rivalry that will
ivitably lead to war.”

7} Ve must plan now to make
tain that after the war there

be jobs at fair wages for
zyone whe can and wants to
+k. If we fail to solve this
blem we will fail to win the
ce. Then we will only be
rking time until the next
*, which will be far more de-
tating in character.

{Ef war is teaching us many
B® essons. One great lesson we
1 all learn from the war is
S: We need neyer again have
femployment in our land.
mada, this great country of
rs, with one hundred and
m hty-eighth of the world’s
#ipulation covering one four-
Bnth of the world’s area, has
liome in the period of this
hx the fourth largest producer
fthe United Nations’ war sup-
Fes and the third world trad-
= nation.

The fact is that Canada has
"zed up to her responsibilities
| an important unit in the
orld family of United Nations,
fh a peak production of 177
feeent above the peak estab-
phed in the year 1927. This
prtling fact is more signifi-
mut when we take into ac-
hunt that 35 percent of the
wer of our manpower rang-

the questions which must be ~

ing from the age of 18 to 45,
are serving in our armed forces
and that one woman in every.
66, from the age of 18 to 45,
iS serving in our War Auxiliary
Service, completely removed
from production.

In spite of this sreat drain on
our manpower, Canadian pro-
duction exceeds previous re-
cords. The great need of war
brought full employment al-
most overnight, but this is only
half the story.

The war has taughts us that
we can perform a ‘‘miracle of
production.” The war has

taught us that when we are.

determined to fill a great na-
tional need, we ean have full
employment. The war has
taught us that we could raise
our output in goods and serv-
ices to 8.7 billion dollars in the
year 1948, over half of which
was used for the war. If we
could perform that “miracle of
production” to win the war, we
can perform the same “miracle
of production” to win the peace.

| ERS are people who predict
that soon after the war we
will sink back to conditions of
1939. If we once start sinking
we will sink further to the con-
ditions of 1933. And then even
lower.
predict that soon after the end
of the war we shall have a long
period of unemployment.
This philosophy guides the
policy of the CCF leadership,
whose main solution to the
problem of all-out wax and the
problems of the postwar is
“Socialism Now.” They center
their main attack on Teheran
and belittle the powerful deme-
cratic coalition of anti-fascist

forces. In the words of Angus
McInnis, M.P., speaking in
Penticton: “We don’t glorify

Stalin and Teheran and all that
bunk,” in spite of the fact that
a similar powerful coalition of
democratic forees has been
forged in the interests of the
people of France, Italy, Ruma-
nia, Chechoslovakia, Belgium
and Yugoslavia, where commu-
nists and socialists have joined
with all sections of the people
in a broad coalition government
of liberation and reconstruc-
tion.

These crepe hangers say, that
reconversion of industry will
force millions of men and wo-
men into idleness. Others fear
the loss of national markets
established by war in the pro-
duction of war materials will,
the cessation of hostilities,

at

These prophets of doom

id, over and over as does the machine and it gives him no peace.

create millions of unemployed,
half of the work done will then
be unnessary, women will go
back to the kitchen, and peo-
ple will be searching for jobs.

Are these. claims true or are
they false? Let us take the
first claim. Will recenyversion
from war to peace be so diffi-
cult that it must cause great
unemployment ? The answer
is clearly “noe.” There is no rea-
son why conversion to peace-
time production should not be
as rapid and efficient as the
creation of our excellent war-
time industries. It is true that
there are hundreds of small
plants equipped to produce only
war materials. After the war
they will have to be dissolved,
but for each small plant that
will have to dissolve there will
spring up two plants ready to
produce the hundreds of items
not now in production, but for
which there is tremendous de-
mand. These plants will:require
as many and more workers
than the number released by
the small plants which will
have to go out of existence at-
ter the war. z

Seme of the huge plants,
such as steel, can continue
production without interrup-
tion and eyen the huge piants
that have to be reconverted,
can be reconverted speedily,
provided some plans are
Inade now, and provided their
owners are asured that they
will have ready customers for
all the peacetime goods they
will produce. ;

After the war seme women
now working will want to re-
turn to their homes. Many
young people will return to
their classrooms. Workers now
employed in war industry at
long hours will seek the estab-
lishment of a shorter work
week with no reduction of pay.

If reconversion is planned
now and planned wisely, the re-
conversion from wartime to
peacetime production need not
bring unemployment after the
war. There need be no depres-
sion, no panic.

WAJHAT about the second rea-

son for expecting unemploy-
ment, namely the loss of Eur-
ope as a customer for war ma-
terials? When we entered the
war, Canada did not have the
money to spend. The govern-
ment was in debt, yet within a
short time our industries were
going full blast, working for
the war effort. Thousands were
employed in the aeroplane in-

War industry has trained a greater number of skilled

men and mechanics than we ever had before:

dustry, producing more planes
in one week than we did before
in a year. Thousands of work-
ers in the shipbuilding mdustry
—and so on:down the line.

What created these jobs —a
pressing néed for ships, tanks;
guns, bullets and many thous-
ands of other items in great
quantities to beat the Axis. A
united people determined to
win the war against the Axis
and a
equally determined. The estab-
lishment of proper controls to
enable management and labor
together to keep things rolling
and protection of workers and
resources with rationing, allo-
cation of materials and price
control.

These things made it possible
for us to nearly double our pro-
duction and create full employ-
ment.

What will our needs be? We
shall need more and better food
and if we are to produce enough
food to give every citizen an
edequate diet we must guaran-
tee our farmers an adequate in-
come. We shall weed more and
better houses. About one-half
of the dwellings of Canada are
in need of major repairs, are
without bath or electricity. We
have a terrific slum problem
and will require many thous-
ands of new homes to meet the
national housing crisis. We
shall need more clothing, we

government leadership -

shall need more and better
schools. Our teachers, in many
of the schools of the country,
are miserably paid. As a re-
sult, the education of our chil-
dren suffers. We will need bet-
ter paid teachers and more of
them.

We shall need more and long-
er vacations. If all who are
willing to work are working
they will need proper hours and
recreation periods. We will
need more -tennis courts and
more baseball diamonds. We
shall need more and more and
more of everything. Our needs
and the needs of every nation
for our products will open up
a new frontier for a better life.

We have learned a great deal
about how to increase the pro-
ductivity of our land and to
grow the food we need.

Ves: we have the ability to

produce all the things -we
need. The 65 dollar question is
where is the money coming
from? We must find markets
for these goods in peace in the
countries abroad where the peo-
ple will need the goods we pro-
duce. Through long term gov-
ernment loans at low rates we
ean help them meet their needs.
These postwar arrangements
will assure international friend-
ship. :
—Continued on Page 14