fic Advocate:

ke OF Bill long,
ds, to finish off
r, his ten best
heir authors as
-xact, nine books.
No. 10, won a re-
an see, is a Strict-
ntleman, as I am.
eome out of a
we stay strictly
cal] market. Bill
* reading is more
p poetic reading.
-are always talk-
silat their hearts
aisper, or some-
-he human heart
jle. Bill and I
= a pump.
fe, listen to a
#2ntist. First, let’s
-7 the sentimental
if he were alive
: Gray, browsing
epitaphs in a

Zi-urn or ani-
‘st

mansion call
ng breath?
voice provoke
; dust :
=soothe the dull

qof death?”

what a modern
tey, can do, turn-
<2ope on the same

‘fter the moment
‘ventricles of the
fain set in move-
irtificial stimulus
; a question to
st impose a de-
> 7?
‘disputing it. It’s
3h for science!
y if the nine of
»ooks Bill pulver-
she other oppres-
inscientific piffle,
‘the vastly multi-
ts and  transla-
inned by law and
government
my library and
ty, I could pay off
ae tax tomorrow.
z to say about the
rent for Shakes-
matter of fact, I
him yet. I haven’t
Yr nine, either. But
md names sound
th. Nobody should

of it all is worse,
mn I recall at odd
an like the late
reiser, U.S. Com-
ty member and
the Soviet Union,
139, that all those
nkers “are men of
'y moved like the
he phenomena of
same book: ‘Yet
with all this, in
of science, is con-
on-changing refer-
ive thought or de-
increased nervous
to already long-
4, as though man,
of this non-under-
liverse of matter-
-time, could indi-
Mentally be crea-
s that from which
uld im no. wise be.”
wing read about

2,400,000 words of Thoreau,”
he finds him one of the most
illuminative of writers. Enough!
Another in the dustbin! Thoreau
was anything but scientific.

There’s even a Johns Hopkins
professor who advised (1987)
graduate students in biology to
read Aristotle’s Historia Ani-
malium. He even referred to it
as a biological classic. Of
course, he’s just a professor
who directs part of the uni-
versity in biological research,
and his eccentric and cloistered
word doesn’t mean a thing. He
probably read from a printed
syllabus and it was all a typo-
graphical error. Instead of
Historia Animalium, perhaps
the title intended was this, com-
posed by some nameless author
who never got any offers from
Hollywood: “Some Diseases
and Cures of the Sweet Potato
As Seen Through Magnifying
Glasses, With Observations and
Inquiries Thereupon.” Now
there’s a book with a title
that’s scientific and irresistible.
But the professor, no. doubt
absent-minded as well, had to
drag out, of course, old and
obsolete Aristotle.

I don’t know what Bill and I

are going to do about it. Still,
there’s hope today. Science has
split the U-235 atom or, to be
scientifically -accurate, its nu-
cleus. More than that, although
I couldn’t explain it to a lay-
man, atom-splitting involves
the annihilation of small par-
ticles. Very small, of course.
About half a million on a pin-
point. Maybe it’s a pin head.
But it’s matter absolutely anni-
hilated. Absolutely gone. No-
body knows where to. Nobody
cares. And the old law of con-
servation is no more. I’d say
the possibilities are infinite.

FRED STABLES.

Vancouver, B.C.

Unemployment

A serious unemployment situ-
ation is facing British Colum-
bia; where two of her greatest
industries, aircraft and _ ship-
building and their subsidiaries
have ben completely wiped out
or reduced to near the 1939
level. These industries employ-
ed thousands of men and wo-
men workers, who are now un-
employed. Coupled with these
are thousands of service men
and women returning to civil
life with no prospect. of obtain-
ing suitable employment.

The governments and the op-
erators of industry are at pres-
ent making no reasonable ef-
fort to alleviate this alarming
state of affairs. Instead, they
are again dragging out the old
time-worn bag of excuses re-
sorted to for the last twenty-
five years. Are the responsible
authorities naive, plain stupid,
or hell-bent in dragging the
country along the same path
as the Nazi monsters did in
Europe? If so they are due for
a rude awakening.

The Canadian workers, in-
cluding all those workers, men
and women ,who fought on
foreign fields .to exterminate
the Fascist monsters, have
learned and experienced much
from World Wars I and II and
the years intervening. The
working class of today realize

CIFIC. ADVOCATE—PAGE 5

that their standard of living
cannot be raised or even main-
tained at its present level, un-
less they have organizations to
protect them. These oragniza-
tions are the trade unions.

The workers in the trade
unions, have in their all-out war
efort unstintingly and have
sacrificed much along with
their fellow-workers in the arm-
ed forces, to make this world a
fit place for people to live in
and have the right to work in.
The trade Union Movement of
today and that of twenty-five
years ago cannot be compared.

In contradiction to what
some people think, and per-
haps what they would like. that
trade unions are only organiz-
ations for workers when they
are employed and ean pay their
dues, the trade unions belong to
the workers and must fight to
retain their right to work at
gainful employment. Their dues
must be arranged to fit the
miserable pittance of unem-
ployed insurance.

Mosher and Bengough, the
presidents of the two great
trade union congresses. CCL
and AFL, and all trade union
leaders have a grave respons-
ibility to the workers in leading
the fight for jobs and maintain-
ing wage standards.

The assistance of political

_parties will be greatly appre-

ciated by the workers in their
struggle for jobs and decent
living standards;. but any poli-
tical party that endeavors to
set up unemployed organiza-
tions; such as the CCF proposes
is merely taking advantage of
the situation for their own ag-
grandisement, and using the un-
employed as a political football.
Such actions as these will only
serve to isolate the employed
from the unemployed, and do
serious harm to the trade union
movement, and the working
elass as a whole. Political
parties cannot take the place of
the trade unions.

GEORGE BLACK
(Unemployed organizer in the
80’s and a leader in the Regina
Trek).

Shipbuilding
Editor, Pacific Advocate:
Recent statements by spokes-
men for the British shipbuild-
ing companies indicate that
it is their desire that the great
shipbuilding plants built up in
Canada during the war should
be allowed to go to rack and
run while all shipbuilding con-
tracts are given to England.
Such statements: make up in
stupidity what jtthey lack fin
realism. With this nation de-
veloping a merchant marine of
its own, and with the need of
ships to carry the. world’s
goods, and with Canada’s ex-
treme unemployment problem
such statements can be termed
nothing else but stupid.
Canadians should be prepar-
ed to demand that, Canada’s
shipyards be kept going at full
capacity, rather than listen to
crackpots asking that the
people of Canada be left in
poverty so that British work-
ers can be exploited because of
relatively lower wage condi-
tions.

Otto Linkmeyer

Questions

f
trategy

, by Leslie Morris

UST as the British industrialists did when the trade unions a century
ago asked for the 10-hour day, their Canadian counterparts are
drumming up a press campaign against wage increases. The Financial
Post this. week strongly editorializes against permitting increases in
basic wage rates and says that wages occupy too large a part of pro-
duction costs now and cannot be allowed to go any higher.

In entering into wage negotiations and preparing their wage de-
mands, unions would do well to bear in mind that wage increases can
be paid by ;Canadian industry without increasing prices. It can be done
by the simple process of reducing profits. The ordinary employer looks
upon profits as part. of the normal cost of his product, and when
he speaks about increasing prices following a wage increase, he is’
merely saying that his profits must remain intact.

The ideal situation would be to increase wages and prohibit the
increase of prices, thereby cutting into the profit slice of the employers.
But it is idle to expect the present government to do that. On the
contrary, it is now lifting price controls to permit “free competition,”
and is reported to be making a concession to labor by permitting an
increase of 5 percent in wages without permission having to be pro-
cured from the War Labor Boards. ;

You can bet your bottom dollar that if the government permits
any such a thing to happen to wages it will more than take care of
that by permitting increases. It is a safe bet that if wages are to
be allowed to go up at least ten and wage increases would be wiped out.

S issue will have to be fought out. At last the main CIO leaders

in Canada, under pressure from their membership, are seeing the

point and have retreated from the position that the workers should

be content to wait until the next federal election te settle these matters
by legiglation. Economic conditions will not wait upon any party.

It is obvious that the Canadian government has a ready-made de-
vice at hand which enables employers to rob the unions of their ability _
to use timing and. strategy in fighting for wages. That device is the ©
present wages and conciliation machinery provided for in the Wartime
Labor Relations order and in PC 1008, the wage-freezing order. Both
orders prevent direct and definitive negotiations with the bosses and
tie the union down to expensive, will-destroying and infinitely prolonged -
procedures. What President Truman is desperately trying to perfect—
a fact-finding, cooling-off technique designed to frustrate and weaken
the unions—is already present in Ottawa. The_unions of Canada must
realize that the end of the war has changed the picture in industry.
For the unions to submit any longer to the ruinous and never-ending
procedure set down in wartime labor orders would be to risk their
very existence as organizations designed to protect the daily economic
interests of their members.

That they are not prepared so todo already is seen in a number
of key industries Where wage demands are being formulated and_ the
workers mobilized for a fight. Steel, rubber, automobile and agricul-
tural implements, metal mining and smelting—in fact, most of the
key industries of Canada are witnessing developing wage movements.

THe CIO conference in Toronto the other day correctly defined wages
“as the very centre of union strategy. That had to be done, otherwise the
wage movements would have been threatened with dissolution because
of a plethora of demands and a poverty of co-ordinated strategy. The
next step is to work for strengthening the local unions and shop plant
organizations which now are showing the effects of the lag in the
wage struggle. And the big problem is the fullest co-ordination of
policy, strategy and leadership, between the various unions and cer-.
tainly between the CCL and the Trades and Labor Congress and the
railroad unions outside the congresses.

Canadian industry can afford to pay a living wage. It is per-
haps the most highly productive industry per worker employed in
the entire world. It is new; it is mainly electrified; it is possessed
of modern machinery and of a highly skilled and disciplined working
force.

Jt ean pay a living wage—increasing wage rates at least by two
dollars a day—without’ raising prices and using inflation to wipe out
wage gains. The Canadian people have come to see this point more
clearly. Consequently, it is good trade union strategy at this moment
to go all out for the increases and the 40-hour week, getting the
support of the veterans, the farmers and public opinion in this
fight; and it is a part of the same fight to combat fiercely the plan
of monopoly to wipe out wage increases and to protect their profits
by abolishing all price controls.

For production, social welfare, housing, veterans’ re-establishment
and the independent movement of the Canadian working class, all
depend on the speed and unity of the wage movement which is now
here. Every Socialist trade union member owes it as a duty to his
class and to his beliefs to be a spark plug in his shop and local union
so as to effectively power this great showdown between Canadian

monopoly and the people.

Old Bill is at present on Vancouver Island conducting
educational classes in the principles of Marxism-Leninism,
and his column was unfortunately delayed in the mail.

Short Jabs will continue as a feature in the Pacific
Tribune.

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 1946