et a ee eee ee

| tion to carry forward

Sixty years of Vancouver labor

dictment of Vancouver’s history.
which showS just how this
wealth was obtained and con-
cerned with breakine the org-
-anized strength of the men and
women whose labor created this
wealth, their absorbing interest
is, to prevent labor from exer.
cising, a strong influence in the
eity’s life. %

fhe, working people of Wan-
couver have every right to be
proud of their militant, oftimes
turbulent, labor record. The
men who helped to.fall the big
timbers along the shores of
Burrard Inlet, who cleared the

land upon which tall office
buildings now stand, who fought
disease and toiled like slaves
under intolerable conditions to
lay ~the railroads, were adven-
turers and rebels, men who

came from the far corners of
the earth seeking a new free-

dom in a2 new country, men who ~

would not lie down willingly to
the poverty and oppression of
the older lands.

They created the wealth that
the “first families” usurped, hew-
ing it out cf the forests, gsarn-
ering: it from the waters, tear-
ing it from the bowels of the
earth. They had no part in
the crooked, “family compact”
politics which put millions into
the pockets of those who ob-
tained the land grants, the coal

grants, the. timber franchises.
Their return was only a low
wage which these latter day

robber barons sought to bring:
even lower by importing cheap
jabor to divide them and pre-
vent them from organizing. But
organize they. did, -

They organized during the
‘eighties, the hard years of Van-
couver's conception and birth
as a city, into the Knights of
Labor and in the “nineties into
the American Federation of La-
bor’s craft unions and by the
turn of the century the fishermen.
along the Fraser River and the
railroads were organizing along
industrial lines. They fought for
the 9-hour day and then for the 8-
hour day, aS now they fight for
the 40-hour week. These were
the years during~ which fighting
traditions of British Columbia’s
labor movement, always with
its heart in YWamncouver, were
established for a later genera-
into the
maturing struggle for socialism. -

Behind the recent victory won

| by the International Woodwork-

_

:

a a at aie

have gone
| history,

' schools.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — PAGE 5

ers of America lies half a cen-
tury of bitter struggle to org-
anize the sawmills along the
river and the inlet and the log-

' ging camps that feed them. Of

these earlier organizers, a few
down into labor’s
a history that lives in
the memories of the working
people and is not to be found
in the textbooks of Vancouver's
Most have passed into
cbhlivion with the generation of
workers they organized into the
Tndustrial Workers of the
World and the One Big Union.
But all have bequeathed to the
present their splendid heritage
of struggle.

The United Fishermen and Al-

‘lied Workers’ Union had its be-
sinnings along the Fraser Riv-

er nearly 50 years ago, when
8000 Indian and white fishesmen

united under the slogan of

“Twenty-five cents or nce fish!”
and virtually the entire working

Population turned out to sup-

Port their strike demonstra-
(tions,

How firmly even then the
union tradition was implanted

in the lives of young Vancou-
ver’s people was evidenced by

the statement Ww. J. Bowser,

dater to become premier of Brit-

ish Columbia, made at the trial

of Frank Rogers, one of the
= pee AE,

fishérmen’s Strike leaders:

se

--- £he Gity of Vancouver,
from which the jury panel is
drawn, is thoroughly union, and
the union juries must neces-
Sarily be very much affected by
the sympathies of the prisoners
who are. union fishermen,” he
wrote.

The same Frank Rogers, a
fightins trade unionist and a so-
Sialist, in 1903 was fatally shot
by a seab on 3 Picket line in
Vaneouver during the tri-union
Strike of the United Brotherhood
of Railroad Employees, the Van-
couver Steyedore’s Union, and
the Western Federation of Min-
ers, the strike which Prime Min-
ister Mackenzie King as deputy.
minister of labor eharged was
a conspiracy to bring all GPR

employees into the United Bro-
therhood of Railroad Employ-
ees, and all miners into the

Western Bederation of Miners.

This readiness to use violence
against labor’s struggles for its
just demands, this attitude of
regarding the organization of
workers into trade unions as
conspiracy, is also part of Van-
Couver labor’s history and tra-
dition. It has left its indelible
memory in the Vancouver Gen-
eral Strike of 1918, the lons-
Shoremen’s strikes of 1923 and
1935, and the Postoffice sitdown
of the unemployed in 1938, La-
bor has won nothing without
long: struggle and in Vancouver,
while the Struggle has brought
many victories, it has been a
Particularly bitter and some-
times a bloody one.

There were black years -when
searcely a workings class family
in the city was without one or
more of itS members on relief
and the people took the desti-
tute youth of Canada into their

hearts and homes and made
common cause with them, just
as in these postwar formative

years they have made and are
making common cause with the

striking loggers and Sawmill
workers, the striking foundry
workers and all others who

struggle for labor’s interests.

Vancouver is a labor town,
and therein lies its greatest con-
trbution, for Vancouver is not
tun as a labor town. The little
men who control its affairs and
smother its destiny do not re-
flect the broad influence of la-
bor and its urge to transform

Vancouver into the metropolis

it must become. The modern,

imposing city hall towers over
Mount,” Pleasant with deceptive
grandeur. There is nothing of.
its modern lines in the policies
of the men who occupy its
council chambers. And labor’s
voice is seldom heard.

More than 50 years ago, in
1892, Vancouver Trades and la-
bor Council entered civie poli-

tics by running candidates for
the city council and elected one
alderman from what was then
Mount Pleasant Ward. In the
‘intervening years labor repre-
sentatives have sat from time
to time in the council chambers
Eut never have they left an en-
during: impression upon the poli-
cies of the city.

Vancouver’s affairs are still
administered as they have been
“down the years in the interests
of the “first families” and those
who have made their way into
their exclusive circle. Between
the people of Vancouver and
the powerful labor movement
which expresses their interests
and the cliques that dominate

the city there lies what Sir
Richard Cartwright in the House
of Commons once termed “
Mountain range of wundiscover-
ead but well-developed rascality,”’
beyond which the eity fathers
have no desire to see.

ty

The ordinary citizen sees it
only too plainly in the spread-
ing slums, the obsolete bridges,
the pitted roads, the general
lack of civic progress. And in
the meantime the city’s srowth
is warped and distorted, the
vision of a Canadian metropolis
on the Pacific blurred for lack
of leadership because between
the city hall cliques and the

broad movements of the people -

there can be no common bond
to foster the strong patriotic
pride the native born and adop-
ted Wancouverites alike feel for
their city.

Vancouver, at 60 years, is a
young city, a city with a fu-
ture. As the world grows stead=
ily smaller in days and miles
and the Pacific becomes 4 vital
area for the latter half of the
twentieth century, it emerges
from its brief period of infancy
as a mature and decisive center
in the struggle for peace and
security. Too long it has sought
in one direction for the leader-
ship it lacks, leadership that
has only reduced its potentiali-
ties for the sake of greater pro-
fits and hampered
industrially, it has
because progress cannot be de-
nied, but its great wartime ship-
building industry is now but
a skeleton, its aircraft industry
virtually disappeared and
the dream of a _ steel industry
has yet to be realized.

its advance.
progressed

has

7 Vancouver will be a great me-
tropolis because that is its des-

tiny. How soon the people of
Vancouver will have the oppor-
tunity to embark upon that
destiny is the answer that la-

bor, which created the city and
Save it its wealth, must provide.

Soviet embassy
greets jubilee

The following is a copy of a
letter from the Soviet Himbassy
in Ottawa, received by Mr. l.. J.
Ladner, Chairman of the Van-

couver Branch of the National
Council for Canadian - Soviet
Hriendship. =

“Dear Mr. Ladner:

ZI wish to express to you my
cordial greetings on the occasion
of the diamond jubilee. of your
city and to convey to you the fol-
lowing message from the chair-
man of the City Council of Odes-
sa addressed to you and to His
Worship Mayor J. W. Cornett:

““ The citizens of the City of
Odessa and-I personally, congrat-
ulate you and the people of Van-
couver on the 60th Jubilee of
your city.

The direct contact established
between our two Cities greatly
assists the better understanding
and development of friendly rela-
tions between the peoples of our
countries. We hope that this con-
tact will be maintained in the
future. May we wish you and the
people of Vancouver the further
prosperity of your city.’ ”

Karpov,

Chairman of the City Council
of Odessa.”

Sincerely yours,
N. Beloikhostikov,

Gharge d@Affaires of the
USSR.”
Dulce Smith,
Executive Secretary.

Shor t Jabs by OI” Bill

The Big Stick :

WHEN Peddy Roosevelt was the Big Noise in the land of the free

: he maintained his position in the public eye by flourishing “the
big stick.” He threatened with condign punishment individuals and
countries who did not immediately fall in line with the demands of
the party he belonged to. He was the first world-travellins president,

Although he earned himself a reputation as a “trust-buster,” his
efforts in that direction were calculated only to confuse the Ameri-
can people and preyent them from seeing the real Maneuvers of
the monopolists who were laying the basis for present-day American
imperialism. :

Since his time, no one politician has filled his shoes in the same

His own government, :
Byrnes delivers “ultimatums,” the favorite “big: stick” method of

“two-day ultimatums” then.

That the need for that help was great May be seen from 4
comparison of the death lists on both sides. The total losses of
Americans being 395,000, while the Russian losses are totalled in
millions.

Part Of A Plan

BYRNES represents the most reactionary elements in the U.S.

These excrescences on the body politic”? as FDR called them, in-
ee in the same “big stick” demands that make Byrnes look like a
clown. :

The Rankin un-American committee has just made a charge
that the Army Orientation Service, whose purpose is to build the
morale of the U.S. army, has issued a bulletin on the Soviet system
which is favorable to the Soviet Union. That is a crime! Le

has
te learn whether there is
“collaboration with a potential enemy of our country.””

MeDuffy, administrator for UNRRA in the Soviet Union, has
quit his job in protest against the move of U.S. politicians who,
in Congress, meved to stop any work of UNNRA in the Soviet
Union because that country “prevents. any news or publicity appear-
ing in the press” of what UNRRA is doing there. MeDuffy denies
that anything of the kind occurs in the Soviet Union.

But that is all part of the plan of the atoime bomb monopolists
to create a war psychology against the Soviet Union, part of the
“big, stick” way of doing things. >

The B.C. Collectric Again

THE B.C. €ollectrie stooges in the city hall are taking the people
of Vancouver for another ride—a streetcar ride.
dealers in promises themselves
is small wonder that they are willing to pass on the honey-sweet
promises of the B.C. Collectric which their experience Should have
taught them, have little likelihood of ever being kept.
The new manager of that delectable octopus is following in the

lined at a great cost to the company.

That promise has a familiar ring. It is now about ten years
since the high mogul of the B.C. GCollectric made a similar promise.
At that time the franchise was also an issue. The promise was that
the company would, in the ensuing: year, spend half a million dol-
lars in the purchase of new rolling stock.

Then the war came and doubled the passenger-Carrying demand
and compelled the B.C. Gollectric to purchase a small number of
cars which they only did after threatening that they would be put
on the Grandview—4th Avenue run as one-man cars. That threat
they were prevented from putting into effect by the union and the
force of public. opinion.

But they are just as cynical in their dealings with the people of
Vancouver today. New management but old methods! And these
methods include this policy of making promises which, by the way,
are only made when there is a threat of competition to their mon-
opolistic control of the exploitation of the
their antedeluvian, peregrinating torture chambers.

We never expected to say it, but we have discovered a good
thing about their Toonervilles, particularly the wrecks on the
Grandview—4th Avenue line. If another earthquake comes along,
make sure you are riding on one of them. Youll never know there
is an earthquake.

A few hours after the earthquake of two weeks ago, old Dutch
Bill, who is known to many readers of this column, was asked what
he thought of the ‘quake. “What earthquake,” he queried. “Don’t
you know that all the people in the hotels and houses had to get
out on the street for fear the buildings would fall on them. Where
were you at a quarter past ten?” he was further asked. “Qh,” he
replied, “I was on a Grandview car, T never felt any earthquake.”

The B.C. Collectric spokesmen claim the street car system does
not pay. That is probably the reason why they put up such a hard
fight to prevent anybody else getting the franchise for it—including-
the City of Vancouver. ,

As it is now, it is a joke to call it a system, excepting for col-
lecting fares. The streets that it is part of their bargain to maintain,
look as if they had been subjected to an atom bomb experiment.
They say they cannot get men to repair them. But the Wational
Selective Service claims that there are 28,000 unemployd in B.C. If
the B.C. Collectric would Pay decent wages they could get lots
of men.

FRIDAY, JULY 5, 1946

people who MUST use