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Editor, Pacific Tribune:

How is this for an award?
After a wait of several months
the National War Labor Board
on June i2th handed down 2
decision granting the Western
System Maintenance of Way
Employees the grand sum of 2e
per hour wage increase. Nothing
ef this appeared in the daily
press and one wonders why. It
is quite possible that the editors
of the dailies are worrying so
much over the inflationary tend-
ency this 2c will haye on the
economy of the nation that its
magnitude has overwhelmed
them.

im the meantime the Mainten-
ance of Way Employees on both
of Canada’s rail systems are
Still the lowest paid category of
workers on the continent :
even with the 2c.

- A UNION MAN.
Barrett Lake, B.C.

Victory

Editor, Pacific Tribune:

With reference to your edi-
torial of June 28th; under the
heading “Victory.”

in my humble opinion so far
as it applies to the recent TWA
strike in B.C. your heading and
comments, in part, are misguid-
ing. Perhaps you, Mr. Editor,
and the undersigned place- dif-
ferent interpretations on the
word “Victory.”

As I understand it the main
objectives at the outset were
an all-round increase of 25 cents
an hour, a 40-hour week, union

Senate plums

ifs is nearing fruit season in
Ottawa. What kind of
fruit?—plums; nice juicy, sen-
ate plums. And no shortage of
fruit boxes. The - plush-covered
containers are all ready for the
plums to be dropped into them,

as, if and when, Mr. King gets

ready, to hand them out. Of
course, Mr. King will not hurry.
He never- does. That is one of
bis cardinal virtues.

The senate is a rest-home for
geod party wheel-horse politi-

cians, who have rendered yeo-
men service to the party in
power. Their labors are tre-

werded by appointments to the

Senate. They get $4000 per an-
num for life and all found,
aside from the odd pickings

available in the course of their
waking shours, which are often
not insignificant.

sleep through
the entire session, and are only
called upon to waken up long
enough to veto any legislation
Passed by the elected represen-
tatives of the people, which may
be regarded by the people as
progressive—by Big Business as
detrimental to their interests—
or by the party in power as in-
imical to its continuity in of-
fice, Briefly, the senate is the
State’s (mot to be confused with
the nation) bulwark against
progress. It is an institution of
reaction. Its somnambulists are
appointed for life. Few ever re-
Sign from the senate and the
death rate is phenomenally
low. If the senators can totter
to the exchequer’s office with
the help of two. RCMP aides
te collect their annual per diem,
and keep awake long enough to

Senators can

veto any forward-looking legi-
Slation, that is all that is re-
quired of them. Their being

Senators puts the hall-mark of
the “well done, good and faith-

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — PAGE 5

“3 Your Deoartinent
‘Z

Security,
ment,
have
under
Can concede
tory.”

and a master agree-
Wone of those objectives

been reached, therefore,
the circumstances, all I
is a “Partial WVic-

Now I propose to stick out
my Chin and say why I think
those objectives were not fully
reached.

In the first place the objec-
tives were too high, £ do not
mean what the workers were
entitled to, but rather what was
Possible of obtaining under the
circumstances.

Union security was the most
important of the 4 items men-
tioned and the public were at
no time fully sold to the ob-
jectives and therefore did not
enthusiastically support the
Strike, this and underestimating
the strength of the CMA was
a handicap from the start.

A mistake was made by issu-

ing a premature statement re-
garding the Sloan recommenda-
tions before they were fully di-

gested and understood.

To make a mass parade toe
Victoria after the Sloan report
instead of before, if at all, was
a mistake and had only half
Eearted public support.

in My opinion, in view of the
whole the men
did well to secure the partial
victory they did.

circumstances,

547 Albert Street,
Nanaimo, B.C.

T. BARNARD.

What You Pleate.

Rose defense

Editor, Pacific Tribune:

First, I would like to say that
your paper shows marked im-
provement of late, now for oth-
er matters.

Years ago,
Canadian
Bred Rose,

the persecution of
Scientists, including:
would have called
forth national - demonstrations,
mass meetings, petitions, etc.
Now we take it lying down.

The so-called spy trials is the
most Childish idiotic farce -of
our history. Wherein we see
So-called prominent Canadian
judges allowing and actually
themselves breaking, Canadian
laws right and left.

This leads up to a query. Has
the LPP become a pure political
party outside of the Trade
Union work, or are we still sup-
posed to be a party of ACTION
also?

Strange as it may seem large.

numbers of people do not ap-

pear to be interested in purely
local issues. Perhaps it is be-
cause they are ‘too close to

them. Yet, they are very much
interested in national and inter-

national matters. Have we
stressed the former to a point
where two latter are ignored?

The Hred Rose defence fund

while a necessary action, will
not in itself cause the release
of Ered Rose. It will take a

lot of organized action to~ per-

suade MacKenzie King (who
has always been and always
will be, a true agent of mon-

opoly) that he has made a grave

€rrer in the persecution of

scientists and communists.
SAM REYNOLDS.

ful servant’ insignia upon them.
Even the circus ballyhoo of
B.C’'s MeGeer has had little ef-

fect on the somnabulic Red (not
to be confused
with the reds)
Chamber. 5

Mr. King,
with character-
istic astuteness,
will undoubted-
ly hold up the
dispensation of

senate plums
until another
federal elec-

tion is nearing.
That is always
considered to be

strategy, of which Mr.
master of the
isn’t a seat in all

good party

King
is 2 art.
While there
of Ganada he is sure of today,
in spite of his long record as
prime. minister and leader of
the liberal party, Mr. King
wants to retire from the scene
leaving the liberal party ‘strong
and virile’, which is the polite
way of saying, the party first,
and to hell with the rest!

Of course Mr. King knows
now to whom the senate plums
are going, but he ‘ain’t tellin*®.
Time has made Mr. King care-
ful. He hasn’t forgotten his so-
journ through the “valley of
humiliation’ when some good
liberal senators woke up long
enough to get in over, the ears
in the Beauharnois power scan-
and

dal, the Customs scandal,
such like excursions in the
realm of political graft and

corruption. Nor is Mr. King for-
getful that a number of new
war-time scandals of graft and
corruption are in bud. Unlike
Fred Rose, MP, who has fought
for, instead of robbing, the
people, these liberal senators

By Tom McEwen

didn’t land in jail for filehing
a few millions from the public
purse. Qn the contrary, they re-
tired to the salubrious climate
of California and the French
Riviera for “reasons of health?”

Mr. King has Honest John
Hart of BC. picked for one
deserving plum. Mr. Hart’s work
in B.C., according to local po-
litical weather-cocks, ‘is nearly
finished,’ and a senatorship for
B.C’s “white-haired boy” is re-
garded as in the bag. While Mr
Hart’s -shot-gun wedding with
the tories in the B.C. coalition,
and the possibility that tory
Anscomb, recently chosen pro-
vineial tory’ leader, may be
B.C.’s next premier, is not alto-
gether to the liking of Mr. King
and the federal liberal hier-
archy, the appointment of Mr.
Hart to the senate is regarded
in liberal party circles as a “po-
tential tower of strength.” A
goodly number of British Co-
lumbians may feel that a sen-
ate plum to Mr. Hart is a poor
wind-up to an otherwise fairly
progressive career, but obviously
Mr. King knows his party stal-

warts much better than a lot of

ether people.

The big problem still facing
the common people is not the
handing out of this stale fruit
of senate plums to “deserving”
politicians, they have no voice
or selection in that, but on how
long Canadians, as a demo-
eratic people, are going to be
Saddied with a reactionary in-
stitution of government, which
stems from the days of colonial
rule? That is the $64 question,
the answer to which, either
opens the door to progress, or
eloses it via the perpetuation of
a dictatorial partisan machine,
conceived and maintained, by
and for reaction.

Short Jabs by or Bil

Improving or nee ees baloney plan for serapping the
s a atomic bomb makes one think — and think
deteriorating ? deeply—if the world’s rulers are improving
morally or deteriorating. The demand Baruch makes is, that all
other nations relinquish all their knowledge of the splitting of the
atom, ail materials connected therewith and all machinery useful for
that purpose. Baruch and his Sang of U-S. imperialist freebooters will,
when they are good and ready, destroy their stock of atom bombs. It
is the most hypocritical proposal ever placed before intelligent hu-
mans. It would be insulting even to a mongrel dog. : : 5 :
: Shortly after the Napoleonic wars ended, a British seaman, Ad-
Miral Cochrane, afterwards Lord Dundonald, one of the most compe-
tent sailors who fought under Nelson, invented a new weapon of
destruction. It is alleged to have been an explosive but that is all that
is known about it. : 2
Admiral Cochrane submitted his invention to the British Admir-
alty. When they examined it, hard-boiled old Sea-dogs though they
were, they were stuck with consternation at the terrible consequences ©
that must surely follow its use and were not prepared to recommend
its adoption by the armed forces, notwithstanding the advantageous
position it would give them in war with any possible enemy. :
They asked Parliament to decide the question. It was discussed
by that body who were convinced that the use of such a terrible
thing would be inhuman and might mean the destruction of the race.
Parliament then decided that the secret should not be used for that
reason, that it should be locked up and never again even discussed.

They did just that, and Admiral Cochrane’s weapon has been the

subject of litarary surmizings by the type of newspaper men who write
Sunday supplements ever since.

The difference between the action of the British capitalist repre-
sentatives at the beginning of last century and the American imper-
jalists today may be an excellent measure for answering the ques-
tion that opens. this paragraph—or maybe our rulers are not detriorat—
ing; it may be the difference in the POTENTIAL ENEMY that is
responsible for: the difference in their actions. If the British rulers
had faced a world of workers threatening revolution, they might not
have been so squeamish about using Admiral Cochrane’s_ terrible

weapon. :

Where is ‘democracy’ ? Four U.S. congressmen have just
: x = returned from a trip to Europe.
Their cook’s tour of the Old World has got Washington all hot and
bothered. They brought back a horrible tale about the lack of de-
mocracy, the utter absence of freedom for opposition parties, in Ru-
mania, Bulgaria, Poland, Hungary and Yugoslavia and way points.

: By “opposition parties” they can only mean the Nazis and fas-
cists, the ideologists who still long for the fleshpots that class rule
used to 8ive them, the monerchist and quislings who represent the
ideas and policies that millions of good men and women died to
eradicate.

if these snooping consressmen want to find a country where de-
mocracy is flouted, why don’t they take a trip south from Washing-
ton, to Mississippi or Alabama or Tennessee or Texas?

In Mississippi they will find the 200 per cent American Bilbo whe
has: just won the primaries in the Coming November elections to the
U.S. Senate. The ignorant spellbinder, Bilbo, is at present Senator
from that state, which has the highest degree of illiteracy in the whole
country. He once declared that “What Mississippi needs is a Musso-
lini.’ His campaigns for elections are highwater marks in hypocrisy.
He goes round the state playing a. melodeon and leading the singins
of Baptist hymns. At the same time making Hitlerlike attacks on
Big Biz. :

That obscene demagogue won his re-election by organizine his
ignorant, clod-hopping, deluded followers to keep over 50 per cent
of the legitimate voters in the state, by force, from the polls, because.
of the color of their skins. 3

Any Negro citizen of the United States could tell these inquisitive
congressmen something about “freedom for opposition parties,” not in
Poland or Yugoslavia, but right in the alleged home of democracy.

These congressmen would learn that Negroes, who in the same
proportion as whites, were drafted into the services to fight fascism,
and went willingly and gave a good account of themselves, are now
refused the ordinary rights of citizenship. =

if, for instance, a Negro applies to be put on the register of voters
in the county in Alabama which bears the honored name of Jefferson,
the founder of American democracy, he is subjected to an examination
on questions of law that only a college graduate (and not all vot
them) could answer. If he fails to answer the questions to the satis-—
faetion of a prejudiced white board—no dice. Force in one place,
trickery in the other, but the Negro gets no vote.

Or they might learn how, in Tennessee, 25 brave Negroes, 10 of
them veterans of the war against fascism, are on trial in a eriminal
court for daring to defend themselves from a white lynching mob of
the Same type as the scoundrelly Bilbo.

Or they might learn further, that the Southern States are full of
white people who have no opportunity to express their opinion at the
ballot box because they are so poverty-stricken they cannot pay a $2
poll tax.

Or they might also learn about that other shining light of Sou-
shern democracy, Senator “Pappy” O’Daniel, of Texas, who led in the
wrecking of the OPA and price controls, in the Senate and threatens
a filibuster if any effort is made to reinstate price contro] in line
with the wishes of the people. And about his son by-the-way, who
achieved fame overnight by giving a G.I. Joe who rented one of his
houses, a fourth of July present immediately his Senator “Pappy” got
rent controls lifted, by raising his rent from $68 to $100 a month—
with an eviction notice if he did not pay up.

At the November elections Bilbo, the ornament of democracy will
go back to the U.S. Senate. Any Senator who sits in the same cham-
ber with him without making a thundering protest must bear a share
of the moral obloquy that belongs with Bilbo.

T have known many Negroes personally. Hvery one of them was
a better man than Bilbo. In fact, of all the twelve million Negro
citizens of the United States, I will Say that there is not one so low
in moral stature as the anti-Negro, anti-Jew, anti-foreigner, anti-labor,
anti-human Senator from Mississippi. Bilbo.

Such are “the rights of man” in Mississippi “democracy” which is
a kind that the people of Rumania, Bulzaria, Poland, Hungary and
Yugoslavia are getting rid of without any help from the U.S. Stafe
Department.

They remind me of a comment of Marx in Capital, He says: “The -
sphere... within whose boundaries the sale and purehase of labor
power goes on, is in fact, a very Eden of the innate rights of man.
There alone rule, Freedom, Equality, Property. .. ”

ERIDAY, JULY 12,

1946