¢ G t é € W ¢ £ I Published Weekly at ROOM 104, SHELLY BUILDING 119 West Pender Street ~ Vancouver, B.C: by the TRIBUNE PUBLISHING co. MArine 5288 RUQCERCKENSUCUSCECHECEESESCUUESEUSESESERRELCCSELENCEICSESESPRUCEIS SEES D: TOM McEWEN .. Editor IVAN BIRCHARD -Manager EDITORIAL BOARD 5 Nigel Morgan Maurice Rush Minerva Gooper Al Parkin ; Subscription Rates: 1 Year, $2.00; 6 Months; $1.00 Printed By UNION PRINTERS, 2303 East Hastings Street — — — Vancouver, B.C. Authorized as second-class mail by the post-office dept., Ottawa Judicial burp PEHAKING at a Kiwanis luncheon a few days ago on the subject of “Canadian Citizenship,’ Mr. Justice A. M. Manson, notorious anti-labor pundit, took occasion to launch a vicious attack on labor. Referring to current strug- gles in B.C. his lordship ts quoted as saying: “,. . . the law has been taken into private hands—we Saw a group of men take possession of the old Hotel Van- couver . - Private rights have been trespassed upon in recent weeks and the law has stood idly by and done noth- ing. I am informed by good authority the highest law en- forcement body in this province declared this (he [WA strike) was a struggle between employer and employee, and told its officers to stand aside.” This after-dinner belch of Justice Manson’s got front- page coverage and became the central theme of a following address by Dr. Norman A. M. MacKenzie, president of the UB€ in his address to the annual banquet of the Law Society of B.C. It is unfortunate that both these men in whom is re- posed considerable influence, had ne word to say on the violation of the basic rights of citizens manifested in the present espionage cases. Not a murmur regarding the ab- rogation of civil rights, the arrests and ‘star chamber’ in- quisition; the holding of persons incommunicado without benefit of legal or other advice; commission conviction of persons without benefit of trial—the suspension of habeas corpus. Their fire, and particularly that of labor-hating Manson, was directed against labor. This is the essence of his distorted concept of law and justice. Plag-waving when men are on the battle fronts or on the production line is one thing; providing the material fa- cilities and opportunities for jobs, homes, decent wages, security, is quite another. Manson assumes a fine Black- stonian horror at the Vets taking over the Vancouver Hotel in order te have a roof over their heads, when constituted authority so-called, did nothing but twiddle its thumbs and pass the buck, and renege on promises made to the men overseas. t Justice Manson waxes wrathful when workers go on Strike for higher wages to meet skyrocketing prices, after their patience has beén exhausted by long delays, blocked negotiations, and official run-arcunds at the hands of ‘con- stituted authority. When they are finally compelled to Strike to defend their living standards against the monopo- lists his lordship emits a snort—‘that, gentlemen, is an- archy.” It is anarchy all right, but not of the people’s mak- ing. It is engineered against the people by the class whom Mr. Justice Manson seeks to defend in his after-dinner ju- dicial burps. 4 “Figures don’t lie, but... HEN the hardrock miners came out on strike CMA spokesmen initiated their stock-in-trade campaign with the announcement that the strike was ‘illegal.’ From there, through the medium of paid press advertising and tadio they sought to show that the strike was one of ‘2,500 miners against 45,000 small investors.’ CMS high-pressure salesmen undoubtedly felt that the plight of the ‘small in- vestors’ would win public sympathy much better than that of Wall St. mining syndicates. It is quite true that there are a great many people in and out of B.C. with a few shares in mining stock—even some of the miners may have a share or two in some gopher- hole speculation, but the ‘small investors’ do not own the Grandby Consolidated, Britannia Mines, Caribou Gold Quartz, Premier or any other of the big concerns—Big Business sees to that. : : The ‘small investor’ gag falling a-bit flat, a new dis- covery was made .. .the gold miners are the highest paid category in B.C. industry.” The CMA mine operators’ wage chart shows the miners at the top of the list, with the log- gers at the bottom! Last month, however, when the IWA was holding the wage front for increases to meet skyrocket- ing prices, the propagandists of the CMA had the loggers at the top as the ‘highest paid’ group in B.C. industry! All of which bears out what most workers already know —that while ‘figures don’t lie,’ the CMA is well equipped with a group of high-pressure liars who do a lot of ‘figur- ing’ on how to confuse the public and sidetrack the issues of wage increases, shorter hours and more security for the workers. The late Herr Goebels would surely find a worthy group of understudies in the CMA. PACIFIC TRIBUNE — PAGE 4 Reaction rides again! Labor-farmer unity KELOWNA NotcH HILL is a little farming community on the northern fringe of the Okanagan Valley, some 50 miles east of Kamloops and only a short distance from Salmon Arm. To the traveller passing through it is merely an- ether point on the Canadian Pa- cific, a store, a gas station and a cluster of houses around a bend on No. i highway, with nothing to distinguish it from a score of such communities along the road. Crops and the weather, the price of beef and such things are the prime concern of the farmers who live in its vicinity and whatever else is discussed, strikes and the demands of labor, the political issues of the day, must be related to these topics. That is why the attitude of the Harmers Institute during the re- cent IWA strike has more than a casual significance to the de- velopment of a people’s movement in British Columbia. For Notch Hill, above all things, is a typical farming community and if its farmers have a distorted impres- sion of labor’s demands, it is also true that labor, too often, has been indifferent to the farmer’s own problems. Had it not been that the TWA was on strike the issue might never have been raised. But throughout the Okanagan the mills and box plants were down and the farmers found themselves on unfamiliar ground discussing a strike directly impinging on their interests, For an hour or more they lis- tened to Henry Codd, their presi- dent, plead for an understanding of the union’s case. A determined, eloquent man, Codd is at once typical of the community in that he has fought hard for the farm- ers’ interests and outstanding within it because he openly iden- tifies himself with the progres- Sive movement and has been an ILPP federal candidate. “We have had bankers and lawyers and doctors here to talk to us,’ Codd said. “Why don’t we invite trade unionists and hear what they have to say?” ont _ Rt eS : NX It was a fair suggestion, but the farmers voted it down. “We'd be introducing politics if we did that,” one old farmer indignantly protested. Ps was the problem the In- ternational Woodworkers faced up and down the Okanagan dur- ing the recent weeks of strike. How were the union’s organizers, the strikers themselves, going to talk to the farmers who all too long had been left to the plaus- ible influence of bankers and lawyers and doctors? How were they going to convince them that they had a common interest in supporting each other’s demands and nothing at ail in common with the lumber operators and! the monopolies whose side the farmers were inclined to take? The executive of the British Columbia Fruit Growers’ Associa- tion, which both represents and dominates the Okanagan growers. was prepared to guarantee the costs of the operators but it was not prepared to accept the union’s terms for a return to work. Bert Melsness, IWA district secretary, was allowed to speak to a meet- ing of growers called by the ECEGA to discuss the strike, but he was not permitted to outline the union’s case. In Kelowna there were hints of violence. veiled talk of vigilante action. The growers wanted boxes for their fruit and they blamed the union, not the operators, because they could not get them. wnable to reach the growers tnhrcugh their cwn officials, the union had to resort to other means. It organized a squad of seme 30 members, some of whom were small fruit growers them- selves, and went out into the councrwvside talking to the farm- ers in their homes, arguinz and explaining. Soon the petition sup- ports ine untsi1 = demands grew to yages scrawled with growers’ Signatures. Wor did they stop there. In places they prevailed upon the growers to call meetings of their own BCEGA locals, like that held at West Summerland where. Bill Langmead, IwA international By Hal Griffin representative, spoke and Jock Stirling, BCFGA president, and R. Stephens, BCEGA secretary. refused to appear. : To counter the mounting sup- Port among the growers for the union’s demands the BERGA ex- ecutive took to the radio, telling the growers how much higher their costs would be if the “work— ers were given wage inereases, blaming the union for the threat- ened loss of their crops. But the grswers were no long er se open ts conviction. Some or them now, rememberins tne pre-war days when apples brought only 40 cents a box, knowing what proportion of their 70 cents costs on the preent price of $1.45 a box goes into the super- profits of the monopolies, sup- ported the workers’ demands for a fair settlement. Those who still talked of vigilante action were exposed for what they were, op- ponents of growers and workers alike, interested in smashing the union te the advantage only of the monopolies which exploit the growers. @ THE Sstuike is ended now and the men are back at work while an agreement is negotiated. But the fight to Stwergthen the bond of interest established be- tween workers and farmers is only beginning. Now the oper- ators, the monopolies, will cam- Paign for higher prices, increas- ing the growers’ costs. They and their supporters among the grow- ers themselves will try to place the blame upon the union. : They will not succeed if the IWA, with the membership of its Local 423 more than doubled Since the strike, and the growing labor movement in the Okanagan now gets out to help the farm- ers in their fight for guaranteed minimum prices. Labor does not want a return to the 35 cents an hour wage of the ’thirties. Neither does the grower want te go back to the days when his apples were 40 cents a box, such of them as did not rot upon the ground because labor lacked ~ the money to buy them at a de- cent price. Together, workers and farmers can go forward. E ERIDAY, J ULY 12, 1946.