Housing

Editor, Pacific Tribune:

E have been reading a copy
_of & beok the government has
recently published entitled,
“Manpower and Material Re-
quirements for a Housing Pro-
gram in Canada.” One para-
graph entitled “Long Term
Housing Needs” reads:

“The question as to what com-
prises a reasonable estimate of
housing needs for the five years
ending spring, 1952, is a com-
plex one. Even over as short a
period as five years there are
many contigencies and uncer
tainties which have an impoer-
tant bearing upon the estimate
and indeéd make any such esti-
mate hazardous. The level of
employment and income over the
mext five years will, perhaps, be
@ most important influence, not
only on the probable level of
new housing during this period,
but also upon the need for new
units. The rate of recognition of
obsolescence and depreciation
will be another important factor.
The taste in housing of the av-
erage citizen will also have 2
bearing.”

Apparentty the government
thinks as we become unemploy-
ed or recipients of a low in-
come; our néed for a home dis-
appears.

Perhaps they think that within
the next five years, we will ac-
quife a ‘taste’ for living in
‘jungles’ and under bridges, this”
‘solving the housing problem
in typical Mackenzie King man-
Ber. It was also stated in the
book that housing conditions
would be 20 percent worse next
spring. At another place in the
book they gave a figure close
te the LPP estimated 500,000
homes needed in the next five
years,

But, by the way squatters
movements are springing up
everywhere it appears the peo-
ple are taking the housing prob-
Jem in their own hands. More
power to such people.

ALICE M. JOHNSON.

Wanoose Bay, B.C.

Whose Cnrurch ?

Speaking generally, it is prob-
ably true to say that the aver-
age British Columbian worker
is suspicious of the Christian
Church: sometimes he is more
than suspicious—he is hostile. It
is not very difficult to under-
stand his attitude. For the most
Part the people of British Co-
lumbia are not very far re-
moved from the old countries of
Europe, and the memory of life
in those countries has not died.
Im many of the countries of
Euirope, the Church is associat-
€a with superstition, with an
enmity towards science, and with
an alliance with the forces of
tyranny and oppression, Even in
Great Britain the Church is his-
torically associated with those
Classes which have fared best
in terms of wealth, possessions
and power in the world; the par-
Son has been the friend of the
Squire, the bishop has sat in the
House of Lords, and—what once
a British Columbia bishop de-
Seribed as a ‘cheap jibe’—that
the Church of England is the
Tory Party at prayer, is «a
quip that has at least enough
Cf truth in it that it stings.

In Canada, where the struc-
ture of society, possible in 2
New land enables us to gain
freedom from many of the an-
achronistic survivals of bygone-
28€s, it yet is true that far too

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — PAGE 5

White What

eften the Christian Church is
the spiritual preserve of the
most favored classes. The
clergy are, as a rule, far more
adept at cultivating the ac-
quaintance of board of trade and
chamber of cemmerce officials
than of trade union leaders; you
are more likely to find your par-
ish priest or local minister hob-
nebbing with the Rotarians and
the service club boys in the
down-town hotels than you are
to find him with the workers
in the Boilermakers’ Hall- and
in the councils of the churches,
the voice of the worker is sel-
dom heard, whilst, the voices of
the successful business and pro-

fessional men are heard 4 great
deal.

All of which Sees to show
what a long way the church
has come since the days of
Jesus Christ. Search the record
of Jesus’ life ang preaching and
ministry as you have it present-
€d before you in the gospels,
and how do you find the dif-
ferent elements in the society of
the day and the country aligned?
You find that Jesus himself is
a carpenter—a@ worker. You find
that the company which Jesus
gathers around Him is that sort
of company. The first Christians
ate, you find, emphatically pro-
letarian; they are carpenters
and fishermen and such lilte.
They are, moreover, members of
an oppressed minority in an
outlying province of the imper-
jalistic Roman Empire. Against
them are arraigned the rulers
of that empire, and the collab-
orators from . among the op-
pressed minority. It is a, tell-
tale commentary upon the spir-
itual qualities of the contem-
porary religious leaders, and
upon their attitude to the ‘com-
mon people’ that, although they
had their quarrel with Rome
upon other scores, when it was
a matter of getting rid of the

upstart proletarian leader and

Suppressing His movement, they
were one hundred percent colL-
laborators.

Even then, it required a pro-
tracted campaign to defeat the
Slaves. Ecr these slaves were
ho slaves in spirit. They fought
with incredible bravery, and
when at last defeat came, not
more than 6,000 were left to
fall captive into the hands of
the Romans. But these 6,000 met
a hideous fate. They were cruc-

ified all along the Appian Way .

from Capua to Rome, and their
bodies left rotting for months

upon their crosses aS a warn-
ing to any  rebellious-minded
slave in Italy to pause and heed.

Jesus associated himself with
that’ kind of people. He told
His followers in certain terms
that they who followed Him,
must accept the virtual certain-
ty of one day having to meet
death by crucifixion. Nothing
could speak more loud and dei-
initely than that, the cause of
Jesus was the cause of the pro-
letariat. It would be humorous,
if it were not so tragic in its
travesty of real Christianity to
contemplate a typical contem-
porary ‘down-town’ congregation
in a typical contemporary North
American city singing, “Take up
thy cross, the Saviour said.”
Look around that congregation
and you will find that it is in
the main composed of people
who have not the remotest in-
tention of ever following out
the implications of what they
are singing. They are people to

boatiinzat
jou PURE.

whom the very word ‘proletariat’
iS an abomination. For they are
the people who have done very
well out of system which exists
on a basis of exploitation of
the proletariat. Good people and
moral in their personal lives as
the great majority of hem un-
doubtedly are, the fact remains
that they are what they are in
the present order of society be-
cause of a system that is in
itself neither good nor moral.
Conservative, averse from funda-
mental change in the body poli-
tie and economic, they are far re-
moved from the proletarian ethos
of the peasants and workers or
Galilee for whom the cross was
not a matter for sentimental
hymn tunes, and still less an
ornament to hang round ladies’
necks, but a stark, ugly, tor-
tueus price, that was certain
to be demanded sooner or later
as a personal payment in retri-
bution for their effrontery in
embracing militantly the prole-
tarian cause, and ranging them-
selves behind the Great Prole-
tarian Leader. But to them it
was worth it, for that was a
cause that would persist in spite
of persecution, that would con-
tinue and gather strength long
after they had paid their pen-
alty, and in the long run—even
though the run was very long—
would be triumphant. It is worth
even being crucified’ to make
men free.

Such was the spirit in which
the Christian Church started out.
No doubt, if that spirit had
stuck, the average worker in
British Columbia today would
not be So suspiciously and some-
times so ‘hostilely inclined to-
wards it, as he is. Neither would
the conservative and the pres-
perous be so friendly and s5s0
patronizingly disposed to it. For
if that spirit had stuck through
nineteen centuries, the “set-up”
ef contemporary Society would
be very different from what it
is. We would have had ‘the
emergence of the class-less so-
ciety on a global scale long
before this. And in a class-less
society you wouldn’t’ need the
patronage of boards of trade and
chambers of commerce and their
Kind to assist the worship of
God. You wouldn’t need boards
of trade and chambers of com-
merce at all.

PETER DISNEY.

Northampton, England.

Fluctuation

Editor, Pacific Tribune:

Enclosed please find postal
order for $9.00 to be applied as
follows: $5.00 renewals as per
orders; $2.00 for Fred Rose De-

sence; $2.00 for Pacific Tribune

Fund.

The values of the dollar has
gone down and the value of
the Tribune has gone up, so
we've got to do something to
Square things.

W. R. PRICE.

Kamloops, B.C.

Serial Features

Editor, Pacific Tribune:

At our last meeting much dis-
cussion took place re the diffi-
culty of selling renewals for our
Paper, and I was instructed to
send the following suggestion
and hope it will be possible to
put this into practice.

That the Pacific Tribune con-
Sider running in serial form
such books as “The Great Con-
spiracy.”

M. CROWE.
Rossland, B.C.

Short Jabs by Ol’ Bill

Increase ss ODUCE, produce, produce!” So the labor

5 7 leaders of the Anglo-Saxon world are thun-
Production {!f dering at the workers. It is the burden of the
songs of Bill Green to his followers in the U.S. and Canada. Tt is
the chorus being chanted by the TUG! and the Labor (CGE) govern-
ment in Britain.

Green harped on it, as the cure for all economic ills of society,
at the opening and closing sessions of the recent AFT convention. A
few weeks ago in the British House of Commons, the Labor member
for Upton, Arthur Lewis, asked if the government would consider
proclaiming May 1 a national holiday. The Chancellor of the Hx
chequer, Dalton, replied that is was inadvisable, but when pressed to
bear it in mind, answered, “Put up the output and we will thinlc
again.” s i

In its sessions at Brighton, this past week, the General Council
of the Trades Union Congress, emphasized this “increased produc-
tion” demand on the workers, “this new principle that the worker

-in preducing more does not only enrich his boss, but enriches the

whole community. In preducing plenty for all he is improving his
own lot and performing a patriotic duty.”

This is not a “new principle’ It.is as old as capitalism—or older,
Engels in an interpolation in the third volume of “Capital,” writes
of capital, “Its historical mission is the ruthless development .. .
of the productivity of human labor It becomes disloyal to its mis-
Sion whenever it puts a check upon the developnient of productivity.”

There are two ways it which the productivity of labor may be
increased; by the introduction of better machinery as means of pro-
duction or by extracting more sweat’ and nervous energy from the
workers through speed-up or longer hours:

If the capitalist is averse to investing in improved machinery,
he attempts to get the increase in the other manner, by more in-
tense exploitation of the labor-power of the woriters. :

This is one of the reasons why Marx, in the same volume of
“Capital” says, “The real barrier of capitalist production is capital
itself.” And don’t forget, it is capitalist production these labor lead-
ers are talking about. Under other historical conditions, with Social-
ist production for instance, the case would be entirety different.

ND does the worker “enrich” himself and the whole

The community. as the General Council claims? If these
Result “leaders” had studied history at all, they would not accept ©

responsibility for such a nonsensical statement:
The invention of Watt's steam engine and the machines that fol-

-lowed it, brought..about such a marvelious- increase in the “produc- —
‘tivity of labor that Robert Owen stated in the House of Commons in

his day, that no man in the textile industry could now do the worl:
that had previously been done by 2500.

Did that “enrich” the workers? Certainly not. James Watt, the
inventor of the steam engine that had made that productivity possible,
wrote after the industrial revolution had progressed so far, that wages
were so low the workers “stole the grease out of the engines and used
it for food.” : a

That, of course is only an individual statement but it refers to

. 2 general and nation-wide condition and is borne out by: other writers.

The steam engine was invented in 1776 and in 2799, 23 years
later, wages and working conditions had become so terrible in spite
of, or rather because of, increased productivity, that the workers be-
gan to attempt to form unions for their own protection.

The capitalists’ answer to this was the Anti-Combination Laws
against conspiring to “extort” any increase in wages or reduction in
hours of work. The penaity for that “crime,” or for attending any
meeting for that purpose, was three months in jail. It became worse,
when some of them were transported to Botany Bay.

Increased production never helpéé the producers one damned Dit.
Every wave of increased productivity is followed by a crisis, First
we have a boom then everything goes boom. 1816, 4825, 1837, 1847ana@
sO On, so that Engels wrote that a capitalist crisis , occurred about
every eleven years, until in this present century; labor has become so
productive that we have had 2 continuous crisis broken only by the
outbreak of two world wars.

Between 1910 and 1930 world production of coal, iron and sik
almost doubled, and these are indicators for all other production, and
the peak of all crises hit the capitalist world. Then workers were
fed on hand-outs and farmers were paid a bonus for NOT producing.
The less they produced the more they were paid.

Today the capitalists cannot pass Anti-Combination laws, because
the workers are too well organized. And since they are unable to
handle the situation themselves, they have turned the job over to
their labor lieutenants, Bill Green, the Labor povermnment Chancellor
of the Exchequer and the General Council of the TUC.

Organized labor must stop this move, must not be detuded by
appeals to patriotism, for there is nothing patriotic in increasing
production for the capitalists while class inequality exists.

Floor : PoerTsce LA PRAIRIE was represented for many,
years by that areh-émemy of the Canadian people,
Sweepers Arthur Meighen, twice Prime Minister of Canada, who
may be dead now for all I know. The last I heard of him he was in
the Senate, which is about the same thing as being dead, anyhow.

In the election this week the constituency returned to its pristine
political allegiance, the Tory fold. A lawyer named Milter, Cal Miller,
if you are in the Tory swim, now fills Meighen’s shoes.

Lacking anything worth saying about him, the press has duz
up a story to give him some standing in political life. According to
the press hawks, the new member for Portage la Prairie got “his
first political job sweeping floors in the old Gonservative party
committee rooms.”

That reminds meé of another floor-sweeper. It has been told of
Richard Whitney, of the House of Morgan, a name to conjure with
on Wall Street at one time, one of the biggest men who ever laced
it to the suckers on the floor of the New Worlr stock market, that
he started in life by “sweeping the floor of the stock exchange.”

The story is probably just as true as the one about the new
member for Portage la Prairie, but one thing is true, Whitney was
the “floor operator’? for Morgan’s and he finished up as a fleor
sweeper in Sing Sing. -

The press, the Tory press at least, ought to do better. _
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 25, 1946