pusing scheme.

postwar public works program must a comprehensive slum The 1944 Federal se Act is a step in that direction; t be improved and extended to pro- ‘a) that the Dominion Government ctually initiate large-scale housing 5; (b) that the Dominion Govern- lives aid to public low-rental housing

Dominion Government must assume sibility for maintaining our national ; at a level of two billion dollars per This can be done through govern- aid in the organization of private

projects clearance

incomes as

assistance.

3b. Housing

and

Latin

P Federal Election Platform

3a. Expand Our Exports

and to projects private capital, setting up rental reduction funds to guarantee that tenants whose in- comes are in the lower brackets shall not have to pay more than 20 percent of their rent; standards which must be met as a condi- tion of receiving Dominion Government

government loans, export credits and lend-lease aid to the countries devastated by the war, to America and to the economically backward colonies of Asia and Africa.

undertaken by

(c) ‘national houging

large-scale long terms

HAT DO YOU THINK?

3

3

tute that Angus Mac- opping out about the = the “only progres- Sanada? I remember im say this at the swn Meeting in Can- ley North in” answer ostion. I remember remarking that night as didn’t look very

Grey North—that 4s though he was suf a bad ease of “yel- al jaundice.”

see he is continuing ‘ith the same guff— ‘everybody and any- ot being progressive ley aren’t wrapping.

in- the same sheet ownership now” that

cover his own bare self. Looks as though ag indigestion to the 7 i

| whatever Angus’ is—and the red-bait- ati-Sovietism that he ast give as much dis- > €CF rank-and-filers comfort it gives re- s—I wonder where mn the last few years. rying to make any political analysis of he meaning of pro- Id we dare to ask a tions and ask the Ss te at least ponder answers.

3 |

: decision of ‘Britain ide by side with the ion in 1941 a step for-

nternational relation- -

= victory of the USSR UsSian-Hinnish affair ' step forward in the

' the name of banana:

meeting the Nazi challenge— and therefore progress? _ (Do I hear you groaning, Angus?)

“Was the meeting of the Big Three at Teheran that brought the second front, liberation to many Huropean countries, agree- ment to set up a world organi- zation for peace and security and first steps toward solving inter- national economic and financial problems—was this progress? (Or “bunk” Angus?)

Was the Crimean Conference and its practical guidance to vic- tory, prevention of new wars, securing of peace and demo- cratic solving of European poli- tical and economic problems— was this a step forward for all

of us, in other words, progress?

Just one more, Angus: Is the keeping in power of Drew in Ontario by CCF isolationism— does that help the people? Is that a step forward? :

And what about the forces that brought all these things about? Which are we to con- sider progressive, Angus?

I would humbly suggest that those who aid in moving this old world of ours even one step forward—have a claim.to being ealled progressive which is far stronger than those who repeat the redbaiting and anti-Soviet sentiments of the worst enemies of human progress. Think it over.

EN AVANT:

I

§ The ‘Nut’cracker

— Page 5

EUOURERETSSREsEpeneee Dapvevesseseresraoeyspssesaies VUCUCROSATUNTEQDOCESUUVEEENSHESOREFH ESTO NASPEREENSNSR DE AED

Short Jabs by Ol’ Bill

TUNUSPEMESESFOSUCERSOSNCEOEUEEECTORUCPEDETEAEGAR EE ELAS Vaussureeaeereriss vaveceie TEVUNGEDEI Va sbadaootetreriicaisy

Our Paper

FTER reading the “Five by Five’ column in the P:A. last week, I had a fit of remorse at not having done as much as I should have done in the “Short Jabs” to drive home more forcefully, the need for every reader of this column to show a greater measure of continuous and persistent enthusiasm in increasing the circulation of our paper and so furthering ovr political influence.

Great changes haye taken place in newspapers in the past few years. Time was, when newspapers were priced so high that working class readers were few and far between. The high prices of papers and the stamp taxes that had to be paid with each individual copy. made it necessary for groups of workers to chip in to buy one paper and have someone read it for them. Im Britain this was particularly so.

The growing ideas of democracy, however, broke down these bar- riers. Radicals published papers and sold them, bootleg fashion, without paying the stamp tax. Many of them went to‘jail for refusing to pay the taxes. William Cobbet’s twopenny Register was one of the first of these attacks on the Tory monopoly of the newspaper business. Suc- cess crowned their efforts, though it took a long time, and penny papers,

‘free of taxes became the rule. :

When the London Standard first appeared as a penny paper, one of the members of the aristoeratic Tory Cecil family, stated in the House of Lords, that it was doubtful if a paper that cost less than six- pence could print any news that was worth reading.

Today their comments are couched in a little different language but they have the same tinge of scorn in them. Recently when the Beveridge report was being discussed in the House of Commons, another hide-bound Tory, Sir Herbert Williams, M.P., said, with all the venom and spleen he could command, “The Times is today, the threepenny edition of the Daily Worker.” The Times had written favorably of the Beveridge report.

Those of us who read “Today in England” in the Province and other Southam papers, which is a digest of news articles appearing in the Times, will understand the rancour that was eating at the heart of that Tory reactionary.

The Times is undoubtedly different from the days when it was known as the “Thunderer” and was the dearly beloved mouthpiece of all who profited from reaction, like that obstinate, fossilized Tory M.-P. and the more cultured but no less reactionary, Lard Salisbury.

But the remark was not at all true. The London Times is not yet a substitute for the Daily Worker, the official organ of the Communist Party of Great Britain. So if there are those amongst us who imagine we can let papers like the Daily Worker and the P_A. go by the board because The Times is good enough to take their place, I want to dis- abuse them of any such foolishness.

Greater changes will have to take place before we reach that Elysian condition (if we ever do). So we still must bend all our efforts to the building of the circulation of our papers. If the Times does make further progress, that should merely spur us to greater endeavor to keep our paper ahead.

When Margaret Black or Grace Greenwood asks us to get one sub a month, we should consider that a duty we owe to our paper and to ourselves. :

At the beginning of the year I asked for fifty enthusiasts to get one sub a week. Perhaps I was too sanguine. Only Sam English from Michel and myself were game to tackle such a mighty task. But one a month is easier than falling off the proverbial log. How about you? Let us keep ahead of the Times, even if it is the threepenny edition of the

Daily Worker.

True or False?

PEAKING at a Catholic youth gathering in Vancouver a couple of

weeks ago, Angelo Branca, “a home town boy who is making good,” told his audience that the Catholic youth do not get their fair share of the jobs. .

So it was reported in the press.

This is not, even if it were true, a good way to approach the prob- lems that the Canadian yceuth will be faced with in. the immediate future__when the swords have been turned into pruning hooks and the guns converted into museum pieces. The assertion has the ring of

foxes about it. oS : ae Boones wishes to implant the idea in the minds of these Canadian youth of the Catholic faith that they have a right to a proportionate amount of jobs, of whatever kind, solely because of their religious con= victions, he is not doing a service either to the Canadian people or to the young Catholic people who listened to his particular brand of oratory. ‘

Fitness for any special kind of work, unless maybe for clergymen or preachers, has no connection with religious beliefs. : Engineers, chemists, physicists, biologists, mechanics skilled in the handling of tools in the skilled crafts or in the more simple feats of trundling a wheel- barrow or swinging a muckstick, and that above covers all the jobs there are. need no special religious qualifications. Catholic or Calvinist; Baptist or Methodist; or of the 101 divergent ereeds into which Chris- tans are broken up or of no religion. at all; any one of them may be stars or dubs in any of the above mentioned occupations. : :

But Branca may be thinking of political jobs, which is a horse of another color. Again he may be correct and he may not. A couple of years ago an article was printed in a Catholic paper published in Man- chester, England. It was a boastful news item in a black faced box on the front page. It was crowing over the fact that the three service attaches—naval, military and air—to the Canadian ambassador at Washinston, Leighton McCarthy, were Roman Catholics. In that case Branca’s contention hardly fits. The Catholics in that case had all the here are other jobs, however, that Catholics are barred from, if they are just Catholics. When, fascism was more fashionable than it is today and Mussolini was in power 1n Italy, it reached out its tentacles to Canada to mould the minds of Italian boys and girls living here.

Their political education was taken in hand by the fascists in Italv throuch appointees in Canada. Branca had that job in Vancouver. Was

that because he was a Catholic?

ey