Page 4
the fisherman
October 5, 1962
THE FISHERMAN
138 East Cordova Street Vancouver 4, B.C.
GEORGE NORTH, Editor Phone: MU. 3-9656
Authorised as second class mail by Post Office Department, Ottawa.
and for payment of postage In cash _
Lesson in Democracy
MISSISSIPPI is providing the world with an insight into a facet of American life that isn't featured on Radio Free Europe or other US avenues of propaganda. They spend their time extolling the virtues of the American way of life and ignoring its many deficiencies.
As an individual, James Meredith is providing an inspiring example of dignity and courage to all people. His actions stand in sharp contrast to those of his cowardly, howling tormentors whose every ignorant act adds proof to the thesis that education and intelligence are anything but synonymous.
But Meredith is only one of many Negroes who are carrying on a struggle that goes far beyond the fight for an education at the university of their choice.
What is involved here is the status of the Negro in American society—his rights as a citizen.
He is at present the man who is often denied the right to vote, who can't eat in this or that restaurant or stay in this or that hotel or live in certain areas or hold certain jobs. The Negro is a victim of vicious economic persecution that extends right into some sections of the trade union movement.
And that has always been the primary factor in the Negro's position in the United States—first as a slave and now as a wage slave—his exploitation by the owners of industry.
It is good, profitable business for them to keep him in lowly estate as a source of cheap labor and high profits.
From here, it appears to us that this is one of the chief issues on which the US labor movement has been weak and vaccilating, has refused to conduct the millitant fight necessary to eradicate racial discrimination and its accompanying economic discrimination.
The fact that racism is still so rampant in the United States that mob action can result when a single, mild mannered man enters a Mississippi university must have . shocked many people in other parts of the world.
The self-created US image of a nation concerned with equality, freedom, and justice—for other people in other countries—has become a little difficult to maintain.
The people of Cuba and other parts of Latin America can scarcely be criticised if they look with doubt on a "liberator" which virtually engages in civil war over such a simple, fundamental right as that of acquiring a higher education.
It would in fact be neither surprising nor out of place if the people of these countries suggested to the United States that it abolish discrimination and its attendant evils before attempting to force its way of life on others. And in this regard it has a long road to travel in education alone, with 92 percent of the south Negroes in all-Negro schools.
What is actually most obvious is that while the US publicly bleeds for the people of Cuba and other lands, it is actually not a whit concerned over their "democratic rights" but is deeply interested in its own right to plunder their resources.
Report from Ottawa
ABC of Politics Should Mean 'A Better Canada'
By FRANK HOWARD, MP
IAM SURE that we have all heard of the ABCs of driving, of swimming, of school. The ABCs of anything relative to the basics or fundamentals or simplicities of whatever subject is referred to. In parliament there are some ABCs too.
Perhaps, though, in the present situation we must look at these ABCs a bit differently. At thisj present session! they could easily stand for| Anxiety, Be-muscment, Confusion.
Parliament! has opened; He: Majesty's repre-; sentative hasj read the speech] from the throne and we are under full sail, almost without a rudder to keep us on course.
There is a great deal of anxiety among members. The question, devoid of all its verbal garnishment, is: When are we going to have an election? No one, at the moment of writing, knows the answer to that question. Perhaps by the time this appears in print we will be in the preliminaries of election time. Perhaps we will still be in parliament wondering whether or not next week will see the defeat of the government.
★ ★ ★ MEMBERS ARE ALSO BE-mused. I don't mean bemused in the sense of being stupified, even though that might well be the case. We are musing the possible courses and actions of the prime minister and his government.
Will he try to bring about his own defeat and enter the election with the complaint that parliament didn't give him a chance to do the things which he promised he was going to do? Will he delay as long as he can, hoping that the economy will pick up in the meantime?
I'm sure in my own mind that even he doesn't know the answers to those questions.
Incidentally, we are in no doubt as to the Liberal Party's attitude. They think they would be elected as the government if there were an election tomorrow.
Consequently they are roaring and screaming for an election re-gardles of the detrimental effect this would have upon the country which would be headless for at least four months. This is naked, shameful lust for power for the mere sake of power. ★     ★ ★
PARLIAMENT IS ALSO CON-fused. But, then this is not a strange situation. Parliament is oftimes confused, sometimes deliberately misled into confusion as when the prime minister tried to blame all of the country's fiscal problems on James Coyne.
Sometimes we are confused because members are not paying attention to the nation's affairs. Confusion then arises out of ignorance.
To me, parliament can function with a minority government. It can function with a number of parties in the House. It can conduct the business of Canada without one eye on the Elections Act all the time.
If we can actually do this, the ABCs might very well stand for A Better Canada.
Pity Poor Union Leader
If he talks on a subject, he is trying to run things.
If he is silent, he has lost interest in the Union.
If he is seen at the office, why doesn't he get out?
If he gets out, why doesn't he stay in and get the work done?
If he does not agree the boss is a skunk, he is a company man.
If he calls the boss a skunk he is ignorant.
If he is not home at night, he must be out drinking.
If he is home at night, he is ducking.
If he doesn't beat his chest and yell "Strike!" he' is a conservative.
If he does beat his chest and yell "Strike!'' he is a radical.
If he -doesn't stop to talk, his job has gone to his head.
If he does stop to talk, that's all he has to do anyway.
If he can't put a member to work who got into trouble, he is a poor leader. «
If he does get him back to work, that's what he was elected "for.
If he should give someone a short answer, "We'll get him next election."
If he gives a lengthy answer, "He is trying to talk us out of something."
If lie tries to explain something, he is playing politics.
If he doesn't explain, he is a dictator.
If his suit is pressed, he thinks he is a big shot.
If the suit is unprcssed, he is a bum.
If he is on the job a short time, he is inexperienced.
If he pleases most of the members, he is seeking re-election.
If he doesn't please most of (he members, he is a de».i duek._
If he has been on the job for a long time, it's time for a change.
Behind the Headlines
Pointed Comments On World Affairs
xlD0UT STAND Too CLOfe-» T^INK tt's CoiMQ To HaVS A BaWEL M6VENVENT-.. v
BERTRAND RUSSELL has made many profound observations. We pass along a couple: "It is clear that thought is not free if the profession of certain opinions makes it impossible to earn a living." and, "Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom, in the pursuit of truth as in the endeavor after a worthy manner of life." Also, "Freedom of opinion can only exist when the government thinks itself secure."
★ ★ *
On the stormy night of September 6, Tom Johnson, an honorary member of the Union, broke down and was drifting in the Gulf of Georgia. Tom says a helpful fisherman loaned him a wrench which was all he needed to get his Little Slope into port. Tom still has the wrench which he'd like to return wrapped in a $5 bill to show his appreciation.
★ * ★
Has anybody seen a black and tan female dachsund named Murry? Mrs. N. Neumann of 3425 Huntingdon Road, RR1, Alder-grove, has lost the valuable thoroughbred dog and as she depends on dog breeding for a large part of her livelihood, it is a serious loss. She feels it may have followed a couple of fishermen who were looking at a boathouse she had for sale on Monday, October 1. Mrs. Neumann would appreciate hearing from the fellows if they know of the dog's whereabouts.
★ ★ *
Peder Jensen, troller Fa-ris, reports a fair season. He fished in the Ucluelet area on the west coast. The veteran fisherman, who may be retiring one of these days, will be spending the winter in Vancouver. He dropped in at Ladysmith, Nanaimo, and Victoria on his way down.
★ ★ ★
A subscription from Ernest Frisch of Ocean Falls who says The Fisherman is "most interesting literature for a sportsman too."
★ ★ Ik-Chester Solberg of Hancy. engineer on the seiner John Todd and a member of the Union since 1943. was injured Saturday, September 15 at about midnight. He got snarled in the gear and was thrown backward into the water, hitting a fender log. He didn't realise until about 3 a.m. how badly he was injured, when he found he was unable to move. An ambulance was called, but it was impossible to get a stretcher into the boat so he was carried out. He was taken to the veterans' hospital in Victoria and later transferred by ambulance to Shaughnessy Hospital in Vancouver. He is suffering from fractured ribs and other injuries but was released from hospital on September 24 and is now at home.
■k     ★ ★
Longline black cod prices to date are 16 to 17 cents for small and 24 cents for large; halibut, 36 to 38 cents; red cod, 7 to 8 cents; ling cod, 12 cents.
★ ★ ★
The following are recent black cod landings at Vancouver: Cap-ella 1, 16.000 pounds black cod, 1.500 halibut,-200 ling cod. 400 red cod. selling Edmunds and Walker; Arctic 1, 5,000 black cod under six pounds. 1,200 black cod over six pounds, 800 pounds dressed red cod, 3,000 pounds halibut, 250 pounds ling cod. selling Reliance Fish; Sea Maid. 2.200;black cod. 1.600 red cod, 400 halibut, selling Tulloch-Western; Deep Sea, 1,100 black cod, 2,000 red cod, 1.800 halibut, selling Edmunds and Walker; Kenn Falls, 2.200 large black cod, 1,500 small black cod, 1,300 round red cod, 600 halibut, selling Jack McMillan Fisheries; Covenant. 1,400 pounds black cod, 2.200 halibut, 1,400 dressed red cod at 8 cents, 2.000 round red cod at five cents, selling Jack McMillan Fisheries; Tanza, 2,500 black cod, 4,000 red cod, 3,000 halibut, selling Edmunds and Walker; Silver Rose, 4,400 large black cod, 3,600 small black cod. 4,500 red cod, 2,000 halibut, 320 ling cod, selling Vancouver Shell Fish.
★ + +
The Zapora, Sentinella and the MRB were also in but we were
unable to get weights up to press time.
★ ★ ★
Axel Ostrom's 50 foot troller which is being built by Men-chions Shipyard is beginning to take shape. The planking has been completed and the yard expects to launch her in November.
★ ★ ★
Chris Moan's troller Manhattan 1 was in recently with 1,900 rjounds of coho selling to Carlyle Fish of Campbell Avenue.
★ ★ *
Tom Ostby of the troller Carl O has called it quits on salmon for the season. He says he may take a trip jigging ling cod.
★ ★ ★
Seven Toed Pete, which is Chris Gallagher's cat of the troller Bora, is becoming quite popular among the fishing fleet, especially the trollers. He derives his name logically since he has seven toes on each paw. One thing he is noted for is putting dogs on the run. He really makes them take off — to the delight of the fishermen. He is liable to wander off on another boat for a day or so in some other port, but always seems to return home to Campbell Avenue Dock.
__^oT T fbR f AlTfl Fii L SERVICE-T£n YEARS Mai?e /|np& THE SUIT/» '
arpHE book (To Other Planets
—published by the Russian ministry of education for use by seventh grade pupils) describes various ways in which the moon might be reached, but each hinges on the problem of fuel for the return to earth, and they all have these three things in common: '1) a base spacecraft, designed to land on the moon, with three men; <2) an auxiliary spacecraft with three more men, which will not land on the moon but will orbit it, waiting to bring the moon explorers home; (3) men changing, out there in space, from one spacecraft to the other."
—McLean's, Sept. 22. 1962
★ ★ *
"THE OVERWHELMING MA-jority of scientists agree that the present level of science makes it possible to detect any nuclear explosions with the help of national control facilities. The conference proposed to make detection even more effective by establishing as a supplement and aid to basic national facilities, a system of automatic seismic stations. These would be installed in agreed numbers by the host nation after being sealed by an international authority."
—New Times. Sept. 26, 1962, reporting on the Ninth Pug-wash Conference, Cambridge. Aug. 20-30, 1962, attended by over 70 scientists from 18 countries.
★ * ★ "OSTENSIBLY THE NATION-
al Productivity Council was set up by the government to examine various problems confronting the Canadian economy. In fact, however, as this column warned at the time, the main purpose of the Council' was to devise ways and means of developing speedup and committing the trade union movement to support such measures including others that are positively harmful to the working class."
—Wm. Kashtan. Canadian tribune, Sept. 24, 1962, commenting on the resignation from the National Productivity Council of Claude Jodoin, Canadian Labor Congress president.
★ ★ ★
"THE    DICTATES    OF THE
cold war have brought upon the people of the USA ruthless intolerance for dissident ideas.
"Under any guise of security men of power have sought to eliminate any independent point of view.
"A stable of paid informers, subversive lists, a secret police, slander in the irresponsible press —all of these techniques have been used for the grand purpose of creating a concentration camp for the mind."
—Bertrand Russell. British philosopher and peace leader, to a meeting of the Committee for Democratic Rights in the USA.
★ ★ *
"THE INTERNATIONAL LA-bor organisation (ILO) No. 100 concerning equal remuneration for men and women workers for work of equal value has been ratified by only 38 out of the 102 ILO member countries.
"It has not been ratified, among others, by Australia, Canada, Fin-lard, Great Britain, Japan, Sweden. Switzerland, and the United States "
—Trade Union Press, Sept. 1, 1962
*|T5 AH emercencv, doc, UjECOTTA use iyiE prill ricut AWAY '
"WE   ARE   NOT   GOING TO
recover Guantanamo Base from them by force, but it is a portion of our territory which we will never renounce, and we will not cease to claim it until it is returned to our country. That base is a dagger piercing the heart of Cuba; that base is the scene of daily provocations against us; from that base drunken soldiers shoot at our guards daily."
—Fidel Castro, speaking at Santiago de Cuba on July 26. 1962. as reported in the News Bulletin published by the Embassy of Cuba in Canada.
* ★ ★
"AT PRESENT MORE THAN a million Common Market workers are employed in countries other than their own — but they are still discriminated against in many ways, not only in their right to seek jobs, but also in their wages and social benefits." —Financial Post, Sept. 20, 1962.
* ★ ★
"EVENTUAL ABSORPTION,
dislocation or disappearance of scores upon scores of small Canadian manufacturing concerns unable to compete in an open trading world crowded with giant producers. The result would be an immense upheaval in employment and the whole process of job creation, job filling, job finding."
—Financial Post. Sept. 29, 1962, forecasting the long term outlook for small business in Canada.
* ★ ★
"IT ISN'T GENERALLY known, but back in the days when everyone thought we had the bomb and they had not, John Foster Dulles was quietly building a shelter in the garden of his New York town house."
—Esquire, Jan. 1962
Herring Closed To Save Salmon
The federal fisheries department has announced closure of the waters off Victoria from Bee-chey Head to Cadboro Bay to herring fishing in the interests of conserving young salmon.
Reason for the closure was, in the words of the department, "There is conclusive evidence that the herring fishery in these waters during the past few days took very substantial numbers of juvenile salmon."
War His Way Out
Meany — Five Star General
• This article by George Harris, f secretary of the United Electrical Workers Union in Canada, appeared in the September 3 issue of UE News.
•
THE August 20 issue of UE News carried an item which quotes George Meany, president of the AFL-CIO, in an address to the US National Association of Manufacturers as saying:
"I never went on strike in my life, never had anything to do with a picketline ... In the final analysis, there is not a great difference between the things I stand for and the things that the National Association of Manufacturers' leaders stand for. I stand for the profit system. I believe it's a wonderful incentive. I believe in the free enterprise system completely."
Meany boasts about never having been on the front line of labor's struggle, and there is no reason to disbelieve him. But this does not mean that Meany is opposed to struggle. On the contrary he has made it quite clear that he is in favor of conscripting American workers up to the last one for the biggest of all struggles—nuclear war.
No other interpretation can be placed on what he said in a speech in Washington, DC on August 22, 1962. Meany, wagging •his militant index finger before the delegates to the American Bakery and Confectionery Workers' Union convention, said:
"The primary duty of organised labor and all US citizens is to keep the United States militarily and economically strong to make sure it is more than a match for the Soviet Union."
Meany then went on to condom cultural exchanges between the United States and the Soviet Union, calling those who believe that such artistic and entertain ment exchanges contribute to wards a lessening of the wai danger, 'academic nitwits."
Meany, in demanding that all lines of communication with the peoples of the socialist countries be cut off and that the US concentrate on the arms race, which is largely the case today, exposes himself a£ one of the foremost warmongers.
★    * ★ WHILE   GEORGE MEANY,
purporting to speak for American labor, and a good chunk of Canadian labor through US head office control of many international unions, calls on the working class to abandon all efforts for peace, and prepare for inevitable war, the idea that such a conflict, with probable total de-struction, can and must be avoided, is gaining ground oh this continent.
It is not to the credit of Meany and the bulk of the high salaried trade union brass, that such is the case, even among some sections of business which is just as interested as Meany in the profit system of so-called free enterprise.
Two Toronto newspapers, Globe and Mail and Star, responded to the Meany war line in editorials which respectively said:
"Meany's proposed course of action would be more likely to make eventual armed conflict in-evitabe . . . While they (US-USSR i talk, even if their words do not have equal meaning for each, they do not fight. While they mix, they cannot fail to influence each other, and the more they mix, the greater the influence.''
—Toronto Globe and Mail + + * "It is fortunate that, at .least in this field, Meany does not speak for all organised labor on this continent. For his is a counsel of despair, which can envision only a disastrous conflict between East and «West."
—Toronto Star
These big business newspapers are not speaking from any other point of view than self-interest. In part, at least, they begin to accept certain facts of life, one being that extending the life of any system through war is now precarious, if not impossible. *    ★ *
THIS VIEW HAS BEEN MOST clearly expressed in an editorial in the Peterborough Examiner, appearing in the August 14, 1962, edition. It said:
"It has to be admitted that the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is no longer a peasant state in transition. It is a confirmed union of peoples based on a novel concept of human society, which puts the economic welfare of its citizens before anything else, and which can match the technology of any nation in the world. Laudable or not, it is a fact and it has to be contended with. Any hope of its crumbling from within or of its being destroyed from without, are exercises in self deception."
And self deception is synono-mus with war, and possible total destruction. Meany preaches this sermon of doom in his capacity as head of the trade union movement, and attempts to deceive millions of workers into accepting self destruction.
The alternative to self deception is the acceptance of the wise words of the Peterborough Examiner, calling for facing facts and adjusting ideas to those facts.
There is no alternative other than that of peaceful coexistence between different systems, with economic, social and cultural activities which will demonstrate for man's intelligence the superiority of one or the other.
Whatever else George Meany may represent in the labor movement, on this most crucial question he represents too much. His mentality seems more suited to a Pentagon general than a trade union president.