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THE FISHERMAN
November 5, 1940
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THE
FISHERMAN The People Must Live
Published Every Other Tuesday by The Fisherman Publishing Society at 164 East Hastings Street, Vancouver, B.C. Telephone MArine 1829.
EDITOR - - V. McCRAE
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Give Us Sane Legislation
Since the unfortunate situation which developed during the arranging of salmon prices for the past season it has become evident to everyone concerned that an equitable system of arbitration has become necessary in the fishing industry. The present clause in the Fisheries Act which is supposed to cover the need, is admitted by all concerned to be hopelessly inadequate, and is actually a clause which was designed to cover another proposed Act. All of the proposed Act was dropped except the arbitration clause which was left with, nothing to cover, and it certainly doesn't suit any of the existing conditions. Unless it is changed for the better it will continue to be made use of by those who don't mind mixing their politics, business and metaphor's as a white elephant which can be used as a red herring.
During the present session of the Provincial Legislature Assembly, fishermen and fishermen's organizations should insist that their representatives in the House support and fight for any measure that would improve the situation.
What is needed is an Act which will cover the entire fishing industry, including the Trollers, Packers and Cannery Workers, who are now left out.
It should not be necessary to obtain the consent of the operators before an Arbitration Board could be set up. A board should be appointed automatically if prices and wages are not agreed upon before a date set well before the fishing season opens.
The cost of the Board should be found by the Government, and not make into a joker by placing it beyond the financial reach of the fishermen, who are already broke because of the need of such a Board.
It should never become necessary to hold up the fishing in order to adjust prices. When the longshoreman goes out on strike the ship remains to be loaded when the strike is over. When the builder locks out his carpenters the house remains to be finished after the lockout is over. But when the fishermen and canners lock horns, the fish swim merely by and die at the foot of some log jam, or maybe deposit a few eggs in the lake for trout feed and to breed the next cycle run. However, all the fishing in the world won't put them in the can after the argument is settled.
The only real solution is legislation which will make a tie-up unnecessary. Canvass your provincial member about it!
Analysis Of Agreement
An analysis of the 1940 and 1939 herring agreements shows the following changes—all retroactive to the commencement of the current herring fishing season:
(a) Increase in the price per ton by $1.00, or 41 per cent for herring going to the herring canneries.
(b) Increase in the price per ton by $1.00, or 41 per cent for all herring going to the freezers for bait purposes. This is a new clause in the agreement.
(c) On tenders for the second successive year, an increase in wages—the union policy of employment of four men on tenders has been enlarged to cover packers on West Coast; on boats of 50 ton or over, the union demands that the division line on tenders be lowered to 40 ton was dropped during final negotiations, as the companies stated this would curtail employment as certain boats would not be used.
In order to ensure full employment, the union maintained the 50-ton scale, but was successful in increasing wages from $175 to $183.75; $150 to $157.50 and from $100 to $110. Another success was that where a fourth man is employed on boats under 50 tons, the wage will be $110 a month. This represents a $20 a month increase for cooks employed on small tenders.
Other noteworthy gains are the $20 a month bonus for seine boat engineers, and the bonus paid to the crew of tenders employed to carry fish from the east coast to the west coast of Vancouver Island, with the exception of fish carried from the Gulf of Georgia areas to the west coast.
On the lay basis there is a slight increase for the mates and cook.
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Mrs. Nielsen's Maiden Speed in the House* of Commons
May 20, 1940.
Mr. Speaker, in rising for the first time to speak in this House I wish to express my regrets that the Rev. W. G. Brown is not sitting here beside me this evening, because, having known him, I feel sure that his voice would have been raised throughout this session in the interests of the people of Canada. I find myself in the
unique position of being the only woman member of this House, and I deeply regret it. It is a sad reflection upon us as a nation when, while over fifty per cent of our voters are women, we can have only one representative of our sex in the House.
All through the ages we women unfortunately have been regarded more or less as the property of men. Because of that position we have been expected to be but the shadows of men, to reflect their ideas and to echo their sentiments. It is only within the last few years that we have become persons in our own rights. And we have at last the courage to search our own hearts and to find there that we have ideas and ideals peculiar to, ourselves. To fail to give expression to these ideas is to deny our womanhood. "THE GREAT QUESTION."
Today the one great question of war overshadows everything else; until now it has received more attention in this House than anything else. From a woman's point of view I should like to say this, that war does not always mean the same things to women as it does to men. To me war means broken homes, widowhood, fatherless children, destruction, agony and death.
DORISE W. NIELSEN, M.P.
I would ask you, Mr. Speaker, what have women to do with death? Our purpose in the world is to give life and to protect it. At this time, particularly in this crisis, I feel that the women of this nation must keep a sane and level outlook, and they must remember that in a time of crisis their great duty is to guard and to protect life.
Through these last years two great calamities have reduced the people of the west, some of whom I have the honor to represent in this House, to the point of destitution. The economic depression and drought have brought to our people of the west insecurity, fear of the future, heartbreak and hopelessness.
"FARMERS OF THE WEST"
Possibly it has often been said in this House that the west has not received from this government the attention and the consideration that it should have received. I wish to stress that most emphatically. The farmers, if they had received the consideration of this government in past years, if they had received a just and fair price for their products, would have been only too willing to struggle on to be self-supporting.
The farmers of the west are wonderful people; they have virility and vitality in the highest degree, yet today you find them despondent and hopeless, fearing to look into the future, because they dread the years ahead. This government, having in the past failed to give our farmers a price which would enable them to be self-supporting, and failed to finj employment for our youth, threw out relief as a sop to desperate people.
RELIEF DEMORALIZING
I am not an advocate of relief; there has never been anything more demoralizing to our people in the west than relief, there has never been anything more calculated to destroy their morale, take away their self-respect and sap their energy than this relief. Yet today and in the months ahead, if the basic problem of agriculture is not tackled by this House so that these farmers of the west can be once again self-supporting, the relief must be continued and it must be increased if the people of the west are to survive.
I feel myself very much qualified to speak upon this question of relief, because for three years
I have lived upon relief. I had to feed a family of five—listen carefully—upon $11.25 a month.
An Hon. Member: A dirty shame .'
Mrs. Nielsen: And I have often wished I had the wisdom and the ability of the minister of finance (Mr. Ralston) to help me balance my budget. Indeed, it is a task. If this government in the days ahead cuts down the standard of living of the people in the west by reducing their relief, it condemns them to slow and agonizing death, both physical and mental.
It has been already agreed by those who are best qualified to study these problems that even before the coming of drought and depression the farmers of the west were not having a square deal or getting a decent living. Professor Britnell of Saskatchewan University has stated in one of his books that the people of the west have through these last years suffered unduly. I should like to quote from his book as follows:
"Direct relief became necessary if starvation was to be averted, though the standard was often actually lower for the very large marginal group that managed to avoid relief, or for those who were just to be pushed on to relief, than for the actual relief recipients, though relief schedules have not been extravagant."
Indeed, I, who have had to live upon relief, know that they were in no way extravagant. I would say to you, my friends—and I call you my friends because T cannot believe that hon. members on the government benches are men of stone; you are men of flesh and blood; you are made of the same texture as these people who are struggling in the west to earn for themselves a livelihood, to provide a home for their children; you are made of the same stuff as they—I cannot believe that you have not in your hearts that human compassion for your fellow men in times of such distress.
"ANOTHER HUNGER"
There is another kind of hunger. Robert Service, the poet of the north, calls it "hunger which is not of the belly kind." I speak of that need which the people of the west have for culture which is their natural right as citizens of this great country. They are living today under conditions
In this country we are supposed to have freedom of speech and freedom of the press.
Well, just where do you suppose any newspaper would get off printing something that the advertisers didn't like?
I'll tell you where they'd get off: behind the eight-ball — in the ash can — up salt creek!
As far as that goes, the only ones in this country who are free to say or write what they like are the ones who want to say or write what the bosses want them to, or else someone of whom the bosses are afraid. While I'm on the subject of freedom, we're not even free to read anything we want to, even after it has been published.
Gee whiz! Look at the jams we used to get into as kids for reading Diamond Dick Junior and Old King Brady and Nick Carter, etc. Maybe if the oldsters had left us alone we wouldn't have wanted to read such trash. As it was, we used to read it anyway, and enjoyed it too. When it comes to a showdown I don't suppose reading such trash ever really did anyone any serious harm after all.
Kids and some grown-ups live for a portion of their time in a land of make-believe anyway, but it seems that anyone who has the power to retire from the commonplace world and go to the land of make-believe also has the power to return benefitted by the change of scene.
Gee, I wish I was a kid again—in spirit, if not in fact!
• * * *
In case any of youse guys are interested, I didn't write the poem that appeared in this column last issue, "The Trail of a Sourdough," but I heartily subscribe to the sentiment contained therein.
• * * •
According to the report issued by the United States Department of the Interior, Fish and Wild-life Service Division of the Fisheries Industries, Market News Service, Tuesday, October 22, 1940, the price paid to sahnon purse seiners for chum salmon was 4% cents per pound at Seattle. With chums weighing an average of ten pounds each, that meanes the fishermen are getting 45 cents for fish that are being sold for 15 cents each in B.C.
Still some people tells us that we should fish for what the cannery operators are willing to pay us in order to be sure production does not stop.
Then the operators tell us that they don't want the fish because they are not sure they can sell them. But are they suggesting that we ship them to the United States where there apparently is a market for them? Heck, no! The answer must be according to my arithmetic that they can make more money by keeping the fish here than they can by shipping them to Seattle. But do they offer to pay enough to sort of split the profits with the fishermen? No, indeed!
• * * *
When we squawk about women working and keeping men out of jobs we often overlook the fact that women have always worked and made it unnecessary for men to do certain jobs.
Among the most primitive people of whom we have any record, the women always had a job or a lot of jobs. As culture advanced women's jobs changed. When people took up their abode in houses the men usually cut the wood for the fireplace. Then we got stoves, then washing machines which were run by hand; then electricity came along and upset our whole domestic scheme; electric stoves, electric toasters and waffle irons, electric irons, even electric ironing machines, electric refrigerators, electric vacuum cleaners, etc. etc. Now, in a modern home one woman can do more work and do it more easily than half a dozen could have done fifty years ago. But where is she going to get the electric appliances? Her husband can't buy them for her if he's a common working man, that's a cinch. So she goes out and gets a job, doing generally what she was trained to do before she got her man—working in an office, nursing, waiting tables in a restaurant, or what not. Then she buys what she started to work to get and then quit her job. But does she quit her job? No, indeed she does not. By the time she has her frigidaire or her electric washing machine or whatever it is she started to earn, there's some other work-saving device on the market and she has to work another two or three years to get that. So it goes on and on forever.
"Women's place is in the home," but how the heck is she going to stay there and also have a home worth staying in?
which make it impossible for them to avail themselves of those things which they should have. Again I quote from Professor Britnell. He said:
"There's no music, no books, no contact with the cultured, leisured world. One can't even window-shop. Dirty, tawdry little village stores—and even they are miles away. There is only an aching, bewildered body whose strength wanes and waxes and wanes again. Above all, beyond all, there is the loneliness. It is an ever-present, all-prevading thing that both agonizes and numbs the soul. Or have farm women souls? Gorgeous sunrises flare and flame, painting the eastern sky with their glow, reflected in the west. We glance at it as we stumble out. It means the beginning of—another day."
I will not tell you any more about these things. Possibly you have heard them expressed many, many times. This is not hunger for food, but hunger of the mind.
I wish I could take you to our little schools. In the children of the west we may have girls and boys with the fingers of surgeons or the minds of scientists, who, if they were trained, might give of their knowledge to the benefit of the whole world, and who might help make the name of Canada famous among the nations of the world.
Today, however, if their mothers and fathers are unable to buy their textbooks and send them to high schools, those girls and boys go to work scrubbing floors and picking stones in the fields. Frustration is everywhere.
MUST GUARD YOUTH.
I want to bring these things to you, my friends, and once again advisedly. I call you my friends because you cannot be insensible; you cannot be unaware of the need for us as a nation to guard our youth and all the virility that is theirs. There is also another matter in the west which affects us as a nation.
Owing to lower standards of living during these last few years another problem is coming to the front; that is, the question of the health of our people. In the west we have isolated districts in some of which the people may have to go 20 or 30 miles to get a doctor.
In my travels through that north country I have come upon instances which may appear to you almost unbelievable. I have known cases where a father or mother, with a desperately sick child at home, has had to travel 20 miles or more in sub-zero weather, not to fetch a doctor but like a whipped dog to beg of a relief officer in an endeavor to obtain a permit to get a doctor to look after that child.
These things are a reflection upon us as a nation. I have said many times that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and as a nation we are only as great and as fine as the most humble of our people. When some of our people are living under such conditions as I have mentioned, then we definitely are not a great nation.
Since I have been in this city, I have admired the great memor-
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