Mr. Editor:
I am writing to you to inform you of certain abuses committed by the pulp and paper industry, principally on the border of the St. Ann Power property. My fellow workers, who number thousands, have had the same experience.
There are in place, regulations concerning the measurement of the wood and the rejection of parts of the wood considered unsuitable for the manufacture of paper. We are told that these regulations are made by Duplessis' minister of Lands and Forest. We are losing from 15 to 20 percent on the measure, of the wood we have cut because, they say, this wood is not suitable for paper; and yet they force us to cart this wood to the paper mill for the manufacture of paper. A good number of the woodcutters, disgusted by this cut in each lot, refuse to bring in the wood and leave it lying on the site of cutting where it will be a total loss.
You are well aware that our wages (so much a cord) are already too low for us to live comfortably. Now, by this swindle in the measuring, our pay is cut by another 15 to 20 percent. The companies get all the wood we cut but pay for only a part of it, while the woodcutters' poor families bewail the fact that they have to do without necessities and see their little children go without food. And all the time the premier is boasting, at banquets and elsewhere, that Quebec is rich and prosperous!
Well, just where is this prosperity hiding itself?
Edgar BEAULIEU
Mistassini — In 1950 I was suffering from rheumatism. A doctor gave me an injection against rheumatism. It didn't help. On the contrary, the trouble worsened. I went back to the hospital and last winter they amputated my leg. I am unable to get a pension because, they say, I am not sufficiently infirm. I am not enough of an invalid to get a pension and I'm too infirm to earn "my living and that of my children: I have five children to keep alive. Why do they call it the invalid pension? Why do they give it that name when in fact it is a pension granted only to the dying?
Welly LEPAGE
"The function of money is not to make money, but to move goods. Money is only one part of our transportation system. It moves goods from man to man. A dollar is like a postage stamp. If a postage stamp will not carry a letter or money will not move goods, it is just the same as an engine that will not run. Someone will have to get out and fix it.".
Henry FORD
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