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Times-Advocate, 1979-02-21, Page 4Think small Times-Advocate, February 21, 1979 Small Business Creates Jobs More diffe OPINION Strange priorities The political situation in Iran would appear to be an item farthest from the minds of most Canadians, but the fact that some of this country’s leaders are already suggesting that oil and gas rationing may become a reali ty due to Iran’s termination of oil production, should point out quite vividly how we are affected by situations in any corner of the world. Canadians have been warned for some time that the supply of energy resources is waning, but the situation in Iran indicates that some of those resources can dry up overnight. All of that points to the urgency of research into new forms of domestic energy and methods for a more conser vative use of those already in ex istence. While some research is now un derway, the situation has not been given the priority it deserves, par ticularly when compared to some other types of government spending. The health and welfare depart ment, for instance, recently announced the first projects that had received fun ding under the $1 million available to groups sponsoring projects to mark the International Year of the Child. While most of those projects are no doubt worthwhile, that $1 million in vested in energy exploration and con servation projects would appear more practical. In Ottawa, for instance, one pro ject will receive $4,000 to “develop projects to sensitize children to their rights as outlined by the UN declaration”. Those rights won’t mean much to most Canadian children if they run out of energy resources! Comforting cop-out It was nice of Warner Brothers to give us the New Improved Superman. The old one was getting a bit tacky. “More powerful than a locomotive” does sound a bit dated. So for a mere $78 million we have a glossier knight in shining armor, a lonelier Lone Ranger, a super-special Superman to be. the symbol of our cultural cop-out. Animals have two basic instincts when confronted with danger — fight or flight. During the ’60s there was a tendency (at least for a few) to fight. Now in the ’70s. with the problems get ting more and more complex, the human animal has taken flight. A good traditional way of doing that is to invest ourselves in simplistic solutions and their champions. Super man catches the bad guys and throws them in the lock-up. That’s a lot easier to understand than an analysis of how those bad guys got to be bad in the first place. Trudeau promised us the “just society.” Then it turned out this super politician had feet of clay and couldn’t bring about quick solutions to complex problems without getting us to give up something. So we are now turning to another hero, his image newly polished for the adoring media. But Joe Clark won’t be able to do anything either, without involving us. So soon we’ll be after a new hero who says he can. Meanwhile, the entertainment world provides us with a host of heroes who know what they’re against. TV sports, for instance, provides us with clean cut battle lines, issues we can un derstand without thinking too much, and tactics that get immediate results. We don’t have to do a thing. Fundamental religionists do much the same thing on TV. They tell us “Jesus is the answer” to whatever the question may be, and they say, “Write to us, send us money, and we’ll pray for you. All your problems will be solved.” Our saintly heroes in medialand can solve all the world’s ills with one easy slogan. But a few ordinary people such as Martin Luther King, Mother Theresa, Jean Vanier and Bob McClure showed us the stuff of which real heroes are made...they risked with a purpose. Meanwhile, problems have become more complex, issues have become less clear and solutions cry out for our involvement. , So we rush to the local theatre for a two-hour bath in the comforting cop- out of super-simple solutions, and we tell ourselves we don’t really believe the Superman story. Warner Brothers, by way of atone ment for their sins, are forced to settle for a puny seven and a half million dollars in the bank after three whole days. The United Church of Canada BATT’N AROUND • r*B?' Perspectives / By SYD FLETCHER Every job has its cupational hazards. Although teaching has nothing so dangerous or glamorous as a deep-sea diver or a steeplejack has to contend with there are some things that can happen to you that are a little unpleasant. Though I don’t have of- ficialsta tis tics to back me up on this I understand that teachers have the third highest rate of nervous breakdowns in Canada (Psychiatrists and dentists have the dubious honour of being the first two). I can remember from my own high school days one character that was brought in at Christmas, in desperation I guess, as our other teacher had received a promotion, and teachers were hard to get then, unlike now. My Grade 13 classmates and I, “’certainly old enough to know better, gave him a really hard time, from dropping books off oc- desks in unison to hiding his desk and textbooks out on the fire escape. By June we were ready to fail math and he was ready for an institution. A very poor situation. Another distinct hazard for teachers seems to be in getting sued. The medical profession, especially in the States, has been very much aware of this, as lawsuits have been on the upswing in the last ten years. In California recently a boy’s parents sued the board of education because'he had not learned to read in his school career (yet had been granted a diploma). In British Columbia a board was sued (successfully) for $1,500,000 because a boy had broken his neck in gym class due to negligence on the part of the teacher. A friend of mine tells of one time when he was dic tating spelling and had given out about ten words as he strolled around the classroom. He came up behind a lad who had not written one word. Without thinking he lightly tapped the boy on the back of the head with the speller he was carrying. To his horror, the boy, startled, jerked upward with his ball point pen and put it through his bottom lip. Blood spouted like a fountain. Embarrassing eh, to say the least. The boy’s father was not at all happy about it. Nor would I be, I guess. If it had been an eye think of the consequences. Another teacher was having a problem with a Grade 5 lad and told him to get out of the classroom. When she came out two minutes later he wasn’t there. You guessed it. He was outside, in January weather, shivering, in his shirt sleeves outside the school door. Then there was that in teresting case down near Toronto where a teacher pulled a boy’s hair (a definite no-no, needless to say) and much to his sur prise a whole handful came out. It turned out the boy had a scalp disorder of some sort. Perhaps the day will come when teaching is done by television or is totally computerized so that instead of resorting to such foolish types of discipline the machine will merely say to the student “Answer this or I’ll give you a thousand (volts that is)”. Amid all the comments that have been written and spoken about the drubbing the N.H.L. all-stars took at the hands of the Russians last week, one important factor has been overlooked by many of the experts who have attempted to analyse the reason for our best not being as good as their best. They’ve correctly pointed out that the Russians are in better physical con dition, that they are more proficient in the basics of the game and that they have better deployment. But they appear to have missed the one aspect that leads to their success...their way of life. While hockey fans throughout this country may have been upset over the fact the Russians put it to our best, they shouldn’t expect those hockey players to change their way of life so they can beat the Ruskies, unless they too are prepared to change their lifestyle. The National Hockey League basical ly operates as a form of entertainment, and as such its participants are enter tainers first and athletes second. In Russia, it is just the opposite. Hockey players are athletes first and last. The state picks up the bill for the training and operation. Team managers aren’t concerned about turning out a product that will entice lucrative TV contracts or fill stadiums to keep the balance sheets on the black side and satisfy in vestors. It’s one of the basic differences between capitalism and socialism. The Russians don’t need any goons on their teams to satisfy the many fans who only come to the arena to see a few good fights and a bit of blood. In Russia, they rely on the KGB to provide their excitement along those lines, while Canadians flock to hockey games to get their kicks. Jr -to if Hockey players in both countries are idols and, generally speaking, among the elite. The Russian players get many benefits not enjoyed by their fellow countrymen. They get higher wages and have comfortable apartments. But, unlike NHL stars who build up lucrative pensions and investments and can attain “easy street” with only a few years’ work in the sport, the Rus sian players know they have to con tinue to perform well to maintain their advantages. That’s why they’re prepared to put countless hours into practice and conditioning to stay at the top, whereas may capitalist players would be more inclined to use their names and sign a contract to do public relations work with a brewery and forget the hard work. It has something to do with the “work ethic” which is a vanishing in gredient with Canadians in all walks of life, and certainly not just hockey players. The Russians don’t have unions to back demands for higher wages and shorter work weeks and obviously the players don’t have Al Eagleson negotiating their terms of employment and long-term contracts. The Russians produce or make the proverbial trip to Siberia. Even the established stars keep looking over their shoulders. if ic ic Howie Meeker, of course, has the answer to all our problems. We have to start from scratch in our minor hockey systems to produce the type of players who can successfully compete against the Russians. The fact that Howie operates hockey schools throughout the country is only a coincidence that would be noted by another capitalist. The basic question, in our humble opinion, is not how we are going to beat the Russians, but whether it’s really worth the effort at all if it means tur ning kids into the type of machines that the Russians produce. Even if the state was prepared to undertake a similar it zx. must be Times Established 1 873 Advocate Established 1 881 aimes -Advocate fcw* Hmm, North MhWNwt ft North UmUao Mne» U? j SERVING CANADA'S BEST FARMLAND C.W.N.A., O.W.N.A, CLASS 'A' and ABC Published by J. W. Eedy Publications Limited LORNE EEDY, PUBLISHER Editor — Bill Batten Assistant Editor — Ross Haugh Advertising Manager ■— Jim Beckett Composition Manager — Harry DeVries Business Manager — Dick Jongkind Phone 235-1331 f*CNA SUBSC Amalgamated 1924 Published Each Thursday Morning at Exeter, Ontario Second Class Mail Registration Number 0386 SUBSCRIPTION RATES: Canada $11.00 Per Year; USA $22.00 The prophets of doom have been busily spreading their messages via bold, black newspaper headlines. Em ployment is falling, unem ployment is rising and we’re all in for hard, hard times — if you believe the doom- sayers. The Canadian Federation of Independent Business, a national organization which speaks on behalf of more than 53,000 small and medi um-sized Canadian-owned firms, suspected that some thing wasn’t quite right in those disaster-filled stories, though. After all, with a la bour force expanding faster than the speed of light, Cana da’s unemployment figures should have been astronomi cal rather than merely un comfortably high - unless some firms have been creat ing new jobs. So the Federation began sifting through the figures provided by Statistics Canada in an attempt to discover which firms have been creat ing new jobs. The results are surprising, especially for any one who still believes that big business is the centre of eco nomic action in this country. Specifically, small firms (those with fewer than 20 employees) have created nine out of every ten new private sector jobs in this country in 1977; and when the data on 1978 is published the record should be equally impressive. So what has happened in Canada to cause such enor mous expansion of employ ment in the small firms sec tor at a time when larger firms have either stopped hiring or are cutting back in staff? Pat Johnston, the Fed eration’s Director of Policy & Research, suggests several interconnected causes. Since 1971, for instance, program in this country, remembered that simple logistics are against us in that the Russians have 10 times as many promising young players to pick from in their grooming programs to reach world supremacy. No doubt we could take 40 or 50 of the most promising 16-year-olds from coast to coast, put them in an arena and toss the key away for five years and have an excellent team. But, would Canadians be prepared to pay the bill? Would those young men be prepared to accept the type of lifestyle that would be dictated? How much would Al Eagleson think we’d have to pay them? * e if » if In short, the only Way this country j-he federal and provincial can hope to compete with the Russians at the international level is to change our system to one more closely resembling that which they use. Freedom of choice would have to be banished. Kids who show superior talents for hockey would become hockey players, regardless of their own ambitions along other pursuits. We’d have to take some of the fun out of the game and replace it with regimented training, designed not for the good of the majority, but for the benefit of the minority who could achieve world standards. It wouldn’t be all bad, of course. The Russians have proven the value of their way of life in many facets of sport and technology. But don’t expect our hockey players to follow their pattern of life, unless you’re prepared to do likewise. You can bet that even Howie Meeker won’t train kids for 50 rubles a week and a luxurious (??) one-bedroom apart ment. And can you imagine how long he’d have to wait for the KGB to knock on his door after he aired his criticisms of the state-run hockey program? s * . governments have introduced many new tax measures de signed to benefit the smaller firm. The incentives have caused expansion in the small business sector — and every new firm or every expanded firm means more jobs. Meanwhile, governments and many bigger firms have increased the amount of work which they farm out to smaller firms. Subcon tracting work is accepted practice in strong nations like Japan and the same bene ficial effects are being felt in Canada. At the same time, many foreign-owned corporations have withdrawn from the Canadian market, leaving be hind a void which can be filled by new Canadian- owned firms. In addition, Canada has undergone several dramatic shifts in economic conditions during the 1970s, Small firms adapt more readily to these changes than is possible for the larger firm. The rapid fall in the Canadian dollar, for example, makes Canadian goods and services more competitive at home and abroad and it has been the smaller firm which has moved quickly to take advantage of the new opportunities. Energy costs, of course, batter the energy-intensive large firm b ut have less effect on the labour-intensive smal ler firm, which explains some shift away from large-scale production. Population has been shifting away from the large centres, back to small business-oriented under developed regions. And, per haps above all, small firms seem to weather economic cycles more easily than their larger counterparts. Job creation — just one of many ways in which small is beautiful. , 4'. --------------------------------------------■■ ----- - f; ■ >1 “Think small" is an editorial message from the Canadian Federation of Independent Business© I down memory lonoj Getting a pound of flesh Recently I’ve been teaching that perennial favorite, The Merchant of Venice, by one Will Shakespeare. It’s a light, romantic comedy, but through the pretty speeches and comic com plications runs an iron and an irony that almost steals the play every time it is read or performed: the story of Shylock the money-lender and his in sistence on his pound of flesh. That word and that phrase have become part of our language. You may have heard someone say, “He always wants his pound of flesh.” They are synonyms of a merciless greed, hatred, and desire for revenge. For those who have forgotten the plot, or haven’t read or seen the play, I’ll give a pocket synopsis. A rich merchant is approached by his best friend, a young man who has squandered all his money, including a goodly sum the merchant has lent him. The young fellow wants his friend to lend him another sum, about $35,000, so I that he can get himself all duded up and marry a wealthy heiress, upon which he will return all the money he owes. For friendship’s sake, the rich merchant says, “No problem. All my cash is tied up in ships at sea with rich cargoes, but my credit is excellent. Go borrow the money and I’ll back your note.” Or words to that effect. I am Will Smiley, not Will Shakespeare. So the young blade goes to a notorious money-lender, Shylock, who agrees to lend him the money for three months. Usually, he charges more in terest than Household Finance, but this time he won’t charge any. The plot thickens. In a few sneering asides, we learn that Shylock hates the rich merchant. He has reasons. The merchant has spat upon him, spurned him, called him dog, and hurt him badly in the pocketbook by lending money interest-free. Shylock can stand the spitting and the names, but he turns purple when he thinks someone is lending money with no interest when he could be copping 40 per cent. He sees his chance. Sure, he’ll lend' the young spender the money, interest- free, provided the merchant will sign a bond: that if the money is not repaid by a certain date, Shylock may take a pound of flesh from any part of the merchant’s body. It’s all a joke, of course. As Shylock points out, a pound of human flesh is not worth as much as a pound of veal, or even a pound of hamburger. (This was before inflation. I wouldn’t bet on it nowadays.) The rich merchant agrees, airily. After all, his ships will be in with their rich cargoes a whole month before the bond is due. And nobody would take a pound of flesh. (Shhh! We in the audience know that Shylock will take a pound of flesh from the heart area, and that the laws of the city will back him up, if the bond is signed in quadruplicate.) Well, well. It is rumoured on the stock exchange that the rich merchant’s ships have all been lost at sea, and he is bankrupt. upholdsBig trial scene. The law Shylock’s claim. Old Shy is whetting a big carving knife on his boot. The rich merchant stands, breast bared. It’s as good as the old melodrama, with the heroine tied to the railway tracks by the villain, and the train fast ap proaching. Smart young lawyer to the rescue. Shylock may take his pound of flesh, but; not one drop of blood, not one ninth of an ounce more or less that pound, or his own life, and all his property, is forfeit. Try that one on the next pig you kill. Now Shylock was stumped. (An old cricket term, chaps.) And that Will Shakespeare knew his law. He was con tinually involved in litigation, like many a playwright. A great (to me) line in one of his plays goes, “Let’s hangall the lawyers.” Anyway. The whole thing got me thinking of usury. This was once an honest term meaning interest on money loaned. It has since come to mean charging excessive interest on money loaned. A dirty business. InElizabetban,England, usury was a crime, and heavily punished. Right up to the death penalty, depending on whom you knew, in the right circles. And I began thinking about usury, in its piejorative (that means name calling) sense, in our society today. Is it shameful to be a usurer? Is usury 55 Years Ago Mr. Wes Simmons, who has recently returned from Fillmore, Saskatchewan, has purchased the blacksmith business of Mr. D. Russell and took posses sion on Monday. Mr. W.D. Sanders is in Toronto this week attending a meeting of UFO. Mr. Paul Coates left last week for England, in charge of a shipment of cattle. In the council minutes we read that Mr. Nelson Wells was offered the position as bell ringer for 1924, for the salary of $75.00. 30 Years Ago Banking service will be available for the people of Crediton and surrounding district next Tuesday with the opening of a Bank of Montreal branch in the village. Tom Coates has disposed of his garage and service business at the Blue Sunoco Gas Station to Fred Dobbs. Exeter won the WOSSA “B” championship of South Huron from St. Marys Tues day. 20 Years Ago RCAF Centralia and Hen- sall will open a best-of-five group playoff in Hensall this Saturday night in WOAA Intermediate League play. H.H.G. Strang, Usborne township clerk, was named by the Liberal organization, Wednesday, to oppose Charles MacNaughton who has held the seat for the Conservatives since last year’s by-election. Rev. Harold J. Snell, who has served 12 years in James Street United Church has accepted a call to Oakridge Acres United Church, London. Miss Jean Taylor and Miss Maxine Reeder were in vested as leaders for the Ex eter Cub Pack ‘A’ Tuesday night. Jane Horton popular Hen- sall student, was crowned queen of SHDHS at the dance this week. 15 Years Ago Ruth Anne Salmon, musically-minded Dash wood grade 13 student was crowned queen of the SHDHS at the At Home dance, Friday night. Right Rev. H.F.G. Appleyard, bishop of Georgian Bay, told Anglican young people of Huron deanery Sunday night that he enjoys the Beatles’ music but he’d like to give the pop ular singers a haircut. Town councillors breathed easier Monday night when they learned from Mayor W.E. Simmons that the On tario dep’t of highways will bear a hefty chunk of the Main St. storm sewer cost. Mrs. Norman Amos, ser ving her second term as president of Beta Sigma Phi, was crowned sweetheart at the sorority’s annual ball on Valentine’s night. Two Guenther-Tuckey truck operators received eight-year accident free awards at the annual staff banquet. They were Anton Hanson and Kenneth Weber. something to be hidden under the rug? Are there any penalties for usury? Answer: no. They run all the way from our banks, among our most respected institutions, down to our finance companies, so lar^°-ng™urJess, re,sPected institutions, all the way to the hood in Montreal who will lend you money at 100 per cent interest, and break your knees with a baseball bat if you don’t pay up, Try borrowing $20,000 from Ann Murray, who touts for a Canadian bank, with no interest. Her look would shrivel borrow^n8 ft01*1 a “finance company” S «A„P?d?/ng y^Wndmother’s bones for fertilizer in case you can’t meet the deadline. llc mS suQr^oanded by usurers, sucking the blood out of SSe Shakespeare was right. Line up all the bank C^da, shoot them quietly, and burn the enjoy Sat b9nkS fmance companles at the stake*rd