The Canadian Commonwealth Part 9

All the same, dismiss the idea from your mind that labor is behind the opposition to Chinese immigration! A few years ago, when Oriental labor came tumbling into British Columbia at the rate of twelve thousand in a single year--when the Chinese alone had come to number fifteen or sixteen thousand--labor was alarmed; but a twofold change has taken place since that time. First, labor has found that it can better control the Chinaman by letting him enter Canada, than by keeping him in China and letting the product of cheap labor come in. Second, the Chinaman has demonstrated his solidarity as a unit in the labor war. If he comes, he will not foregather with capital. That is certain! He will affiliate with the unions for higher wages.

"If the Chinaman comes in here lowering the price of goods and the price of labor," said the agitator a few years ago, "we'll put a poll tax of five hundred dollars on and make him pay for his profit." The poll tax was put on every Chinaman coming into Canada, but do you think John Chinaman pays it? It is a way that unjust laws have of coming back in a boomerang. The Chinaman doesn't pay it! Mr. Canadian Householder paid it; for no sooner was the poll tax imposed than up went wages for household servant and laundryman and gardener, from ten to fifteen dollars a month to forty and forty-five and fifty dollars a month. The Italian boss system came in vogue, when the rich Chinaman who paid the entrance tax for his "slaves" farmed out the labor at a profit to himself. The system was really one of indentured slavery till the immigration authorities went after it. Then Chinese benevolent a.s.sociations were formed. Up went wages automatically. The cook would no longer do the work of the gardener. When the boy you hired at twenty-five dollars had learned his job, he suddenly disappeared one morning. His subst.i.tute explains he has had to go away; "he is sick;"

any excuse; with delightful lapses of English when you ask questions.

You find out that your John has taken a job at forty dollars a month, and you are breaking in a new green hand for the Chinese benevolent a.s.sociation to send up to a higher job. If you kick against the trick, you may kick! There are more jobs than men. That's the way you pay the five hundred dollars poll tax; comical, isn't it; or it would be comical if the average white householder did not find it five hundred dollars more than the average income can spare? So the labor leaders chuckle at this subterfuge, as they chuckle at the "continuous" pa.s.sage law.

For a time the indentured slavery system worked almost criminally; for if the newcomer, ignorant of the law and the language, got wise to the fact that his boss was doing what was illegal under Canadian law, and attempted to jump his serfdom, he was liable--as one of them expressed it--"to be found missing." It would be reported that he had suicided.

Among people who did not speak English, naturally, no details would be given. It seems almost unbelievable that in a country wrestling with the whole Asiatic problem the fact has to be set down that the government has no interpreter among the Chinese who is not a Chinaman, no interpreter among the j.a.panese who is not a j.a.p. As it chances, the government happens to have two reliable foreigners as interpreters; but they are foreigners.

Said Doctor Munro, one of the medical staff of the Immigration Department: "Even in complicated international negotiations, where each country is jockeying to protect its rights, Canada has to depend on representatives of China or j.a.pan to translate state doc.u.ments and transmit state messages. Here we are on the verge of great commercial intercourse with two of the richest countries in Asia, countries that are just awakening from the century's sleep, countries that will need our flour and our wheat and our lumber and our machinery; and we literally have not a diplomatic body in Canada to speak either Chinese or j.a.panese.

I'll tell you what a lot of us would like to see done--what the southern states are doing with the Latin-Spanish of South America--have a staff of translators for our chambers of commerce and boards of trade, or price files and lists of markets, etc. How could this be brought about? Let j.a.pan and China send yearly, say twenty students to study international law and English with us. Let us send to China and j.a.pan yearly twenty of our postgraduate students to be trained up into a diplomatic body for our various boards of trade, to forward international trade and help the two countries to understand each other.

"When trouble arose over Oriental immigration a few years ago," continued Doctor Munro, "I can tell you that it was a serious matter that we had to have the translating of our state doc.u.ments done at that time by representatives of the very nations we were contesting."

Unless I am misinformed, one of the men who did the translating at that time is one of the Orientals who has since "suicided," and the reason for that suicide you might as well try to fathom as to follow the windings of a ferret in the dark. Certain royal clans of j.a.pan will suicide on order from their government for the good of their country.

"The trouble with these foolish raids on Chinatown for gambling," said an educated Chinaman in Vancouver to me, "is that the city police have no secret service among the Chinese, and they never raid the resorts that need most to be cleaned out. They raid some little joint where the Chinese boys are playing fan-tan for ten cents, when they do not raid up-town gambling h.e.l.ls where white men play for hundreds of dollars. If the police employed Chinese secret service, they could clean out every vice resort in a week. Except in the segregated district, which is white, there would not be any vice. They need Chinese police or men who speak Chinese, and there would be no Chinese vice left in this town."

To go back to the matter of the poll tax and the system of indentured slavery, the bosses mapped out every part of the city and province in wage areas. Here, no wages under twenty-five dollars, to which green hands were sent; here, a better quarter, no wages under forty dollars; and so on up as high as sixty dollars for mill work and camp cooking.

About this time riots turned the searchlight on all matters Oriental; and the boss system merged in straight industrial unionism. You still go to a boss to get your gangs of workmen; but the boss is secretary of a benevolent a.s.sociation; and if he takes any higher toll than an employment agent's commission, the immigration department has never been able to detect it. "I have no hesitation in saying," declared an immigration official, "that for four years there has not been a case of boss slavery that could be proved in the courts. There has not been a case that could be proved in the courts of women and children being brought in for evil purposes. Only merchants' wives, students, and that cla.s.s can come in. The other day an old fellow tried to bring a young woman in. We suspected he had left an old wife in China; but we could not prove it; so we charged him five hundred dollars for the entrance of this one and had them married on the spot. Whenever there is the slightest doubt about their being married, we take no chances, charge them five hundred dollars and have the knot tied right here and now.

Then the man has to treat the woman as a wife and support her; or she can sue him; and we can punish and deport him. There is no more of little girls being brought in to be sold for slavery and worse."

All the same, some evils of the boss system still exist. The boss system taught the Chinaman organization, and to-day, even with higher wages, your forty-five dollars a month cook will do no gardening. You ask him why. "They will cut my throat," he tells you; and if he goes out to mow the lawn, he is soon surrounded by fellow countrymen who hoot and jeer him.

"Would they cut his throat?" I asked a Chinaman.

"No; but maybe, the benevolent a.s.sociation or his tong fine him."

So you see why labor no longer fears the Chinaman and welcomes him to industrial unionism, a revolution in the att.i.tude of labor which has taken place in the last year. Make a note of these facts:

The poll tax has trebled expenses for the householder.

The poll tax has created industrial unionism among the Chinese.

The poll tax has not kept the Chinaman out.

How about the Chinese vices? Are they a stench to Heaven as the Hindu's?

I can testify that they certainly are not open, and they certainly are not aggressive, and they certainly do not claim vice as a right; for I went through Vancouver's Chinatown with only a Chinaman as an escort (not through "underground dens," as one paper reported it) after ten at night; and the vices that I saw were innocent, mild, pallid, compared to the white-man vices of Little Italy, New York, or Upper Broadway. We must have visited in all a dozen gambling joints, two or three midnight restaurants, half a dozen opium places and two theaters; and the only thing that could be remotely constructed into disrespect was the amazement on one drunken white face on the street that a white woman could be going through Chinatown with a Chinaman. Instead of playing for ten and one hundred dollars, as white men and women gamble up-town, the Chinese boys were huddling intently over dice boxes, or playing fan-tan with fevered zeal for ten cents. Instead of drinking absinthe, one or two sat smoking heavily, with the abstracted stare of the opium victim.

In the midnight restaurants some drunken sailors sat tipsily, eating chop suey. Goldsmiths were plying their fine craftsmans.h.i.+p. Presses were turning out dailies with the news of the Chinese revolution. Grocery stores, theaters, markets, all were open; for Chinatown never sleeps.

CHAPTER X

WHAT PANAMA MEANS

I

It now becomes apparent why British Columbia was described as the province where East meets West and works out Destiny.

On the other side of the Pacific lies j.a.pan come to the manhood of nationality, demanding recognition as the equal of the white race and room to expand. Behind j.a.pan lies China, an awakened giant, potent for good or ill, of half a billion people, whose commerce under a few years of modern science and mechanics is bound to equal the commerce of half Europe. It may in a decade bring to the ports that have hitherto been the back doors of America an aggregate yearly traffic exceeding the four billion dollars' worth that yearly leave Atlantic ports for Europe. Canada is now the shortest route to "Cathay"; the railroads across Canada offer shorter route from China to Europe than Suez or Horn, by from two to ten thousand miles. Then there is India, another awakened giant, potent for good or ill, of three hundred million people--two hundred to the square mile--clamoring for recognition as British subjects, clamoring for room to expand.

The question is sometimes asked by Americans: Why does Canada concern herself about foreign problems and dangers? Why does she not rest secure under the aegis of the Monroe Doctrine, which forever forfends foreign conquest of America by an alien power? And Canada answers--because the Monroe Doctrine is not worth the ink in which it was penned without the bayonet to enforce the pen. Belgium's neutrality did not protect her. The peace that is not a victory is only an armed truce--a let-live by some other nation's permission.

Without power to enforce the Monroe Doctrine, that doctrine is to Canada but a tissue-paper rampart.

To add to the complication involving British Columbia comes the opening of Panama, turning the Pacific Ocean into a parade ground for the world's fleets both merchantmen and war. Commercially Panama simply turns British Columbia into a front door, instead of a back door. What does this mean?

The Atlantic has. .h.i.therto been the Dominion's front door, and the Canadian section of the Atlantic has four harbors of first rank with an aggregate population of nearly a million. Canada has, besides, three lake harbors subsidiary to ocean traffic with an aggregate population of half a million. One may infer when the Pacific becomes a front door, that Vancouver and Victoria and Port Mann and Westminster and Prince Rupert will soon have an aggregate population of a million.

Behind the Atlantic ports, supplied by them with traffic, supplying them with traffic, is a provincial population of five millions. Behind the Pacific ports in British Columbia and Alberta, one would be justified in expecting to find--Strathcona said a hundred million people, but for this generation put it at twelve million.

Through the Atlantic ports annually come two hundred and fifty thousand or more immigrants, not counting the one hundred and fifty thousand from the United States. What if something happened to bring as many to the Pacific, as well as those now coming to the Atlantic?

Then a century of peace has a sleeping-powder effect on a nation. We forget that the guns of four nations once boomed and roared round old Quebec and down Bay of Fundy way. If the Pacific becomes a front door, the guns of the great nations may yet boom there. In fact, if Canada had not been a part of Greater Britain four or five years ago when the trouble arose over j.a.panese immigration, guns might easily have boomed round Vancouver long before the Pacific Coast had become a front door.

Front door status entails bolt and strong bar. Front door means navy.

Navy means s.h.i.+pbuilding plants, and the s.h.i.+pyards of the United States on the Atlantic support fifty thousand skilled artisans, or what would make a city of two hundred and fifty thousand people. The s.h.i.+pyards of England support a population equal to Boston. In the United States those s.h.i.+pyards exist almost wholly by virtue of government contracts to build war vessels, and in Great Britain largely by virtue of admiralty subsidies. Though they also do an enormous amount of work on river and coastal steamers, the manager of the largest and oldest plant in the United States told me personally that with the high price of labor and material in America, his s.h.i.+pyard could not last a day without government contracts for war vessels, torpedoes, dredges, etc.

Front door on the Pacific means that to Canada, and it means more; for Canada belongs to an empire that has vaster dominions to defend in Asia than in Europe.

But isn't all this stretching one's fancy a bit too far in the future?

How far is _too_ far? The Panama Ca.n.a.l is open for traffic, and there is not a harbor of first rank in the United States, Atlantic, Pacific, or Gulf of Mexico, that does not bank on, that is not spending millions on, the expectation of Panama changing the Pacific from a back into a front door. Either these harbors are all wrong or Canada is sound asleep as a tombstone to the progress round her. Boston has spent nine million dollars acquiring terminals and water-front, and is now guaranteeing the bonds of steams.h.i.+ps to the extent of twenty-five million dollars. New York has built five new piers to take care of the commerce coming--and the Federal government has spent fifty million dollars improving the approaches to her harbor. Baltimore is so sure that Panama is going to revive sh.o.r.e-front interests that she has reclaimed almost two hundred acres of swamp land for manufacturing sites, which she is leasing out at merely nominal figures to bring the manufacturers from inland down to the sea. In both Baltimore and Philadelphia, railroads are spending millions increasing their trackage for the traffic they expect to feed down to the coast cities for Panama steamers.

Among the Gulf ports, New Orleans has spent fifteen million dollars putting in a belt line system of railroads and docks with steel and cement sheds, purely to keep her harbor front free of corporate control. This is not out of enmity to corporations, but because the prosperity of a harbor depends on all steamers and all railroads receiving the same treatment. This is not possible under private and rival control. Yet more, New Orleans is putting on a line of her own civic steams.h.i.+ps to South America. Up at St. Louis and Kansas City, they are putting on civic barge lines down the rivers to ocean front.

At Los Angeles twenty million dollars have been spent in making a harbor out of a duck pond. San Francisco and Oakland have improved docks to the extent of twenty-four million dollars. Seattle attests her expectation of what Panama is going to do on the Pacific by securing the expenditure of fifteen million dollars on her harbor for her own traffic and all the traffic she can capture from Canada; and it may be said here that the Grand Trunk Pacific of Canada--a national road on which the Dominion is spending hundreds of millions--has the finest docks in Seattle. Portland has gone farther than any of the Pacific ports. Portland is Scotch--full of descendants of the old Scotch folk who used to serve in the Hudson's Bay Company. If there is a chance to capture world traffic, Portland is out with both hands and both feet after that flying opportunity. Portland has not only improved the entrance to the Columbia to the extent of fifteen million dollars--this was done by the Federal government--but she has had a ca.n.a.l cut past bad water in the Columbia, costing nearly seven millions, and has put on the big river a system of civic boats to bring the wheat down from an inland empire. There is no aim to make this river line a dividend payer. The sole object is to bring the Pacific grain trade to Portland. Portland is already a great wheat port. Will she get a share of Canada's traffic in bond to Liverpool? Candidly, she hopes to. How? By having Canadian barges bring Alberta wheat down the Columbia.

II

And now, what is Canada doing? Canada is doing absolutely nothing.

Canada is saying, with a little note of belligerency in her voice--What's Panama to us? Either every harbor in the United States is Panama fool-mad; either every harbor in the United States is spending money like water on fool-schemes; or Canada needs a wakening blast of dynamite 'neath her dreams. If Panama brings the traffic which every harbor in the United States expects, then Canada's share of that traffic will go through Seattle and Portland. Either Canada must wake up or miss the chance that is coming.

Two American transcontinentals have not come wooing traffic in Vancouver for nothing. The Canadian Pacific is not double tracking its roadbed to the Coast for nothing. The Grand Trunk has not bought terminals in Seattle for nothing. Yet, having jockeyed for traffic in Vancouver, the two American roads have recently evinced a cooling.

They are playing up interests In Seattle and marking time in Vancouver.

Grand Trunk terminals in Seattle don't help Vancouver; but if Canada doesn't want the traffic from the world commerce of the seas, then Portland and Seattle do.

One recalls how a person feels who is wakened a bit sooner than suits his slumbers. He pa.s.ses some crusty comments and asks some criss-cross questions. The same with Canada regarding Panama. What's Panama to us? How in the world can a cut through a neck of swamp and hills three thousand miles from the back of beyond, have the slightest effect on commerce in Canada? And if it has, won't it be to hurt our railroads?

And if Panama does divert traffic from land to water, won't that divert a share of s.h.i.+pping away from Montreal and St. John and Halifax?

There is no use ever arguing with a cross questioner. Mr. Hill once said there was no use ever going into frenzies about the rights of the public. The public would just get exactly what was coming to it. If it worked for prosperity, it would get it. If it were not sufficiently alert to see opportunity, it certainly would not be sufficiently alert to grasp opportunity after you had pointed it out. Your opinion or mine does not count with the churlish questioner. You have to hurl facts back so hard they waken your questioner up. Here are the facts.

How can Panama turn the Pacific Coast into a front door instead of a back door?

Almost every big steams.h.i.+p line of England and Germany, also a great many of the small lines from Norway and Belgium and Holland and Spain and Italy, have announced their intention of putting on s.h.i.+ps to go by way of Panama to the Orient and to Pacific Coast ports. Three of those lines have explicitly said that they would call at Pacific ports in Canada if there were traffic and terminals for them.

The steamers coming from the Mediterranean have announced their intention of charging for steerage only five to ten dollars more to the Pacific Coast ports than to the Atlantic ports. It costs the immigrant from sixteen to twenty-five dollars to go west from Atlantic ports. It can hardly be doubted that a great many immigrants will save fare by booking directly to Pacific ports. Of South-of-Europe immigrants, almost seven hundred thousand a year come to United States Atlantic ports, of whom two-thirds remain, one-third, owing to the rigor of winter, going back. Of those who will come to Pacific ports, they will not be driven back by the rigor of winter. They will find a region almost similar in climate to their own land and very similar in agriculture. Hitherto Canada has not made a bid for South-of-Europe immigrants, but, with Panama open, they will come whether Canada bids for them or not. They are the quickest, cheapest and most competent fruit farmers in the world. They are also the most turbulent of all European immigrants. We may like or dislike them. They are coming to Canada's sh.o.r.es when the war is over, coming in leaderless hordes.

The East has awakened and is moving west. The West has always been awake and is moving east. The East is sending her teas and her silks to the West, and the West is sending her wheat and her lumber to the East. When these two currents meet, what? If two currents meet and do not blend, what? Exactly what has happened before in the world, impact, collision, struggle; and the fittest survives. This was the real reason for the building of the Panama Ca.n.a.l--to give the American navy command of her own sh.o.r.es on the Pacific. Now that Panama is built it means the war fleets of the whole world on the Pacific.

Canada can no more grow into a strong nation and keep out of the world conclave a.s.sembling on the Pacific than a boy can grow into strong manhood and keep out of the rough and tumble of life, or a girl grow to efficient womanhood and play the hothouse parasite all her life.