Seventy-five years ‘ago, in April,
pioneer union organizer and
socialist Frank Rogers who led the
historic fishermen’s strikes of 1900-
01, was shot on Vancouver’s
waterfront. This article, by
Fisherman editor Hal Griffin,
appeared in that paper in
December, 1976. He has edited it
for publication here.

he three men were discussing

the waterfront strike over a
leisurely meal at Billy Williams’
Social Oyster and Coffee House on
Carrall Street when the elderly
longshoreman remarked that it
was past 11 o’clock and he had
better be getting along. The other
two men agreed and said they
would walk with him to his room-
ing house near the corner of Water
and Abbott Streets.

As Lawrence O’Neill, the
longshoreman, recounted it later,
the meeting was accidental. He
had gone into the coffee house that
Monday night for a late supper and
found the other two men there. As a
union man himself, he knew them
both well.

One, Tom Sabonia, was a
fisherman, who worked as a
longshoreman during the winter
months like many other fishermen.

The other, a short, stocky man
with a strong face and a quiet way
of speaking, was Frank Rogers —
and there were few workers.
along the Vancouver waterfront
who did not know of Frank Rogers
after the Fraser River fishermen’s
strikes. Rogers was a seaman but
he could claim equally to be a
fisherman or longshoreman, both
of which occupations he had
followed since his arrival in
Vancouver. .

It was natural then, that they
should have been discussing the
waterfront strike. They were still
discussing it When they rounded
the corner of Carrall Street and
turned west on Water Street.

At the corner of Abbott Street
they stopped for a few minutes and
they were standing there, talking,
when they noticed a group of men
across the CPR tracks at the ap-
proach to Stimson’s Wharf. Rogers
suggested they go over to find out
what was going on.

As they neared the tracks, shots
rang out in quick succession. One
ricochetted along the roadway to
the corner of Abbott and Cordova
Streets. O’Neill and Sabonia turned
to run. Rogers, who was directly
beneath the light over the tracks,
crumpled with a bullet in his
stomach.

With the aid of passers-by at-
tracted by the shots, O’Neill and
Sabonia helped him to the Great
Western Hotel nearby and sent for
a hack to take him to City Hospital.
There, two days later, on April 15,
1903, he died.

Three-quarters of a century
later, the murder of Frank Rogers,
the pioneer socialist and union
organizer who led some _ 8,000
fishermen in the Fraser River
strikes of 1900-01, is still officially
an unsolved case. And, it may be
asked, why comb the brittle pages
of old newspapers and records to
prove something that now has
passed into history?

True, many things have
changed. The trade union
movement has become strong
enough to compel recognition —
but not yet so strong or united that
it cannot be destroyed.

The fishing industry has been
transformed, and an_ industrial
union has come into being to
combat the monopoly which even
in Rogers’ day had taken shape,
but the struggle remains essen-
tially the same.

This is why the story of Rogers’
murder is. important, so that
another generation of trade
unionists may know something of
their own origins, the militancy
and unity that enabled their
organizations to live and grow in
face of all the ruthless attempts to
crush them.

i

The murder of Rogers cannot be
separated from its background in
the labor struggles that were
taking place in British Columbia
and elsewhere across the continent
in those opening years of the
century.

The first frenzied rush to the
Klondike was over, but Vancouver
was still flourishing as an outfitting
centre and jumping off place for
the Yukon.

Everywhere there was talk of
expansion. New railroads were
being promoted, new mines were
opening, contruction was booming
and labor was in demand.

Among the newcomers who
flocked into the city were many

who brought with them socialist

ideas and experience in union
struggle for which they found a
ready audience. |

' Behind them came the organized
expression of those ideas, the
Western Federation of Miners, the
American Labor Union and _ its
affiliate, the United Brotherhood of

Railway Employees, for which

scores of convinced unionists,
many of them members of socialist
groups, acted as voluntary unpaid
organizers.

The men who had built empires
out of government giveaways,
extolling the virtues of hard work,
thrift and anti-unionism for the
working man, found it hard to cope
with these men who lived by a
principle, moving:from industry to
industry and always organizing.

Frank Rogers was one of those
dedicated organizers who sought

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—April 28, 1978—Page 8

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only to give substance to his
convictions. His past, before he,
came to Vancouver some time
after 1897, is obscure.

- The newspapers of the day,
which devote columns to his

murder, reveal nothing of his

~career, not even his age or bir-

thplace.

By
HAL
GRIFFIN

A five-line entry in the daily
record book made by Brown, the
beat constable who took Rogers to
the hospital, is all that remains in
the records of the Vancouver police
department. Everything else has
disappeared, presumably ab-
stracted or destroyed after
acquittal of the man charged with
the murder in order to obstruct
further investigation.

The picture of Rogers that
emerges from the three turbulent
years before his death is that of a
man whose talents as an organizer
made him the natural choice for
leadership of the fishermen he had
united in struggle for their
demands.

He accepted and gave leader-
ship, first as vice-president, then
president of the B.C. Fishermen’s

-Union, but he does not appear to

have sought office. At the time he

ue

was shot, he was again a rank and
file member of his union,
organizing along the waterfront as"
he had organized on the fishing
grounds.

It was part of his pattern as a
member of the United Socialist
Party, for which he spoke oc-
casionally on such subjects. as
“Socialism and Trade Unionism,”’
supporting its appeal ‘‘to educate
your fellow unionists on questions
of socialism and the labor
movement on economic and,
political lines.”

It was Rogers who became the
main target for the cannery
operators in the 1900 strike.

The names of the men who
headed the Fraser River Canners
Association —- Dr. D. Bell-Irving,
W. Farrell, C. F. Todd and Ed-
mund A Wadhams — have left
their imprint on the fishing in-
dustry. Their purpose, to break the
strike and smash the union, was to
set the pattern of labor relations in
the industry for the next three-
quarters of a century.

But every form of intimidation,
every inducement to division
among whites, Native Indians and
Japanese, failed to break the
fishermen’s ranks in their demand

for a sockeye price of 25 cents a

fish.

On July 23, Rogers was arrested
at Steveston on trumped up
charges and taken to Vancouver.
midnight the same day, on the
order of three justices of the peace
signed under the Militia Act after
the federal government itself had
refused, the militia — the derided

“Sockeye Soldiers’ — were 0
their way to Steveston.

The strike ended with a sé
tlement of 19 cents a fish afte
some of the Japanese, intimidat
by the show of force and misled by
false reports that the operators ha
agreed to pay 20 cents, start
fishing.

But the union was established #
the river, it had compelled ti
operators to recognize it ant.
forced the price up four cents fro!
the 15 cents first offered. TH
operators had every reason to fea!
and hate Rogers. a

It was Rogers who was ager
their target when the truce endél
in 1901 and the battle over pric
was’ resumed. During the winl@!
months, Rogers and others hal
been organizing and a Gras
Lodge of the-B.C. Fishermel)
Union had been formed, with 1o@
unions at New Westminster, Va")
couver, Canoe Pass, Eburne a
Port Simpson, where the Nativ@
joined the union despite oppositi?
from the local Indian agent. |

Anticipating a heavy sockel!
run, the operators offered only ©
cents a fish when nogotiatio®
opened in May. j

_ All Natives: and the majority |
white fishermen held out ve

cents. Japanese fishermen, W
had organized the previous Y%,
into the Japanese Fisherm@
Benevolent Society, reporte®!
under direction from the Jap: i
consul, promised their fu!
cooperation. |

Negotiations continued throw!
offer and counter-offer, ©
operators proposing 12 cents, fi
to July 27, then to August 3, and |
cents thereafter, the unio!
demanding 12 1/2 cents for ©
season.

Then the operators broke ‘
negotiations and began trying”
conclude agreements with !
dividual fishermen on the basis!
their first offer of 12 cents to J -
27, with the threat of a still low
price to those not signing bef!
July 5. i.
The outline of the cn

operators were bent on provo®
became apparent with the arm
in Vancouver of the first of a laff
number of Japanese from seat

As non-residents, they could
obtain fishing licences, but ¥”
could be and were hired aS 7—
pullers and helpers. F
In new negotiations on July is
union committee qualified its § y
on prices with the demand ¥
union fishérmen be gi”
preference over the Japanese: Fi
To the operators’ offer of 15 C? i
up to 400,000 cases, 12 1/2 cent f
to 500,000 cases, 11 cents uP,
600,000 cases on a declining )
scale, they replied that they W
be prepared to fish for 11 centS’,
the season, provided their rig!
were recognized. But ~
agreement was forthcoming. rl
Spurred by reports that yi
Japanese were going fishing °.
had been supplied with art
union boats began patrolling 4
river. Rogers issued a statem®@,
“The fishermen consider if
arming of the Japanese as a § f
which means civil war and will®,
all white men and Indians ;
govern themselves according),
Union pickets too, bé 4
carrying arms, but under sit
orders to use them only if ,
were fired upon by strikebreak®”
Inevitably there were cla ih
é

along the Fraser River and i
Gulf of Georgia. Union fisher,
boarded Japanese boats, disarty
the strikebreakers and cut f
nets. Some they effectiv),
eliminated from the battle |
marooning them on Bowen Isla",
Police patrol boats madé tH
effort to disarm ve
strikebreakers. But they did alt
six union patrolmen, R. opeal,
Louis Ludden, C. Forrest,
Sullivan, C. Willig and W. wilt
on several charges, includ
intimidation of a Japanese
firearms. 4
The day the six men appear ‘le
court in Vancouver, Rogers a

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