Ih

ee Sh SS

SSS > SS ee — i. ae Se EL RE SE-B Sa ee SR ie RS TS a eS SS Se a

eS

union member named Joseph
Desplains were arrested. Later,
Captain Anderson, a member of
€ union negotiating committee,
and his boat puller, Arthur Emery,
Were also taken into custody.

All faced similar charges, with
15 counts, kidnapping and
Marooning among them, against
Rogers alone.

The first trials at Vancouver
ended in acquittal for Rogers and
the patrolmen. W. J. Bowser, the
Prosecutor, who was to go down in
history as the venal attorney
general of a corrupt Conservative
government, complained that “‘the
Crown could not get a fair trial,”
although the court had made every

appeal to prejudice to secure a
Conviction.
: The Season was over and the
Strike had long been settled by a
Compromise agreement of 12 1/2
cents for one quarter of the pack
and 10 cents thereafter, before
Rogers and the others faced new
trials before the Assize Court at
New Westminster in October.

The shadow of prison still hung
Over them when the grand lodge

held its convention at New West- —

minster on September 26, electing
Fred Taylor as grand president

and Charles Durham as grand:

Secretary-treasurer.

Again the Crown failed to obtain
a conviction from a_ prejudiced
court. On October 8, the six
patrolmen were found not guilty.

On October 20, Desplains, An-
derson and Emery were acquitted.
The jury reported it could not
reach agreement on the charges
against Rogers and the case was
laid over to the spring assizes. But

ogers remained in jail.

That night the acquitted
unionists were guests of honor at a
fishermen’s supper held at
Bloomfield’s restaurant in Van-

couver, where the campaign to win .

Rogers’ release was launched.

It took four months of protest
Meetings and delegations, but at
the end of that time Rogers was
free on an exorbitant $10,000 bail.

When the spring assizes opened,
the case did not come up. Rebuffed
in two trials, the government
preferred to let it drop.

The fishermen’s victories
heartened the struggle for union
organization throughout the
province.

Whatever the industry and
Whatever the demands of its
workers, union recognition was the
central issue. And whatever they
Might concede, the employers
Were determined not to recognize
the right of their workers to
organize.

The B.C. Fishermen’s Union had
been obliged to compromise on

' prices, but it had forced the

Operators to recognize it as the
argaining agency for the
fishermen. That alone was a
victory.

How great a victory it was

Came apparent in 1903 when the
Western Federation of Miners
invaded the Dunsmuir coal em-
Pire, founded on a government
8lveaway of coal and forest lands
on Vancouver Island.

2on the federation claimed the
Majority .of coal miners at
adysmith and Extension as
Members. The mine owners’ an-
Swer was typical. James Dun-

-Smuir, a former premier, forced a

Strike, announcing that rather than
Tecognize the union, he would
€ep the mines closed for years.”’
the same time, the United
Brotherhood of Railway Employ-—
began organizing unorganized
employees.
N March 1903, when CPR freight
Office employees at Vancouver
Went on strike, H. E. Beasley,
Visional superintendent declared
at the CPR was prepared to
Send a million dollars ‘‘to kill the
organization.”
their anti-union stand, the
Unsmuir interests and the CPR
Ad the full support of the McBride
“*nservative government.
Jn 1901, J. H. Hawthornthwaite

‘

d won a provincial byelection in teamsters,

Nanaimo to become the first
Socialist to sit in a Canadian
legislature.

At the 1903 session he introduced
a bill described as An Act to
Further Amend the Law Relating
to Trade Unions. It provided that
employees ‘‘shall at all times be at
liberty to join any trade union or
similar labor association, in-
‘ternational or otherwise’ and
proposed penalties for employers
discriminating against employees
for union membership.

Premier Richard McBride asked
Hawthornthwaite to withdraw the
bill. Hawthornthwaite refused and

typographical trades, musicians,

civic employees, barbers, cigar.

makers and tailors.

When the procession reached the
Labor Hall at the corner of Homer
and Dunsmuir streets, the
longshoremen formed ranks on
either side of Homer Street while
the fishermen escorted the casket
into the hall.

The funeral was one demon-
stration of labor’s temper. The
great protest rally held at Van-
couver City Hall on April 21 was
another. There labor’s leading

spokesmen, among them, J. C.

Mortimer, Socialist leader, and

expected to hesitate before firing
on strangers unless he recognized
the man at whom he shot.
_The police moved quickly. On
April 14 they arrested Alfred Allan,
a CPR special, and charged him
with the shooting. But as they
continued the investigation, other
facts came to light. ;
Two men, a foreman named
Frank Armstrong, ‘“‘who had
refused to strike with his fellow
workers,’’ and a ‘‘substitute’’
named Thomas Sugden, claimed to
have been walking along the tracks
towards the steamer Yosemite,
used by the CPR as a boarding

‘The fact that Rogers was standing in the light
when the shots started and that they stopped
firing when he fell, would go to show that a
deliberate plan had been carried out to waylay

and shoot him.

9

forced the bill to a vote. Only three
members joined him in voting for
it.

All this was the broad
background to the murder of
Frank Rogers.

The CPR strike began on March
2, 1903 as a walkout of 25 freight
office employees protesting
discrimination against union
members. Within a few days half
the city was embroiled in the
dispute.

The CPR brought in scabs from
the east and longshoremen
promptly refused to load CPR
freight. Union painters refused to
touch cars repaired by scabs.
Union teamsters walked out in
sympathy. Unionferrymen refused
to transport cars from Vancouver
to Ladysmith. Even the telegraph
messenger boys went on strike.

Demonstrating its readiness to
spend.a million dollars to crush the
union even while publicly denying
it, the CPR brought in scabs and
special police by the score.

On March 3, the New West-
minster Daily Columbian reported

that the “system of patrol and,

surveillance” had been redoubled.
“A line of constables paced up and
down the CPR platform and all
along the wharf and tracks,
although no person came in contact
with them,” it said.

On March 31, only two weeks
before Rogers was shot, 125 Italian
laborers who had been brought to
Vancouver ostensibly to lay tracks,
refused to act as strikebreakers
when they were ordered to load
freight and conducted a five-hour
battle with CPR special police sent
to clear them out of their railway
cars.

This was the immediate
background to the murder of

‘Frank Rogers.
Rogers must have known that |

the outcome of the CPR strike
would be decisive for union
organization along the waterfront,
as indeed it was, for the
longshoremen’s union was
smashed when the strike ended
after four months.

Since the strike began, he had
been active in organizing support:
for it. But there is no indication
that he was motivated by anything
more than curiosity when he
walked down Abbott Street to his
death on the night of April 13.

The labor movement’s reaction

-to his death was both a denun-

ciation of the CPR and a demon-
stration of its own solidarity. __

The UBRE posted a $500 reward
for the arrest of the murderer and
draped its charter in black.

For the funeral on Saturday,
April 18, virtually the whole trade,
union movement turned out.
Vancouver had seen nothing like it
in its 27-year history. sy

In front of the hearse marched
the longshoremen and behind it

‘came contingents from the

fishermen,carpenters and building
trades, machinists, shingle
sawyers and millworkers,
blacksmiths,

Ernest Burns, Fishermen’s Union
organizer, demanded that the
murderer of Rogers be brought to
justice. —

Meanwhile, the daily papers
were advancing and abandoning
theories in rapid succession.

The Columbian of April 14’
claimed:

“Just as the last shot was fired
some of those nearest to the place
state a voice shouted from the
direction of the wharf office,

‘There, that’s Kelly. That’s all-

right’.””

The purpose of this curious
statement was to suggest that
whoever had shot Rogers had
mistaken him for Edward Kelly,
the alias used by one of two.
prisoners who earlier had broken
out of jail at New Westminster. But
Kelly was captured in the U.S. on
April 20 and nothing more was
heard of this theory.

In the same issue the Columbian

carried a purported interview with

O’Neill quoting him as saying three:

of them were with Rogers ‘‘and two

of us went down one side and
Rogers and Tom, a fisherman,
went down the other...” -

The inference was apparent.
Whoever had fired the shot could
claim he expected to be attacked.

The Province of April 14 alter-
natively suggested that Rogers had
been shot by scabs “‘by way of
revenge” or that he had been hit by
a stray bullet from “‘parties .. .
firing at each other from opposite
sides of the road. . .”

It did, however, voice the
suspicion that was uppermost in
the minds of most unionists.

“The fact that Rogers was
standing in the light when the shots
started and that they stopped firing
when he fell, would go to show that

.a deliberate plan had been carried

out to waylay and shoot him.”
Rogers was well known along the

waterfront. Even a trigger happy

scab or special policeman might be

house for scabs and specials, when
they were assaulted by six
unknown men around 11 p.m.

The two scabs ran in different
directions. Sugden got two
specials, William Warner and
William Wilson, with whom he
returned fo look for his hat. Arm-
strong also came back to look for
his umbrella. But,it transpired,
Armstrong, Warner; and Wilson
had agreed among themselves to
“hush up” what occurred im-
mediately afterward.

On April 16 police arrested
James F. McGregor, a
strikebreaker, and charged him
with the murder. .

Announcing the arrest, Van-
couver Police Chief Samuel North
stated:

“T think in McGregor we have
the man that did the shooting. He is
a non-union man, a clerk in the
freight office, who came here from
the East in the first bunch of clerks
who arrived .. .

“McGregor was not exactly in
the company of the CPR special
policemen and the foreman Arm-
strong, who had been beaten up
before that, but we have evidence
of his movements. He was there at
the time, and certainly, we are

informed,fired all the shots except -

one =.
However, North added, he was

Satisfied there had been no

deliberate attempt to waylay
Rogers.

He believed that “McGregor was
afraid that the men who had beaten
Armstrong were after them all
again. He seems to have fired at
about the first person he saw. . .”

Armstrong’s evidence, on which
the case against McGregor hinged,
was the sensation of the hearing in
Vancouver police court on April 18,
at which the B.C. Fishermen’s
Union was represented by none
other than Rogers’ old foe, W. J.
Bowser.

Although it was taken in 1907, this photo shows the corner of Carrall
and Water Streets much as Frank Rogers would have known them. In
1903, Billy Williams’ Social Oyster and Coffee House, a popular
meeting place for waterfront workers, was below the Alhambra Hotel

(at left).

—Vancouver Public Library photo

Armstrong related how he had
been with Warner and Wilson on
the track about 100 yards from
Abbott Street when he saw the
flash of a revolver from the end of
Stimson’s Wharf.

Wilson called, “‘Who’s there?”
and getting no answer, fired his
revolver in the air. Warner also
tried to shoot in the air, but his
revolver failed to fire.

Then they saw a man ap-
proaching from Abbott Street.

But let the Columbian of April 18
take up the story:

“Who was that man?”’asked the
Crown prosecutor, Mr. Crane.

“The man was Jim McGregor,
the prisoner,” the witness replied.

The witness shifted uneasily,
while the prisoner leaned forward
to hear the words which came
reluctantly and slowly.

“What did you say
McGregor?” asked Mr. Crane.

“T asked him why he did not ~
speak when we shouted.”

“And what did he reply?”’

The witness did not answer. The
prisoner leaned still farther for-
ward and a greater quiet fell upon
the crowd.

The question was repeated and
Armstrong turned to _ the
magistrate and asked if he was
compelled to tell what McGregor
had said, and the magistrate an-
swered in the affirmative.

“I may not have the words
exactly right, but as near as I can
remember them, McGregor said,
‘I know. I shot one of the men,
because I saw him drop on his
knee.’

“Afterward McGregor said, ‘I
sighted my shot alongside the
building’ or ‘I drew a bead along
the building’ or some similar ex-
pression.”

“Then,’”’ said counsel for the
Crown, ‘“‘what did you say?”

“I said to McGregor,” replied
the witness, ‘“‘Why did you tell us
that; you will get us all into
trouble.’

“There was a good deal of talk
about the matter. Then we. went
back to the No. 2 shed and talked. I
suggested that we should talk no
more about the shooting, and we
did not do so.”

If Armstrong’s testimony had
been sensational on the first day, it
was even more so when the hearing
resumed on April 21 and he asked
for permission to qualify it.

Previously he had said he was
sure McGregor carried a gun. Now
he was not sure — he might have
eae McGregor with someone

se.

McGregor was committed for
trial and Allan was released for
lack of sufficient evidence.

In the hands of a skilful lawyer,
and the CPR sent E.P. Davis, K.
C., to lead the defence, Arm-
strong’s change of testimony
provided the opportunity to throw
doubt on his entire statement.

At the trial in New Westminster
on May 6 and 7, Davis exploited it
to the full. He contended there was
actually stronger evidence against
one of the witnesses than against
McGregor, although two witnesses
had testified that McGregor >
carried a revolver.

Crane, the prosecutor, failed to
exploit the fact that Armstrong,
Wilson and Warner had admitted
to conspiracy to suppress
evidence, concluding his address to
the jury by suggesting a man-
slaughter verdict. ;

After deliberating for two hours,

the jury returned with a verdict of
not guilty.
- Police Chief North may have
been confident ‘‘we have the right
man,’’ but McGregor had reason to
believe he would never be punished
for the crime.

to

As the Province reporter wrote,
“Throughout the trial he exhibited
the utmost unconcern and at no
time could it be supposed from his.
demeanor that he feared con-
viction.”’

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—April 28, 1978—Page 9