| oe Prepared both his financial and political connec:
sle’s ori: To carry through his scheme he bought out Dig-
Ag weal $5,000 interest for $700,000 and allied himself
Moted = Members of the “Pacific Quartet” that had pro-
. 4 Southern Pacific and other U.S, railroads—Charles

_» Leland Stanford and Collis P. Huntington.

hae pn. William Smithe headed what soon became
Smithe i € province's first wee ok government. And
Ott gove already helped Dunsmuir as a member of the
Mili foment which, in 1877, sent a naval vessel and

EEN. ° . “ . 4
Nanaimo to break a strike of Dunsmuir’s miners.

atl Be Pisiting the demand | for a Vancouver Island
te 4 ich had dominated provincial politics since British
bil 8 entry into Confederation, Smithe introduced a
- ad a federal-provincial agreement with the Duns-
ee ty a Under the agreement the Dunsmuir interests
Vinca tie a a federal cash grant of RUSS and a pro-
Oil ores a grant of 1,900,000 acres, including all coal, coal
ee Poo clay, marble, slates, mines, minerals and sub-
this atsoever thereupon, therein and thereunder.” For

i . Dunsmuir interests were to build the railway—78
4 Mm Victoria to Wellington.
a See
the oN Slveaway was dénounced, at Victoria as at Ottawa

a year, but Dunsmuir’s friends prevailed. On
it, ... 19, 1883, the bill passed the legislature and with

Bee Monopoly of the Vancouver Island coal fields
0 the Dunsmuirs.

Rob % xt ed
lone. *t Dunsmuir, the Scottish immigrant, had come a

inne from the log cabin at Nanaimo. But for the English
the, "t miners and the Native Indians who preceded
and ead the Italian, Czech, American, Ukrainian, Scottish
Ae eee immigrants who followed them, there was no
ie the hard, dangerous work in the mines. Robert
the + mes Dunsmuir erected their Victoria mansions out of
Merely es sweat and blood, but the miners themselves
Pye a seeanged their log cabins for the dingy dwellings of
“Over, Strickland streets that became known as Nanaimo’s
lingty Y Row”: for the stark frame company houses of Wel-
» &xtension and Cumberland.

in) wee Vancouver Island mines became the most dangerous
Ova World, with a death toll exceeded only by those of

the meta. Gas and fire added the price of human life to
b be € of production, as the record of major disasters

1 1879 and 1909 showed: April 17, 1879—11 killed
Rplodgsion at Wellington; May 3, 1887—148 killed in
A at Nanaimo; September 10, 1901—17 killed in fire

Ladysmith in the first years of this century.

ROBERT DUNSMUIR

at Extension; October 5, 1909—25 killed in explosion at
Extension.,

But life was cheap to the mine owners when placed
against the profits from coal, Within five years of their
landing, in 1861, the English immigrant miners were on
strike against conditions. They struck again in 1870 and
1874 at Nanaimo and in 1876 at Wellington.

In 1877, the Elliott government set what was to become
a pattern in coal strike settlement over the next 40 years.
When the Wellington miners struck over weights and wages,
Dunsmuir, Diggle and Company hired strikebreakers. The
miners drove the strikebreakers out and themselves refused
to leave their company houses. Then the government sent a
naval vessel, the Rocket, on which Diggle had served as a
lieutenant, and a force of militia to break the strike. The
government of John Robson, who had been one of the lead-
ers of the movement for responsible government, followed in
1890 by sending an artillery battery to Wellington to break
another strike.,

Even this was only a prelude to the force used against
the miners by the Conservative government of Premier Sir
Richard McBride and his attorney general, W. J. Bowser, in
the great strike of 1912-14.

Many changes had come to the Vancouver Island coal
fields in the first decade of the new century.

The United Mine Workers of America had begun to
organize the mines in 1903, giving the strength of union
organization to the miners’ own militant action and self-
imposed discipline.

The Socialist Party of Canada, too, had found ready
support among men who recognized the necessity of electing
their own representatives to oppose governments that denied
their every demand, and who caught the vision of a social
system in which the wealth would be administered for those
who produced it. Since 1903 they had been electing Socialists
—J. H, Hawthornthwaite and then John Place in Nanaimo,
Parker Williams in Newcastle—who formed the only real
opposition to the Conservatives in the legislature.

The mines had also changed owners. James Dunsmuir,
who became the sole owner of Wellington Collieries and the
Esquimalt and Nanaimo Railroad in 1902, had sold all his
interests to MacKenzie and Mann, the railroad promoters,
for $11,000,000. MacKenzie and Mann had organized Cana-
dian Collieries (Dunsmuir Ltd.) by selling $25,000,000 of
stocks and bonds, largely in Britain.

What remained unchanged was the company’s demand
for greater production in its mines at Extension and Cum-
berland to maintain its rate of return on an inflated stock
and its unyielding opposition to the union whose demands
for wages and safety conditions threatened its profits.

(NEXT WEEK: THE GREAT.COAL STRIKE)

Fawers need
labor's help

B RITISH. COLUMBIA’S
small fruit producers are
sorely in need of the support
of the labor movement and
the public generally if their
indus'ry is to survive.

Their problem is twofold:
protecton of the Canadian
market against U.S. dumping,
and stabilization of prices
above the cost of production.

Lack of protection for
small fruit growers is dram-
atically illustrated by the fall-
off in cultivation of straw-
berries in the Fraser Valley.
In 1948, 3,500 acres were
under cultivation. Now there
are 1,544 acres.

Last year the growers re-
ceived between nine cents and
14 cents a pound for strawber-
ries, a figure not even half
of the cost of production. Yet
these same berries retailed at
39c per pound. The estimated
cost of producing one acre of
strawberries is $761. The
farmer’s return on an average
of one and one-half tons per
acre at an average of 11 cents
a pound was $330.

In November, 1955, over 90
percent of the soft fruit in the
Fraser Valley was winter kill-
ed. The provincial govern-
ment, through the prodding of
the farmers, instituted a dis-
aster loan to be repaid in pay-
ments gauged to a 22-cent
berry price. The price of 22
cents was the result of the
government’s own investiga-
tion of production costs.

The other aspect of the
problem is U.S. dumping.
Brokers importing large quan-
tities of berries have enjoyed
profits on the dollar discount
and U.S. freight rates are
lower. Fruit ripens earlier in
the U.S., allowing growers to
reap the benefit of high
prices for early fruit and
then, after local fruit is on
the market, to sell at dumping
prices.

The Farmers Union has en-
dorsed a petition demanding
that the federal government,
under the Agricultural Stabi-
lization Bill, establish a mini-
mum floor: price of 22 cents
per pound for 1958.

While there is some merit
in imports prior to market-
ing of the Canadian crop,
after Canadan fruits are on
the market a ban against U.S.
imports should be instituted
to. protect Canadian growers
against unfair competition.
Because of the lack of govern-
ment protection of the in-
dustry, many producers are
badly in debt. To enable them
to continue, a moratorium on
debt should be declared until.
such time as the necessary
protective measures are en-
acted by the government.

CHARLES CARON

May 2, 1958 — PACIFIC TRIBUNE—PAGE 9