y light on a shameful past

For three quarters of a Hg
the oriental question, as it became
known, dominated and distorted
British Columbia politics. Racial
prejudice against Chinese,
Japanese and East Indian im-
migrants, engendered by ex-
ploitation and inflamed by self-
seeking politicians, spilled over the
hustings to taint every political
issue and leave its wake of violence
in anti-oriental riots.

Even Amor De Cosmos, British
Columbia’s second premier and
the most consistent and far sighted
of those who led the-struggle for
responsible government, deferred
to the prevailing anti-Chinese
sentiment, although his
chauvinism was couched in what,
for the period, were relatively mild
terms.

Incited by a daily press which
- invariably referred to Chinese as
“Celestials’”’ and “‘Johns,’’ reviled
them as “almond eyed rascals”
and “unsanitary heathen’ and
described them collectively as
“the Chinese evil,’’ the early labor
movement was caught up in this
anti-oriental current.

The Workingmen’s Protective
Association, formed at Victoria in
1878, was founded on an anti-
oriental platform. The Knights of
Labor contested the Vancouver
civic election in 1887 on a program
headed by anti-oriental demands.

Nearly 40 years later, in 1926, the -

Canadian Labor Party split and
foundered on the rock of the
oriental franchise.

The history of this period, from
its beginnings in the first anti-
Chinese legislation passed by the
colonial legislative assembly in
1860_to its climax in the evacuation
and dispossession of the Japanese
in 1942, is told by James Morton in
his book, In the Sea of Sterile
Mountains: The Chinese in British
Columbia. The title is derived from
a contemptuous reference to
British Columbia as a ‘“‘sea of
sterile mountains’” made by Ed-
ward Blake, federal Liberal leader
in the eighties.

The Chinese. .
new book.

The book is outstanding for its
exhaustive research, assembled
into a lively narrative of events.
Although he is an assistant
professor of medicine at UBC,
Morton is no dull academic writer.
Quite the contrary. He is given to
‘interpolating his own pungent
comments, sometimes to the point
but sometimes, unfortunately, to
the detriment of an accurate
historical assessment and _per-
spective.

The strength of the book is that it
exposes the economic roots of the
anti-oriental prejudice, as these
excerpts show:

“The Dunsmuir mines had been
a source of labor trouble since the
strike of 1877; they employed
Chinese and they fought every
move of the growing labor unions.
Old Robert Dunsmuir was a hard-
headed businessman. He was the
wealthiest man in the province,
with black diamonds tumbling
from his mines and with his ocean-
going ships, his Albion Iron Works

CSU members launch
union history project

Twenty five years after the giant
shipping concerns teamed up with
the federal Liberal government
and right wing circles in the labor
movement to crush and_ then
legislate out of existence one of the
finest and most militant trade

unions in Canadian history, a
group of West Coast Canadian
seamen gathered in Vancouver
last Saturday to prove their spirit
had not been broken nor their
memories erased.

For the 150 former members of
the Canadian Seamens Union that
met in reunion at the Fishermen’s
Hall, it was not merely to remake
old friendships and recall the
struggles that had bound them
together. They came together for a
practical purpose, to commission
the writing of a history of their
union.

The reunion heard addresses
from Tom McGrath, president of
Local 400 of the CBRT and from
Bud Doucette, former CSU activist
now living in Toronto.

“Existing union establishments
are not going to write the CSU
history,” McGrath said, “‘so it is up
‘to CSU’ers to make sure it is done
and done right.”

But Doucette followed, bringing

greetings from CSU veterans on™

the Great Lakes and in the
Maritimes. ‘‘It is time,” he said,
“that the true story and lessons of
the CSU struggle to establish rights

-and conditions for merchant
seamen and for the maintenance of
a Canadian merchant fleet be told
by those of us who were involved.
We must do it now before too many
more of us slip away.”

Doucette pledged that similar
reunion meetings would be held
soon in Toronto, Montreal and
other Eastern cities to raise
support: for the CSU _ history
project.

A committee of four has un-
dertaken the immense task of
researching the CSU’s turbulent

history. William “Moose” Mozdir,

former member of the CSU, Jim
Green, PhD. candidate and
member of the Marine Workers
Union, Liz Partington of the Office
and Technical Employees Union
and David Fairey of the Trade
Union Research Bureau combined
to form the committee.

The committee hopes to involve
former CSU members in- the.
preparation and financing of the
project. A further committee to
raise funds for the project was
struck off at the reunion.

The “CSU History Project
Committee” has invited former
members and supporters to con-
tribute funds, documents,
photographs, press clippings and
personal accounts of CSU events
and experiences to the CSU History
Project Committee at 138 E Cor-
dova St., Van.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—OCTOBER 10, 1975—Page 10

and his controlling interest in the E
& N Railway.

“But he had his problems. He
was accused of favoring an-
nexation of the province to the

United States and of helping to -

keep the price of coal in Victoria
too high...

“He stated that he had been
subject to ‘a great deal of an-
noyance during the past few
months’ and he had closed his
mines rather than accede to the

union — until the needy workmen _

were forced to return. The
following month his miners again
went on strike, this time over the
use of Chinese labor, but, said
Dunsmuir later, ‘Enough men
were found to take the places of the
dissatisfied miners.’ ”’

And again, in the testimony of
Samuel M. Robbins, superin-
tendent of the Vancouver Coal
Mining and Land Company, before
a federal commission.

“The employer of 400 white
laborers at ‘not less than $2 a day,’
he (Robbins) praised the 150
Chinese whom he paid $1 to $1.25 a
day. ‘At the time of their coming
here,’ he said, ‘my company had
been suffering from a strike of
white laborers, and we dccepted
the Chinese as a weapon with
which to settle the dispute.’ ”

When thousands of Chinese were
brought into the province to build
the CPR, anti-Chinese prejudice
was fanned to white heat. And
Morton, drawing on the newspaper
reports of the day, draws a vivid
picture, not only of the racism they
encountered, but of the conditions
under which they lived and
worked.

He quotes the British Colonist:
“Mile after mile along the course
of the winding Fraser, enclosed in
the narrow dale beneath the clad
mountains, are seen clusters of
tents and hordes of Chinese who
seem to owe their existence to the
work of the railway construction
more than the wealth of the land.”’

They were “all penned up like
cattle” on the wharves, crowded
into river boats, working “‘like ants
in an ant hill, with pick, shovel and
wheelbarrow” — and dying of ‘‘a
sort of scurvy or black leg’’ when
shortage of food in a bitter winter
reduced a diet ‘‘constantly on the
brink of vitamin deficiency.”

And when the railway was
completed, those who did not find
their way into the United States or
return to China were left ‘“‘com-
pletely destitute . . . Their choice
was to beg, stealor starve...”

When Mayor James Fell of

Victoria conducted a personal tour

of Chinatown in 1886, he found thick
green slime oozing from beneath

. nearly a century of exploitation and discrimination epenunted in James “Morton's
‘ —Sean Griffin pbote ;

tenements and an intolerable
stench from rotting fish, opium and
human exgveriedh in Morton’s
words.

Exploited both by the tyees who
contracted their labor and the
mine owners and railway con-
tractors who used them to drive
down wages and break strikes —
although there were instances
when they themselves went on
strike — and condemned as ‘‘un-

sanitary’ because of the conditions

under which they were forced to
live, the Chinese, ironically, forged
the final and most difficult link in
the railway which physically
joined Canada as a state.

Yet they would wait 90 years, as
Morton points out, until they ob-
tained the right to vote in British
Columbia. .

In the Sea of Sterile Mountains is
a significant contribution to
Canadian history in that it casts a
revealing light upon the racism
which stained so many decades of
British Columbia’s first century.
Its weakness is that the larger
background is often grey and out of
focus.

Published by J.J. Douglas and

obtainable at the People’s Co-op

Bookstore, 353 West Pender Streer,
Vancouver, at $12.50, it is essential
reading for all who want a greater
understanding of our history.

Hal Griffin

LONGSHOREMEN AND BOSSE
BEGIN SETTLEMENT PARLE

VANCOUVER, OCT. 10, 1935.
concluding the waterfront ing
which lasted nearly one mo
with Judge Davis presiding,
representatives of the Shippin
Federation and the longshore
met last night for prelimina
discussion with Commissioné
Davis. ‘

Ivan Emery, longshore leade
presented the longshoremen

case. W. Mitchell and Paddy Owel”

Coyle also
longshoremen.

Mr. Farris, well known Liber
lawyer and former attorneé.
general in the John Olive!
government, was legal advisor 0
the Shipping Federation.

represented - thi

Farris made a furious attack
the longshoremen’s union al
attempted to turn the probe into
red-baiting inquiry and declar
that ‘‘an epidemic of strike
followed their. union building:
Browbeating witnesses and uni0
officials, he demanded to kno

(A.F. of L.) as it was ‘“‘the oldes
labor organization” in the city.

Discussions will be resumed at
the finding will be submitted to th
Shipping Federation and to t
longshoremen and seamen. It

expected that no concrete sét |

tlement will be reached this we

and the commissioner will leavé-

for Ottawa this weekend.

In the meantime, picketing
being strengthened

are a daily occurrence, due
mayor McGeer’s policy
providing extra police for the

Shipping Federation at the expens®

of the taxpayers.

members of the New aed

Seamen’s Union, also refused (0
work their ship today because it
_had been loaded by strikebreake!>:

Scheduled to sail at 10a.m. with 2!
passengers, mail and freight f0
Honolulu and the Antipodes, 5

was held at her berth at Pier

until after dark.

The crew later went into co®
ference with the longshoremen a!)

on the

waterfront and arrests of pickets |

a
The crew of the Monowa!,.)

it was decided to take the ship ou! tt

& Maui

HAWAII

Honolulu/Waikiki

From

$349

Double occupancy
‘includes
Hotel

2679 Hastiggs Street East/Vandouver B.C./253-1221