a

Bree Oem

By the turn of the century the industrial unions had al-
a$ reat a strength in the province as the craft uniogs and

ere e ios .
an Xercising a profound influence on Vancouver Tradese.

n
abor Council,
oie one district council already established among the
a Miners of the Kootenays in 1899, the Western
1on of Miners set out to organise the coal miners,

its aif, ancouver Island the miners responded eagerly to

luc ee and strike for their demands. But the

bhe Interests resorted to the well-tried method first used

~the tt Dunsmuir against the Wellington miners in 1877

land a tought in strikebreakers and one by one, in Cumber-

those sCysmith and Wellington, the strikes collapsed and

Nactiy Ose names had not been added to the Dunsmuirs’
‘St returned to work.

Most

ede

Sect beast to its failure on Vancouver Island, the WFM
Yon the S campaign at Fernie with a successful strike that
Dove oy Miners’ major demands =e increased wages, im-
tio Con nitions and union recognition. But a second dis-
Dtiet a! established at Fernie by the WFM had only a
ak Reece ‘The United Mine Workers of America had
Ntisd oe Fernie with its first local in 1902 and the ensuing
tte fon conflict ended in November, 1903 with the en-
the UMW of the WEM locals going over in a body to
Kenda A. This transfer of allegiance gave the UMWA the
“flict ¢ Y Over its rival among the coal miners, although the
I} jong -otinued until the two unions reached an agreement
Whereby the WEM would confine itself to metal

nd the UMWA to coal miners.
Other

T industrial unions too. were organising in the prov-
Owhi ie American Labor Union, an avowedly Socialist body
the 4-2 the WEM had affiliated in 1898 after it broke with
Vato Federation of Labor, found fertile ground in
‘fliate Ver when it began organising in 1902. And another
bog 4 2 the American Labor Union, the United Brother-
TRahige Rey Employees, whose ultimate objective was to
ite * * lrailroad workers into one union, rapidly established
MOng previously unorganised railroad clerks.

heal? Victoria, the American Labor Union- was met with

There ¢ -Y, Most craft union leaders. But in Vancouver,

Mica ests led many of the craft unions, its socialist and
1st principles won it active support.

‘nd tha'tions between Vancouver Trades and Labor Council
the ¢ a tades and Labor Congress were already strained by
Wlticoh <® resistance to the council’s persistent demands for
Paden action and the predominant feeling among council
Mead op @t the congress should organise in its own name in-
Merion telying upon the international unions. Entry of the
tletnatin Labor Union into the field presented an apparent
‘Dit eeye> and in 1903 Vancouver Trades and Labor Council
tig) 2 the congress by endorsing the principles of indus’
ttiyeq ODlsm, ordering the congress’ per capita notice “re-
‘fling and filed” and instructing its organising committee to
om é RM New unions, where no craft union already existed.
the Dn Merican Labor Union. Twelve unions elsewhere in
*vince followed it out of the congress.
A th mt t at

al 4s tee-member royal commission appointed by the Lib-
te lab ‘tnment of Sir Wilfred Laurier in 1903 to investigate
Were wo’ Situation in B.C. found that the industrial unions
Is j ‘ Ngaged in a conspiracy.” There was a conspiracy, but
Doge. Sator was the Canadian Pacific Railway and its pur-
Td Ich did not hesitate at murder, was to smash the new
“l unions,

|

Ning the Spring of 1903 the CPR provoked a strike by dis-
Tbloy a Member of the United Brotherhood of Railway
Tid clerks Without cause and refusing to reinstate him. Rail-
re, fe 8 walked off their jobs. Freight handlers, longshore-
right ‘msters and steamboat men refused to handle CPR

Xiners a

ince,

they pe Toyal commission, of which W. L. Mackenzie King,
Mag ea deputy labor minister and later prime minister,
is th nber » had one answer for the wave of strikes rolling
eWe © province. It found that the American Labor Union,
Stern Federation of Miners and the United Brother-
ic th allway Employees were “Sn confederation with each
, se latter two being affiliated with the former, and
iy dV e6 &ts were engaged in a conspiracy to sweep all the
etherhg of the Canadian Pacific Railway into the United
r We Sod of Railway Employees and all coal miners into
* bein Stern Federation of Miners, and no doubt with a view
wer © able to stop all transportation and all mining when-
“On eng eet appear expedient in advancement of the com-

id.

Hastings and Cambie, Vancouver, in 1896

In the commission’s view, “the spirit of legitimate trade
unionism ought to be encouraged and protected while irrespon-
sible ones of socialistic tendencies should be prohibited and
declared illegal.”

The CPR had another but not dissimilar answer. On the
night of April 13, 1903, Frank Rogers, a leader of the long-
shoremen’s and fishermen’s unions active in the Socialist
party, was shot down by gunmen while he and two strikers
were walking along the CPR tracks at the foot of Abbott
Street in Vancouver. Rogers died in hospital two days later
and his funeral became a demonstration of labor solidarity.
But the strikebreaker accused of his murder was freed by a
New Westminster jury,

Even the solidarity of the strikers and the strength of
the support for them in the labor movement could not pre-
vail against the combined wealth of the CPR and the Duns-
muir interests. The CPR refused or evaded every proposal
for arbitration and at the end of four months the strikers
returned to work under an unstated agreement. The CPR had
accomplished its purpose of smashing the UBRE and with it
the longshoremen’s union.

What remained of the American Labor Union three
years later went into the Industrial Workers of the World, a
branch of which was formed in Vancouver in 1906. Founded
at Chicago in 1905 at a conference of industrial unions, the
IWW split at its second convention in 1906, also in Chicago,
and the Western Federation of Miners withdrew. The Van-
couver branch, from the outset, took on the syndicalist, anti-
parliamentary coloration of the majority, following its pre-
cept, “By organising industrially we are forming the struc-
ture of the new society within the old.” But it remained
largely a propaganda organisation until the railway construc-
tion boom of 1911-12 swelled its ranks with hundreds of
transient workers.

Although in all its propaganda it eschewed parlia-
mentary action, the IWW could not escape the contradiction
between its form of organisation and its reliance upon spon-
taneous action on the job and its political objective, “to do
away with capitalism.” As in the free speech struggles in
Vancouver in the decade before the First World War and
the campaign for release of imprisoned Vancouver Island
miners in 1912-14, it found itself involved in political strug-
gles. But the contradiction remained, carrying those who
stayed in the ITWW ever farther away from the main
revolutionary current of the socialist movement, to which
ultimately they became an obstruction.

The Socialist Party of B:C., which in 1904 linked up
with Socialist parties in Manitoba, Ontario and New Bruns-
wick to form the Socialist Party of Canada, also faced a con-
tradiction between its disdain of immediate political demands,
its stated purpose “not to further the efforts of the com-
modity labor-power to obtain better prices for itself,” and
the fact that its elected representatives in the legislature and
its members holding trade union posts were compelled to
fight for the very things their propaganda rejected. In fact,
Hawthornthwaite, Williams and Place used their minority
position in the legislature to win important concessions. Never-
theless, the contradiction remained.

(NEXT WEEK: THE SOCIALIST TRADITION
—Concluded)

June 13, 1958 —

These are
the victims

HE great atomic danger

which hangs over our own
lives and those of future gen-
erations has been widely ex-
posed by scientists.

The names and professional
standing of these men and
women have given their state-
ments the added weight of
solemn warnings which have
helped to turn uncertain fear
into world-wide opposition.
They have shown quite clearly
where the responsibility lies.

Here are some of the warn-
ings:

Before an A-bomb was drop-
ped, abnormal children were
much less in number in com-
parison with normal ones, says
a report about abnormal babies
in Nagasaki by Japanese Pro-
fessor Tano Ueshiro.

During the nine years after
the explosion, however, the
rate was remarkably changed:
471 of 3,150 babies who were
born during the four years
from January of 1949 to the
end of 1953 were still-born, and
181 were abortions.

Among the babies who came
into the world there were 3,630
abnormal or deformed chil-
dren. The details are as fol-
lows:

@ 1,045 had something wrong
with bones, muscles, the
skin and nervous system.

@ 429 had deformed organs of
smell and hearing.

@ 254 had deformed lips and
tongues.

@ 243 had something wrong
with the internal organs.

47 had deformed brains.
59 had cleft palates.

25 had no brains.

8 had no eyes at all or had
no pupils of the eye.

é xt ce tt

A thoroughgoing inquiry car-
ried out by chief scientists
from Columbia University has
shown that the quantity of
strontium 90 in the human
body had increased in a fright-
ening manner over the past
few years. For just the short
period between July 1, 1956,
and June 30, 1957, the increase
amounted to 33 percent.

One particularly alarming
fact which this inquiry estab-
lishes is that children under
four years of age have ten
times more strontium 90 in
their bodies than adults over
20 years of age.

If tests are continued at the
same rate with radioactive
fallout equal to the 1957 level,
the concentration of strontium
90 in the human body will
have reached one-fifth of the
tolerance level by the year
2000.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—PAGE 9