THE DAILY PROVINCE DECEMBER 2, 1907 p. 6 THE PROVINCE W. C. NICHOL DAILY AVERAGE CIRCULATION FOR NOVEMBER, 190, 15,677. MONDAY, DECEMBER 2, 1907 RESULT OF THE COMMISSION. ------------------As a result of the evidence secured by the Commission, appointed to inquire into the question of Oriental immigration into British Columbia, it will be admitted, we imagine, that the investigation was expedient and that it ought to be, and likely will be, fruitful of good. The difficulties which the Commissioner encountered, in reaching the facts, were not overestimated by us when, at the beginning of the inquiry, we ventured to doubt if Mr. King would be able to overcome them. That he has surmounted them, at least in part, is the best tribute to his ability and to his resolution fearlessly to discharge the task he undertook, but it is worthy of attention that it was only in the last three days that absolute facts were obtained, that the testimony was not either valueless or unreliable. In view of the evidence given to Mr. Gotoh of the Canadian Nippon Supply Company, it is a fair presumption that previous Japanese witnesses deceived the court, that they suppressed knowledge which they should have imparted and affected ignorance of conditions of which they were perfectly informed. It would be placing too great a tax on our credulity to ask us to believe that the boarding-housekeeper and other employment agents, who appeared before the Commission and testified, were unaware of the fact that hundreds of their own countrymen who were brought to Vancouver, during the present year, were under contract. They could not help knowing it, and the fact that only one out of all the Japanese witnesses could be induced to tell the truth, is a significant commentary on the veracity of the people. However, the evidence and documents supplied by M. Gotoh are of themselves worth all the labor and expense to which the Commission has THE DAILY PROVINCE DECEMBER 2, 1907 p. 6 been put. By these it is not only proved that during the past eleven months some fourteen hundred Japanese laborers have been imported into Canada, under contract, but that agreements existed between the Canadian Nippon Company and great corporations in this province whereby many additional laborers were to be brought here during the next five years. These are extremely important facts; they are not only important in themselves, important as proving the importation of Japanese labor, but as indicating the dimensions which that traffic might have attained had not public attention been directed to it, as a consequence of the disturbances in this city in September last. If a single company such as the Canadian Nippon could bring in and distribute fourteen hundred laborers, we may rest assured that such a lucrative field would not be left entirely to one business concern. And we have every reason for presuming that other companies were as actively, though perhaps not so extensively engaged, as the Canadian-Nippon Company. The rewards were too great for the traffic to be confined to one company of operators. We are not in a position, therefore, to say, how many Japanese laborers have been brought over during the past year, under arrangement with corporations doing business in British Columbia, but the presumption is not unfair that they have been in excess of two thousand. Nor is it an unfair deduction to draw that had the traffic gone on unchecked, it would have increased and we should have discovered in a few years that we actually had a Japanese population which made it impossible for white labor to exist in this province. With the amount of railway construction in prospect during the next seven years, and with the many other enterprises existing and about to be launched, all of which naturally will seek the cheapest labor obtainable there would have been a large and increasing field for the operation of these importing agencies. Let us, however, confine out attention to the facts which were brought out in Mr. Gotoh’s evidence. We find from that evidence that the company which he represented and of which he was manager, had contracts with two large corporations: a coal company, doing an immense business not only in British Columbia, but in the United States, and a railway company: and that these contracts called for the supply of labor as it was required. During the THE DAILY PROVINCE DECEMBER 2, 1907 p. 6 period for which the contracts ran, had there been no interference with their operation, five thousand or six thousand men might have been demanded. We know, at any rate, that during the past year fourteen hundred men were required and were supplied. One of these companies was the Wellington Colliery Company, of which Hon. James Dunsmuir, the Lieutenant-Governor of British Columbia, is the president, and in which he is the largest shareholder. We know from past experience that Mr. Dunsmuir is not averse to Oriental labor in his mines, but his signature attached to the contract with the Canadian-Nippon Company would almost lead us to the conclusion that his intention was to employ, for the future, mere of this labor than he has employed in the past, that, in fact, he was disposed to employ it every largely to the exclusion of white labor. Now such a disposition, on the part of one occupying the prominent position Mr. Dunsmuir does in this province, is not commendable. But when we consider that it was Mr. Dunsmuir, who as Lieutenant-Governor of the province vetoed the bill for the limitation of the Japanese influx, we are confronted with a situation which, as far as he is concerned, is extremely unpleasant. We do not mean to suggest that Mr. Dunamuir[Sic], the Lieutenant-Governor anauled[Sic] provincial legislation in order that Mr. Dunsmuir the coal magnate might secure cheap labor. That would be a serious charge, indeed, to make, and one that we do not think is justified. We are of the opinion, and have been so all along, (and it is indeed the fact), that Mr. Dunsmuir, in his capacity as Lieutenant-Governor, acted under instructions from Ottawa, in vetoing the Bowser bill, but there is certainly room for adverse comment in the fact that he should have shown himself so compliant to federal wishes when by being so his own personal interests were so highly served. That the Canadian Pacific Railway was also a party to a similar contract indicates the necessity for some sort of legislation which will prevent railway corporations from constructing great enterprises, which depend on the public for their success, with utter disregard to public interest. The evidence against the C. P. R. was conclusive, but we do not for a moment believe that the Grand Trunk Pacific has not also been contemplating some similar contract, if indeed it has not already made one. It would be an insult to the intelligence of the THE DAILY PROVINCE DECEMBER 2, 1907 p. 6 public to ask them to accept such a statement as that the Grand Trunk Pacific was determined to employ nothing but white labor. As a result of the Commission, it is true, it may now be unable to secure Oriental workmen, but its inability to do so will be the only reason for the preference it may show for white labor. The result of the Commission’s inquiry has been to prove that Japanese cheap labor was being brought into Canada on an extensive scale, and that it was contemplated bringing it in during the next few years on an even more extensive scale--on a scale which would have produced all those evils which are bound to flow from the predominance in a white country of an Oriental population. The commissioner, in his report, we think, will probably consider it his duty to emphasize that fact, a fact that, in itself, is sufficient, beyond question, to call for immediate legislation for the limitation, if not the exclusion of a class of people whose unrestricted entry would threaten our national well-being.