1914-03-03

[Stage Direction]
RESIGNATION OF HON. F. D. MONK. Mr. SPEAKER:	I have the honour to
[Mi*. Doherty.]
inform the House that I have received from the Hon. Frederick Debartzch Monk his resignation as member for the Electoral District of Jacques CartieT in the province of Quebec. I accordingly issue my warrant to the Clerk of the Crown in Chancery to-make out a new writ of election for the said electoral district.


[Stage Direction]
Bill No. 91, respecting the Northern Territorial Railway Company.-Mr. McKay.
Bill No. 92, respecting the Premier Life Insurance Company.-Mr. R. B. Bennett.
Bill No. 93, respecting the Prince Edward and Hastings Railway Company.-Mr. Hepburn.

Mr. BORDEN moved:: That on Wednesday, the 4th of March next, and subsequent Wednesdays to the end of the session, the House will meet at three o'clock p.m., and that the sittings on such days shall in every respect be under the same rules provided for other days, and that on said Wednesdays Government notices of motions and Government orders shall have precedence after questions.


Sir WILFRID LAURIER:: I suppose
there is no serious objection to this motion, but I would suggest that we should be given to-morrow again and that the motion should run from the following Wednesday, the 11th.


Robert Laird Borden: I accept that, and I therefore beg to move that the 11th be substituted for the 4th.
Motion as amended agreed to.



CANADIAN NORTHERN RAILWAY.

[Stage Direction]
On the Orders of the Day being called r
Wilfrid Laurier: I beg your
leave, Mr. Speaker, to ask the Minister of Finance to give the House some information, which he seems to have given to the press this morning. I suppose I need not lay down the principle that Parliament is entitled to as much consideration at his hands as is the press. I wish to ask the hon. gentleman with regard to a statement attributed to him in the Ottawa Citizen. The article refers to the new Canadian loan, and in the last paragraph of the article, it is stated that the Minister of Finance said there was no truth whatever in tbs rumour current here that the Government had in view an issue later on for the purpose of making a loan to a railway corporation; and, that no application for assistance by way of loan had been or was expected to

be received by the Government from any railway or other company. I refer to this especially in view of the statement published in another newspaper, attributed to Sir William Mackenzie, to the effect that there had been a demand laid before the Government, if I correctly apprehend his statement, because it concludes:
He could not give out anything as to what -the Government would do; he had simply laid the case before them and it was now in their hands. He seemed to be as confident as ever as to the work he had in hand.
Can the Minister of Finance give any information to Parliament on this matter?


Hon. W. T. WHITE (Minister of Finance) :: I can give an explanation of
the statement which I made to the press, but as to the statement of Sir William Mackenzie, or as to any remarks that may be attributed to him, of course I cannot ispeak. My hon. friend has correctly read what I stated to the press, namely, that no application had been received for assistance by way of loan to any railway company, nor was any expected to be received. ;So far as I am aware, that is a correct statement of the facts.


Mr. MACDONALD:: What about the
loan?



JUDGMENT OF CHIEF JUSTICE HAULTAIN.

[Stage Direction]
On the motion of Hon. W. T. White for 'Committee of Supply:
Mr. WM. THOBURN (North Lanark): Before we go into Committee of Supply, I would like to draw the attention of the hon. Minister of Justice to a judgment which was rendered in Saskatchewan by Chief Justice Haultain, and which is of vast importance to the business men of this country. It is as follows:
The Linder Refrigerator Company, of Montreal, is to appeal against the judgment of Chief Justice Haultain given at the Supreme Court here in a case of importance to firms doing business in the province, but not registered here. The company sued the Saskatchewan Creamery for the sum of $3,426 for a refrigerating plant and mechanical services rendered after the plant was installed. The defence mainly was that the machinery was defective. The judge held that there was no evidence to this effect, but at the same time gave judgment for defendant on the ground that the plaintiff company, being a foreign company and not registered in the province of Saskatchewan under the Foreign Companies Act, could not maintain the action on their contract in the Saskatchewan courts.
Is it possible that any Canadian firm doing business in any one province of the
Dominion and shipping goods to another Canadian firm in any other province of the Dominion, can be non-suited on the ground that the shippers were a foreign company? As I understand the meaning of the word 'foreign', it applies to a person or persons belonging to another nation or country-alien. I hope that the term cannot be applied to any Canadian business man doing business in Canada. If such is the law, then I think that the sooner that law is amended the better for all parties concerned.
Mr. DOHERTY:: The matter referred to
by the' hon. member seems to involve a determination of the question of how far a company, incorporated by this Parliament or under the laws enacted by this Parliament to do business generally, or incorporated by or undeT the laws of one province, is entitled to do business in any other province without being subject to such requirements as the legislature of the province in which it seeks to do business chooses to impose. I take it that the plaintiff in this particular case was an incorporated company. This is a question upon which there has been very considerable divergence of judicial opinion. It is one of the questions in connection with the respective powers for the incorporation of companies by Parliament on the one hand and by the legislatures of the provinces on the other hand, which have been submitted for the adjudication of the courts. These questions have been passed upon by the 'Supreme Court of Canada, and the judgment is in process of being taken before their Lordships of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. Until their Lordships pronounce upon the question, 1 am afraid that it will be difficult for me to give to the hon. member any answer that will be of any great use to him. No doubt, when the words ' foreign company ' are used, it strikes one as an anomalous that a company incorporated by Parliament or under its laws should be treated as a foreign company within a province; but Chief Justice Haultain is not alone among the judges of this country in having held that there was within the provincial legislature a power to impose conditions upon the doing of business within the province by companies incorporated otherwise than by the legislature or under the authority of the legislature itself. That is a question upon which there is a great deal to be said upon both sides, and I do not think that I can, on my own authority,

make any satisfactory answer to the question. The hon. member will have to wait with the rest of us for the determination by their Lordships of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council.


Mr. NESBITT:: Will the hon. minister
tell us what the decision of the Supreme Court of Canada was?


Charles Joseph Doherty: The judges of the Supreme Court were divided in opinion. Two of their Lordships held that companies incorporated by Parliament or under the laws of Parliament were entitled to exercise the powers conferred upon them within the provinces; and that the right, at all events, of the provinces to impose taxes for the purpose of raising revenue was concerned, the provinces were not absolutely at liberty to prevent the companies from carrying on buisness within the provinces. It is a little dangerous for me to undertake to say offhand what the holdings of the different judges were, because the questions are intricate and involved, and it is not easy to say that there was an absolute decision applicable in all cases without taking into consideration the circumstances of the incorporation and the particular powers sought to be exercised. Speaking in a general way, however, two of the judges -of the Supreme Court held favourably to the power of Parliament to incorporate companies and to confer upon companies incorporated powers exercisable not subject to be restricted by legislation of the provinces. So far as we are dealing with companies incorporated for purposes, which themselves are expressly included in the subjects regarding which this Parliament may legislate, the judges, as I understand it, held that these companies can do business within the provinces without being subject to restriction, and as to those companies which are incorporated only under the general powers upon the question, how far they may be subjected to further restrictions by provincial legislation in regard to the exercise of the powers conferred upon them were differences of opinion. While two of the judges, speaking in a general way, may be said to have held favourably to the incorporating powers on the part of this Parliament, and more restrictively than the others upon the question of the power of the provincial legislatures in regard both to the incorporation of com- , panies to do .business outside of the prov- ' ince, and also their power to restrict the operations of non-provincially incorporated companies, it is not possible for me

to undertake to discuss the matter in detail, or to specify in a word the difference of opinion existing. But the questions involved are, no doubt, of the very first importance to the business public of Canada; and, because they are of that, importance and because there does exist on the part of the judges this marked divergence of opinion, it is important to have the judgment on the question of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council.



GOVERNMENT RAILWAYS MAIL SERVICE.

[Stage Direction]
On the motion of Hon. W. T. White foT Committee of Supply:
Hon. CHARLES MARCIL:: I desire to
call the attention ot the acting Minister of Railways (Mr. Reid), who, I regret to see, is not in his place, to a matter relating to the news service organized lately by the Canadian Government Railways, with the laudable object of sending out bulletins to the newspaper press about the affairs along the line of those railways. News is sent out to the French-Canadian press as well as to the English press, and a French-Canadian journalist has asked me to read certain items from this service and put them on ' Hansard.' It will be seen that the French service is not what it might be; the work of translation is so faulty that it must have been made by a man who translates merely verbally and so falls into many grammatical errors. I will read certain items in order that the Postmaster General (Mr. Pelletier), who, I presume will look after the matter! may urge the appointment of a better translator:
* bar I erry pour le Passage a Georgetown, P.E.I.
(Correspondence special.)
Sackville, N.B., Feb. 28.-Durant les recent froids les vapours du Gouvemement qui font les services de Pictou, N.S.,. a Georgetown, P.E.I., atat englassee dans la glace et ne pouvaient naviger, mais il y a tout des indications quo le Char Kerry sera bien adopte pour naviger sous des conditions ci dur. D'abord que l'eau de les plus grande passage etat couvert de grande mor-ceau de glace, le plus petit passage de les Capes n'avait pas que de glace d'importance. Un va-peur comme la type de Char Ferry n'aurait pas de difficulte a force son passage a traverse les neuf mille qui sepparait 1'isle de l'autre cote. Des persons qui ont fait le passage dans un bateau construi pour cette navigation n'ont pas ren-contrer de glace qui est dangereuse. II est dit par des marines qui ont traverses la route que la glace a cette passage nes pas ci grande comme ales autres parts de la Straits de Northampton. Le travail a la Cape Tormentine est tou-jours en conditions de preparation. Des large quantities de pierre de Sackville sonten route pour la Cape Tourmantine, et apres que la navi-

cation etat commences il y aura des materiaux envoys de Pt. du Chene. Apres que les terminals sont finis, et le Char Perry pret pour service, il y aura la nessite pour service plus efficient a le N.B. & P.E.I. Railway. On dit que ces possible que la I.C.R. prendra la branche ligrne chemin de fer autout ou par lessee, qui le fera bien pour la present compagnie de faire des improvements qui sont bien demande par le grande traffic. Apres ca Lille Prince Edward sera toujours en touche avec le monde.
Nouvelle Raffinerie de Sucre & Dartmouth.
(Correspondance Special.)
Feb. 28, 1914.
Dartmouth, Feb. 28.-Ouvrage pour mille per-sonne sera trouve dans l'overture de la noveau batiment de la Acadia Sugar Refining Company a Dartmouth, qui replacera la plant qui etait brule a l'annee 1912. La capacity du noveau batiment sera 2,600 barils de sucre par jour. Depuis la destruction de la premiere plante la plus grande part del'ouvrage au sucre a etait fait par un autre compagnie a lautre cote de le Port Halifax.
Comment is unnecessary. These paragraphs are really important, and they are appreciated by the newspapers. The work is worthy of better translation.


Mr. PELLETIER:: It is evident, from
what the hon. gentleman has read, that the so-called translator does not know very much about language. I will call the attention of the acting Minister of Railways to the matter.



VANCOUVER ISLAND LABOUR TROUBLES.

[Stage Direction]
On the motion of Hon. W. T. White for Committee of Supply:
Mr. ALPHONSE VERVILLE (Maison-neuve):: I wish to bring to the attention
of the House again this everlasting question of the miners on Vancouver Island. A few weeks ago, while we were in Committee of Supply, reference was made to the report laid before us by the Royal Commission on this subject. Before this, the House, on my motion, ordered a return of the correspondence exchanged between the Government and the operators. A week ago yesterday, this return was laid on the table. I have read that return very carefully, and I find that it is notable not so much for what is contained in it as for what is omitted from it. I think there must be correspondence which should have been given with this return but which is not there. We seem to have a one-sided return, just as we had a one-sided repor* The trouble culminated, I believe, on trie
15th of September, 1912. I find that on the 19th September, the minister, or his deputy, notified the men that they would have to apply for a board of conciliation. Also on the 20th, a similiar letter was .sent to the operators of the mines. On the 20th, an answer was received from the miners stating plainly that they were not on strike, and had not been on strike, but had left work in protest against discrimination-[DOT] which was later on referred to by the minister in commenting on the Teport-and against the conditions under which they had been working. There are letters which show-and if necessary I will read them later on-that the department were very anxious to get information from the operators of the mines as well as from the men. But I fail to find in the correspondence anything at all from the operators. *Still, it is manifest from some of the letters that the department did receive some documents and took copies of them. I believe these documents were received from Sir William Mackenzie. But there is nothing of these documents in the return. Now, up tc the present time, judging from this return, the Government is supposed to know nothing at all about tlie operators' side of the question. But no one in this House or out of it will believe that in the year and a half since this trouble began the department has not received any statement of the operators' side of the question. I cannot but wonder why these documents have not been included in the return. I am tempted to believe-just tempted to believe-that the Canadian Northern Railway interests, which are involved in this affair, are two great friends of the minister. If not that, I should be tempted to believe that the minister himself might be interested. Of course, I am not saying that he is, but I am tempted to do that because there was such a lapse of time at one period during which there was no correspondence whatever between those concerned in that famous strike in the west and the department. It has been stated that the men had not exposed their case and also that they had not received the proper information as to the necessity of asking for a board. We must bear in mind that there are many ways of applying for a board, and it is also proved by the correspondence that the department will not stand on technicalities in connection with an application for a board. The letter sent by the men on the 30th day of September clearly explains the case to the department. The

minister should have done something in that matter. Of course he will say that he has written to give instructions to the fair wage officer, Mr. McNiven. I strongly believe that if Mr, McNiven had been left alone he surely would have done better than he has done. I know him well enough and I know enough of his knowledge of labour troubles to be convinced that, left to himself, he would be able to do some good. There must have been correspondence also between that fair wage officer and the department, although it is omitted from the return.
I wish to read to the House a letter, signed by Mr. Foster, sent to the Minister of Labour on the 30th day of September, which explains this case. That letter is as follows:
Nanaimo, September 30, 1912.
Hon. T. W. Crothers,
Minister of Labour.
Dear Sir,
A short time ago, if you remember, in the Wilson hotel, you made the remark that if you could do anything in your power for the benefit of the workers that you would only be too pleased to do so, now I will endeavour to give you a full explanation of the trouble which we are engaged in at the present time. Our men have been openly discriminated against and the companies refuse to give any reasons whatever, they refused to meet our committees and we claim the right to question at any time why our men are discharged, the companies refuse to concede that right to us, and what do we find, they put us up against a lockout, Our men are compelled to act on those gas committees and we can find no other reasons why they are discriminated against. Of course the companies are able to prove that they are not discriminating against our men on acccount of their actions on gas committees, but they do not submit any reasons why they have discharged them, and that is what we want to know, if there is any way to compel them to let us know why they are allowed to discharge our men unquestioned that is the only question at issue. And if there is any remedy we would like to know.
Trusting you will give this question your immediate attention and that we will receive an early reply, I am.
Fraternally yours,
(Signed) Robert Foster, President District 28, U.M.W. of A.
P.O. Box 798, Nanaimo, B.C.
The answer of the minister was simply that he would consider the matter and reply later on. Up to the present time I do not know that any answer has been given.
It is not my intention to go over all these letters, because they are long, and probably when the minister -is replying to me he will read some of them, including the letters that do not appear in this re-

port. Up to the 30th of September, it seems that everything was done by telegram. That was probably the better form of communication, but from that day there is written correspondence. Of course, the explanations were long, and for that reason the minister commenced writing letters to the operators as well as to the men. But we find that at a certain moment a gap occurs in this report. There are two places in the report at which the department almost begs the company, that is Mackenzie and Mann, to have their side of the question exposed, as the session was to open very soon and probably those questions would be brought up before the House. That is about what the letter states, yet up to the present nothing appears in this report as to their side of the question. We now have before the House only one side of the question. Why is it? I know that you, Mr. Speaker, do not believe that the Mackenzie and Mann Company were so strong that they could prevent their side of the case being included. I do not believe it. I claim that last year; when Mackenzie and Mann were before this Parliament asking for a donation of $16,000,000, that was the time for the Labour Department and for the Government to force them to meet those men and come to some agreement. I claim that) whenever any company comes before this Government asking for so many million dollars and the Government and this Parliament do not know what they are going to do with that money, that is highway robbery. In such a case, when an agreement of that kind is to be made, a government is all powerful over a company of this kind. Reading this correspondence, we find that up to the 25th day of October correspondence of all kinds was received, and then we jump away down to the 19th of November. The case of the men was absolutely explained.
As I stated, I do not want to weary the House by reading all the correspondence. Probably it might have been better to do so, but I shall give a chance to the minister to read some of it, because he will pick out from the report the communications which best suit him. I am not attacking any one; I am simply stating that the men's case has been explained, and I have said here before that any man who understands the situation of labour in any part of this country, if he knows how to go about it, can probably do some good in bringing about a .settlement of such a dispute,

especially when there is a -demand for conciliation made to the Government of the country. I would ask the Minister of Labour why -it is that for that long period, from May 8, 1913, up to very late in the year, that is to say for five and a half months, nothing at all appears in this report. Is it that the Minister of Labour was sleeping on that, or was the department sleeping on it? Are we to believe that the fair wage officers out in the West were advised not to send any correspondence of any bind, or was it understood that for five and a half long months they were not to do so? Not a single line of correspondence appears in this return. The strike was on, and if nothing was done probably it was owing to a letter received from the secretary of Sir William Mackenzie himself, in which -he says that the men had acknowledged that they had made-' a great mistake in the way the strike was declared, and that, of course, they should have given thirty days' notice.
I suppose the minister, with the love he has for international unions, was hoping that international trades unionism would break up at any moment. How can he say the strike was not sanctioned by headquarters when the men are still being paid to-day ? From the beginning to the end the men have done all in their power to get this strike settled; they even went to the provincial Government.
But, whether the men were right or wrong, or whether the operators were at fault, is not the question. We must not look at one side of the question only, and only one side has been put before this House. We must not try to prove that the men were absolutely wrong and the operators absolutely right. We have to consider the matter from both sides. Men were put in jail and kept there a certain length of time, but that does not prove they were guilty. I am not prepared to say that some men have not done wrong; far from it. If the operators have [DOT]done wrong, why does not the minister come right out and state the exact conditions ? My experience in the labour movement has Taught me something about operators, not only operators of mines, but of other industries. They are very careful what they say. They do not say to the men: I am going to fire you because you are a member of the union; far from it. They do not say:	We will not hold
a conference with you because you are union men. In this particular case the miners asked for a joint committee to 81
hear the case. The company at first agreed to that, but afterwards they said: We do not like the committee that has been chosen, we want men who are now working^ for us. There is just as much sense in that as in the Government getting three of its employees to make an investigation. We could not expect them to be impartial. In September last a convention was held in Montreal. I am not going to tell the minister what was said about him there. My hon. friend is reported to have said at that time: * Oh, I can state in two words why the congress was against me.' I hope that he will give the House those two words. It was suggested at that convention that the Prime Minister should ask for the resignation of the Minister of Labour. That was outside of the jurisdiction of the Trades and Labour Congress, I know. I am not going to ask that, but before I sit down, I will make a certain motion. Just now, I will ask the minister to tell us whit has happened during the five and a half months since May 8, 1913, because this correspondence does not 4 p.m. cover that period at all. Did any correspondence pass between the minister or the officers of his department, and the mine owners? He may answer that he has already given me a return. It seems to me that when a motion is made for correspondence in connection with a strike, everything should be brought down, and I would like to ask the minister why the operators' side of this question has not been brought down in this return. We cannot discuss the question intelligently without that. I leave it to the House to decide why the correspondence has not been brought down. Perhaps the House will believe, as I do, that there is something wrong in the matter. The correspondence brought down covers very little. The latter part of it includes the report of the commissioner which has already been discussed in this House, and contains acknowledgements from different parties to whom a copy of the report was sent. I am not discussing that report now. My point is that for a year and a half nothing at all has been done, and during that time we have granted nearly $16,000,000 to a company that was involved in that strike. Was it to fight the men or for some other reason?
I may be told that there is no strike on now, that the owners have all the men they want. It matters not what colour the men are. I do not want to go back to yesterday's discussion of the Asiatic question. My hon. friend knows more about that than I do. But one thing I know, it is



impossible for any member from British Columbia who understands this question, to approve the action of the Minister of Labour. Of course the minister may say, I have done all I could through my officers, and so forth.
I claim that the minister is largely responsible for the suffering that has taken place there. I am not going to touch upon this phase of the question at the present time, but later on I hope to bring to the notice of the House a number of particular incidents which will surprise the Minister of Labour and will also surprise the right hon. the leader of the Government. I feel confident that the right hon. gentleman does not know the conditions under which the Minister of Labour has operated with reference to this question. I know that he is broad-minded enough to see justice done to all parties in this matter. Probably the Prime Minister is the greatest sufferer in that he has as his colleague the present Minister of Labour. Organized labour has very little confidence in the Minister of Labour, but I would commend to him the resolution which was adopted at the Trades Congress held in Montreal. The Trades Congress has no jurisdiction to deal with a matter of this kind, but we in this House have jurisdiction, and therefore I propose to move the following amendment, which will, if adopted, carry into effect the sentiments that were expressed at the Trades Congress, a representative body of labour men, composed of 350 delegates:
That Mr. Speaker do not now leave the Chair for the House to go into Committee of Supply, but that it be resolved that the whole conduct of the Minister of Labour in regard to the claims and the rights of the coal miners on the island of Vancouver was marked by persistent negligence and absolute indifference and deserves the censure of this House.


Mr. H. B. MORPHY (North Perth):: Mr. Speaker, I desire to say a few words upon this question which has been raised by the hon. member for Maisonneuve (Mr. Ver-ville); and in approaching a subject which, in all its details, is worthy of the consideration of this House, I do so with a feeling of regret that conditions have reached such a pass in this now prolonged labour trouble at Nanaimo. But I cannot at all agree with the hon. member in his statement that my hon. friend the Minister of Labour (Mr. Crothers) has been derelict in his duty, or has neglected in any way to do what an hon. member occupying the responsible position of minister should have done. The hon. member for Maisonneuve has

made the point that the men had not received word that it was necessary to ask for a board. I have read the correspondence, and I do not propose to wade through it now, but I find upon the record that the men were duly notified of what was required and that the minister wrote them at The inception of the trouble, stating what was required. I also find that an official of the department, a couple or three days after the trouble reached the ears of the minister, wrote that he-
-is to-day mailing you copies of this law and forms of application thereunder. In the event of proper application being made everything possible will be done to expedite the procedure under the Act.
That is on the 19th September. The trouble broke out, I see by the records, on the 15th September. It will appear later on that the mine workers to whom this was sent claimed not to have received the letter, but the letter from the Assistant Deputy Minister of Labour on the same day shows that he enclosed the forms referred to by the minister in his letter. I am informed by the minister that these documents have not been returned from the mail, and I think I will show presently before I sit down that there is irrefutable evidence that these forms were received, although the parties to whom they were sent denied that they had come.
The hon. member for Maisonneuve says that there are two sides to the question. That is apparent in almost every dispute, whether it is a labour trouble or any other kind of trouble. I was surprised to hear the hon. member say to-day that the men's side had never been put before this House. I was present when the Minister of Labour explained at great length, and I thought with a great deal of fairness-


Alphonse Verville: I said that the men's side had been put, but not the other side.


Hugh Boulton Morphy: time We will find this coal bidding for markets on the Atlantic seaboard as well as on the Pacific coast. This feature in itself would not be so bad if there could be an interchange of competition, but that cannot be,-
Mark the words:
-for the reason that the much superior quality of this coal will always bar outside competition
from its own zone.
Why did Farrington go in? Of course, in the interests of the American mine-worker he went in to cripple, to throttle, to shut up the Canadian coal mines. My hon. friend knows these facts, for he has a copy of this document on his file, I presume. If not, the publication of this Government has been sent him. In spite of this, he makes in this House the speech to which we have just listened. In view of these facts, I do not think the labour of this country will stand up and eheer for a member of this House representing labour who will condone interference on the part of a representative of the United Mine Workers who comes in here in the interests of the American workers and the American mine owners.
Now, there is just one observation I wish to make, particularly because it is a matter that the minister cannot touch at all. The hon. member for Maisonneuve told us, when he last spoke on this subject, something of what Will Thome thought of the Minister of Labour-that according to Will Thorne, in England they thought the minister was ' a frost.' He has said also that he would like to tell what the Labour Congress thought about the Minister of Labour. I do not know Will Thorne except by name, but I have no doubt he is a very reputable gentleman. But I can assure the non. member for Maisonneuve that Will Thorne does not know the Minister of Labour.
Let me tell the hon. gentleman something that I know to be a fact-something about the opinion of the Minister of Labour that is hdld throughout Ontario. Personally, I have had some means of judging of his work and of the keenness and forcefulness of that work. I represent a riding in which there were a large number of trainmen affected by the Grand Trunk railway strike. I saw the hon. Minister of Labour sitting at the hearing of these cases with three of the higher authorities of the Grand Trunk railway; and I can teli the hon. member for Maisonneuve that it would have done his heart good to have been there and to have taken.part, or to have sat by and listened. He would then have seen the attitude taken by the minister on behalf of labour. There was no backing up, there was no slowing
I Mr. Morpliy.]
down; it was full steam ahead. The minister's position was: these men must be reinstated. And they were reinstated, every man of them; and they got their back pay, the cheques coming to the Minister of Labour. So, there was no guess-work. Thus throughout the province of Ontario there is unanimity of feeling that at last the Dominion of Canada has a real Minister of Labour.
Of course, partisan attack is made upon him in this House under the pretence that he is ' Minister of Play.' There is no more indefatigable worker, so far as I know in any department of Government. The very record from which the hon. gentleman quotes, and on which he bases his complaint, he knows very well, is not complete. For the Minister of Labour has had a special man on the spot all the time. He has made appointments of new men in his department to go up and down the Grand Trunk Pacific watching the interests of labour, and another man to go through northern Ontario on the same mission. But my hon. friend would have the Minister of Labour go and sit at the mouth of this mine at Nanaimo and neglect all the other duties of his department here and throughout the Dominion. The Minister of Labour went out there on the spot. He failed. The hon. Sir Richard McBride was appealed to. He failed. A Royal Commission was appointed by the British Columbia Government. They failed.


Mr. CARROLL:: Failed in what?


Hugh Boulton Morphy: In arriving at an adjustment of the troubles between the men and the mine-owners.


William F. Carroll: Were they asked to do that?


Hugh Boulton Morphy: The record shows that a commission was appointed and failed in this work. I think my statement is accurate.


William F. Carroll: The commission was not appointed to make a settlement but to make a report of conditions to the minister.


Hugh Boulton Morphy: I hope the hon. gentleman will try to back that up when he speaks on this question. That is the gravamen of the charge, if the bon. gentleman takes the responsibility of making the charge.


William F. Carroll: I asked to what purpose was the Royal Commission, consisting of Mr. Price, appointed.


Hugh Boulton Morphy: The hon. member will
have to look up the correspondence-


William F. Carroll: Was it to report on the situation or to attempt to settle the strike?


Hugh Boulton Morphy: In looking up the correspondence -which is very voluminous-the hon. members speak of the minister doing nothing, but there is a great deal of correspondence, some fifty pages in all


An hon. MEMBER:: The clerks do that.


Mr. CARVELL:: Have you got the commission, if not I shall send it over to you.


Hugh Boulton Morphy: I am reminded, I have been told, I do not know whether the hon. member for Glace Bay would quite agree with me about Farrington and the United Mine Workers.


William F. Carroll: I am going to answer the hon. gentleman.


Hugh Boulton Morphy: I am told that the miners of Glace Bay refused to entertain the officers of the United Mine Workers of America. Is that true?


William F. Carroll: Some of them, yes.


Hugh Boulton Morphy: They were not allowed to extend their good offices to assist in settling labour troubles.


William F. Carroll: That is not the fact.


Hugh Boulton Morphy: Then you can speak to that and explain how far they went in snubbing them. The hon. member for Maisonneuve, I am told-I speak subject to correction-was president of the Trades and Labour Congress which met' in Halifax when the question of the establishment of a Department of Labour came up and a resolution was passed asking the late Government to establish a Department of Labour and especially referring to the late Minister of Labour, the hon. Mackenzie King. The resolution passed at that congress, which lasted from the 21st to the 25th of September, 1908, was as follows:
That this congress records its appreciation of the valuable services rendered to the workingmen of Canada by the Dominion Department of Labour since the establishment of the department in 1900. The congress believes that the continuous growth and expansion in the department's work during the seven years of its existence is an evidence of the increasing importance of this branch of the administration. While recognizing the able manner in which the present Minister of Labour and his predecessors have discharged the duties of their office as minister of the department, the congress believes that the scope of the department's work and its efficiency and usefulness would be greatly increased were a Minister of Labour appointed who would give undivided attention to the work of the department. In the interest of the country as a
whole, no less than of its working classes this congress would recommend that the Domin-nion Government add to the present portfolios that of a Minister of Labour who shall be assigned control of the Department of Labour as a separate and distinct branch of the Administration.
My hon. friend will remember that resolution. At the same time a letter was written by Francis Giddens, who, I am told, was private secretary to the hon. Mr. King at that time. That letter reads:
Dear Mr. Plant:
You will probably have seen from the press by the time this reaches you what is happening in North Waterloo.
Of course, something happened in North Waterloo later than that.
Would you please try and get through a strong resolution at the congress in the matter of having the Government make the Department of Labour a separate department with a separate minister? Perhaps you might be able to have the congress pass a resolution appreciative of Mr. King's services as Deputy Minister of Labour during the eight years he has been connected with the department. It could be pointed out that this would be nothing political, as it would have reference only to the manner in which Mr. King's services had been discharged as a public servant on behalf of labour.
That was before he failed properly to draft the settlement in the interests of the Grand Trunk workingmen in that agreement which did not state the time at which they would be taken back. The hon. member for Maisonneuve remembers that the thing of value to the men was left out of the agreement and when he did get it he took the word only of the Grand Trunk, everything else was in writing. The main thing was altogether verbal. That is the way the late Minister of Labour could fight on behalf of workingmen. The letter concludes :
-and it would seem something workingmen should be willing to do in the way of showing appreciation of work done on their behalf. It would also doubtless help in gaining for them the sympathy of the press and of the House in endeavouring to have the department made a separate department.


William F. Carroll: Who wrote that?


Hugh Boulton Morphy: Francis Giddens, private secretary to Mr. Mackenzie King, I am told. The hon. member for Maisonneuve did not know anything about that letter, did he?	^


Alphonse Verville: Who was it sent by?


Hugh Boulton Morphy: Mr Giddens sent- it to Mr. Plant.


Frank Broadstreet Carvell: Suppose he d'd.


Hugh Boulton Morphy: I am asking my hon.
friend, does he deny that he knew of the letter?


Alphonse Verville: I did not know anything about it for a good many reasons. When a man is president of such a congress as that he does not know of any correspondence that comes there. I was president of the congress and not secretary. There was no harm in it anyway.


Hugh Boulton Morphy: I am sorry to have taken up so much time; but I would like to say, in conclusion, that, as a comparatively new member of the House, I think it is to be regretted that a matter fraught with such immense consequences, a matter of such vital importance to this country, a matter involving a prolonged strike such as this, should be approached in a partisan manner. I think that the minister, who is well able to speak for himself, has already shown, and should not have been asked to show again, that he has done all that he could have done in an honest endeavour to bring about a settlement of the strike. We have the appointment of a Royal Commission, the minister's own visit and his deputy's visit to the scene of action; and, having regard to all these facts, it does seem to me that the people of Canada will say that the Minister of Labour shirked nothing, and neglected nothing, throughout the whole transaction, and is entitled not to be attacked, but to receive the plaudits of his fellow countrymen for having done his duty.
Mr.W.F.CARROLL (South Cape Breton): Mr. Speaker, I very seldom refuse an invitation to good meat or to easy meat, and the hon. member for -North Perth (Mr. Morphy), having invited me to discuss some phases of this question, I wish to take up a short time in discussing the coal strikes in the provinces of British Columbia and Nova Scotia, and the United Mine Workers of America. I rather admire the hon. member for North Perth for his general defence of the Minister of Labour. That was to be expected; but I should have thought he would have come to the minister's defence in this particular case rather than make the broad statement that the minister is cordially thought of in the province of Ontario, and that he succeeded ip getting the workingmen on the Grand Trunk railway their rights. If the Minister of Labour did anything for the benefit of the Grand Trunk employees, he is to be applauded for that, not adversely criticised. The Minister of 
Labour is justified in obtaining all the applause that can possibly come to him for his conduct in connection with the settlement of the Grand Trunk strike. In that particular case it was not the Minister of Labour who was criticised. It happened to be the Minister of Railways. But if the Minister of Labour was successful in getting the employees of the Grand Trunk railway their rights by holding a cudgel over the heads of their employers, is he not to be condemned for not effecting some settlement of the strike in British Columbia, where he could have wielded a much more-effective cudgel than the one he used in the Grand Trunk strike? This resolution is not intended to condemn the Minister of Labour for anything other than his action and -his futile attempts to settle the deplorable labour troubles in the province of British Columbia. I think I am justified in saying that the hon. member for North Perth has not attempted to defend the Minister of Labour in his handling of that strike.^ He made the general statement that the minister was to be commended, but I did not hear him giving any facts or the history of the strike to show in what particular the minister should be commended. It is true that he made an onslaught on an international union in this country, the-United Mine Workers of America. He attempted to show this House 'that it was an undesirable union because, forsooth, it had its headquarters in the United States, and he attempted to prove that the leader of the strike had some ulterior motive in coming across the international boundary line and interfering in labour matters in British Columbia. That does not defend t'he Minister of Labour. 1 want to take issue with my hon. friend from North Perth in that matter; but before dealing with that particular point I wish to say that this strike did not begin in August, 1913. It had become very serious then.
The real beginning of the trouble in Biitish Columbia started in September, 1912, when the employees of the Canadian Collieries Company came out on strike. According to the minister, they came out on strike; the employees themselves say they took a holiday. The cessation of work in this coal mine affected 933
5 p.m. employees. Two days later there was a cessation of work by the miners at Ladysmith in what is known as the Extension mines, also owned by tlie Canadian Collieries Company. Seven hundred employees were affected. I do not care whether it is called a strike or

a holiday, but on the 18th day of September, 1912, some 1,500 or 1,600 employees of
the Canadian Collieries Company,- counting the two mines, were affected by either a strike or a holiday or a lockout or whatever you are pleased to call it. What did the Minister of Labour do? He sent a telegram to the leaders of the affected miners telling them something about Canadian law. He told them that it was illegal for them to come out on strike without first applying for a board under the Industrial Disputes Act. So far as he went, the minister was perfectly correct, but it strikes me as rather peculiar that he did not get possession of the facts and learn whether it was a holiday or a strike before he took this step of warning the miners. I am not going to find fault with him for sending that telegram. It is true that a strike cannot be carried on in this country without the operators or workers first having recourse to the Industrial Disputes Act. Will the minister point out to this House how he attempted to settle this difficulty between the 19th of September, when he sent that telegram, and the 1st of May, 1913, when all the miners in the other collieries came out on strike. He sat silent dur:pg those months, so far as we have heard from him in this House, and so far as the correspondence goes to show.


Mr. CROTHERS:: Has my hon. friend
examined the return brought down for the hon. leader of the Opposition? If he examines that return, he will find that correspondence was going on right along, not only with the miners but with their employers.


William F. Carroll: I examined the correspondence which was brought down for my hon. friend from Maisonneuve (Mr. Ver-ville) and I found nothing.


Thomas Wilson Crothers: The right hon. leader of the Opposition secured an order for a return very much more comprehensive than the return asked for by my hon. friend from Maisonneuve. The right hon. leader of the Opposition obtained his order first, and it is not the practice, as I heard the Prime Minister state in this House last week, to duplicate these orders. The hon. member will find a great deal more correspondence in the return secured by the right hon. leader of the Opposition than appears in the return given to the hon. member for Maisonneuve.


William F. Carroll: The minister is undoubtedly correct, but that does not affect
the point I am bringing out: that from the 16th of September, 1912, notwithstanding the fact that 1,600 miners were affected, until August, 1913, practically nothing was. done with reference to this matter. The minister must know that the time to settle. tbese disputes is at their inception, and if he reads carefully the history of labour troubles in this country he will find that, I will not say always, but almost invariably, when strong steps were taken at the. inception of labour troubles, those troubles were amicably settled.
That is the point I wish to bring home to the Minister of Labour. He may have had correspondence with the union or the men; he may have had- correspondence with the. mine operators; but did he do anything tangible to bring these people together? I do not think h-e has shown that, during that period from September 16, 1912, until the 1st May, 1913, when the whole of the coal miners of British Columbia went out on strike, he did anything tangible to bring the operators and miners together.
The hon. member for North Perth (Mr, Morphy) read extracts from a certain statement, which he said was an article by Mr. Farrington, published in the United Mine Workers' Journal. He said in one part of his speech that this article was signed by Mr. Farrington. I would like to point out to the hon. gentleman that this is not correct-that it was not a contribution to the United Mine Workers' Journal by Mr. Farrington, either signed or unsigned. These extracts purport to be extracts from a speech delivered by him before the United Mine Workers of America at Indianapolis or Seattle. There is this difference between the two, that -if it were a signed article he would be responsible for every word in that journal, but if what appeared in that publication consisted of extracts from a speech-and I have the minister's own words for that- it would not have the same strength. But suppose that this is a signed contribution to the United Mine Workers' Journal, what do we find? The hon. gentleman was rather unfair in giving extracts from this alleged contribution of Mr. Farrington. He read sentences which had been read previously in this House by the Minister of Labour to show that the invasion into British Columbia of the United Mine Workers of America was at the instance of the coal operators of the United States of America, and that they were practically the hired envoys of the operators of the United

States. Does the Minister of Labour for one instant countenance such a construction as that to be put upon that language? Does the minister, or does the hon. member for Perth, wish to convey to this House that the United Mine Workers of America were organized in British Columbia at the instance of the operators of the United States? They are sworn enemies. There has been open war between the United Mine Workers and the operators for years and years, and does the Minister of Labour think that they are reaching a common ground in invading Canadian territory for the purpose of throttling and killing the coal industry of this country? Surely not. He placed that construction upon this language in this House the other night, and the hon. member for Perth places the same construction upon it now. But, marvellous to relate, the commissioner sent into British Columbia by the Minister of Labour seeks to 6onvey the same idea through his report.
What are the facts? The Minister of Labour, and every member of this House who knows anything about labour unions, must know that it is one of the creeds of the International Labour Union to have the same conditions prevailing in all countries in so far as the working hours, wages and general behaviour of the operators towards the miners are concerned. That was the reason why the United Mine Workers of America came into the British Columbia district. The Minister of Labour, I understand, took the trouble some days ago to deny the statement in the press that he was against international unionism. Will he deny that he was against the United Mine Workers of America in the strike which has prevailed in British Columbia for the last year or more? If he denies this he will be inconsistent with the language that he used on the floor of this House some time ago. He asked: Why should Mr. White, an alien, president of the Mine Workers of America, come over to Canada and seek to force terms upon the operators of British Columbia? It is the business of the United Mine Workers to make the best available terms they can for the men who are enrolled beneath their banner. Will the minister say that is a bad thing? Will the minister say that because an American, whom he calls an alien, comes over to this country to try to better the condition of the miners of British Columbia, he has no Tight to try to impress his convictions, and the convictions of the association with
which he is connected, upon the operators? He has every right to do so.
Almost every labour organization in this country to-day is an international union. The railway employees, and almost all the organizations connected with labourers on railways, are international, and many of them have their head offices in the cities of the United States. Have they been a menace to the operation of the railways of this country? Have they invaded this country for the purpose of injuring the Canadian railways to the advantage of the American systems? I think my hon. friend the Minister of Labour and the hon. member for Perth will seek in vain all through the history of these organizations to find that such is their object.
The hon. member for Perth, in order to assail and belittle the miners in British Columbia, I have no doubt, went out of his way to show that one of their number had committed certain atrocities there. I do not justify these crimes, but it is no defence to the attitude of the Minister of Labour on this question. The fact that a miner out there committed some crime is no defence, and let me tell the Minister of Labour that all these riots and crimes are directly traceable to the position that he took upon this strike between the 16th September, 1912, and the 1st May, 1913. I will prove it. All during these months there was no serious trouble, no riots in British Columbia. The Minister of Labour was approached, and he was told that some one hundred and odd miners had been imported from England by .misrepresentation, and that they were importing foreign labour into British Columbia by misrepresentations and in violation of the Immigration Act. What did my hon. friend do in connection with that? He sat silent, as he did last winter in this House, and made no attempt to keep out these undesirable aliens, the scum of China, the scum of Japan, the gunmen and the thugs. Had he taken proper steps in that connection, I do not think the riot would ever have occurred. The riot did occur when these thugs and aliens, the scum of Japan and China, appeared on the streets of the mining towns of British Columbia, in full force, apparently an organized crowd, to show the miners in these districts that the strikebreakers were the bosses of the situation, and that the strike was at an end. Then commenced the riots, and then commenced these unfortunate occurrences, which have been detailed to us by hon. gentlemen

opposite. But the hon. member for North Perth (Mr. Morphy) said nothing whatever about the coal operators. Oh, they were veritable angels to him, and if their wings were not long the wings were nevertheless there. The question involved here is as to the right of the miners of British Columbia, or of any other part of Canada, to organize in whatever union they may see fit. I was asked by the hon. member for North Perth to say sometning about invasion of the United Mine Workers into my county in 1908, and into the >
mining districts of South Cape Breton and Nova Scotia generally. They did come there; they organized there; they had almost one-half of the miners in that district under their banner at one time. But, unfortunately for them, they were not the first union on the ground there. The Provincial Workmen's Association, as I stated in this House the *other night, had been doing business on behalf of the coal miners and with the operators, in the province of Nova Scotia, for a quarter of a century, and they had been doing it fairly successfully. They had succeeded in obtaining some very good legislation, higher wages, and other benefits for the miners in these districts. The strike at *Glace Bay was not so much a strike between capital and labour as between two rival labour organizations, I have no doubt that the Minister of Labour will tell us that he has certain information now to the effect that I opposed the United Mine Workers' in Nova Scotia. If he says that, may I tell him, that I know the source whence he *got his information, and that it was a long way for him to go, out to a town in central Saskatchewan to get such news. Let me tell the Minister of Labour that it will be futile for him to make any such statement, because it will not be a true statement. I was not in public life at that time, nor had I any intention of going into public life. I was a lawyer, and had been the paid lawyer of the Provincial Workmen's Association in that town and in that part of the country for three years previous to the strike. I may tell the hon. gentleman that 1 defended all the actions taken by the United Mine Workers against the Provincial Workingmen's Association for the possession of their property, and I am happy to state that in each action my clients were successful. I defended the men who were under the banner of the Provincial Workmen's Association all during the strike, and :at their instance I acted as solicitor and
lawyer in the prosecution of the United Mine Workers.
But in British Columbia there was no organized labour; there was no union when the United Mine Workers came in there, and they were the sole custodians of the labour situation in that province. The mine workers joined their banner, and for that fact and for that fact alone, the Canadian Collieries dismissed two of the men in their employment. They asked the minister to intervene. Mr. Foster, a labor man, wrote to the minister asking him what could be done in such case, and the minister wrote to him that it was under consideration with the minister, from September, 1912, until the present time, and he has not yet given Mr. Foster, nor the miners of British Columbia, the benefit of his ruling and his instructions on that particular question. If the minister had taken the proper stand then against discrimination, the strike would not have reached the proportions it did.
I am afraid that the hon. member for North Perth (Mr. Morphy) did not catch the point in this discussion. Whether the mover of this resolution was in the House and voted in favour of the Grand Trunk workmen, or whether he was not in the House, is beside the question. My hon. friend from Maisonneuve (Mr. Verville) is endeavouring by this resolutiSh to impress upon the House that in this particular instance the Minister of Labour-I will not say has done nothing-but, has been most inactive in trying to get a settlement of a very serious industrial dispute. The Minister of Labour told us, when his Estimates were before the House, that he did all he possibly could to settle the strike, but later on he admitted that, under the Conciliation Act, it was possible for him to have gone much further than he even attempted to go. Why did he not use the Conciliation Act ? His excuse for his inaction was, that the Minister of Labour who preceded him in office failed to put this Act into operation in connection with some trouble in Ontario or Quebec, and that was his justification for not putting it into operation in the present instance. Is that a fair argument ? Will the workmen of this country, will the artisans of this country, will the general public of Canada, look upon that as a fair justification for the Minister of Labour not putting the Conciliation Act into force in one of the most serious and remarkable labour troubles that has ever arisen in Canada. It is beside the question, whether or not certain letters were sent to the Trades and

Labour Council in Montreal, applauding the action of Mr. Mackenzie King. That has nothing to do with the question whether or not the present Minister of Labour has done his duty iii respect to the mine operators and the miners of British Columbia. We give the minister credit if he settled the Grand Trunk strike. As a matter of fact, it was settled a year before he took office. He had no more to do with that strike than with whether or not cheese is selling in the United States for ten, fifteen or twenty cents. That is no justification for the minister's position in this present trouble; but if he did do something, we give him credit for it.


Frank Broadstreet Carvell: It was his duty.


William F. Carroll: Yes, it was his duty.


Frank Broadstreet Carvell: The man takes credit for doing his duty.


William F. Carroll: I give a man like the Minister of Labour credit for doing his duty, because he does it so seldom that he deserves credit when he does do it. He had the very same material, indeed a much stronger bludgeon in his possession when this strike occurred in British Columbia. He telegraphed the men in September, 1912.
I have no evidence that he had any correspondence with the company, whether he asked them to make app^ation for a board or not; but if there was any reasonable doubt in the mind of the minister as to whether or not he could proceed without a board, it was as reasonable for him to use the bludgeon of 116,000,000 last spring, which the Canadian Northern railway were asking of this country, and say: Messrs. Canadian Northern, unless you attempt at least to come to some amicable arrangement with the coal miners who are operating your mines in the West, I will use my endeavours to prevent this Government from handing over to you the enormous sum of money for which you are asking. If he had done that, I have no doubt that the question would have been settled; but the minister does not need to have recourse to such bloodthirsty methods, if I might call them so, of settling disputes in this country. We were told by the hon. member for North Perth (Mr. Morphy): Oh, the minister did magnificently; he sent Mr. Price to British Columbia to attempt to settle the strike. The minister did no such thing; he sent Mr. Price to British Columbia to make a report on conditions there. I would like to read for the information of this House one very peculiar thing in this com-
mission which was issued to Mr. Price. It is in part as follows:
The minister also recommends that the commissioner have the right to determine the manner of conducting the proceedings in respect of such inquiry, and to make inquiries and investigation concerning the relations between employers and employees in the same or kindred industries in industrial centres other than those immediately affected, with a view of making such recommendation as in his opinion may serve to promote amicable relations between employers and employees and to minimize the frequency and magnitude of industrial disputes in this industry.
He was not required by this commission! to attempt to make a .settlement of the strike; he was requued to go into the mining centres of British Columbia, and especially into the centres where this industry was carried on by other operators, and to find out the best way of settling a strike,, and to report to the minister. Did he report, anything of benefit to the minister or his department as to how this strike should be settled? His report from cover to cover is a direct attack on the United Mine-Workers of America. He attempts to show the very same thing which the Minister of Labour and my hon. friend from North Perth have attempted to show in this House, that the United Mine Workers, invaded British Columbia at the instance of the American operators for the direct purpose of the destroyal of the mining industry in British Columbia. What are the grounds that he urges? The grounds are frivolous. Those men went there; they had organized labour; they were trying to do what no other labour organization had succeeded in doing and that was to get justice for the miners of British Columbia. Yet Mr. Price, for his forty dollars a day-I suppose he was entitled to it, I am not complaining about that price-makes no recommendation to the Minister of Labour as to how to settle this strike. The worst feature of it is that Mr. Price, notwithstanding the fact that he was in British Columbia for weeks, never attempted to hold a consultation or conference with the men who had the strike in hand. He got no information from Mr. Farrington, the head of the United Mine Workers in British Columbia. He does not even mention within the confines of his report one redeeming feature in the conduct either of the miners of British Columbia or of the United Mine Workers of America. Strange to say, he does not call in condemnation the attitude of the mine operators of British Columbia in dismissing men, because, forsooth, they joined an organiza-

tion, a union, which in their estimation at least would be of some benefit to them.
1 do not intend to discuss again the fact that, when the matter became serious, when bloodshed began in British Columbia, the hon. Minister of Labour went to other fields across the broad Atlantic to get new ideas as to the conditions of labour and how to deal generally in his department with labour problems and difficulties. I think that, as Minister of Labour and as a student or a quasi student of labour conditions in this country, he had a most fertile field in British Columbia for his operations. One of the worst strikes that ever darkened the pages of labour in this country was on; blood was being shed; it was found necessary to call out the militia; and still my hon. friend from North Perth says that fifty British miners were kept from going into the mines of British Columbia. With that field for study, the hon. Minister of Labour goes to England. He is to be blamed for doing that. He cannot justify his action, and no man in his position would attempt to justify an action of that kind.
This is not the first time that a serious preposition of this kind has occurred in this country. In 1910, the very same question came up-whether there was any obligation upon the coal operators of this country to hear complaints from organized labour, and whether or not it was lawful for coal mine operators to dismiss miners [DOT]because they happened to belong to a labour organization. This case in 1910 arose in the same part of the country. Neither operators nor miners would ask for a board under the Industrial Disputes Act. Hon. Mackenzie King, then Minister of Labour, sent a representative of the department tc the ground, but both parties still refused. When the delay became very pronounced, did Mr, King rest on his oars saying:	I
have done all I could and am unable to bring these warring factions to a peaceful .settlement? No; he rose in his place in the House and announced that unless an application were made to the department either by the operators or the miners he would appoint a royal commission to go over the whole question, that the party who failed to apply to the board would be accorded no members on that commission, and that the commission should have the power to settle the strike one way or other. Here was an instance of a Minister of Labour who saw to it that the solution of a difficulty like this was not made impossible by the fact that neither capital nor labour would make
application for a board under the Industrial Disputes Act.


Thomas Wilson Crothers: Where was that and when?
Mr. CARROLL; In British Columbia, in 1910.


Thomas Wilson Crothers: Where?


William F. Carroll: I have not the memorandum before me, but I think it was at Fernie.


Thomas Wilson Crothers: I think my hon. friend will find that there was no labour trouble there in 1910.


William F. Carroll: That is the usual subterfuge of the Minister of Labour. Will he rise in his place and say that this very identical question was not settled in the manner I have referred to by a former Minister of Labour in connection with the mines of British Columbia?


Thomas Wilson Crothers: I will.


William F. Carroll: Then why dispute the matter of dates?


Thomas Wilson Crothers: It was not settled. The board was appointed and an award made, and both parties refused to accept the award.


William F. Carroll: I think the minister is mixing up-


Thomas Wilson Crothers: No, you are doing the mixing.


William F. Carroll: The minister will have to do the unweaving of the explanation.


Thomas Wilson Crothers: I shall be glad to do so.


William F. Carroll: The instance the minister refers to was in 1907.


Thomas Wilson Crothers: No.


William F. Carroll: The instance I refer to was in 1910.


Thomas Wilson Crothers: There was nothing in 1910.


William F. Carroll: The hon. Minister of
Labour and the member for North Perth (Mr. Morphy) will attempt to draw a red herring across the trail to escape condemnation for what they did in this case.


Mr. GRAHAM:: For what they did not do.


William F. Carroll: For what they did-they did nothing; they not only did not do something," but they did nothing. They cannot justify the minister's conduct

except in the way that has already been attempted by showing that Mr. Farrington came into those regions for the purpose of killing the coal mining industry of British Columbia. But if they go on to read the letter sent by Mr. Farrington to the Minister of Labour, they will see who is doing the killing. For, as a matter of fact, no worse thing could happen this country than the introduction of Oriental labour into our mines. Before the strike of 1910, only ten per cent of the labour employed in these mines was Oriental labour, whereas in July, 1913, there was sixty-two per cent. That is to be found in Mr. Price's report-to be sure it must be arrived at by calculation. Does my hon. friend from Nanaimo (Mr. Shepherd) say that it is a good thing for the operators, for the miners, for the public of British Columbia, that Orientals should be taking the place of white labour in mining there?


Mr. SHEPHERD:: Certainly not.


William F. Carroll: But we see that the direct result of the Minister of Labour's inactivity in this matter is that sixty-two per cent of the miners operating there in July, 1913-and I suppose this includes surface men-were Orientals. If this question had been settled in a broad way, at least if strong effort had been made to settle it in a broad way, this would not have resulted; and I understand that it has come about in direct violation of the mining laws of British Columbia.


Francis Henry Shepherd: Was the same number of white men employed in July, 1913, as before the strike. If not, the percentage is fallacious. Was there any material increase in the number of Orientals employed?


William F. Carroll: I understand that there were about one hundred fewer miners in that particular mine in July and August than before the strike. Suppose that there were 400 in July, and 500 at the beginning of the strike. Of that 500 only ten per cent were Orientals, and these, I understand, working on the surface. But of the 400 employed in July and August, 62 per cent were Orientals, and working both on the surface and in the mine. Will the hon. member for Nanaimo say that that is a fair condition? I take the ground that Oriental labour, in the first place, cannot be made qualified to operate mines, and I do not believe they should be granted certificates by the authorities of British Columbia to operate in the wall of a mine, in the capacity of
	.
either shot-firer, digger of coal, operator of a machine, helper or anything else, because the moment they go down into a mine they are going to cause unrest. They have been debarred from there practically, so far. It is going to cause unrest with the white labour, it is going to mean that the other employees in the mines will not be so safe, because the Oriental in British Columbia does not understand mining and will never be in a position to understand mining like his white brother. That is one of the results.
I believe that the Minister of Labour approached this question with a preconceived prejudice against the United Mine Workers of America. I gathered that from his speech in this Parliament. I believe that Mr. Price went to British Columbia, he may be an honest man and all that, but with a preconceived prejudice against the United Mine Workers of America, and I learn this from the report which he has made to the Department of Labour. I think it is an unfortunate thing that the intelligent miners were not asked by Mr. Price to give their views on certain situations. I think it is an unfortunate thing that Farrington, who was leading this strike, was not asked to come and give evidence one way or the other on conditions prevailing in British Columbia; and there is no man who knows anything of mining in British Columbia who will say that the conditions of the miner in British Columbia is ideal, or anywhere near ideal. That is the reason why the United Mine Workers were brought in, to try to better the conditions. I think that the announcement made that the coal miners in British Columbia are going to compete, by way of the Panama canal, with the coal miners of the Atlantic seaboard, is the most ridiculous statement I have ever heard in this House. That is one of the reasons, too, why the Minister of Labour has a preconceived prejudice against these miners. I do not know where he got his conception, I do not know where he got his prejudice, but they were in the minds of both himself and the gentleman whom he sent out there to investigate this dispute and to report to his department.
At six o'clock, the House took recess.
The House resumed at eight o'clock. PRIVATE BILLS.



CONSIDERED IN COMMITTEE-PROGRESS REPORTED.

[Stage Direction]
Bill No. 41, respecting the Canadian Northern Railway Company.-Mr. W. H. Sharpe.

Bill No. 65, respecting the McClary Manufacturing Company.-Mr. Beattie.

[Stage Direction]
Bill No. 86, to incorporate the Canadian Alberta Railway Company.-Mr. Warnock.
Bill No. 87, to incorporate the Erie and Ontario Railway Company.-Mr. Lalor.
Bill No. 88, respecting the London and Lake Erie Railway and Transportation Company.-Mr. Marshall.
Bill No. 89, respecting the University of Saskatchewan, and to change its name to The University of Emmanuel College.-Mr. McKay.

[Stage Direction]
Consideration of the motion of Hon. W. T. White for Committee of Supply, and the proposed amendment thereto of Mr. Ver-ville, resumed.
Francis Henry Shepherd: In
the remarks I shall make this evening with reference to the Nanaimo trouble I will endeavour to avoid any repetition of any remarks I may have made on February 6, when the debate commenced; but it may be necessary to refer to what was stated to be the initial cause, that is, the discrimination against Messrs. Mottishaw and Portrey, the two members of the gas committee. This cause was evidently lost sight of in the later stages of the trouble which resolved itself into the straight question, the recognition of the United Mine Workers of America. I shall say a few words as to the manner in which this strike was caused. I have had a mining experience of over forty years and have been in several strikes and mining troubles, but never in the whole of my experience did I know of a strike which was inaugurated in the manner in which the strike on Vancouver island was inaugurated. There is a well established principle amongst miners that those who wish to go on strike for any grievance or for bettering their condition shall only do so by and with the consent of a good majority of the whole. If I recollect correctly it requires a two-thirds majority of those entitled to vote upon the question as to whether or not there shall be a strike. The vote to return to work requires, I think, only a majority. This strike was not inaugurated upon those principles, and I venture to say that if this strike fails-and I think it will fail, in fact it probably has failed-its failure will be in a great measure due to the fact that the strike was not inaugurated
upon the principles which I have enunciated. With reference to the initial cause of the strike, the discrimination against Messrs. Mottishaw and Portrey, this matter came up in the British Columbia Legislature in the reply of the Premier to Mr. Place, the Socialist member for Newcastle. The Premier proceeded to quote from a report by Mr. Mottishaw to the effect that No. 2 mine at Extension was not in a dangerous condition at the time the agitation about the gas committee originated. He regarded it as rather a peculiar thing that the report which was supposed to be fundamental in the support of the trouble did not state that the mine was in unsafe condition. Referring to Mr. Place, the Premier said:
My friend from Newcastle has not been behind hand in this matter and I have read his speeches on the subject. He tries his best by all the ingenuity he can command to show that this Government and this Government alone, is at the bottom of the whole trouble, when he knows perfectly well, because he can be fair-minded if he wants to, that what was behind the difficulty was the proposal to establish the United Mine Workers of America on the island.
During this trouble the companies, at least in my constituency, were at all times ready to meet their men as a body of miners, but they absolutely refused to meet them as a committee emanating from the United Mine Workers of America. The question will naturally be asked, why did the operators refuse to meet the United Mine Workers of America? I do not propose to go into that matter, because it was threshed out very thoroughly on the 6th and 10th of February and also this afternoon.
But the main feature was that of recognition. Probably many hon. members of the House do not understand what is meant by recognition. If you will pardon me, Mr. Speaker, I will quote from the Coal Age of New York. I want to be perfectly frank in this matter and to state that this publication has been decidedly opposed to the methods used by the United Mine Workers of America on Vancouver island. It says in its issue of February 21, 1914:
' It seems only right and proper at this time to ask what is implied in the demand for recognition, so urgently and persistently made by labour unions in general, but with marked pertinacity and daring by the United Mine Workers of America in particular. There is a legitimate use of this term which may be understood to convey so much no one will deny. Recognition is to be earned, not demanded. It is the ripened fruit of toil, labour and industry. It comes naturally as the result of accomplishment. There must be something to recognize in order to gain recognition.

There can be no objection, as a rule, to operators recognizing a mine union. Many of the mines to-day are working under that principle. There is a distinct understanding between the operators and the men. The unions are fully recognized, and as a *rule the result is that the conditions prevailing are absolutely harmonious. But 'there is something underlying this; it is not simply recognizing the United Mine Workers of America that the operators <object to. There is evidently something underlying, some ulterior object, as has been stated by the hon. Minister of Labour and by my hon. friend from Perth, and 'that is that the United Mine Workers are using the labour unions to virtually control the coal trade conditions on the Pacific coast. I will not dwell upon that matter; I mention that for what it is worth, but that is one of the things which it is hard to prove, and the only proof we have is Mr. Farrington's own statement.
Why did the miners of Vancouver island join the United Mine Workers of America? It has been stated by the hon. member for South Cape Breton (Mr. Carroll) that this was the initial union upon the island, that up to that time the men were absolutely disorganized. I beg to correct him. There have been miners' unions on Vancouver island for thirty or forty years, and some of the most severe struggles we have had have been under the direction of labour unions. It is true that there was no organized labour union at the time that the United Mine Workers of America invaded the island, but there have been miners' unions, and some of them have been very successful indeed. I might mention one in my own town of Nanaimo, where the conditions were so amicable that the mine manager became the president of it. You can readily understand that when a mine owner or mine operator consents to be the president of a labor union things must be [DOT]amicable.
The hon. member for South Cape Breton said that Orientals should not be employed as miners, shot lighters or in positions of confidence or trust. He made the statement that within a very short period the number of Orientals employed in connection with the mines of British Columbia had risen from ten per cent not underground, to 65 per cent above and below ground. If I am wrong in that I hope the hon. gentleman will correct me. I fail to see how the hon. member can support that statement when I show the House that the conditions prohibiting the employment of.

Orientals in large numbers is absolutely safeguarded by the Coal Mines Regulations Act of British Columbia. I quote section 56:
(1)	Coal-miners' certificates of competency shall be granted by a board of examiners consisting of not less than three competent persons ; such board to be constituted at each colliery which the Lieutenant Governor in Council may designate, and such board shall consist of the following persons:
(a)	One appointed by the Lieutenant Governor in Council:
(b)	One, with two alternates, appointed by the manager or managers of the colliery:
(c)	One coal-miner with two alternates, possessed of certificates of competency as such. Such coal-miner and coal-miner alternates shall be elected by the coal-miners whose names shall appear on the list referred to in section 12 in the Third Schedule to this Act:
(d)	The proceedings of the board shall be in accordance with the rules in the Third Schedule to this Act.
I want hon. members to pay particular attention to this, because this clause was inserted at my suggestion and with the hearty approval of the Minister of Mines:
(e)	An inspector of mines snail, ex-officio, be a member, without voting power, of all boards under this section within his inspectorate.
(2)	Such board shall hold office for one year or until their successors are appointed.
(3)	The examination as aforesaid shall be held on the first Monday in each and every month, except in cases where the minister may fix some other date on whicn a board shall hold its examinations.
The reason why he was divested of voting powers was that it would disturb the balance of the board and .make it .an even number, and consequently in many cases inoperative.
No certificate of competency shall be granted to any coal-miner who does not satisfy the majority of such Board of Examiners that he is sufficiently conversant with the English language, and with the provisions of the Acts relating to coal-mining and the rules and regulations made thereunder, to render his employment as such safe, and also that he has been employed in a coal mine for at least twelve months previous to the date of his application for such certificate, and has sufficient knowledge of methods of coal-mining to render him competent to perform the duties appertaining to his employment.
Therefore, I fail to see how, under these restrictions, it would be possible that a wholesale increase in the .employment of Orientals in the mines of British Columbia could take place. The inspector was placed on that Board for the reason that he should exercise no authority as to voting power but supervision over all applicants applying to that board for a certificate, and to see that, in

addition to being competent miners, they should possess an absolute knowledge of the English language, or such as to enable them to read, not only the Coal Mines Regulations Act, but any notices of danger or other publications which might be posted about the mines for the general safety of the mines. Under these conditions it would be impossible to import Orientals in a wholesale manner, as the hon. member for South Cape Breton would have this House believe. That there w.as an increase I believe, but that the increase was not over and above the number that the machinery of the board could allow to pass through is I think beyond question. The board sits once a month, and the time is fully occupied in getting ten or fifteen through at a sitting. That being the case, I fail to see how a large increase in the number of Orientals, over and above those already there, could possibly take place. They were certainly not imported. The Orientals, as I said on the 6th ultimo, are only employed underground in the mines of the Canadian Collieries Company. They are employed, as a matter of course, on the surface at other collieries.


Mr. OLIVER:: I have been given to understand that the Act of British Columbia has been amended since the Act that my hon. friend read, in some particulars that affect the employment of Orientals. Is that a fact or is it not?


Francis Henry Shepherd: The Act has not been amended. 1 am in a position to know, because I am responsible for the drafting of that Act, and I know it is not the intention, unless a very urgent case demanded it, to re-open the Act.


Frank Oliver: The information I had
was possibly inaccurate. Does the hon. gentleman say there have been no amendments to the regulations based on the Act?


Francis Henry Shepherd: There have been no
amendments whatever to the Act; the Act has not been re-opened for any purpose. It may naturally be asked why Orientals are only employed in the mines of the Canadian collieries:-


Mr. McKENZIE:: What would happen
if a man should go to work in a mine without having complied with the regulation which the hon. gentleman has read?


Francis Henry Shepherd: Do you mean if he
went to the mine without a certificate?


Daniel Duncan McKenzie: Yes.


Francis Henry Shepherd: If he goes before the committee and is refused a certificate, he cannot be employed, and if the manager does employ him he is guilty of an infringement of the Act, the penalties for which are provided in a general section.


Daniel Duncan McKenzie: That is what I wanted to know.


Francis Henry Shepherd: It is a matter of
pretty ancient history why the Canadian Collieries, Limited, originally the Duns-muir Mines, should be allowed to employ Chinese underground, and why they are not employed underground in any other mine in British Columbia. They used to be employed in all the mines on the island, and in the year 1887 a disastrous explosion occurred in the No. 1 mine of the Western Fuel Company, then the New Vancouver Coal Company. Chinese and white men were employed underground in the mine, and there were approximately 100 lives lost, a great number being Chinamen. The sentiment prevailed that possibly the explosion and consequent deplorable loss of life may have been due to the inexperience of the Chinamen. That sentiment became so strong that the miners refused to resume work after the mine was restored, and the company willingly acquiesced that from that time forward no Orientals should be employed for any purpose whatever underground. This decision was followed by all the mines on Vancouver island, with the exception of the Dunsmuirs. The Orientals have been employed in the Dunsmuir mine for over a quarter of a century, probably thirty years.
It may be asked, why has some legislation not been passed prohibiting Orientals from being employed underground. As a matter of fact, such legislation has been passed, and its legality was submitted to the Privy Council in the friendly case of Bryden vs. the Wellington Collieries Company. The point in the case was as to the validity or otherwise of the clause prohibiting the employment of Chinese underground in any capacity whatever. "The decision of the Privy Council was that the clause of the Act was ultra vires, and consequently, under that ruling of the Privy Council, the Canadian Collieries and Dunsmuirs have enjoyed the advantage, if I may so term it, of employing Chinese from that day to this. This in an unfair condition; it gives them distinct advantage, not only with regard to trade, but it is eminently unfair and unjust to the white



workers. I trust I have made myself perfectly clear as to how I stand upon the question of the employment of Orientals underground.


Frank Oliver: I understood the hon.
gentleman to read from a .statute of British Columbia a provision which prevents the employment of a miner underground, except he passes a certain examination. I understand the hon. gentleman now to say that, according to ancient practice, Orientals are now employed in these Dunsmuir collieries.


Francis Henry Shepherd: Exactly.


Frank Oliver: How is it that the Act is not effective against them, if it is effective against other mines in the province?


Francis Henry Shepherd: The provision of the
Act that no Orientals should be employed underground was declared ultra vires by the Privy Council. This is not embodied in the present Act, and the only restriction against the Orientals in the present Act is that they shall be able to speak and Tead the English language, and shall be practical miners. There are, however, other restrictions, which my hon. friend from South Cape Breton referred to, and which I shall read. Rule 42 provides:
No Chinaman or person unable to speak English shall be appointed to or shall occupy any position of trust or responsibility in or about a mine whereby through his ignorance, carelessness, or negligence, he may endanger the life or limb of any person employed in or about a mine, namely:	as banksmen, onsetter, signalman,
brakeman, switchman, furnaceman, engineer, or be employed at the windlass of a sinking pit.
These are the positions which he is not allowed to occupy underground, but there is evidently no provision preventing him from acting as a miner, providing he can produce before the Board of Examiners tne qualification required.
There is another question; and I wish to avoid, as far as possible, any partisan controversy while I am speaking upon this question. One hon. member on the other side of the House compared the visit of the ex-Minister of Labour, Mr. Mackenzie King, with that of the present Minister of Labour, with regard to the settlement of strikes on Vancouver island, and he quoted the instance of the strike at Nanaimo in 1905, when the ex-Minister of Labour went out and amicably adjusted that strike very satisfactqrily. This was used in compari-. son with the action of the present Minister of Labour, in the light that he had failed
[Mr. Shepherd.!
where the former Minister of Labour had been so eminently successful. I wish to point out that the conditions were entirely different. The strike in 1905 was called upon the very principle I enunciated at the commencement of my remarks. There was a distinct grievance; there was a unanimous vote that they should strike until the grievance was redressed. I cannot Temember the'duration of that strike; I think it was about six weeks; but about that time the opportunity had arrived for a compromise or for some one to intervene, and the Hon. Mackenzie King came out and did effect a reconciliation and a readjustment of the grievances which then existed.
But, what were the conditions when the present Minister of Labour came to Nanaimo? When I returned home, after last session of Parliament, I thoroughly investigated in my own way the conditions prevailing, and I came to the conclusion then, and I have had no occasion since I formed that opinion to change it, that the difficulty was absolutely insoluble, so far as compromise was concerned. The operators absolutely refused to acknowledge the United Mine Workers of America, and the United Mine Workers of America absolutely refused to deal with the operators unless they were received as the United Mine Workers of America. When you get conditions such as these, a solution is absolutely impossible. These conditions confronted the Minister of Labour when he visited Nanaimo with Mr. Price. These were the conditions when Nanaimo was visited by the deputy minister of labour. There was no other conclusion to arrive at than that a solution was absolutely impossible so far as any intervention was concerned. I recall the remark made by the minister to a body of miners in Nanaimo who had called to interview him with regard to some solution of the matter. He said: ' The question is this, gentlemen: one of the parties must back down, and back down all the way.' That has been the inevitable result.
This being the condition, I think that the comparison was absolutely unfair. Would the ex-Minister of Labour have been as successful with the strike of 1913-14 as he was in 1905? I submit not.. Would the exminister have gone so far in his efforts to effect a reconciliation and have advised the operators to accept recognition of the United Mine Workers of America? I venture to say not. He would have accomplished no more in his efforts at reconciliation than was

accomplished by my hon. friend the Minister of Labour.
One more word about recognition. Why was the association so particularly anxious that it should be recognized? The reason is that recognition carries with it the right to deduct from every worker a certain portion of his earnings for the purposes of the union. If the miners are united, why should it be necessary for the union to compel the companies to deduct this fee from the regular earnings of their miners? For the simple reason that the men are untrue to each other. There is a lack of solidarity among the workers, and therein they fail. So long as this lack of solidarity continues among the workers, so long will they continue to fail. The fault and failure lies with that entirely.
I do not wish to dwell any further upon this phase of the trouble; but there is another phase of this question. The strike, so far as the operators are concerned, is virtually over. The mines are working to their utmost capacity, that is, as far as the mines in their present condition will allow; because it must be admitted that the damage done to the mines is considerable. In the strike zone there must be about a thousand men unemployed, who are still loyal to the United Mine Workers of America, and who are receiving strike pay. A number of their coworkers are undergoing sentences in jail, and it is upon this matter that I wish to speak for a little while. In my opinion if there is one thing above another which will tend to bring industrial peace and quiet to the troubled strike zone of Vancouver island, it will be the extension of clemency to these imprisoned miners. I know many of these miners, and I know that they are not criminals at heart. They have been ill-advised; they have been led away in the heat of the moment; and I think that the demands of society are reasonably satisfied by the sentences that some of them have already served. I am pleased to note that the learned judge who is conducting these cases is of the same opinion. In confirmation of this, I must ask you to bear with me while I read hii remarks to a body of men whom he released on suspended sentence. Mr. Justice Morrison addressed the men as follows:
In regard to the commissions of some crimes I quite agree with the proposal urged by some of the leading criminologists, that when an accused person has been tried and found guilty of a crime the court instead of punishing the crime should proceed to inquire who is the offender and what are his character and 82i
antecedents and circumstances; and upon the result of that inquiry he should be dealt with in whatever way the interests of the public-demand. The effect would be that some offenders who now go to prison would be restored to the ranks of labour. That must not be mistaken for leniency.
We are more in need of prison reform fWfetv leniency. At the same time I do not believe that severity in punishment will avail to check crime. Great severity in punishment of crime is now as obsolete as many of the barbaric methods of the old days.
Now, I think you are not of the criminal class. You have been up to the time of this particular offense, lawabiding citizens who in my opinion have been betrayed into the present trouble by designing agencies whose machinations it was most difficult to resist. You can assist in making those reforms. If my treatment of you to-day will tend in any way to bring the administration of the law into contempt on account of its apparent leniency then indeed will any attempt, at reform be in vain.
1 hope you will not think I am taking advantage of Your present position to foist upon you gratuitous advice. I wish you to know that it is a mistake to assume that because you may think you have a grievance that therefore you may commit a breach of the law with impunity. We all think we have grievances. But we must not in any attempt to remedy those grievances take the law into our bands.
I do not mean anything I have said to cast any reflection upon properly organized labour I am sure that had you taken the advice of some of yjur representatives in the legislature, and honourable members of your un.ons there would have been no breaches of the peace. It would be affectation for me to pretend that I do not hear of the pernicious influence at work upon the men-influences which were brought into requisition in and about those very assizes and of which unfortunately you have been vicarious victims.
In spite of those agencies and their ill-advised futile resolutions I shall now, after mature consideration, do that which were it r.ot for such blatant conduct on their part would have been done considerably sooner.
I am in no way influenced by them or their advisers in extending to you that consideration which I think your cases respectively merit and which I think is entirely in the public interest.
Application was made to the Minister oi Justice for clemency in some cases, and it was not considered that the time was opportune to extend clemency. On account of the troubles at Nanaimo and on Vancouver Island an organization was formed for the purpose of endeavouring to secure the release of these men who were imprisoned. That this organization did more harm than good to their fellow-workmen, I am thoroughly convinced. The meetings were attended by men who spoke intemperately, and who used violent language, threatening language; and, instead of approaching the Minister of Justice in a contrite manner, they approached him absolutely demand-

ing the release of these men as if they were suffering an injustice. And it must be borne in mind that many of these men pleaded guilty, and the rest of them were tried by a jury of their peers.
Now, Sir, there is still another side of this question to be considered; and, removing it from its local colouring, I submit that there is a widespread dissatisfaction and unrest among the workers of the world. There must be some cause for it. When, owing to the high cost of living and other causes it becomes so difficult for workingmen to make both ends meet, can any one fail to understand that workers are prone to lawlessness and crime? And is it not the duty of all legislative bodies, and the duty of the State, to endeavour as far as possible to remove the causes that drive men to lawlessness and crime? I am reminded, Sir, [DOT]of the words of the author from whom I -quoted before, Charles Dickens, in Martin Chuzzlewit, from which I shall make a brief quotation in conclusion. The case today seems very similar to that of which Dickens speaks. I would recommend this quotation to the Minister of Justice when I again ask him to present to His Royal Highness the Governor General a further appeal for clemency on behalf of these imprisoned miners, believing, as I do, that it is the shortest cut to peace and industrial prosperity for my stricken town and district. In a state of society which ignores the causes which lead to lawlessness and crime, I cannot put my views more clearly than in the following words of Dickens:
No, my good Sir, I have a duty to discharge which I owe to society, and it shall he discharged, my friend, at any cost.'
O late remembered much forgotten mouthing braggart duty, always owed and seldom paid in any other coin but punishment and wrath, when will mankind begin to know thee? When will men acknowledge thee in thy neglected cradle and thy stunted youth, and not begin their recognition in thy sinful manhood and thy desolate old age? O ermined judge whose duty to society is now to doom the ragged -criminal to punishment and death, hadst thou never, man, a duty to discharge in barring up the hundred open gates that wooed him to the felon's dock and throwing but ajar the portals of a decent life?
O prelate, whose duty to society it is to mourn in melancholy, phrase the sad degeneracy of these bad times in which thy lot of honours has been cast, did nothing go before thy elevation to the lofty seat from which thou dealest out thy homilies to other tarriers for dead men's shoes, whose duty to society has not begun?
O magistrate, so rare a country gentleman and brave a squire, had you no duty to society before the ricks were blazing and the mob was mad? Or did it spring up armed and booted from the earth, a corps of yeomanry full grown?


Frank Broadstreet Carvell: I speak with all sincerity when I say that I have listened with great interest to the very moderate and very reasonable address of my hon. friend from Nanaimo (Mr. Shepherd). I think he has impressed every member within the sound of his voice as he has impressed me. I think we can quite realize that my hon. friend occupies a very unenviable position in regard to this important labour dispute in his own community, in his own constituency, in his own home, and I can understand the great difficulty he would have in attempting to discuss a question of this magnitude in its peculiar local and personal conditions. Of course, he has discussed the matter so far as it relates to mining, with a knowledge that few of us possess. In speaking on this subject, I confess that, from a practical standpoint, I have but little knowledge. But 1 have read the report on the subject published by the minister. I have also read the return brought down in answer to the motion of my hon. friend from Maison-neuve (Mr. Verville), and that in answer to the motion of the right hon. leader of the Opposition (Sir Wilfrid Laurier). Besides, I have been receiving a large correspondence from the hon. gentleman's own city and other parts of British Columbia since this matter was discussed in the House three or four weeks ago.
If I am able hurriedly to summarize the substance of my hon. friend's address this evening, I come to the conclusion that it practically amounts to three things. He first lays down the position that this strike is on the question of whether or not the mining companies shall recognize the United Mine Workers of America. His second important conclusion is that a law exists in the province of British Columbia, of which he claims -to be the father, by which they can prevent Asiatics and certain classes of labourers from going down into the mines to perform work there, but from necessity-I fear from political necessity-this law has not been invoked by the powers that be in British Columbia. The third important conclusion at which he arrived is that, through the blundering of some person or bodies of persons, this unfortunate dispute has reached a point where he himself has come to the conclu-; sion that it is impossible of settlement.
Now, I have tried to summarize-and I think I have done it fairly-the main points of the argument of my hon. friend. As I have said, I realize the local conditions and difficulties of my hon. friend in

attempting to discuss it from the general standpoint of whether or not the Minister of Labour is liable to the censure of this House for the part he has played or has not played. For that is the question we are discussing here to-night; that is the substance of the motion of my hon. friend from Maisonneuve (Mr. Verville). In effect, the hon. member for Maisonneuve says that the Minister of Labour has not properly enforced the law, that he has not done his duty by the miners of British Columbia, and that he deserves to be censured by this House. I quite understand the difficulty my hon. friend from Nanaimo has in trying to discuss this matter from that reasonable standpoint. I give him credit for not having referred to the Minister of Labour except once. When the Minister of Labour went to British Columbia in June, when the heather was afire, when men were at one another's throats, he came to the conclusion that the difficulty had reached the point where some one had not only to back down but to back clear down; and, as he concluded that his friends the magnates of British Columbia could not back clear down-and I think I could go further and say that the hon. member for Nanaimo knows his man too well to think that the Minister of Labour would ask his friends the magnates to back down -he agrees with the Minister of Labour in saying that at that time it was impossible to do anything because the magnates could not back down.
As I have said, I have been receiving many communications from British Columbia within the last three or four weeks. Some of them are really surprising, startling, to me. From these communications, and also from the correspondence brought down by the minister, I think any reasonable man, any man who approaches this subject with an open mind, must have the conclusion forced upon him that there is the possibility of an unholy alliance existing between Premier McBride, the Conservative party of British Columbia, the Canadian Northern railway, or the firm of Mackenzie and Mann, and the Minister of Labour. I do not say this alliance does exist, but I do say that is the conclusion to which one is irresistibly driven who reads this correspondence.
The minister will say: What proof have you of that? I am going to give him the proof, and I hope he will answer it. I have gone over this return fairly carefully, and have tried to summarize it, and I will
give my hon. ~ friend some of the arguments on which I base these assertions. Take first the conduct of the minister and his department, and when I say his department, of- course I mean the minister, because not only is he technicaly responsible, but I do not believe that any act or move was made by his department without the minister's personal knowledge, and therefore I treat the minister as being the department. I find that a day or two after the strike was inaugurated, the minister sent a telegram to a representative of the miners in British Columbia that he had noticed that there were difficulties, and he took the trouble to point out to them, which they probably knew as well as the minister, the procedure under the Industrial Disputes Act, and stated that he was sending them copies of an application form if they wished to avail themselves of the benefits of the Industrial Disputes Act. I am not go:ng into an argument as to whether these documents were sent or not. Five weeks after, the secretary of the miners union sent back a letter stating that they had never received the documents and one of the officials replied that the documents were forwarded. I do not wish to discuss it any longer. I only give the fact that one party says they sent the documents and the other party says they did not. A most remarkable corroboration of the ground taken by the men however is to be found in one of the letters of Mr. Farrington in which he states that, on the second occasion when the minister stated that he was sending copies of these documents to Mr. Farrington, they were not enclosed in the letter. So it is remarkable that on two occasions when the minister or his department professed to be sending a form to these miners on which to make the application to take advantage of the Industrial Disputes Act, the documents never reached the miners. Then I find that' about the same time the minister sent a telegram to the mine workers-and here the minister had no doubt whatever as to whom he should send the correspondence because he sends it straight to Mr. D. B. Hanna, one of the vice presidents of the Canadian Northern railway, of course, closely connected with Mackenzie and Mann, and I have no douot at all the proper party to whom to send any information regarding the coal strike in British Columbia. Mr. Hanna replies as follows, (page 11 of the return to the motion of my hen. friend from Maisonneuve) :

Toronto, Ont, Sept. 24, 1912.
F. A. Acland, Esq.,
Deputy Minister of Labour,
Ottawa, Ont.
Your message 21st only received yesterday, but not being on board I waited to consult Sir William and have since wired Victoria for information. We thank minister for his offer and will state situation more fully when I receive reply from Victoria. Meanwhile understand men at one mine have quit work but trouble not spreading.
(Sgd.) D. B. Hanna.
That was on the 24th of September in reply to a telegram sent to Mr. Hanna three days earlier. On the 27th day of September. 19X2, a further correspondence took place between Mr. Acland, the deputy minister and the coal mining company.
Ottawa, Sept. 27, 1912.
Re disturbances in coal mines at Ladysmith and Cumberland, B.C.
Dear Sir,-With further reference to the industrial troubles in the coal mines controlled by your company on Vancouver island concerning which the department has exchanged telegrams with you, the minister, I am to state, is particularly desirous of having without delay your company's statement on the subject, and would be obliged if the same could be forwarded immediately. Statements received by the minister go to show that work has ceased at Ladysmith as well as Cumberland, the alleged ground being discrimination against membership in the local union, but the department is not fully informed as to this. The situation is one in which it would appear probable that an application would shortly be received for a board of conciliation and investigation, and the minister has thought that your company might desire to take action which will render unnecessary the establishment of such a board. Can you kindly arrange to have a statement expressing the company's view forwarded to the department so that it may he placed before the minister on Monday, the 30th?
Tours very truly,
9 p-m.	(Sgd) F. A. Acland,
Deputy Minister of Labour.
D. B. Hanna, Esq.,
Third Vice-Pres., Canadian Northern Ry., Toronto, Ont.
As I said, the minister asked the railway company to send to him their statement of the case and, as I shall show later on, he also asked the men to send to him their statement of the case. One would think that to a communication of that importance, coming from the Department of Labour over as important a matter as this coal strike, the Canadian Northern railway would have at least, as a matter of courtesy, favoured the minister with a reply; but the conduct of the Canadian Northern, or perhaps I should call them the Canadian Collieries, was such

that it might be said that they treated the minister with what would almost appear like mild contempt. I want to read the correspondence to show you how hard the minister tried to get the information and how fearfully afraid the Canadian Collieries were of the Minister of Labour. I wish to show you, Sir, what a wonderful bond of union must have existed between these two great personages. There is considerable correspondence in a general way between Mr. Acland, the deputy minister, and the mining company. That was in September and the early part of October and then the whole matter dropped. Now you come down to the 19th day of November, that is a month and a half had elapsed and nothing was done, hundreds of men were out of employment and a terrific condition of affairs existed all through one of the great coal mining centres of Canada; and after about five or six weeks the correspondence opened up again and in the letter of the 19th of November, 1912, we find a statement which I think is of more than passing importance. It shows that they did not, for some reason, want to commit to paper what was going on between the minister and his friends. That is the substance of it. But they actually sent the deputy minister to Toronto to talk this matter over privately and verbally with the company and get the company's views without putting them on paper; and so well did the company guard the matter that they have never put their views on paper. I do not know what information the minister may have, but so far as the miners are concerned or the public or Parliament, down to this day we are in absolute ignorance of the position taken by the company. We perhaps know their position and that is that they will not treat with the men, they will not treat with anybody, but the reasons which they give are a closed book in so far as we are concerned.
I shall read first the letter of the 19th of November, 1912:
Dear Mr. Hanna:
When I called on you on me 9th instant regarding the coal mining troubles of your company's mines on Vancouver island you were good enough to promise to secure a statement of circumstances to date and asked your Mr. Thompson to see to it. I had intended calling on you on the following Saturday, the 16th inst., but did not reach Toronto until your offices were closed. Perhaps you will be kind enough to forward for the minister's information the statement you were expecting, if it has in the meantime arrived. Parliament, as you are aware, meets immediately and the minister feels it would be well to have the latest information

from the company's point of view as to this somewhat difficult dispute.
Yours truly,
(Sgd) F. A. Acland,
*	Deputy Minister of Labour.
D. B. Hanna, Esq.,
Third Vice-Pres., Canadian Northern Railway, Toronto, Ont.
This was answered on the 21st of November by Mr. Hanna, as follows:
Toronto, Ont., November 21, 1912.
F. A. Acland, Esq.,
Deputy Minister of Labour,
Ottawa, Ont.
Dear Mr. Acland,-I have your letter of the 19th instant. I understand from Mr. F. C. Annesley, secretary to our president, that he sent to Sir William at Ottawa on the 18th instant some papers concerning the difficulty at the mines on Vancouver island, and no doubt Sir William has since taken the matter up with you.
Will you please advise me if such is not the case.
Yours very truly,
(Sgd) D. B. Hanna.
That is followed by a communication from the department to Mr. Hanna, dated November 23, 1912:
Ottawa, November 23, 1912. Dear Mr. Hanna,-Yours of the 21st. Sir William, as you say, has been in Ottawa for some days, but has not, I think, been in the department and has not left with the minister or elsewhere any papers or information concerning the difficulties at your mines. If you are able to apprise the minister of the latest developments and present situation it would be an advantage. It frequently happens that questions on matters of this kind are asked in. Parliament and the minister particularly desires to have information at hand.
Yours truly,
F. A. Acland,
Deputy Minister of Labour. D. B. Hanna, Esq.,
Third Vice-President,
Canadian Northern Railway Company, Toronto, Ont.
The last document in this remarkable series, dated November 26,	1912, and
headed Mackenzie, Mann and Company, Limited, Toronto, reads as follows:
F. A. Acland,
Deputy Minister of Labour,
Ottawa, Ontario.
Dear Sir,-With regard to your letter to Mr. D. B. Hanna, respecting trouble at the local mines, Sir William Mackenzie is going to Ottawa to-night. Will you therefore kindly communicate with him while there. I may say that we understood that Colonel Davidson had seen either you or the minister with regard to this matter.
Yours very truly,
(Sgd) H. Annesley.
That is all the information which the Canadian Northern Railway Company gave the public regarding this most important
transaction. If they gave the minister anything else he has deliberately concealed it from Parliament. I make that statement advisedly after having read all the returns brought down by the minister and after having listened to practically every word said on this subject, not only in this debate, but in the previous debates in this House. But you have to go back to the telegram sent by Mr. Annesley to Sir William Mackenzie some time prior to that in order to see the true significance of the conduct of the company and the conduct of the minister. I find on page 17 of this report a most remarkable document, and I am afraid it must have been smuggled in without the minister's knowledge, because it is not directed to the department. It was handed in by the Canadian Northern railway people, and I think it ixplains the whole situation. The trouble began about the 17th of September, and this is dated only a few days afterwards. It is as follows:
Canadian Northern Railway Company,
Office of the Third Vice-President,
Toronto, 7 th Oct., 1912.
Coulson wires: Referring to my telegram of the 10th I did not state that two weeks ago our miners were prevented from voting on resumption work by local union president who destroyed ballot boxes and also threatened men. Local union officials realize error in not giving thirty days' notice before striking and also in not having consulted international union and are trying to avert responsibility. International union repudiate action and will not support strike morally or financially. Conditions very quiet, but we expect men very soon to hold indignation meeting and return to work repudiating union entirely. Union appeal to Ottawa their last resort. If unsuccessful union dead and labour trouble ended.
Message endorsed.
Telephone out of order.
(Signed) F. C. Annesley.
Coulson, I understand, was the manager >f one of the company's mines in Nanaimo. There is the crux of the whole matter in one short telegram, a telegram from Sir William Mackenzie's private secretary to himself, pointing out the iniquities of the union leaders, claiming that the strike was brought about by an unlawful vote, that they knew what was going to happen, that they knew there was going to be an indignation meeting before very long, but that the union leaders were not going to stand by the men, that they were going to refuse to furnish funds and the men would have to go back to work; the men would next apply to Ottawa-and now, Sir, you have got to the bottom of the whole thing and if they failed at Ottawa. ' the union is

dead and the labour trouble is ended.' From that day forward there never was any possibility of these people winning at Ottawa. They had to lose at Ottawa, and when they did lose, the Mackenzie and Mann interests were triumphant, the union was dead, and the labour trouble was ended. When you read that telegram, which I am surprised was given us, and take in conjunction with it the mild manner in which the Minister of Labour has treated this question, I think you will have the key to the whole situation. It is only another illustration of the old rhyme:
Tender-handed stroke a nettle,
And it stings you for your pains;
Grasp it like a man of mettle,
And it soft as silk remains.
If the Minister of Labour had grasped this matter like a man of mettle, he would not have the trouble he is having here tonight. It is all very well for the hon. member for Nanaimo to say that conditions had reached such a stage about a year afterwards that they could not be helped. If the minister had not sat idle for about eight months, that condition of affairs would never have existed.
I have read down to the 17th of November, and according to the report given to my leader, not a finger was lifted for five months. The minister allowed the strike to go on and thousands of men to be idle in British Columbia, secure in the fact that he was doing the bidding of Mackenzie and Mann. He simply sat tight and did the bidding of the interests. These people lost at Ottawa, the strike was ended and the union was dead. I am not here to defend labour unions or international unions. I do not know whether I am fortunate or unfortunate, but there is not a member of Parliament of the whole 231 who has as little to do with labour unions and labour matters as I have.' I know there are two or three small railway unions in my constituency, and so far as I know they are all international unions. They get along amicably with their employers. There was a difficulty about a year and a half ago with the checkers. The Minister of Labour refused to do anything. He refused to recognize these men and to give them a board because the Canadian Pacific railway did not want him to, and it was only after the hon. member for Rouville '(Mr. Lemieux) and myself brought the matter up in the House that the Minister of Labour got a move on; and within one week after the matter was ventilated in the House, the minister did not have any trouble in
. 1
arranging a settlement with the Canadian Pacific railway; and the checkers' strike was over, and the men of my town, at least, all went back to work. That is all I have had to do with labour unions, and therefore I cannot be successfully or honestly charged with discussing this matter in order to make-political capital out of it. It matters nothing to me, personally, whether the mines in British Columbia win or lose, but it does matter to me as a Canadian citizen and as a member of Parliament that the Minister of Labour, who was appointed and is paid for the purpose of looking after the interests of labour in Canada, should sit down, fold his arms and do the bidding of the big interests, while the miners and their wives and families starve. He does not care so long as he is able to carry out the instructions of his masters, the corporations. That appeals to me, that is my business,, that is the minister's business, and that is the business of every man in this House.
I said also, that it looked to me on the surface as though there were an unholy alliance between the Canadian Northern Railway Company and the British Columbia Government. I want to come to that for a few moments. I find on page 12 of the report of Mr. Price, the commissioner, that at the very inception of this trouble the labourers did everything they possibly could in order to have this matter settled according to law. In the first place, remember the labourers did not claim that they had struck. I am only giving the version of many people which has been referred to in this House many times. The miners claim that two of their members had been discriminated against because, acting in the performance of their duties as a committee of miners, they had reported the existence of gas in one of these mines. They claimed that one gentleman, Mottishaw, I believe, was removed from work in a particular mine, that he was politely crowded out, and was given no further work to do. He went to another mine, the Cumberland, got work, and, after three days, was politely crowded out of that. Because these men had reported the existence of gas in one of these mines they were simply refused work and discriminated against.
That was the cause of the trouble. 1 have here a very instructive little pamphlet issued by the Rev. John Hedley, pastor of the Haliburton street Methodist church in Nanaimo. I know the minister received a copy of it, because I find in the corres-

pondenoe a letter from this reverend gentleman to the minister, and also an acknowledgment of the minister to himself.
I do not know who Mr. Hedley may be, excepting what I see in this small circular, and what I learned from the report of Mr. Price. I find that he was a gentleman of sufficient importance to be entitled to give evidence before Mr. Price, and a summary of his evidence is given in the report brought down in response to the request of my right hon. friend the leader of the Opposition (Sir Wilfrid. Laurier). I find that this gentleman states that gas had been found in these mines a great many times, and that there had been a fearful loss of life as the result of it. He said that in 1884, in the Wellington, mine, 23 men were killed; in 1887, at Nanaimo, 180 men were killed; in 1888, at Wellington, 50 men were killed; in 1904, at Extension, 17 men were killed, and in 1909, at Extension, 33 men were killed. That is a terrible toll of human life resulting from this one particular cause.
On account of that, legislation was passed by the British Columbia legislature giving the miners the right to appoint committees to investigate this condition of affairs. The miners, acting upon their legislative rights, their individual rights, their civil rights, and their rights almost as British-horn citizens, in order to protect themselves, sent this committee down into the mine to investigate it, and they came back and reported the existence of gas. Because of that report-at least so the miners claimed-these .men were simply fired out of their jobs, they could not get places, they were refused work at their ordinary avocation and practically the only kind of work that they knew anything about. These are the facts as given to us here. Then as a protest against that, and in order to discuss the matteT, they took a holiday. When they came back next morning they found a notice posted up saying: Get your tools out of this mine; you can only come back if you will sign an agreement to work under certain conditions for two years. If they had signed this agreement the union was dead. There is no use in trying to get away from that fact. It seems to be the intention of the mine owners that this union must be killed-1 do not know why. You never can tell me that Mackenzie and Mann, Who have been working with international unions for the last twenty years, who know all about international unionism, who have
members of international labour unions on every railway they own in Canada, and who have members of international unions probably on every street railway they own in Canada, were determined to drive out this union because it happened to be an [DOT]international union. That is all nonsense. The reason must have been that they were determined to drive out this union because they believed the union would be a benefit to the miners and possibly inimical to their financial interests. There is no other possible conclusion to come to, and there is no use in my hon. friend the minister reading, as he did three weeks ago, and as his friend the hon. member for North Perth (Mr. Morphy) did this afternoon, an article written by a member of the international union who afterwards came to British Columbia-I refer to Mr. Farrington-about wanting to organize British Columbia to protect the American miners from competition. There is no use in my hon. friend trying to throw any such herring as that across the trail. These international unions are here >and my hon. friend might as well recognize it. These international unions will be in the coal mines of Canada and he cannot help it. Yet he allies himself with vested interests and financial interests in order to prevent them from coming. But they will continue to come and he will have to accept the situation. There is no use of my hon. friend trying to get away from the fact that his fight is a fight against international unionism. He cannot deny it. He may deny it in words, but he cannot deny it as a matter of fact. He cannot make these international labour unions of Canada believe that that is not the real fight that he is putting up to-day. He cannot make the ordinary man who reads believe that the real fight is not a fight against international unionism.
I have no brief to defend or condemn international unionism. I know that as far as my own limited experience goes-and that is of the railway order-international labour unionism has been an unbounded success. There has not been a labour strike that I know anything about in eastern Canada, excepting possibly the fight with the local union in Nova Scotia when, I think, they should have lost, that the international union have not obtained, if not in every case, at least in many cases, in which their demands were not unreasonable, a material victory, thus benefiting the status and condition of the men whom they represented. I believe to-night that had the minister taken a different course, had

the union been helped to go on with their work, had the minister accepted the union, there would have been a much better condition in British Columbia than there is at the present time.
As I say, at the same time the minister was notified, these men notified the authorities in British Columbia. I do not want to take up time toy reading the whole of the letter which was addressed to Sir Richard McBride. It is to be found at pages 12 and 13 of Mr. Price's report. In this letter, dated September 21, and addressed to Sir Richard McBride, Premier of British Columbia, they state in a very moderate and prudent manner the whole cause of the trouble from their standpoint-I am not saying they are right or wrong; I am only saying from their standpoint:
Now, Sir, the information that we desire from you is this: When men are appointed or elected as a gras committee at any mine in this province, and do their duty under the law what protection does the law afford them? Does it prevent the employer or his agents from discriminating against them nr discharging them m case they make a report not satisfactory 'o the management?
Your obedient servants,
' Kobert Foster,
District President.
. G. Pettigrew,
International Board Member.
* David Ervine,
International Organizer,
per George Pettigrew The record is silent as to whether Sir Richard McBride condescended to give an answer to these people. I do not know-the Minister of Labour has not furnished us with the information, if he has it, and if he has not it, he should have it-I do not know whether a reply was given to this by Sir Richard McBride; but we do know that same sort of a board was organized by the British Columbia Government, and this board spent a great deal of time trying to came to some sort of a conclusion. It was called the Royal Labour Commission, and the miners spent about a week in presenting their case before this commission, in the month of February, 1913, which would be four or five months after the unfortunate strike took place in Nanaimo. Therefore, Sir Richard McBride did something, whether he acknowledged the receipt of this letter or not.
I shall read some extracts from the letter of Mr. Farrington, addressed to the deputy minister under date of May, 1913. You will remember, Mr. Speaker, that after the general strike was called on the 1st of May, the minister got * busy, very busy. There is fMr. Carve.ll.]
no doubt that he then commenced to write letters, and to send telegrams, and he commenced to see the enormity of the condition of affairs which he had created by his negligence and by throwing himself bodily into the hands of the interests. He wrote to a Mr. White, who was president of the United Mine Workers of America in Indianapolis. Mr. White handed the correspondence over to Mr. Farrington, who was in Canada looking after the interests of the strikers. This letter is of so much importance that if it had not been read and placed on ' Hansard ' by my hon. friend from Maisonneuve some weeks ago, I would have been inclined to read it to-night. As it is already in ' Hansard,' hon. members and the public can read it if they wish to. I only want to refer to certain portions of this letter which deal with the action of the British Columbia Government. Mr. Farrington describes what had been done with the Government, to some extent and with the company. Dealing with the British Columbia Government, he says:
Next we spent from February 19 to 26 inclusive before the Royal Labour Commission, which was created by the provincial Government to investigate labour conditions throughout the province, presenting the miners' side of this controversy and exposing the merciless and thievish practices of the Canadian Collieries Company, so well did we succeed that members of the Royal Commission unofficially informed us that they were convinced of the justice of our position, and promised the undersigned that they would use their good offices in order to bring about a satisfactory adjustment of the existing differences, so that you will know that we had no objections to the aforementioned commission using their influence to bring about an adjustment. There were three letters written by myself, and which read as follows:
I shall read the three letters which follow, to show that these miners did everything which reasonable business men could do in order to have this matter settled by the powers that be, and under the legislation existing. They applied to the British Columbia Government and spent a week before this Royal Commission, and then they wrote this letter:
Victoria, B.C., February 27, 1913. Mr. G. H. Parsons,
Chairman, Royal Labour Commission, Victoria, B.C.
My dear Mr. Parsons:
I trust you will pardon me for writing to confirm my declaration made before your honourable commission in Ladysmith yesterday, and I deem the controversy between the Canadian Collieries Company and the United Mine Workers of America to be of sufficient importance to warrant an immediate report and recommendation by your commission to this particular feature of your work.

If the judgment of your commission is in accordance with mine, I take this means of repeating that your good offices will be acceptable to the United Mine Workers of America, and so far as you may be able to use them to bring ^bout a settlement of this controversy.
Thanking you and the commission as a whole, for the courtesy shown the mine workers during the hearings at Cumberland and Ladysmith, I am,
Tours truly,
Frank Farrington.
Not receiving any answer to that, Mr. Farrington wrote again on the 7th of March, 1913, from Fernie, B.C.:
Fernie, B.C., March 7, 1913. The Hon. H. G. Parsons,
Chairman, Royal Labour Commission, Victoria, B.C.
My Dear Mr. Parsons:
Will you kindly advise me in care of P.O. Box 789, Nanaimo, B.C., as to whether your commission has been able to do anything towards bringing about an adjustment of the trouble at Cumberland and Ladysmith, and as to whether you are doing anything in this connection.	,
Yours truly,
Frank Farrington. ^
Not receiving any answer to that, he wrote, on the 20th March, 1913, for the third time, from Vancouver, B.C.:
Victoria, B.C., March 20, 1913. The Hon. H. G. Parsons,
Chairman, Royal Labour Commission, Victoria, B.C.
My Dear Mr. Parsons:
Will you kindly refer to my letters of February 27 and March 7 and advise me as to whether your commission have done or contemplate doing anything in connection with the miners trouble at Cumberland and Ladysmith? I have some plans of my own, which I expect to bring into use, in order to bring about a settlement of this trouble, which I am holding in abeyance, while awaiting the action of your commission. While I have no desire to hurry the commission I am anxious to know whether you have any plans in connection with this trouble, and would like to hear from you not later than Wednesday, March 26.
Please address me c/o Box 798, Nanaimo, B.C., and oblige.
Yours truly,
Frank Farrington.
After waiting considerably over a month, Mr. Parsons, the chairman of the commission, who had privately informed Mr. Farrington that he was in sympathy with him, and would do something to help him out, wrote this most remarkable document:
Golden, B.C., April 3, 1913. F. Farrington, Esq.,
International Board Member, District No. 12, United Mine Workers of America,
Box No. 798,
Nanaimo, B.C Dear Mr. Farrington:
Your letter of the 20th instant has just reached me, and it is with considerable regret
that I have to state that I know nothing which the Royal Labour Commission can do in regard to the matter referred to.
Yours truly,
H. G. Parsons.
Nothing further was done by the British Columbia Government, not a finger was raised to help in the difficulty; the commission which wanted to make a report in favour of the miners,-I say so advisedly, were refused the right to do so. They were not even in a position to answer the letters; and finally this letter was written, which,
I consider, while couched in courteous language, was certainly an insult to every labourer in British Columbia.
Nothing further was done until after the riot had occurred in the month of August, and blood shed. As has been described, some women and children were turned out of their homes and driven over the hills into the woods, and a condition of affairs existed, which happily had not existed in Canada for a great many years before, and I hope never will occur again. After that, this same British Columbia Government, and I say this advisedly too, instead of doing something to try to mitigate the trouble, were the instrument and means of having some. 400 soldiers and extra police sent to Nanaimo. The labour men were practically decoyed into a meeting in their hall and surrounded by soldiers; were first ordered to march out in file, but eventually got sufficient time to transact business, and were then marched out in the middle of the night, and thirty-seven of them were sent to prison like ordinary criminals, and not given the right of British subjects to have bail under certain conditions. We all know that bail is granted to practically every criminal in Canada where the sentence would not -be more than five years. I am only stating this as a general principle, but it is practically correct. These men were treated, not like Br.tish subjects, not even like Russians in their own country; they were treated more like inhabitants of Siberia than like inhabitants of any other country that I know of on the face of the habitable globe, and treated in this way by the British Columbia Government. If we can believe the information which we are receiving from people in that locality, the grossest partisanship has been exercised by this Government in order to wreak their vengeance upon political opponents and to stand by at least their political and business friends, and some go so far as to say that it is in order to stand by their own financial interests.

I have here a most remarkable letter from a gentleman about whom I know nothing whatever. It was written to me in response, I presume, to something which he read in the newspapers regarding the discussion which we had some three. or four weeks ago on this matter. I read this letter in order to show the condition of affairs existing in British Columbia and the manner in which the British Columbia Government tried to settle this strike. I give it for what it is worth. If the man be not responsible, then it does not hurt the hon. minister. If the man be responsible, it is in my judgment the most terrible indictment I have ever heard in this House of the conduct of any government or of any set of government officials. I did not suppose that such a condition of affairs could exist in Canada, and I do not believe that there is another place in Canada where it could exist. The letter is as follows:
Nanaimo, B.C., February 15, 1914. Mr. Carvell, M.P.,
Ottawa, Canada.
Sir,-I see you are taking- some interest in the affairs of this province. We have had a strike in this locality since September 1912 and in this town since May, 1, 1913, and they were caused by the fault of the provincial government in not carrying out the laws that exist on the statute books in regard to gas in mines, and can easily be proved any time by any unbiased investigation. Crothers and the others the Dominion Government sent out here never tried to investigate, only tried to exonerate the companies and blame the miners. The trouble started in Extension mines owned by McKenzie and Mann. A few years ago an explosion took place in this mine and killed thirty-two men and two days before the mine was reported clear of gas by Government inspector. The mines employ a gas committee of their own and pay them and it is lawful to do so.


Mr. SPEAKER:: The hon. member comes within the rule which prohibits bringing into the House communications from outside with reference to members of the House, either to credit or to discredit statements made by them.


Frank Broadstreet Carvell: I did not think of that phase of it, but I will certainly read no portion of the letter again which refers to any member of this House. I shall be very particular about that. (Reading):
The two men employed by the men reported gas in a certain place and were discharged for doing so and were blacklisted as well. They went to see McBride and he told them if they had found gas and not reported it they would have been put in jail and he was asked what protection they had for reporting it and he said he could do nothing. Personally I don't think the strike altogether devolves on the miners. As far as I can learn the property is terribly

over capitalized and rumour hath it McBride an 1 Bowser are in on it. The Government has never tried to bring the contending parties together hut they have spent a large amount of the people's money to help the corporation to defeat the workers and have never given the workers any protection, and today you cannot stand two on the streets without running the risk of being arrested. I have talked to men who have been all over the world and they say it is the worst they ever saw. The people of this district are intelligent and law-abiding in so much as this is the largest mining camp on the Pacific and we had our jail closed for years for want of occupants but the crime is in not sending Conservatives to the local House, and one thing I am surprised at is the forbearance of the people that they havn't rose up in rebellion against the British Columbia Government. If they had done this in England, they would have torn the jails down before now. They seem to try to irritate the people to rebellion to have the chance to shoot them down and if they are determined to use Russian methods they will be met eventually by Russian tactics, the bomb, and all the Government investigations have been royal farces. I have given you a brief outline of the situation. If you want any further knowledge on this Question I will be glad to give it. You may think that I am a miner but I am not. Never worked in a mine. I have been in business here over twenty years and have a rating in Duns and Bradstreets. I will state what treatment I received at the hands of Bowser and his lick spittles around here. I was on Nicol street collecting on the 11th of August about 4 o'clock and there was a little trouble between a family who had been receiving over $100 per month relief from the union and had started to scab. The trouble didn't amount to anything but the authorities magnified it. I was standing a little piece away from the crowd talking to another business man, and a constable put my name down and not the other man as he was a good Conservative and I have a list of 40 Conservative business men who were there and none of them arrested, and not one Conservative has been arrested in the whole district. About a week after I was arrested, searched and thrown into jail, brought up next morning for a hearing and sent up for trial without bail. I could have got fifty thousand dollars bail if necessary. About. thirty of us were chained together and put between double rows of soldiers and marched through the streets to the station and taken to-Victoria jail to wait jury trial. We waited there about two months and then thought too-long to wait for assizes and came up to elect for speedy, trial, chained together again and. marched through Victoria streets and in the train if you wished to use toilet you had to take the other man with you as the police would not loosen handcuffs. Waited some time about three weeks for speedy trial and then saw Government was railroading the men to jail and. through a technicality were allowed to re-elect for jury and chained together again and marched through the streets of both towns again and thrown in jail again, and when any one tried to give us any fruit, tobacco or any food, men and women were brutally assaulted by soldiers and police after being in jail three months. I was let out on my own recognizance of a thousand dollars and not tried yet. They are doing all they can to irritate people to rebellion to get the chance to shoot

people down and justify this roaring farce. It was never necessary to put troops in here, and they want an opportunity to shoot up to justify them. The other day I was standing on the sidewalk that I paid for on my own store, that I paid for and was ordered away by the law and order gentry special police, the scum of Vancouver and Victoria, but any one that votes the Conservative ticket in British Columbia can commit no crime, but if he don't, its a crime to move or a crime to stand still, and the British Columbia Government in my opinion is the most [DOT]corrupt and corporation-owned Government on the American continent to-day.
Yours respectfully,
(Sgd) I. Hodgkinson,
Nanaimo, B.C.
I shall be pleased to send this letter over to my hon. friend the Minister of Labour if he wishes to read it. I am reading from a copy, but I have the original.
After reading a letter of that kind from a white man in Canada, I do not care who he is or what he may be, if any man has any British blood in him, it will boil; if he has any blood in him at all, it will boil at treatment such as that by a government of a citizen. Yet my hon. friend sits back and smiles complacently. He says:	I
have Mackenzie and Mann behind me; I can do as I have a mind to and what can you do about it? My hon. friend will have another tribunal to face, and he will find that he is not yet through with his conduct in the Nanaimo strike.
I have here another short piece of evidence which I wish to read, and this again is from the Rev. John Hedley. I find it on pages 15 and 16 of the pamphlet which he sent out, and I commend it to the earnest consideration of my hon. friend:
The men who were apprehended in such numbers were flung into the Nanaimo jail. Although innocent until proven guilty-many have since been discharged-they were treated as criminals. Given no opportunity for bail except in case of sickness, confined three in a cell 0 x S feet, the only sanitary arrangement a bucket placed in the cell and emptied once a day, dysentery rife, yet no trace of disinfectants ; food meagre and poor; brought to and from the jail to the court house by armed soldiers and special police; manacled by handcuffs when brought to and from Victoria; confined eight or nine weeks before trial, such is the treatment accorded them by British Columbia justice.
Contrast this with the treatment given by the Government to the strike-breakers. They have had full liberty, properly housed and fed and cared for in every way. These are the transients of many nations, while the strikers are citizens of the city and district. Since then the authorities have manifested a mania for making arrests. Men have been arrested on the most doubtful and trivial charges of intimidation and picketing. Many of these charges have not been sustained, yet the victims of this
tyranny must go to jail whether innocent or guilty. The result is a general breakdown of all regard for British law or justice. As far as the miner can see the law and the administration of the law exists solely for the protection and help of the mining companies. All loyalty to the state must vanish when it is recognized that-the state does not stand for justice or fair-play.
I have given you to some extent the attitude of the Mackenzie and Mann interests and of the mine owners generally, and I have given you some little description of the attitude of the British Columbia Government. Now, a word as to the attitude of the Minister of Labour. He sent the miner.? a telegram stating the law-which, as I have said, they knew as well as he. He then folded his hands and did nothing except to write a few letters; he sat down and enjoyed his salary for five long months, until a general strike was called and 3,500 men were out of employment in Vancouver island. Then he .sent further telegrams, and finally appointed his friend, Mr. Price -and I have nothing to say against Mr. Price, he 'may have been as good for this service as any body else-to go out to British Columbia. But he did not send Mr. Price out to settle this dispute; the hon. gentleman himself will not say that he did. He sent him out to investigate conditions and report, under the provisions of the Inquiries Act. Investigate what? Why, there is not a thing in this report that the minister had not in his office before he sent Mr. Price to British Columbia. The minister simply squandered a few thousand dollars in giving his former partner a nice trip at the expense of the country. Also, he delayed the matter for three or four weeks longer and gave himself a chance to go out there and consult with his friends the mine owners, come back and get away to England. It looks like the most unholy temporizing with a serious condition of affairs that I have ever heard of in a civilized country. He knew the strike had taken place; he knew as much a? he knows now concerning whether it was a lock-out or not. He knew that the trouble was between the mine owners and the union. He knew a general strike had taken place on the 1st of May. He had this report of Mr. Farrington some time in June, before Mr. Price was sent out and before even the Order in Council was passed appointing him. For the Order in Council appointing this friend of the minister was not passed until the 23rd of June, and the minister had the Farrington Teport in his hands a

week or ten days before that. He had, I believe, privately and personally, the side of Mackenzie and Mann on this question, because they had been here and he had seen them. He knew everything that Mr. Price could find out; but simply for the purpose of delay he appoints his friend to go there at a splendid salary and find out what he already knew. This done, he tells us he could do nothing more.
Well, Sir, the point has been referred to by my hon. friend from South Cape Breton (Mr. Carroll), and so I shall not take up much time in discussing it; but the minister had it in his power to settle this difficulty in twenty-four hours if he had wanted to do so. I make the statement here that the Minister of Labour could have settled this strike simply by lifting bis hand.	He makes the boast, as
his friends in this House and his newspaper supporters make the boast- and will do it again, at the next election, before every railway audience in Canada-that the Minister of Labour wielded the big stick over the Grand Trunk railway company and made that company take back men whom they claimed they ought not to take back, under the settlement effected between themselves and the late Government. The Grand Trunk railway claimed that they had carried out their contract, but the Government took the contrary view. And when the Grand Trunk railway came to this Parliament for legislation which they really wanted, the Minister of Labour sat back in his seat with the most cynical smile I have ever seen on his face-and that is saying something-in effect saying: You will get no legislation from this Parliament until you settle the strike and put these men back. The Grand Trunk had to put the men back, and they did. The men were reinstated, and the Grand Trunk got their legislation-' you pays your money and you takes your choice.'
Now, let us see what the position was in regard to the Nanaimo strike. The minister's friends, Mackenzie and Mann, said they were bankrupt-I do not believe it, I have no idea that that was the case at all; and I did not believe it then any more than I believe it now. But they wanted sixteen or seventeen millions of our good money to help them over a financial diffl-' culty, and they said to the minister and his friends: We delivered the goods in the last election; we stood by you, and we want you to contribute sixteen or seventeen mil-
lions. Does the Minister of Labour say that he could not have wielded the big stick then? Do you think that Mackenzie and Mann, merely to persist in refusing to recognize a labour union in British Columbia, would have foregone seventeen millions of cold cash when they and the Bank of Commerce wanted it so badly? Why, you have only to state the proposition to show its absurdity. Yet the Minister of Labour tells us: The strike had reached a point where we could do nothing to help the settlement of it. The Minister of Labour's friend, the hon. member for Nanaimo, says: I have honestly come to the conclusion that it cannot be settled. This legislation in favour of Mackenzie and Mann did not go through until some time early in June. The general strike took place on the'1st of May-one month before. The representatives of Mackenzie and Mann were hanging around the corridors for fully a month, fairly begging the minister and his friends for that sixteen or seventeen millions. They said they had to have it, The case was so urgent that, as the minister knows, his supporters had to be fairly whipped with scorpions to get them in here to support that legislation. He had to go so far as to promise an increase in indemnity-which he did not give them. He had to resort to tactics which no minister in a Canadian Parliament has ever resorted to before in order to press a Bill through Parliament. But he tells us that he could not -say to Mackenzie and Mann:	Call off
that strike. Well, I do not believe any man who makes that statement. Now, I challenge the minister, and I hope he will answer and tell us why he could wield the big stick over the Grand Trunk when they only wanted legislation, but could not do it over the Canadian Northern railway when they wanted millions of our money, which, I have no hesitation in saying, they were not justified in asking for. That is practically the whole thing in a nutshell.
I started by making the statement that the suspicions were in favour of the theory that there was an unholy alliance between the minister, Mackenzie and Mann and the British Columbia Government. I have given you nothing but the documents brought down by the minister himself except this letter of Mr. Hodgkinson from British Columbia. I have simply discussed this matter from the record, and have drawn what in my judgment is a reasonable conclusion, the only conclusion that can honestly be drawn from the documents. I hope the minister will do this House the

justice to answer, and not only this House, but the people of this country and the miners of British Columbia especially who have been suffering untold misery, suffering a condition of affairs which, I believe, has not existed before in a British country in the last hundred years. I ask the minister to tell this House and these miners why he did not apply the same methods in the case of Mackenzie and Mann in June, 1913, when they got an enormous amount of our money, which he had applied to the Grand Trunk railway only the year before when they simply wanted legislation. I ask him to tell why he sat idly by for five er six months and did nothing; why he did not attempt to bring on a board. No doubt, he will tell us again: Oh, a judge in Quebec has said, I am afraid there is something wrong with your statute; I am afraid that if you interfere you may get in wrong, be called down and make yourself a laughingstock. But, Sir, I tell you it is no laughing matter to the poor miners and their wives and children in British Columbia. It is no laughing matter to the labouring people all over Canada that the minister has seen fit to do nothing. It is a matter of supreme importance, a matter of so much importance that I think it is the duty of this Parliament, before one dollar of Supply is voted, to see that the minister answers these questions, and absolutely clears up the imputations against the good faith and bona fides of the Department of Labour as administered by him.


Mr. R. F. GREEN (Kootenay):: Mr. Speaker, I have not taken up much of the time of this House since I have been a member of it, nor did I intend to take up any time in connection with this particular affair until I listened to the remarks of the hon. member for Carleton (Mr. Carvell). I did not intend to address the House on this question, because I do not profess to know the merits of the case in dispute. It is true that I live in British Columbia and very close to the scene of this trouble. I have tried to follow the dispute through the press of the country; I have tried to gather the usual fair-minded idea of the merits of the two sides; and yet I am far from having any definite or decided opinion as to the merits of the case.
Since I have occupied a seat on the floor of this House I have tried, in my own weak way, to get an idea of the workings of the minds of some of the members of the House. I have been particularly interested in following the views of the hon. member
for Carleton, N.B. (Mr. Carvell); and I may say that it is hard for me to-night to keep within parliamentary language in telling you what I think of the state of mind that he must be in when he can make the insinuations and the charges, without decent foundation, that he does in this House against the members and the minister. If there is an insinuation against the character of any man in this House or out of the House who is his political opponent, spoken of in the press or talked about on the streets, he delights to come on the floor of this House and to put it forth as if it were a fact. He seems to wallow-yes, that is a good word for it-in insinuations, innuendo and general charges against the characters of othet people and other governments and all those who do not agree with him. He does not seem to even look for reasonable proof of his statements-somebody says no proofs. He does not need proof. All he wants is a report to be passed upon. In my boyhood days I was always taught to keep an eye on the man who did not have a clean mind, and I have tried to govern myself along those lines; and the man who is always ready to accuse his neighbour of some wrong doing, you can take my word for it, has not a clean mind and you had better look out for him.
This gentleman talks about an unholy alliance between the Conservative Government of British Columbia, Messrs. Mackenzie and Mann, and the Minister of Labour of this Government. He brings as proof of that a letter that has only to be read to any intelligent person to stamp it on the face as being the most distorted view that could possibly be given of
10 p.m. any ordinary occurrence. He tells us that the Conservative Government of the province of British Columbia are to blame-for what? For sending the troops to	Nanaimo to
protect the lives and property of good, respectable, responsible people. The troops would never have been .sent to Nanaimo had it not been for the fact that before they were sent there, these miners, led by irresponsibles, carried off their feet by the teachings of these irresponsibles, committed the most dastardly crimes it was possible to commit, burned and destroyed property, turned men and women and children out of their homes, attempted to commit murder by throwing bombs into the houses which men, women and children were occupying. Red riot was running through that country; and yet this man.

seeking to gain a little political advantage for his party, has the hardihood to say from his place in this House that the provincial Government was wrong in protecting the lives and properties of respectable persons. I care not what the situation is as far as the dispute is concerned to-day; but I do know, in all fairness, that there are two sides to every dispute. It may be in this instance that the men were right in the first instance and the company wrong; but the actions that necessitated the calling out of troops were certainly wrong.
The Government of British Columbia have tried to handle the affairs of the province in a just and fair manner to all interests concerned. That they have done so is evident from the fact that every time they have appealed to the country they have come back with a larger majority. The people of that province are well content with the present Government, not only in their past actions, but in their actions in connnection with this particular matter; and I do not believe the Government would hesitate, if necessary, to appeal to the people on that particular question. When the hon. member for Carleton (Mr. Carvell) attempts to prove an unholy alliance between Messrs Mackenzie and Mann, the Conservative Government and the Minister of Labour, he has a very hard job ahead of him.
There is no evidence to show that there was any collusion between these different parties other than the communications they are entitled to have in the ordinary way. The miners have the right to put their case before the Minister of Labour; so has the company, and each party has the same rights :so far as the local Government is concerned. This country is not governed for the labourites, nor is it governed for the capitalists. The Government is, and ought to be, for all classes; all interests should be protected, and I believe that is what both these governments are trying to do.
The hon. gentleman held up his hands and told us that the Minister of Labour could have settled this dispute in 24 hours that when Mackenzie and Mann came here foT $17,000,000 he could have used the big stick and said:	You cannot have this
money until the coal strike is settled. Does not the hon. member know that the Canadian Northern railway and the Dunsmuir Collieries, Limited, are two distinct institutions; does he not know that the latter is a British flotation owned and controlled absolutely in the old country? It is true

that Sir William Mackenzie is identified with that institution, and possibly carries a large amount of its stock, but the control of that company is in the old country. It would be a nice thing for the Minister of Labour to say to the manager of the railway company:	If we are going to assist
your company, you must go out and take another company in which you are personally interested by the throat and insist on their settling some dispute that is going on. The hon. gentleman is not fair. I do not believe that his mind will allow him to be fair. I believe that in the very near future we will all agree that the very best plan has been followed and that there will be no honest criticism of 'either Government for the methods they have pursued. The strike, so far as the people of British Columbia and the people of Canada are concerned, is something we all regret very much; but let us be men enough to discuss the situation in a fair manner and without attempting to gain a party advantage by appealing to either the labour vote or any other vote in this country.


Wilfrid Laurier: In the views which I have the intention of presenting to the House upon this question I will endeavour to follow the advice of my hon. friend who has just taken his seat, and try to present those views in a fair manner without endeavouring to obtain any party advantage in doing so. The proposition which is before the House is that the House should affirm:
That the whole conduct of the Minister of Labour in regard to the claims and rights of the coal miners on the island of Vancouver was marked by persistent negligence and absolute indifference and deserves the censure of this House.
This is certainly a very severe indictment against a minister of the Crown, because the minister is here charged with nothing less than dereliction of the duties that are cast upon him in the office which he has accepted. I have to say, after having looked over the record, that in my judgment the indictment is well founded, and I want to give my views to my hon. friend. I shall endeavour to do so in a temperate manner, so that he can answer, if he chooses to do so, the objections which I have to raise against his conduct.
I do not charge my hon. friend with having failed to prevent a strike, but I charge against him that he took no steps whatever to stay a strike which he knew was impending. It was his duty as minister of the Crown to use every possible means to pre-

vent a strike which he knew for weeks and months was to take place; and the charge which I bring against him is that during all those months he took no effective steps to prevent what he was sure would come unless something was done by him.
It appears from the record that some time in the month of September, my hon. friend heard that there were labour troubles in British Columbia. At once he took a step in which he showed diligence, and if that first step had been followed by similar diligence, he would not find himself in the painful position in which he now is. He addressed this telegram to Peter McNiven on the 7th of September:
My attention has been drawn to newspaper despatches announcing the occurrence of coal miners' strike at Cumberland mines. The Industrial Disputes Investigation Act provides means for possible settlement of all matters in dispute by reference to an impartial board of three members, on which company and workmen concerned may each have a representative of their own selection. Law does not compel acceptance of board's findings but forbids strikes or lockouts pending inquiry under severe penalties. In present case requirements of the Act do not appear to have been satisfied, and I am desirous of learning particulars of dispute by telegram without delay. Department will furnish any further explanation of industrial disputes law which may be required, and is to-day mailing you copies of this law and forms of application thereunder. In the event of proper application being made, everything possible will be done to expedite procedure under Act.
T. W. Crothers,
Minister of Labour.
An answer was received by the minister the following day in these words:
There is no strike declared at Cumberland mines. The company have openly discriminated against men who were taking an active part in union organization. They also refused to meet a committee of men. The men decided to take a holiday, after which the company gave orders for men to take their tools out of the mines.
J. J. McAllister.
The answer which was at once given to the minister upon his very proper offer of service was that there was no strike at the time, but that the company was openly discriminating against the men. If you want to know what was meant by the men in stating that they were being discriminated against, we find it in a letter which followed the telegram I have just read, and which was addressed to the minister by Robert Foster (president), and John McAllister (secretary), on the 3rd of October, but we find it still better in a letter dated September 21, 1912, and addressed to Sir Richard McBride, by a committee of the men composed of Robert Foster (district president), 83
G. Pettigrew (international board member), and David Ervine (international organizer). There you will find in a few lines the statement of the real difference between the men and their employers. They go on to say:	*
Some two or three months ago Oscar Motti-shaw and Isaac Portray were elected as a gas committee to examine the mines of said company at Extension and report on the condition of the same, as required by law. During their examination they found and reported gas in five working places. The management of the mines, upon the posting of this report, called on the Chief Inspector of Mines, Mr. Graham, to come to Extension and make an examination of the places in question. This he did and the report of the gas committee was verified. Soon after this the place where Oscar Mottishaw was working was finished and he was refused another place. New men were employed while he was idle, waiting for an opportunity and asking for work. Not wishing to he the cause of any trouble between the management and the men there he finally left and went to Cumberland where, he secured employment, wonting for a contractor in the mines of the same company. He had only worked there three days when the contractor, Mr. Coe, received instructions to discharge him, from the superintendent, Mr. Henderson. Mr. Coe demurred, saying that Mottishaw was a good workman and he had no reason to discharge him, asking Mr. Henderson what reason he would give Mottishaw. Mr. Henderson insisted that he must discharge him, saying that he could tell him that the could not pay him $3:50 per day, the amount he had agreed to pay him, whilst the other men were being paid that amount for the same work. Mr. Coe complied with the request of Mr. Henderson and discharged Mr. Mottishaw.
There was the case of the men. It was, as they stated, that these two men had been charged by their fellow workmen with the duty of examining the mines and that, upon reporting that there was gas, they were discriminated against.


Thomas Wilson Crothers: I am very sure my
right hon. friend will be glad if I correct him as to that. It was only one of the two men that was dismissed in connection with the examining for gas; the other was not.


Wilfrid Laurier: I do not say whether or not the case is as stated; I say that the men stated tftieir case to be as I have presented it to the House. I do not say that their case is so; I do not know. What I do say is that here is the complaint which they made.


Thomas Wilson Crothers: I think my right hon. friend will find nothing in that statement to show that both men who were on the gas committee were dismissed. As a matter of fact, Portray, who wrote the report, was not dismissed.


Wilfrid Laurier: That has absolutely nothing to do with the case.


Thomas Wilson Crothers: Yes, it has.


Wilfrid Laurier: No; that is where my hon. friend has made his mistake all along. These men made their complaint. The complaint was right or it was wrong, it was true or it was not true; but they made the -complaint that these two men, M-otti-sh-aw and Portray, who had made the report, had been dismissed, or rather, that they had not been given work. These men had been at work -at certain places and when they had finished their jobs they were not given any further work to do. My hon. friend says that Portray was not dismissed, Then, this is my answer to my hon. friend: It was stated to him that these -men had been dismissed, that 'they had not -been fairly dealt with by the company. I know that the company has stated -all -along that these men were not improperly treated. I know it was stated that Portray was not dismissed at all, but that he was not given work. Here was the statement of the -company on the one side, and here was the statement of the men -on the other side. What was the duty of >my hon. friend under su-ch circumstances? He said to-day that he should take the version of the company that these men were not dismissed. I say his duty was not to take the statement of one or the other. The great mistake he made from the start was not to order an investigation right away and see who was right -and who was wrong.
I do not pretend in this m-atter to speak with any feeling at all. I shall put the case -chronologically as it appears to me, and the charge I make -against my hon. friend is, in the words of thi-s motion, that he has -acted with persistent negligence, with -absolute indifference; and the very statement that he makes when he interrupts me now is evidence of what is affirmed in this motion, that he has acted with want of diligence and with indifference. If my -right hon. friend had understood his duty, -as he should h-ave understood it, he would have endeavoured, at the very first moment -when there was -an issue between these men -and their employers, to find out the truth; -and, in pursuance of this obvious duty, to send -an agent to the spot and have an investigation made. If my hon. friend had done that, what would have been the result? His efforts might have been unavailing; but at all events he could have said to-d-ay: I have done the best I could; I have failed, but, at all events, n-o man could do m-ore.

But will my hon. friend tell us that he has done everything that he should have done, that he has exhausted every means possible? After the moment when he became -aware of this issue between the men and the company, his obvious -duty was to see who was telling tlhe truth- the -company or the men. What were the facts? Where was the truth? That was the first duty which was incumbent upon him.
But there was another thing he should have done, it was his obvious duty, and I must express my surprise that he did not do it. When he wrote to the company, as he did, and when he received the answer which I have just mentioned, was it not obvious to him that he should send one of his officers to try and bring these two parties together ? When the minister found himself faced with the position of affairs that existed at the Cumberland mine, it was his duty to send a conciliator to the spot to try and bring the men and the company together. He finally did send Mr. Acland, his deputy minister, to the Cumberland mine and to Nanaimo. When did he send him ? He sent him in September, 1913, twelve months after he first received notice of this trouble. It was only then that he thought he should send Mr. Acland. Why did he not send him sooner ? Instead of waiting for one year to send Mr. Acland in order to endeavour to bring the two-parties together, after there had been bloodshed, after passions had been wrought to the highest pitch, if he had sent him in the month of Septmber, or October, 1912, is there not reason to believe that he would have achieved some results ? I will not be so unfair as to hold my hon. friend responsible because the strike was not prevented, but I cannot hold him guiltless of negligence and indifference to the rights of these men.
I said a moment ago that I did not desire to bring any passion into this debate. I am a party man, I do not conceal that fact, but I prefer to fight this battle rather upon the ground of policy than upon personal grounds. In the long course of my political career I do not think I ever entered personally into an argument against an opponent. In this case it is not because I want to make a point against my hon. friend; but It seems to me that he has a duty to perform since he has accepted the position which he now occupies. His duty is to watch, and to watch closely, every difficulty that may arise between employer and employee, and to endeavour to prevent the trouble from continuing. If

the hon. gentleman had been as diligent as he ought to have been, the result might have been different. But what did he do? He allowed the month of November to pass; he allowed the months of December, January, February, March, April to pass, and all that time he must have been aware there was seething trouble in Nanaimo. And yet he did nothing. I heard the hon. gentleman say this afternoon, in answer to my hon. friend from Sydney, that there was some correspondence with regard to this in the month of October, and that the last cor espondence that took place was in the month of November. Nothing was done by the department, even by way of correspondence, after November.
What did my hon. friend do later on? He waited until June or July, and then, he repaired to British Columbia, and there is not a report even of what he did there. Then he left to take a holiday. I would be the last man to find fault with him for taking a holiday, but does the minister believe he was discharging the duties of his office when he took a holiday at a time when bloodshed was occurring in British Columbia? On the contrary, it seems to me that the minister should have been there all the time, night and day, watching, to prevent, if possible, the unfortunate things which occurred.
He told us he appointed a commissioner. I find no fault with the selection of Mr. Price, as commissioner, but I do find fault that the commission he gave to Mr. Price was not at all with reference to this trouble. Mr. Price was not charged, in the commission which the minister gave him, to make any attempt towards a settlement of the trouble; the commission issued to Mr. Price was simply to make a general inquiry, with a view to amending the law, so as to prevent the recurrence of disputes of this character. The whole commission to Mr. Price was, to make a general survey and a general report, which he has done.
There is the case against the Minister of Labour. He has failed altogether to do anything which was commanded by his position, in order to bring these two parties together and prevent a strike. What could be the influence; what could be the reason which actuated the Minister of Labour? He started very well, but he stopped very short.
Now, I would not say that the Minister of Labour was prevented from acting because the Canadian Northern Railway Company was to be found on the other side 83i
of the case, or because my hon. friend found out in British Columbia that the owners of the mine were the Canadian Northern Company. My hon. friend from Kootenay (Mr. Green) stated that there was no evidence of collusion between the Canadian Northern Company and the Minister of Labour. I do not say there is. The hon. gentleman stated also that the Canadian Northern Company were not the owners of that mine; that Sir William Mackenzie may have had an interest in it, but that the .mine belonged to some parties in England. I do not know how that is, and I care not. I do not think it matters much who are the owners, but I know that the correspondence with regard to this case was carried on, not with Sir William Mackenzie, but with the Canadian Northern Company, and the evidence is that every letter in the record from the owners interested is to be found written upon the paper of the Canadian Northern Railway Company.


Frank Broadstreet Carvell: And headed Mackenzie and Mann.


Wilfrid Laurier: I will not go so far as that.


Frank Broadstreet Carvell: One of the letters certainly is.


Wilfrid Laurier: I will take the case just as I find it. There is so much in the correspondence that something may have escaped my eye which has not escaped the eye of my hon. friend (Mr. Carvell).


Frank Broadstreet Carvell: It is there, all right.


Wilfrid Laurier: It has been pointed out this afternoon that a letter from the Deputy Minister of Labour was addressed to Mr. D. B. Hanna, third vicepresident of the Canadian Northern Railway Company, and that is significant. Here is another letter in the correspondence; it has been read, but in view of the statement made by my hon. friend from Kootenay, I think it will bear reading once more:
Ottawa, September 27, 1912. Re Disturbances in Coal Mines at Ladysmith and Cumberland, B.C.
Dear Sir,-With further reference to the industrial troubles in the coal mines controlled by your company on Vancouver island, concerning which the department has exchanged telegrams with you, the minister, I am to state, is particularly desirous of having, without delay, your company's statement on the subject, and would be obliged if the same could be

forwarded immediately. Statements received by the minister go to show that work has ceased at Ladysmith as well as Cumberland, the alleged ground being discrimination against membership in' the local union, but the department is not fully informed as to this. The situation is one in which it would appear probable that an application would shortly be received for a board of conciliation and investigation, and the minister has thought your company might desire to take action which will render unnecessary the establishment of such a board. Can you kindly arrange to have a statement expressing the company's view forwarded to the department, so that it may be placed before the minister on Monday, the 30th.
Yours very truly,
(Sgd) F. A. Acland, Deputy Minister of Labour.
D. B. Hanna, Esq.,
Third Vice-President,
Canadian Northern Railway,
Toronto, Ont.
That letter as will be seen is addressed to
D.	B. Hanna, Esq., Third Vice-President, Canadian Northern Railway, Toronto, Ont. Again, on the 6th of October, another letter is addressed by Mr. Acland to Mr. Hanna, as follows:
Ottawa, October S, 1912.
Dear Mr. Hanna:
I am enclosing the documents you left with the Minister and myself this morning, relating to the Vancouver island difficulties. I have had copies of the documents made.
Tours very truly,
(Signed) F. A. Acland.
D. B. Hanna, Esq.,
Third Vice-President,
Canadian Northern Railway,
Toronto.
I read these letters in answer to the statement made by my hon. friend from Kootenay (Mr. Green), to the effect that there has been no collusion between the Canadian Northern railway and the minister. I do not say there has been, but I say: whatever may have been the circumstances, whatever may have been behind the scenes, Mr. Hanna was asked again and again to give information as to the nature. of the difficulties between the company and its men, and though a promise was made day after day, yet no information was given; at all events, no information is to be found in the correspondence, as having come from the Canadian Northern Railway Company.
There is another statement here which is very significant. It has been said with reference to this, that the Canadian Northern Railway Company induced the Minister of Labour not to grant an inquiry. I do not say that, but I do say that the Canadian Northern Railway Company made a suggestion of that kind to my hon. friend,

and the statement upon which I found my charge is in a letter which is to be found in the correspondence from Mr. Annesley, secretary of Sir Wm. Mackenzie, and which reads:
Canadian Northern Railway Company, Offices of the Third Vice-President,
Toronto, Ont., October 7, 1912. Translation of message to Sir William Mackenzie:
Coulson Wires:
Replying to my telegram of the 10th, I did not state that two weeks ago our miners were prevented from voting on resumption work by local union president, who destroyed ballot boxes and also threatened men . Local union officials realize error in not giving thirty days' notice before striking and also in not having consulted international union and are trying to avert responsibility. International union repudiate action and will not support strike morally or financially. Conditions very quiet but we expect men very soon to hold indignation meeting and return to work repudiating union entirely. Union appeals to Ottawa their last resort. If unsuccessful union dead and labour trouble ended.
(Sgd) F. B. Annesley.
How did that telegram find its way to the Department of Labour? Somebody must have sent it there, and who could it be but the man to whom the telegram was addressed? There is no covering letter. We cannot find out how it came there, "but the suggestion is there contained and the words are very suggestive:
Union appeals to Ottawa their last resort. If unsuccessful union dead and labour trouble ended.
And there was no investigation and no action taken by the Department of Labour. Unfortunattly the trouble was not ended; it was only commencing. The charge w'hich I have to make against my hon. friend is, that he did not act at all. I do not charge against him that he acted upon the suggestions contained in that telegram. The record is bad enough without making any charge at all. I simply lay the facts before the House and let them speak for themselves. More than this I have not to say against my hon. friend, but I thought that I owed it to him that, before he spoke, I should tell him how that question strikes one who, although an opponent, does not want to have any cause for prejudice against him. It would, however, be hard for my hon. friend to give to the House any justification which would absolve him of the negligence and of the indifference charged to him by the motion now before the House.
Before I take my seat, I want to say a word about the strikers. It was very properly stated that the men had been guilty

of very serious offences. Far would it be from me to defend them from the offences which they committed against the law. The law was violated in a very serious manner; but who is the man who would charge them with it? These men were goaded to madness. They implored in vain; they expected in vain the intervention of the department. Nothing came. When their blood was hot, when reason perhaps was not as strong as it ought to have been, when bad treatment had goaded them into a condition which ought not to have existed, they resorted to violation of the law, which must be condemned. Nothing can justify the excesses which took place; but if nothing can justify these excesses, there are circumstances where there may be excuses for the offences, and I have to say that in my humble judgment the men who are in jail to-day for committing these offences are not half as guilty as those who by supineness goaded them into committing them.


Thomas Wilson Crothers: I shall refer for a moment to my right hon. friend (Sir Wilfrid Laurier) who has just taken his seat. I did not think that he would intentionally misrepresent conditions, but the fact is that he very grossly misrepresented conditions in Vancouver Island. Before pointing out the particulars in which he has misrepresented the facts, I wish to congratulate him upon the progress that he has made in the direction of taking a deep concern in the interest of the workingmen of this country.
My right hon, friend was the head of the Government in the year 1906 when a strike occurred at Buckingham, about twenty miles from this city. The attitude taken by my right hon. friend's Government at that time was that they would take no part in that strike or attempt to settle the dispute between the men and their employers unless requested by both parties to do ,so.


Mr. BOYCE:: There was bloodshed too,
wasn't there?
Mr. CROTHERiS: In order to prove that, I shall read a letter from my hon. friend the Minister of Labour at that time. The men at Buckingham, on the 26th day of September, 1906, wrote to the Minister of Labour of that day asking him to intervene to effect a settlement between them and their employers. This is a letter from the then Minister of Labour, Mr. Rodolphe Lemieux, which shows conclusively the attitude taken by my right hon. friend's Government at that time on the question of intervention:
November 2, 1906-
My Dear Weir:
This letter was written to the Hon. W. A. Weir, Minister of Public Works and Labour, Quebec.
Re Buckingham strike. I have to thank you tor your letter of the 31st ultimo, and for your kind promise to send copies of the several reports made by Mr. Marois. With regard co what you say as to the report of our inspector, I would state that this matter was not investigated by any officer of the Department of Labour. The procedure of the department, in most of the cases with which the department has had to deal has been to intervene only where both sides have been willing to accept the department's friendly offices. In this case the employees concerned asked the department to lend its good offices towards adjusting the difficulties existing. The department at once communicated with the company offering its mediation, but met with such a flat refusal that it was thought no good would come through intervention.
And there was no intervention, and the result was that, although the men requested intervention on the 26th of September, 1906, a riot occurred on the 18th of October in which three men were killed, a large number injured, and the militia went there from Ottawa and remained there for some time in order to protect the interests of the people.
That was in 1906, and I charge my right hon. friend with having neglected his duty at that time when there was a strike within a stone's throw of the seat of Government. When the men asked his Minister of Labour to go down and intervene and try to settle the matter, his Government said: We can do nothing unless both parties ask U3. They refused to go there at all, and the result was that three men were killed and several seriously injured.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: Does my hon. friend not know well that the Industrial Disputes Investigation Act wa? not placed on the statute book until the year after that?


Thomas Wilson Crothers: Of course I know, and I am a little surprised-no, I am not surprised that my hon. friend from Pictou should ask such a question. My hon, friend from South Cape Breton (Mr. Carroll) pointed out a day or two ago that the Conciliation Act was in force from the year 1900, and it was under the 'Conciliation Act that my right hon. friend could have directed an inquiry. The Conciliation Act was passed in 1900, seven years before the Industrial Disputes Investigation Act was passed.

Is my hon. friend from Pictou (Mr. Macdonald) satisfied?


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: I will let my hon. friend (Mr. Crothers) know when he gets through.


Thomas Wilson Crothers: Since my hon. friend (Mr. Macdonald) has seen fit to interrupt, perhaps I might call his attention to something that occurred in Nova Scotia, his own province, when a strike was on there, and when the Government of the right hon. gentleman (Sir Wilfrid Laurier) which the hon. gentleman supported, was in power. On the 7th of July, 1909, the Minister of Labour of that Government received the following telegram from Mr. M. J. Gillies, M.P.P., Glace Bay, N.S.:
Five thousand employees Dominion Coal Company on strike here. Situation looks serious. Important that you get here immediately and try to effect a settlement.
What did my hon. friend from Pictou write to that Minister of Labour? His letter was dated that same day, the 7th of July:
Det me congratulate you upon the fact that you were not troubled with an election and that you have got into the saddle without very much trouble.
I doubt very much whether that congratulation was absolutely sincere.
I have just been talking on the phone with our mutual friend Alex. Johnston, and our joint opinion in regard to the situation in Sydney is that at the present stage it is not wise or prudent for you to come down or take part in the situation. There was a rumour in Sydney that you were to he asked to come down-
And the hon. gentleman proceeds to head him off.
-and I am writing as a result of my interview with Johnston, to say that I think for the present that you should not come down. We will advise you a little later in the matter-
No politics in this, of course.
-and if it can be possible for you to produce any result you can depend upon our judgment in the matter.
But he could not wait for the letter to reach the Minister of Labour, and was afraid he might act in the meantime. So he sent a telegram:
I am wiring you in case any request has been made.
Then, we have the reply from the Minister of Labour, dated the 13th of July, 1909. This letter shows what a change has come over the spirit of their dream during the last few years. The right hon. gentleman thinks there ought to be intervention

at once. But in 1909, he was quite ready to see his Minister of Labour supported by the hon. member for Pictou, take no action whatever. This is his letter to the hon. member for Pictou:
I have received your letter of the 7th instant confirming your wire to the effect that it was Alexander Johnston's wish and yours that I should not take any part in regard to the situation at present.
Of course it was in the interest of the men, in the interest of the country, that something should be done, but this Minister of Labour took this advice from the member for Pictou and Mr. Alexander Johnston and did not send anybody to the scene of the strike.
Though it was not my intention to intervene in any way, I am glad you wired me promptly.
So, though there were five thousand men on strike, and though the Minister of Labour of the late Government received word from a political friend that the matter was looking very serious, he accepted the telegram from the hon. member for Pictou that he and Mr. Alexander Johnston thought it better that he should not go to the scene of the strike.


Mr. W. H. BENNETT:: Is the hon. member for Pictou the representative of Glace bay?


Thomas Wilson Crothers: No, Mr. Johnston represented that district, if I remember well. Nowj I would like to ask the hon. member for Pictou, who is present on this occasion, whether there is any truth in the statement that in those days he desired the striking miners of Nova Scotia to be imprisoned. I would like him to answer that question.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: Mr. Speaker, when
this hon. gentleman gets through answering the resolution presented by my hon. friend from Maisonneuve-


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Oh, oh.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: -and answers it like a man on its merits, without accusing other people in regard to other matters, I will discuss this question with him.


Thomas Wilson Crothers: The hon. gentleman
refuses to say whether there was or was not any truth in the statement that he desired the striking miners in those days to be arrested. I am not prepared to prove further than this, that he insisted upon the Government prosecuting these men for having gone on strike. Here is a letter from him dated the 14th of August, 1909:

The strike situation in Nova Scotia has been summarized in this way, that in Inverness, the strike practically does not exist. There are some men who are not working, but these men are not necessary to the adequate operation of the mines. In the Dominion Coal Company's works, from which I have just returned, the company are rapidly increasing their output and the men are only being kept out on strike, at least a great portion of them, by the usual stories which the resources of the United Mine Workers people supply to them, of the fact that the company are going to settle and various reasons are given for this from week to week. I do not doubt at all that the company will be successful there, and there may be a break very shortly. I think that the men will eventually realize that the company will not on any terms settle their compromise. The Springhill situation is one I am not advised about and is really very serious. The situation at Inverness and the action of the United Mine Workers is a direct and absolute defiance of the provisions of the Conciliation Act, and I think it would be a great mistake if the department itself-not the company or any outside party or person-[DOT] did not proceed against the United Mine Workers people who came out on strike in disregard of that Act. I notice by the press that inquiries are being made by the department with reference to the circumstances, and I am quite sure that you will find the facts to be that the strike is one which is in contravention to the Act. And can assure you of my fullest support in so doing if you should arrange to have these proceedings initiated. It seems to me that the effect of the department proceeding against this infraction of their own law would be a very good move in Nova Scotia.
This is the man who last week showed so much concern for the striking miners out in Vancouver, so far away; but when they got near to where he lives he insisted on the Government prosecuting them and sending them to prison for striking. He did not quit with one letter. I shall read several letters to show that he insisted, time and time again, on the Government sending to prison these men who had gone on strike in Nova Scotia, and still he gets up before us now and manifests great concern for the miners away out in Vancouver island.
At the present time public opinion is strongly against the strikers and against every one who is connected with them, and there is no question about their desire to have the matter speedily dealt with by a strong hand. In the event of your taking any proceedings, I would suggest that the matter be put in the hands of some recognized lawyer of ability-


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Oh, oh.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: Does my hon. friend mean any insinuation by that?
Mr. CROTHERS. (Reading):
Some recognized lawyer of ability.
My hon. friend would have filled that
bill, because he is a recognized lawyer of ability.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: That insinuation is worthy of the hon. gentleman.


Thomas Wilson Crothers: I thought that was a compliment rather than an insinuation. The letter goes on:
-such as Mr. Roseoe, of iientville, who has been acting for the Militia Department.
So that we had the militia down there looking after the interests of the public; and yet my hon. friend would not allow the Minister of Labour to go to Glace Bay because his supporters, Messrs. Macdonald and Johnson, did not want him there just then for political purposes.
In the event of your taking any proceedings I would suggest that the matter be put in the hands of some reognized lawyer of ability, such as Mr. Roseoe, of Kentville, who has been acting for the Militia Department and making some investigations in that matter. I should be very glad to hear from you in regard to this matter.
(Sgd.) E. M. Macdonald.
An answer was sent to that letter by the Minister of Labour. It was dated the 17th of August, 1909. It is from the Hon. Mr. King. It is a very lengthy letter and I shall read only portions of it.
With regard to the administration of the criminal laws generally it is, as you know-*
Fancy my predecessor instructing my hon. friend from Pictou in the law.
-it is, as you know, administered by the provinces. No department of the Dominion Government and no officer of the Dominion acts as a special agent for the Government in giving effect to its criminal legislation. Under the circumstances, it would seem that there should be very special reasons for a departure
11 p.m. in the case of the Industrial Disputes Investigation Act and one of these reasons, it would appear to me, should be that the regular course of procedure having been tried has been found insufficient or ineffective. Where a province, a municipality

I hope my hon. friends will listen to this, because here is an enunciation of the attitude they took with reference to the enforcing of the laws passed by their own Parliament, and I may have occasion to refer to this when my right hon, friend comes to refer to some other Act. Here are the general principles laid down by the Government, led at that time by the right hon. leader of the Opposition.

where a province, a municipality, a company, an individual or a set of individuals, any one of which may be adversely affected, is not prepared to lay the information against any individual or set of individuals who are acting in

a manner prejudicial to their interests when the law as it stands affords them this measure of redress, it is difficult to see just why the federal Government, which is the least remotely affected of all-
The Government not affected at all by the strike of five thousand people; not affected at all when the militia are called out in Nova Scotia to protect life and property; and my right hon. friend's Government, through his Minister of Labour, announces that the Government has nothing to do with anything of that kind; it is for the individual.
Where a province, a municipality, a company, individual or set of individuals, any one of which may be adversely affected is not prepared to lay the information against any individual or set of individuals who are acting in a manner prejudicial to their interests, when the law as it stands affords them this measure of redress, it is difficult to see just why the federal Government, which is the least remotely affected of all, should be expected to take the initiative in entering a prosecution.
That is what the hon. member for Pictou wanted them to do.
When the means of redress are so ready at hand. The most obvious inference to be drawn where no information is laid, is either that interests are not being seriouslv affected, in which case it would be a mistake for the Government to attempt prosecution; or that in the circumstances known to the parties the law has not been violated, in which case, of course, a prosecution would be of no avail.
Still my hon. friend from Pictou was not satisfied with that and he sent another letter; he knew more about it than the Minister of Labour at that time. This is the letter sent in answer to that on August 20:
Hon. W. L. M. King,
Minister of Labour,
Ottawa, Ont.
Dear Mr. King:
X have your favour of the 17 th and note its contents. I am very much obliged to you for the frank way in which you have written me in regard to the matter. I do not agree with you altogether, that the main motive of the men who struck at Inverness was not openly to defy the Act. The idea has been generally circulated by the Opposition people

You see the Conservatives were in opposition then, they are on this side now.
The idea has been generally circulated by the Opposition people that the Act was of no force or value and whether they desire to openly defy the Act, or not, they were certainly very regardless of it. The United Mine Workers is still maintaining an attitude of hostility.
These are the men he is weeping over now in Vancouver island.
The United Mine Workers is still maintaining nn attitude of hostility to the company, and the
[Mr. Crothers.j
men who compose the organizations are still out. Mr. Moss, one of the district officers, is still in Inverness conducting the strike. It does seem to me that on the whole, it would be in the best interests of the order and of the public if the Government should take steps, so that the mining men should understand that the United Mine Workers' men should understand that this Act is a serious proposition and is not one that is to be openly disregarded. I do not think you need at all fear as to any injuries resulting in the subsequent working out of the Act and I am quite satisfied this would be the proper course to take from a matter of standpoint.
They have here ' a matter of standpoint.' I do not know what that means.
I am going to Sydney on Saturday and will write you after my return from there.
Yours faithfully,
E. M. Macdonald.
But he was not satisfied with that. He was very persistent in his desire to have the striking miners sent to jail. Here is a letter dated August 25, to Hon. W. L. Mackenzie King, Minister of Labour, Ottawa.
Dear Mr. King,
With reference to the matter of action in regard to the situation in Inverness, I have made careful inquiry with reference to the facts and find them to be as follows: At a meeting of the United Mine Workers at Inverness at which the two organizers were present when the question came up, as to whether there should be a strike or not, the organizers told them that they would not recommend them to strike, that it was a matter entirely for the local union, but if they did strike they would stand behind them, and give them financial assistance. I have inquired into this matter carefully and that is the information that Mr. McGillivray the manager gives me. What is more, they have carried out their promise by giving assistance as Joseph B. Moss, one of their council is on the ground superintending the giving out of relief. I do not know any better evidence that there could be of section 60 of the Act than this, for the representatives of the United Mine Workers to encourage emp Oyees to go or continue on strike, than by saying ' If you do strike, we will pay yqu.'
Section 60 prohibits the aiding or encouraging of an illegal strike. It has been held in Nova Scotia that giving support to miners on strike by a union is illegal, and comes within section 60, so that my hon. friend from Pictou in writing that letter said in substance to Mr. King. Under section 60 those United Mine Workers' officials are doling out flour, meat, pork, and butter to the striking miners. That is a violation of section 60. Do your duty as Minister of Labour and imprison these men for violating the Act. And yet he is so much concerned about the welfare of the poor struggling miners on Vancouver island. He goes on:

Under the circumstances I really think that the department should vindicate this law by taking some action. The general feeling in Nova Scotia among all classes outside of the coterie of Conservative politicians,-
He could not leave them out.
-who are backing the United Mine Workers is that some legislation should be enacted in the approaching session of Parliament which would prevent the possibility of American strikers coming into Canada and engaging in strikes such as they have done in Nova Scotia this year.
His proposition is that if the law is not strong enough to prevent officials coming into this country from the United States it ought to be amended, and yet he comes here and talks about the poor miners. He goes on:
I think that the logic and basis of such legislation is unanswerable. The feeling among our people is very strong on the subject. I can arrange to give you any information you desire-	-
My hon. friend from Pictou not only wrote the Minister of Labour that he ought to prosecute these people but he said: ' I will be a detective for you and give you information.'
-further, with reference to the matter, and trust that you may see your way clear to take some action.
1 think that is about the fourth time he wrote the Minister of Labour urging him to take such action.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: Will my hon. friend be good enough to send me over those documents.
Mr. CROTHERlS: I will send you copies.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: I assumed my hon. friend was reading from copies, if not I would not have asked him.


Thomas Wilson Crothers: I am reading from the original.


Wilfrid Laurier: Put them on the table, then.


Thomas Wilson Crothers: 'My hon. friend from Nanaimo read this afternoon a portion of an article written by Frank Farrington, vice-president of the United Mine Workers. Hon. members will remember that portion of the article that was read this afternoon by my hon. friend from Perth, pointing out the superior quality of the coal of Vancouver island, and north of Vancouver island as far as Prince Rupert, and pointing out that these mines were being tapped preparatory to supplying coal for Atlantic ports as well as for ports on the Pacific after the
opening of the Panama canal, and pointing out that it would be impossible for the [DOT]mine owners and miners ot the United States to compete with the mine owners of Vancouver island because of the superior quality of our coal. This article was sent to the United Mine Workers of the United States by Farrington because, as he says in the beginning of it, the people of Canada understood the situation but the United Mine Workers in the United States did not; so he proceeds to enlighten them. There has been some doubt cast upon this article by some hon. gentlemen this afternoon. It appeared in the United Mine Workers' Journal published in Indianapolis and dated the 27th of March, 1913. Let me read a paragraph or two that have not been Tead in order that you may see the exact situation.


William F. Carroll: May I ask the minister if that is signed by Mr. Farrington as a contribution to the Gazette?


Thomas Wilson Crothers: It is in the United Mine Workers' Journal under this caption: 'The situation in Vancouver Island, by Frank Farrington, in the United Mine Workers' Journal, March 27,	1913.' I
would ask hon. gentlemen to remember that he is addressing the United Mine Workers of the United States, and I want to satisfy you that the steps that he was taking were directed in the interest of the mine owners and mine workers of the United States and not in the interest of the mine owners or mine workers of Canada.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: May I ask my hon. friend if this argument that he is now making is in justification of the fact that he did not interfere and did nothing?


Thomas Wilson Crothers: I have confidence in the intelligence of my fellow-members to whom I am addressing this argument, and I am sure that they will judge it properly. In this statement he says:
So that it is not beyond reasonable conjecture to expect that within a comparatively short time we will find this coal bidding- for markets on the Atlantic seaboard as well as on the Pacific coast. This feature in itself would not be so bad if there could be an interchange of competition but that cannot be, for the reason that the mu:h superior quality of this coal will always bar outside competition from its own zone.
The duty devolving upon the United Mine Workers of America-
Mark you, upon the United Mine Workers of America.
-because of this condition,-

Because coal produced on Vancouver island will take the place of coal produced in Washington .state and other parts of the United States when the Panama canal opens, and because of this condition we must organize.
The duty devolving upon the United Mine Workers of America because of this condition, is to organize Vancouver island and adjacent territory, raise the standard of employment and act as a balancing medium in the establishment cf equitable competitive mining rates.
Not because the people of Vancouver island are suffering, not because the mine workers of Vancouver island are getting low wages, or are being ground down, but because of this condition to which I have just alluded. Mr. Frank Farrington would balance things up. Mr. Frank Farrington would tell the mine owners on Vancouver island how many hours in a day or how many days a week they shall keep their mines open. He says that the United Mine Workers of America will 'act as a balancing medium in the establishment of equitable competitive mining rates.' Then he proceeds:
This will be a herculean task, but it must be done, or we must suffer from inevitable competition, and the job-
J-o-b.
-can be easier done now than after the task gets bigger.	.
Snuff them out now before they get stronger and bigger! We should do it now in the interest of the mine owners and workers of the United States !
Recognizing the seriousness of this condition and being desirous of protecting the interests of our membership, as well as being anxious to extend assistance to the men employed on Vancouver island-	[DOT]
This is the first time we have heard of Vancouver island.
-the international executive board decided to expand the power and protection of the organization to the island. In keeping with this decision a district convention was held in Nanaimo during the month of November, 1911, and a district organization was formed.
Keep in mind all the time: 'Because of this condition we must organize Vancouver island.' They called a meeting in November, 1911, organized, and the strike followed ten months afterwards.
As hon. gentlemen opposite have referred to the letter that this man Farrington wrote to me, while I am not prepared to admit that every statement in it is true,
I am prepared to accept it as against
[Mr. Crothers.l
himself. Here is what he says, as shown on page 681 of 'Hansard.'


Thomas Simpson Sproule: It is not permissible to refer to a previous debate.


Thomas Wilson Crothers: I am reading from this letter. I will read it from the original if it is any better. He says:
I have just been favoured with a copy of the official report filed with your department by Royal Commissioner Samuel Price, who, I understand, was appointed in accordance with an Act of the Dominion Parliament to investigate the coal-miners' strike now existent on Vancouver island. Because of my having charge of this strike from its inception, I think I can discuss the report with a reasonable degree of assurance-


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Order.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: I will have to ask the
hon. gentleman to desist, or read something else, because the privilege cannot be refused to another if it is allowed now in violation of the rule.


Thomas Wilson Crothers: I am not reading part of a speech; I am reading a letter written by this man Farrington. He says that he had charge of the strike from the inception. He comes over here in November, organizes the union, has charge of the strike from its inception; and he says further in that same letter, and I want to especially call the attention of hon. members to the statement, that at the time of the strike the coal mines in Vancouver island were as safe as human hands could make them. These are the words that he uses in that letter prior to the strike. While we have hon. gentlemen opposite trying to lead this House to believe that there was something wrong, that there was gas or something in the mine, we have their leader stating that prior to the strike the mines of Vancouver island were as safe as human hands could make them.
There is this further. It will be remembered by those who have read Mr. Price's report that it sets forth two or three extracts from a report made by the commission in 1903, composed of Justice Hunter and the Rev. Mr. Rowe, my predecessor, Mr. King, being secretary. I believe that Mr. King wrote the report. But this man Farrington, in this letter, because Mr. Price quoted two or three paragraphs from that report, proceeds to say that the report of the commission of 1903 was

virulent in tone, unwarranted by the facts and injurious to the miners of that time.

That is the way he criticises the report of 1903, made by Chief Justice Hunter and Rev. Mr. Rowe, Mr. Mackenzie King being the secretary of the commission and writing that Teport, as I believe.
Now, Sir, I have given you some evidence which will enable you to appreciate and to understand what occurred after that. Everything that occurred on Vancouver island, I submit, must be read in the light of that communication, and interpreted by that communication. What do we find? We find in September, 1912, a report in the newspapers that some 1,500 men had gone on strike at Cumberland. My right hon. friend the leader of the Opposition will persist in the statement that men who were on the gas committee were dismissed.


Wilfrid Laurier: I did not say that at all.


Thomas Wilson Crothers: You said that the men said so.	*


Wilfrid Laurier: Exactly.


Thomas Wilson Crothers: That is not so. I do not say for one moment, and I would not for my right hand accuse my right hon. friend of making a misstatement intentionally; I do not believe he would do so, but he is under the impression that the men said these two men were dismissed. There is nothing in the correspondence to show that; there is nothing in the letter read by my right hon. friend to show it.


Wilfrid Laurier: Read it.


Thomas Wilson Crothers: I have read it. What they said was that Mottishaw and Portrey were members of the committee, and they go on to show that Mottishaw was dismissed. But Portrey never was dismissed, and they do not say he was. I challenge my right hon. friend to find anywhere where the men themselves say that Portrey was dismissed. The right hon. gentleman will find them saying that they were discriminated against, but without naming anybody.
It is scarcely worth while going through all the facts again. What is the complaint? No one has come down to any particulars as to a complaint. Is there a single hon. member opposite, who has spoken on this matter, who has suggested that I should have done anything that I did not do? We have had some very remarkable statements during this debate, and I feel very much like taking my colleagues in this House into my confidence, to the extent of making the confession that there are some
men utterly incapable of a generous thought, of an honest impulse, or of an unselfish motive. Moral degenerates themselves, their vision discerns in others nothing but depravity.
The fact is that in Vancouver island, as in Nova Scotia, the issue between the companies and the men was recognition of the United Mine Workers. My right hon. friend became very warm this afternoon in advocating the case of the poor strikers out on Vancouver island, but what was the position taken by his Government, when they were in power? He will find it expressed by my predecessor, the Hon. Mr. King, in ' Hansard ' of February 24, 1911. My hon. friend from Westminster (Mr. Taylor) was discussing the Nova Scotia mine troubles, and he said:
At Springhill, as I understand it, the matter at issue was the recognition of a union, and the question raised by the hon. member for Halifax was whether or not this department has made any endeavour to secure recognition of the union by the proprietors of the mine where the trouble occurred, or whether the department took the opposite view and stood behind the mine owners in declining to treat with the men; on that basis I think we ought to hear from the minister with regard to that point.
My hon. friend from Carleton (Mr. Car-vell) to-night lashed himself into paroxysms of eloquence because this Government did not insist upon the company recognizing the United Mine Workers of America. Did not you all hear him? He repeated it over and over again, and he will perhaps dream about it to-night. Mr. Taylor, the member for New Westminster, put to the Government of that day, in 1911, through their Minister of Labour, the question, whether they had done anything to induce the company to recognize the union. And what was the answer of Mr. Mackenzie King, the Minister of Labour:
Mr. King: I have no hesitation in saying that the recognition or non-recognition of a union is something to be entirely left to the parties themselves. The department would not be justified in asking employers to recognize the union.
And yet my hon. friend from Carleton says that I ought to have brought pressure to bear upon the company to recognize this union and get the matter settled. The Government of Sir Wilfrid Laurier, through its Minister of Labour, declared that the department would not be justified in asking the employers to recognize the union, any more than in asking the employees to take any particular stand against the employers who failed to recognize the union. Mr. King said:	That is a matter to be left to the

parties themselves. Mr. King utterly refused to do anything, where the issue is the recognition of the union. But my right hon. friend (Sir Wilfrid Laurier) has reformed since then, and he thinks the Government ought to compel the mine-owners to recognize the union.
I know very well that the great majority of trade unions in this country are international in character, affiliated with like organizations in the United States, and to that I make no objection, speaking generally, and I never did. This organization, the United Mine Workers, is one of that kind. The hon. member for Pictou (Mr. Macdonald) will be interested to know what happened in Nova Scotia, with reference to this particular organization. There were three boards appointed there, under the Industrial Disputes Act: one presided over by Judge Chipman; another presided over by Judge Wallace, another presided over by Judge Longley. I want to read short extracts from the judgments of these gentlemen, as to the United Mine Workers of America:
The most important question before the board was that of recognition of the United Mine Workers by the company. Here there is no question of agreements, it is purely a matter of policy. The United Mine Workers claim the right to approach the management by a committee, as is done by the Provincial Workers Association. The company refuse to recognize that right. The principle reason, however, why the company refuses to recognize the United Mine Workers is that they are practically a foreign organization having dangerous and menacing powers under their constitution.
My hon. friend from Pictou (Mr. Macdonald) approved of that judgment; my hon. friend from Cape Breton South (Mr. Carroll) backed up the judgment of this board, as well as the judgment of the other boards, to which I will refer later.
It is true that the United Mine Workers is international in membership, but the principal executive officers and the great bulk of the members reside in the United States. The company points out that this has a very serious bearing on the coal trade of Nova Scotia, inasmuch as the American operators are making serious inroads in the Canadian markets.
It appears in the evidence of Mr. Duggan that since 1906, sales to the St. Lawrence markets of American bituminous coal have increased 531,000 tons. As the St. Lawrence trade forms the chief market of the Dominion Coal Company, anything that tends to interfere with it would naturally affect the interests both of the coal company and the miners they employ. The board considers this objection of the coal company a very grave one, because with one foreign organization controlling the miners, labour difficulties in the United States would almost certainly lead to complication in Nova Scotia. If through labour troubles in the United States a market

opened up there for Nova Scotia coal at profitable rates, pressure would undoubtedly be brought to bear on the miners in Nova Scotia to prevent exports of our coal to the United States. It is true that the United Mine Workers is recognized in western Canada-
It means in the Crowsnest.
-but there the conditions are different because while Nova Scotia mines are finding it increasingly difficult to hold their own against the United States coal in the St. Lawrence trade, the Canadian mines of the west not only hold their own market, but in many cases can aford to export to the United States notwithstanding the duty. Another and most serious objection to recognizing, the United Mine Workers arises in connection with certain clauses in their constitution. One clause of that constitution states that local unions shall be composed of miners, mine labourers and other workmen, skilled and unskilled, working in and about the mines, except mine managers, top boss, and persons engaged in the sale of intoxicating liquors. Under this rule every man except the superintendent and manager of the mine is eligible for membership in the union. This the board considers to be a dangerous and unusual rule and not in accordance with the custom in Great Britain and other mining centres. It is also in conflict with a rule of the Dominion Coal Company, a special reference to which is made in an earlier paragraph of this report. But the most objectionable clause in the constitution is as follows :
* The international officials shall at any time they deem it to the best interests of mine workers in a district that is idle, for just and sufficient reasons order a suspension in any other district or districts that would not in any way impede the settlement of the districts affected, provided that such action would conserve to the best interest of the United Mine Workers of America.' This rule makes it quite possible for the executive of the Mine Workers, whose head office is in Indianapolis, Indiana, to proclaim a strike in Nova Scotia if they considered it to be in the interest of the United Mine Workers as a whole. Inasmuch as all the dominating interests of the United Mine Workers are centered in the United States, it seems clear that the policy of the organization would be governed by the interests of the mines there. Consequently it is not unreasonable to anticipate that on some future occasion, although labour conditions in Nova Scotia might be satisfactory, it would be to the interest of the United Mine Workers as a whole to proclaim a strike in Nova Scotia. That is a power which in our opinion no foreign body should be able to exercise over our industrial interests in Nova Scotia.
The Chairman of this board was Judge Wallace, one of the ablest men in the province, appointed by the Liberals. (Reading):
The board considers that the coal company is amply justified in refusing to recognize any organization that could exercise such a dangerous and continually menacing power.
Yet my hon. friend from Carleton, N.B. (Mr. Carvell) says that we ought to have taken up the big stick and compelled the

mine owners in Vancouver island to recognize this union. (Reading):
Foreign officials sitting in Indianapolis should not have the power to decree that Nova Scotia miners, even when without a grievance, must stop working, and thereby cripple a great Nova Scotia industry.
That is the opinion of Judge Wallace. The [DOT]other two judges in the other two cases, Judge Longley and Judge Chipman, both held that this question of the recognition of a union was not a matter that could be properly considered under the Industrial Disputes Act.
While all this trouble was going on in Nova Scotia, while the right hon. the leader [DOT]of the Opposition was Prime Minister of Canada, his Minister of Labour sent his deputy to Nova Scotia to do what ? To intervene to try to make a settlement between the company and the men ? No; he was positively instructed not to intervene; he was instructed to go and look around and report conditions. My predecessor was afraid of taking a stand against either the workers or the owners. He wanted to ride two horses at the same time. I have in my hand a report made by the deputy minister at that time, and you will find on page 24 this language:
The officials were disposed to negotiate with the company if any opportunity had been found-	'	t	i
That is, the officials of the men. They actually were ready to negotiate.
-and insisted that if they could only get together there was no doubt of their being able to reach an agreement.
What does Mr. Acland say under instructions from the Government of tihe day led by the right hon. the present leader of the Opposition? He says:
I was asked to ascertain whether the companies would see a committee composed only of former employees-
Not including any representatives from the United States and not to be considered as a representative from the United Mine Workers.
I was compelled to reply that my instructions would not permit of my intervening even to this extent, and did not approach the company on the point.
My hon. friend says that the first thing I should have done was to intervene. Yet he as head of the Government of that day sent an officer to Nova Scotia instructing him not to intervene. The officer's instructions were so positive that he says he had
not a right to ask whether the company would receive a committee of their own men or not. Yet hon. members opposite and the right hon. leader of the Opposition find fault with us for doing what we did.
What had we to deal with on Vancouver island? We had the issue created by Mr. Frank Farrington, the man who was there at the inception of the strike, the man who engineered the strike, saying that the difficulty could not be settled except through the officials of the United Mine Workers of America. My hon. friend from Carleton said that Mr. Price did not see Mr. Farrington.


Frank Broadstreet Carvell: I never said so.


Thomas Wilson Crothers: Well, I will take it back; but some hon. members said so this evening. Mr. Farrington saw Mr. Price in Vancouver before he went over to Vancouver island. Mr. Farrington was seen and interviewed by Mr. Price in my presence, so that we got his attitude from the beginning. His attitude was that the strike in Vancouver island could not be settled except through the officials of the United Mine Workers of America. He went to Vancouver island, to Victoria; we saw the representative owners of these mines, and they said: We will never recognize the United Mine Workers of America if these mines be closed for forty years. I believed them. There was the issue. My right hon. friend, when was in power, said: We will have nothing to do when the issue is recognition of the union. Yet 'he lashed himself into warmth to-night because I did not hurry out to fix up a settlement when the issue was the very same one which he refused to deal with in any manner whatever, although he had the Conciliation Act to work upon before the Industrial Disputes Act was passed.
We sent word at once when we heard there was a strike. The deputy minister went to Toronto to see the representative of the Canadian collieries to find out what their attitude was. We saw those men in Ottawa. My hon. friend from Carleton seems to think that it is a great offence to see Sir William Mackenzie about a matter of this kind. I am proud to say that I had the opportunity of talking face to face with Sir William Mackenzie and his vice-president, Mr. Hanna, with reference to this very matter, and I found out from them directly what their attitude was.


Frank Broadstreet Carvell: Why did you not give us that information?	[DOT]


Thomas Wilson Crothers: I am giving it to you now. It was verbal. I saw these men in this city, and the deputy minister went to Toronto to see Mr. Hanna. I speak subject to correction-and got his viewpoint. Their position was:	We will
not recognize the United Mine Workers of America. And they have stood to that. And if what my right hon. friend and his Government said when they were in power is correct, you can do nothing when that is the issue. Yet the right hon. gentleman waxes eloquent, he almost takes me under his wing and attempts to coddle and to pity me, for not doing that which he refused during his term of office to do.
Well, they proceeded to work the mines at Cumberland and Extension, and in a short time they had an output of about sixty per cent of the normal. It has been represented here this evening, and was said a week ago, that men were brought to Vancouver island from England by means of misrepresentation. Of course, I was not in England and do not know what was said to these men. But I do know that I instituted an inquiry in the city of Vancouver through the immigration agent there. Mr. Malcolm Reid, on this question. Five of these men stated under oath that no deception had been practised on them, that they were told that there had been labour troubles at Cumberland, that some of the men who had been on strike were returning to work, that other men wern coming from other places and that the output had reached sixty per cent of the normal; And knowing the facts without deceit or misrepresentation, they came to Vancouver island, and remained there because they had found things better than had beeD represented to them in England. It is only fair to say that a number of these men, when they reached Winnipeg, were taken in charge by representatives of labour there and persuaded not to go on to Vancouver island. Two bunches of them came out, one in advance of the other. The second bunch were induced not to go to Vancouver island. They were taken charge of by the labour people. And it is said that when some thirty-seven or thiTty-eight of these men were under the protection of the labour people who were housing and feeding them, they did sign a paper declaring that misrepresentations had been made to them in England to induce them to come to this country. I do not know whether that is so or not, but as I have said, five of them under oath before
Mr. Reid stated that there had been no misrepresentation whatever.
My right hon. friend says over and over again that I must have known that the strike would spread. How should I have known that the strike would spread? I had every reason to believe that it would not spread. Why? Because all the other miners in Vancouver island were working under agreements, one of which had two years and four months yet to run, one had five months, and one had seven months. These agreements covered all the other miners except those who went out on strike in September. They are set forth in this report of Mr. Price's. I have no doubt that my hon. friend from Carleton and my right hon. friend the leader of the Opposition have read these agreements. Yet the leader of the Opposition says that I ought-to have known that all these men would go out on strike about the first of May. I had every reason to believe that the men would live up to their agreements. And I am proud to say that the great majority of the miners of Vancouver island desired to live up to their agreements. Take the leading company outside of Cumberland, the Western Fuel Company, doing business in Nanaimo and employing fifteen hundred men. Of that total number only 240 belonged to this union. But this minority, by the use of the word 'scab' and 'blackleg,' and by a circular sent out as a result of the activity of this man Farrington, chased the other 1,260 out of the mine. I showed to the House the other day the-dodger that was circulated. They would not allow the men to take a vote. Here it is: ' General strike.' I saw a copy of this when I was in Nanaimo-a long, narrow dodger, as red as blood. And those who did not want to strike had called a meeting for that evening to discuss the situation. Notwithstanding that call, this is what this strike dodger said:
General Strike. After having- consulted the managers of the different collieries around Nanaimo, the parties signing themselves as a joint committee have decided to call a meeting at the Princess Theatre at 7 p.m.
While not opposed to meetings of the miners, we beg to inform all employees in or around the mines that a strike has been declared by the United Mine Workers of District No. 28, and endorsed by the National, and will continue until such time as the operators of this district enter into an agreement with the United Mine Works of America. Ballot or no ballot any one going to work in these mines will be branded a scab.
So the declaration was: 'We have called a strike'-that is, Frank Farrington called

a strike in pursuance of his conspiracy as set forth by himself in his articles. It meant: We must get possession of the mines of Vancouver island, we must get control of this valuable property, ' ballot or no ballot.' This dodger was issued under instructions from Frank Farrington, as may be seen. From the 16th of September, 1912, until the 1st of May, 1913, I had no reason to suppose, as the leader of the Opposition would attempt to lead members of this House to think, that a general strike was being arranged for. I am surprised that my right hon. friend should make a statement of that kind. I had every reason to believe that the men who had entered into these three separate agreements would carry out their agreements. I had every reason to believe, and to know, that the strike at Cumberland was not effective, and that the output was growing day by day. And what is the condition of Cumberland to-day ? There are more men there than they can find work for, output larger than ever. At the Western Fuel Company, the output is 700 tons a day-nothing like it was before the strike, but it is growing. The strike is over in Vancouver island.
No one deplores the conditions in Vancouver island more than I do. I regret very much that so many reasonable, decent and intelligent men in Nanaimo and other places were whipped into submission by this foreigner from Seattle-and I have no objection in stating that fact. By the judicious -though that is hardly the word-use of the word ' scab,' 240 men drove 1,260 out, and so all this suffering has followed. I am told-and I believe it came out in the evidence the other day on the trial of Angelo-that this Angelo who led the riot in Ladysmith, was a paid agent from Indianapolis, that he went about the town pointing out the houses that were to be burned, and twelve of them were burned, as he directed. Dynamite was thrown into a man's house and his arm blown off. And yet we have gentlemen on the other side of the House championing the contention that the militia should not have been sent in there to maintain law and order. I say I deplore the fact that so many innocent men and so many innocent women and children have suffered by this conspiracy of Frank Farrington's in the interest of the workers of the United States and the owners of the United States and not in the interests of the men in Canada. I say that has been brought about by Frank Farrington in the interest of foreign conditions. It has been a failure. A great many people
have suffered. The provincial Government took charge of this matter. It was not up to us, as my predecessor said in the letter I read here a few minutes ago; it is up to the province to administer the criminal law. They undertook to maintain law and order in Vancouver island. These men are being tried under the protection of judges who were Liberals before they were appointed to the bench, men who were appointed to the bench of British Columbia by hon. gentlemen opposite; and yet they come forward and say that these men will not get justice from the public officials whom they appointed. I have no such idea of the judges in British Columbia. I have the highest regard for the judges in this country, whether former Liberals or Conservatives. I am proud to know that in this country a man who is appointed a judge rises to the occasion.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: Why do you talk about their being appointed by the Liberals if you are so high and lofty about it?


Thomas Wilson Crothers: It removes any objections that you may have as to the manner in which they are treating the men who are being tried by them. They are under the protection, at all events, of these judges. Every judge in Vancouver island who has had anything to do with this matter was appointed by the Liberal Government and was a Liberal before he was appointed, and I have no doubt whatever that he is meting out justice. I quite agree with the hon. member for Nanaimo (Mr. Shepherd). I have talked to the Minister of Justice about this thing. I am in favour of liberating these men where there is no evidence of an intentional desire to commit such offences as I have referred to. I quite understand that in the excitement, a number being gathered together in a crowd, men might do things without thinking of their consequences. But for the leaders, the men who went down hours before the burning began and pointed out the houses which were to be burned and those which were not to be burned, I have no sympathy. I think that they should be made to know that when they set their feet on Canadian soil they set their feet in a country where law and order will be maintained at any cost.
I do not propose to take up much more time. There have been a great many base and discreditable assertions and insinuations made by some gentlemen who have addressed the House, and I think the hon. gentleman from South Cape Breton (Mr. COMMONS
Carroll) is the biggest sinner in that regard. I think he is the man who said that Japanese and Chinese and thugs and aliens had been brought into this country to take the places of the white men who had ceased work in the mines.


William F. Carroll: I say so still.


Thomas Wilson Crothers: There is no evidence whatever.


William F. Carroll: Read your report.


Thomas Wilson Crothers: My report does not
say anything of the kind. My
12 p.m. report says there were a number of them working in the mines. That is not wAat the hon. member for Cape Breton said: he said the Japanese and Chinese and thugs and aliens had been imported into the country to take their places.


William F. Carroll: Correct.


Thomas Wilson Crothers: And that is not true. There are Japanese and Chinese working in the mines at Cumberland. I have been told that they have been working in those mines for twenty-five years. They have to get certificates before they can go into a mine to work, just as a white man has. They got their certificates, they went into the mines and they earned their money, I hope.
A great deal has been said about the Foster letter, and I want to refer to it. Foster did write a letter, and I got that letter. Of course, I know that the hon. member for Carleton will not give anybody credit for anything honest or straightforward. That letter was written to me from Nanaimo on the 30th day of September. Nanaimo is sixty miles from Cumberland. I had not the faintest idea when I got the letter from Foster that he had anything, to do with the strike at Cumberland, and he simply says in that letter that the company -I did not know what company, he meant, I supposed some company in Nanaimo-was dismissing men and would not give any reason why, and he asked me whetner there was any means by which they could compel the companies to say why they were discharging men. That is the simple fact.
I did not know he was connected with the Cumberland mines. I got his letter; it went on my personal file; I wrote back that I would look into the matteT, and write him again; and, to tell the truth, I never thought about writing him again. That is the simple fact of the matter. My deputy was dealing with the matter, deal-

ing with both sides. I consulted him. We sent them forms that very day. The very day we got word I sent a telegram that we were sending forms in another letter. We did send forms in another letter, and they never came back. We sent them to Farrington, who wrote back saying he never got them. It is very strange that these things should occur. I think I have a fairly	capable and accurate gentleman in the	office, Mr. Gerald Brown, a particular friend of my right hon. friend. Mr. Brown wrote the letter enclosing the forms. I submit that I did everything reasonable-I did a great deal more than my right hon. friend ever did under similar circlumstances-to bring about peace. I recognize that where the question at issue is the recognition or nonrecognition of a union you cannot do so much, and that was the position taken Dy my opponents. The great majority of the labour leaders whom I have been privileged to meet during the past two years, are men moderate and reasonable, devoted to the best interests of the men they represent, and at the same time having a keen regard to the welfare of the general public; and our immunity from labour troubles in this country during the past two or three years is materially due to the influence of these labour leaders. I appreciate it very much. The great majority, I say; but I am sorry that I cannot include amongst these men the member for Maisonneuve (Mr. Verville), who is here, and I am very glad to see him. He poses in this House as the only representative of labour. Well, I represent a large number of labour people in the west riding of the county of Elgin, perhaps not so many as he does in Maisonneuve. I am just as proud of the labouring people of St. Thomas, whom I represent here, as he possibly can be of the two or three times as many that he represents in Maisonneuve. He poses as the only representative of labour in this House, and the Liberal press describe him as an independent labour man, which description falsifies his real political character and record. Now, Mr. Speaker, I think the time has come when the mask should be removed, and this man should be revealed to the people of Canada, workingmen and others, in his true light, as a well- defined specimen of that wing of the Liberal party known as the dyed-in-the-wool Grit; and in this respect he rivals my hon. friend from Carleton, N.B., the member for Kings, P.E.I., and the member for Pictou, N.S.

This is the sixth session I have sat in this House, and I have yet to learn of a single occasion when my hon. friend from Maisonneuve voted with the Conservative party. I have noticed that he is just as sensitive to a wink or a nod from the leader of the Opposition as the most pronounced partisan sitting behind his leader. I saw him yesterday having a long interview with my right hon. friend, getting this thing ready. He takes his instructions from my right hon-. friend. The member for Maisonneuve was sitting in this House at the time of the Buckingham disturbance when Sir Wilfrid Laurier refused through his Minister of Labour to intervene. When the House was going into Supply the labour representative in this Parliament, the hon. member for Maisonneuve, did not make any motion. He had a seat in this House when the strikes were on in Nova Scotia, when the Government through its Minister of Labour refused to intervene. He had a seat in this House when the hon. member for Pictou wired insisting that these mine workers should be sent to prison. Yet my hon. friend never suggested that a motion should be made in amendment of going into Supply. My hon. friend from Maisonneuve has never accomplished anything in this House for the working people of this country. I challenge him to show that he has ever accomplished anything in the interests of the working people in the eight years he has sat in this House; and why? Because he has more interest in Alphonse Verville and the Grit party than he has in the labouring people of this country. I had an interview with my hon. friend from Maisonneuve about a year ago. I asked him to come to my room that we might talk over some matters that might be of interest to the working pepople of this country. We had a pleasant interview for half an hour or more. I said to the hon. member: 'If anything occurs to you that can be done to advance the interests of the working people of this country, come to me and I will render you every assistance in my power.' But from that day to this he has never spoken to me about these matters.


Alphonse Verville: The only interview I
ever had with the Minister of Labour was about the eight-hour Bill, and on that occasion the minister never mentioned anything about my coming to see him if I wanted anything for the labouring people of Canada.


Thomas Wilson Crothers: Mr Speaker, I have
made one statement; my hon. friend has made another; you can take your choice. My hon. friend from Maisonneuve does not want to benefit the working people of this country. What he wants are grievances. Without them my hon. friend would lose his occupation. He would have to take his coat off and earn an honest living.


Mr. MICHAEL CLARK:: I rise to a point of order, and it is that when the hon. minister suggests that an hon-. member of this House would be earning an honest living if he left the House, there is a suggestion that he is not earning an honest living in this House. I submit, with all due deference, that that is language that should not be used in this House.	.


Thomas Wilson Crothers: I did not intend to use the word ' honest.' I am only too glad to take it back.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Oh, oh.


Thomas Wilson Crothers: I have never understood that it is a dishonourable thing to take back anything you should not have said. What I meant to say was that he would have to take his coat off and go to work. My hon. friend was speaking on this subject in the House about a week ago and he became almost offensive. He made statements that I think are not borne out by the facts. He stated that a resolution was brought before the Trades and Labour Congress asking for my resignation. I am told by gentlemen who attended that congress that it was not concurred in by the committee, and that the motion was simply suggested by a gentleman from Toronto, a photo-engraver. This gentleman wanted my resignation because, while I was acting on behalf of the Minister of the Interior during his absence in England, I refused to recommend the passage of an Order in Council prohibiting all photoengravers from entering Canada from any source whatever. I refused to do that, and that is the top -and bottom of the origin of that resolution. The committee kicked it out, and my hon. friend from Maisonneuve knew that they kicked it out. And yet he had the unfairness to try to lead the members of this House to believe that the Trades and Labour Congress of Montreal had asked for my resignation. With equal colossal assurance he endeavoured to show that I should be dismissed from office and a practical man put in my place. He endeavoured to lead this House to believe that the Right Hon. John Burns, a practical man, was at the head of the Labour Department in



England. The Eight Hen. John Bums has been a member of the British Government eight years, but he never was at the head of the Labour Department in England, and I am sorry that his great representative here did not know that; or, if he knew it, he was attempting to mislead the members of this House. The Right Hon. John Burns has been president of the Local Government Board for some time, but that is not the board that deals with labour questions in England; it is the President of the Board of Trade who deals with labour matters, and since the Eight Hon. John Burns entered .the British Government eight years ago the presidency of the Board of Trade has been occupied by Lord Salisbury, Mr. Lloyd George, Mr. Winston Churchill and Mr. Buxton, every one of them lawyers, I think.
What has been going on in England since this practical man, the Eight Hon. John Burns, for whom I have a great deal of respect, and whom I do not blame at all, has had to deal with strikes? Has he been able to settle strikes in England? There have been more serious strikes in England since he was taken into the Government than ever before. In 1912, there were no less than 40,000,000 days lost through strikes in England; that is roughly one day for every man, woman and child in the United Kingdom. Great Britain has had her great dock strikes, her mining strikes and her Dublin strikes. Every one knows, who has followed labour matters in England, that during the last eight years, while this practical man was a member uf the British Government, there had been more labour unrest in England than there had ever been before. I am not blaming Mr. Burns for it.	.
The hon. gentleman was no nearer the facts when he spoke about the Minister of Labour in the United States, Mr. Wilson. What are the facts with reference to the United States to-day? In Northern Colorado there are 3,500 miners who have been on strike for three years and in Southern Colorado there are 14,000 miners on strike. Yet my friend, Mr. Wilson, a practical labour man and a good man, has not been able to settle the strike in Colorado or in West Virginia, or in Calumet. He has not been anything like as successful in settling strikes as we have been here I think I have satisfied every reasonable man in this House that I have done everything possible to effect a settlement in this case, if I did not follow the example of the right hon. leader of the Opposition when he
1 Mr. Crothers.l
refused to settle this dispute twenty miles from Ottawa resulting in three deaths. I do not pretend to have followed the track of the leader of the Opposition when he was Prime Minister in refusing to intervene in Nova Scotia and when he said: ' Let them fight it out,' when he sent, through his Minister of Labour, his deputy to Nova Scotia, and gave him such strict instructions not to intervene lest he might lose a vote either from the workers or the owners, such strict instructions not to take any part as between the two sides to the dispute, that he was not able, he said himself, to ask them to meet a committee of one who did not belong to the United Mine Workers at all.
There is one other thing that I ought to mention. The hon. member for South Cape Breton' mentioned this matter, 'and, knowing the facts, 1 thought he ought to have been ashamed of himself to make any reference to it whatever. He sp ike abcut me not attending a meeting that had been called at Glace Bay. That is perfectly true, but what was the reason? We got stuck on the road and lost nearly half a day. I received a telegram from Ottawa telling me that the longshoremen at St. John, N.B., were threatening to strike and asking me to go to St. John as quickly as possible to try and avert the strike. Owing to the loss of time, owing to the fact that I was stuck in the mud, and owing to the further fact that I was obliged to return to St. John, a more important matter, I was not able to carry out the programme I had provided. Therefore, I went to St. John. There has been no strike. I do not say that my going to St. John was the reason of it, but it was my duty to go there in preference to going to Glace Bay. It1 was a very serious matter; there were eight or ten ships in the harbour of St. John waiting to load and the information came that they were threatening a strike. I did not go to Glace Bay simply because I was not able to carry out the programme for the reason which I have given. In the ordinary course I would have gone there in the interest of the whole country and not in the interest of any particular part of the country.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: Mr. Speaker, I am compelled to make a few remarks at this late hour, but before proceeding I would like to ask you to request my hon. friend the Minister of Labour (Mr. Crothers) at once to place upon the table of the House the letters from which he read

in the course of his address in reference to myself.


Thomas Simpson Sproule: The rule is that when a minister of the Crown quotes from any official documents he is obliged to lay them on the table of the House.


Thomas Wilson Crothers: Very well, Mr. Speaker, I shall do so right away.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: The minister might as well do it at once.


Thomas Wilson Crothers: Yes.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: I am sure that the House and the friends of the hon. minister who has just sat down must have been somewhat surprised at the dignified, clear, and argumentative manner in which he made his defence to-night. It was worthy of a minister of the Crown in every respect,-[DOT]


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Hear, hear.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: And I am quite sure that the men who sit behind him, while they are applauding, are not very proud of the minister, when they consider the ridiculous position which he took in defending the actions of his department. Although on the stump and in the back woods, my hen. friend promised holus bolus to look after everybody who lost money in the Farmers' Bank, and things of that kind, once he gets into Parliament, while he fails to fulfil his pledges, he does not add by his methods any dignity to his position or in his dealings with public affairs. What does my hon. friend put forward as a reason why he neglected to attend to the ordinary business of his department in connection with this strike on Vancouver island? He says that there was a Buckingham strike in 1906, that- we did nothing, and that, therefore, he says: I did nothing. Splendid logic, is it not? Great statesmanship worthy of the Administration to which he belongs! That is the kind of argument in which he indulges, but the hon. gentleman, who did not follow the facts in regard to the matter, forgot there was not at that time on the statute book of this country the Industrial Disputes Investigation Act, by which the Minister of Labour could deal with ,a question such as this.


Thomas Wilson Crothers: There was the Conciliation Act.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: 
Thomas Wilson Crothers: You are misstating the facts now.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: If the hon. gentleman has the pluck, let him stand up now and say that he did not take any steps with regard to this labour situation in Vancouver, because he was opposed to the United Mine Workers. I challenge him now to say whether that is his position, and I shall take my seat while he answers.


Some hon. MEMBERS:: Speak.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: The hon. gentleman will not answer, but that is really the position he has taken to-night. He has abused everybody connected with international labour unions. He has denounced the United Mine Workers and declared there was nothing in the allegation made by the committee with regard to gas in the mine. He has read decisions from judges elsewhere, which declared that the United Mine Workers should not be recognized, and then when he comes to the crucial point he has not the pluck to stand up and say that that was the reason he did not interfere in Vancouver. And yet, that is his whole defence to-night. He told us there was no gas in the mine-


An hon. MEMBER:: There is plenty over there.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: Not half so much as there is on the other side of the House. Let me read this statement from a man who was right on the ground and who will, I think, be accepted as being cognizant of the facts. The Rev. John Hedley, M.A., B.D., in an address before the Brotherhood of Haliburton Street Methodist church, said:
The Government have their inspector of mines, the companies have their fire-hosses, the men have their gas committee, elected by them and paid	These two_ men,_in June,
reported gas in dangerous cpiantity. This report was corroborated by the mining inspector. (See inspector's report.) One of these men shortly afterwards was dismissed by the company, and on going to Cumberland got work only to find later he was blacklisted. In the opinion of the miners he was discriminated against because of this report. The union protested through -a committee but the manager refused to see them. On the following day, September 16, the men took a holiday partially in protest, chiefly to collectively consider the matter. As the men were working on their different shifts of eight hours each this was only possible by taking a holiday. During the day a committee went to see the general. He replied 'that he did not know any of them and would not meet them.'
There, from the statement of a gentleman occupying a position in one of the Protestant churches of this country, we have the story of tne inception of this difficulty, from which it appears that it was sought to punish the men whose business it was to report gas in the mine, because they had so reported, and it appears from all the evidence that gas did exist there in dangerous quantities for some time before. This naturally interfered with the management to a very great degree. It threw upon them very great additional respons bility, which they did not care to assume. The summary method of disposing of the question was to dismiss the man who had found the gas. This they proceeded to do and to prevent him from being employed elsewhere. When the men resented this matter, they were told by the management that they did not know any of them and would not meet them. Yet my hon. friend, with those jaunting tours of his to the West in private cars and those tours of his across the ocean, while all these difficulties were occurring in the iYest, tells us that th s gentleman who gave this lecture right at the seat of the trouble did not know what he was talking about, when he declared and proved that the gas was the cause of the difficulty.
What else did my hon. friend say? tie said: ' Have I done anything I should not have done?' The great trouble with my hon. friend has been that he has not done anything at all. We are not finding fault with him for what he has done. He has left undone the things he ought to have done. His night and morning prayer with regard to this question should be that he may be forgiven for leaving undone the things he ought to have done. ' What have I done that I should not have done? ' he says. ' Nothing', we answer. Nobody during the last year has expected him to do anything -in his position. I saw_ in a British Columbia paper this reference to my hon. friend. Only to-day they are saying this in Tory, B.C.:
If the federal Government is wise in its day and generation, Minister of Labour Crothers will be retired to his village home.
We are not finding fault with the Minister of Labour for the things he has done. It is because of his desire to be called the Minister of Play instead of Labour, of h,s desire to jaunt across the country and across the ocean while serious d.fficuLies exist among the labouring classes in this country, that we are finding fault with the hon. minister, and certainly not for what he has done.	_
My hon. friend, in that illogical method in which he deals with his position, with that declination on his part to take any position, proceeds to tell us about this frightful, gentleman, Mr. Farrington, who had designs upon the coal mines of British Columbia. When he found that out, why he took to the woods. He did not go out and fight Mr. Farrington at all. He did not take any steps to bring this flight to a conclusion by intervening as he might have done, by asking for a conference of the men and of the management when he was out there himself, as he ought to have done, or by sending his deputy minister out there to deal with the question in that way. My hon. friend, if he knew Mr. Farrington was this menace, as he wants -this House to believe, should not have soughf quiesence; he should have been most active and aggressive in the interests of the people of Canada and the people of British Columbia, but he did nothing until to-night when he abuses. Mr. Farrington at long range as an excuse for not taking any action. He complains: How could I have known that they would go out on strike in May? Why does the right hon. gentleman who leads the Opposition say that I should have known that they would go
132*2

out on strike in May? Any real live Minister of Labour would have known, as a matter of course. If he knew that labour troubles existed on Vancouver island, as he was bound to know, and if he had means of information that any responsible minister would have at his command, he was bound to know that the condition was such that this trouble would naturally occur, and that a wider strike would take place in May. My hon. friend, who is paid to ascertain and know, complains when we say to him that he ought to have known.
My hon. friend tells us that the judges appointed by Liberals had given decisions in the West, sentencing these men who had taken part in riots. That is just about the size of the hon. Minister of Labour in his estimation of the men who held judicial positions in this country. With all deference to the gentlemen who sit around my hon. friend, I do not think there is one of his colleagues who believes that a man, who has passed through the strife and storm of political life, whether here or in any other political arena, who ascends to a judicial position, carries into that position any desire either to favour or to antagonize the people with whom he has been associated in his political days. Yet my hon. friend the Minister of Labour tells us that the judges appointed by the Liberals were the men who sentenced the strikers in British Columbia, and that argument shows the size of the man.
Then he tells us that my hon. friend from South Cape Breton (Mr. Carroll) was entirely wrong in regard to his statement about Orientals. Let us see about that. Mr. Price tells us something about Ori-enta's, and I think that my hon. friend from South Cape Breton is as accurate upon this question as I have always found him to be. This is what Mr. Price says in justification of my hon. friend:
It is true, however, that the number of Orientals employed underground in the mines of the Canadian collieries has increased very materially since last September, not only relatively, but absolutely, the total number of Orientals employed in May. 1913, being 432 out of a total [DOT]of 690, as against 315 out of a total of 766 in 1912, and probably among surface men the increase has been proportionately greater.
Then what does 'this clergyman say in regard to this question of disposition of Canadian labour in these mines, as the result of the action, or rather the failure to act, of the hon. Minister of Labour:
Later the Orientals who had stood loyaUy by their fellow-workmen, stated and generally believed, were intimidated to return to work. 
Since then the mines of Cumberland have been employing Chinese, Japanese, negroes and a few white miners.
So my hon. friend from South Cape Breton stated what was accurate. I am sorry that my hon. friend the Minister of Labour is not waiting to hear me out. This gentleman who I am told in Ontario is known as ' last speech Crothers,' does not seem to-night to like to have the second last speech. As he is a gentleman, who has explained to the world that he is not a Minister of Labour but a minister of play, and whose sole defence *to-night, when he was charged with maladministration is: What in the world have I done, when I have not done anything? I suppose he might as well be outside as inside when 'his department is being criticised.
What is the real issue in regard to the matter in the West? My hon. friend says that the strike in Vancouver island is ended. Here we have some statements to the contrary. The Western Call-my hon. friends from British Columbia will recognize it it is the last paper we have from them has this t-o say on the coal situation:
ine coal strike situation in British Columbia is quite unbearable. This is becoming, more and more, the opinion of right thinking men all over the province.	Especially do the
Inends of the Administration feel that some solution must be reached and that the situation ought to be at once firmly taken in hand by the Minister of Mines. The attitude of the Western Call has been sympathetic to the men and whilst deploring violence, which necessitated military and legal action, has persistently pointed out that no serious attempt has yet been made to bring matters to a head.
In fact, just what, we are saying here to-night in this resolution. (Reading):
In fact the public justly complain that they have been kept in the dark as to the real causes of the rupture between operators and men, and are growing steadily more impatient as they read of men for years-good steady citizens-being sent to the penitentiary for two years. Men who in no real sense can be called criminals. Men who have families to sustain, and whose past characters have been good.
But there is another reason why British Columbians are growing restive. The strike i3 seriously disturbing trade at a time when the province can ill afford it. Sixteen months of enforced idleness in one of the main industries of our province has helped to cause a stagnation in business that almost everybody feels, and the worst of it is that <iay by day our coal trade, one of our greatest sources of revenue, is being lastingly enfeebled by our coal users, unable to get coal at any reasonable figure, transmuting their furnaces into oil burners.
Coal is now being brought into the province from Australia-
.MARCH 3, 1914
That would worry my hon. friend from St. Antoine, Montreal; he never wanted to buy anything out in Australia.
-and advertised at $8.50 per ton. Household coal is $8 per ton, and we are only 30 miles from pithead, with a water haul from the bunkers. Coal can be put into the bunkers for $1.25 per ton at present wages. In Indiana and Illinois 10 cents a ton is reckoned a fair net profit for operators. This makes $1.35 per ton at bunkers. Between that and $8 or $8.50 there is surely a huge sufficiency to supply our coal scuttle without adding with it the sorrow and disgrace of a nearly two years' lockout of three or four thousand of our sturdiest workers. As a matter of fact $ 1 should give the operators a very splendid profit.
Something must be done. The public are demanding it now, and their voice will grow louder as the days go by.
That is from a paper which is a Conservative paper in British Columbia at this moment. And the Minister of Labour says that the strike is settled in Vancouver island. Certainly, a curious position of afiairs! Whait have I done? says the minister; I have done nothing. But what has he left undone? Why, he has not even pretended to do anything. What should he have done? His first duty was to find out the facts and place the responsibility for this trouble where it belongs. Did the hon. minister attempt to do that? Nobody wno reads Mr. Price's report will say that this was done. Mr. Price does not.even pretend to make findings on the question. After a long dissertation he winds up with the recommendation that there should be certain amendments to the Industrial Disputes Investigation Act, and that is ail. What is the attitude of the men about investigation? In the British Columbia Legislature last week, Mr. Place, a labour representative, insisted, and public opinion fully concurred with him, says a newspaper, that it was the plain duty of the Minister of Mines to investigate the circumstances which led up to the trouble and to place the responsibility where it belonged. That is exactly what the miners asked and exactly what this Government was afraid to do. That is what the labour representative in British Columbia says,-that the duty of this minister was to investigate the question so that there- should be no doubt as to what were the primary causes of this labour difficulty and as to who was responsible. But the minister never attempted to do anything of the kind. When the business oi British Columbia is being paralyzed, and when for a year and a half destitution and proverty have reigned in what was a prosperous mining district, the minister has not yet
even tried to do that what was his first duty under the circumstances. The men say tin t that is all they want of the Government, and they are prepared to make their case. But the minister says:	Oh, I
did nothing because you did nothing at Buckingham and in Cape Breton. He was queried last winter, I think by myself, as to whether he was going to introduce amendments to the Industrial Disputes Act, and answered that he was not going to do so. If the statutory powers were not wide enough to enable him to deal with this question in such a way that the parties would be bound to come together after the facts were properly investigated and the responsibility for this strike had been placed upon the proper shoulders by a competent tribunal, why did not he come last session and take more extended powers? The hon. member for Vancouver (Mr. Stevens) told us two weeks ago that the Minister was going to introduce amendments to the Act, but up to date he has not introduced anything, and we have no information as to what he intends. If the situation and the men in British Columbia are a menace to Canada, as the minister would have us believe, why has he not taken power so that he might avert from Canada the danger that threatens? It is this inertia that the Opposition in this House criticises, this inability to do anything, this carelessness as to whether anything is done or not so long as he remains Minister of Labour.
The hon. member for Nanaimo, after saying that he did not see that anything could be done,, he made a plea for the second time to the Minister of Justice to exercise clemency to the miners confined in the penitentiary, as I understand, for offences committed at the time of the difficulty. Whatever these men may have done, undoubtedly their offences against the law were committed in a moment of excitement and passion. I do think the hon. member for Nanaimo has strong ground of complaint against this Government at the retention in prison of these miners who, in a moment of irritation and excitement, may have committed offences against the law, in view of the fact that the Minister of Justice opened the doors to Landry, the forger, in Nova Scotia, and in view of the fact that Currie, the perjurer, after he had exhausted every means known to the law to escape from his confinement by judicial action, within a month the Minister of Justice opened the door and told him to be gone. Of all the offences

that are rank and smell to heaven, perjury has always been regarded as one of the worst. But these poor boys, who may have been misguided, and who, in the heat of the moment and in the feeling that is always roused on mining disputes, committed offences against the law, are told: You are not Conservative politicians, you must remain in jail while your children starve or anything else may happen.


Mr. MEIGHEN:: Will the hon. gentleman make clear how long he says Currie spent in jail?


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: According to an
answer to a question in this House, which, strangely enough, does not appear in 'Hansard,' and which I have re-asked, he was sent to jail in the winter of 1913. His reserved case was argued in Halifax last summer, and before the Supreme Court of Canada in December. After the decision was given against him, he was liberated in the month of January.


Arthur Meighen: Does the hon. gentleman know how long Currie spent in jail?


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: He was sent to jail in the winter of 1913.


Arthur Meighen: So he spent a year in jail, which was longer than-


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: And his sentence was longer too. But the hon. solicitor general must not lose sight of the fact that Currie went to the Supreme Court of Nova Sc.tia on a case reserved and could not get out. Then he came to the Supreme Court of Canada on a special case in December and could not get out; and when the courts would not let him out, the minister did let him out. I sympathize with my hon. friend from Nanaimo in the complaints he makes regarding this matter. The Minister of Labour, certainly, in his policy of do nothing and know nothing, I suppose, never heard of this case in Nova Scotia, this discrimination as against the poor miner boys of the West; or if he had, he might posssibly have done something. Then, we should have said that he had done those things which he ought to have done. But instead of that the indictment is, and that indictment he has failed to answer, that he has left undone those things that he ought to have done.
Where, then, do we stand? The hon. minister has exhibited a total lack of interest in the lack of legislation in connection with labour in the two years and r half fMr. Macdonald ]
since he assumed his present position. A Minister of Labour has a great task to fulfil in this or any other country. The hon. gentleman has referred to distinguished men who have filled a similar position in the mother country. But whatever ambition he has to be classed in the same category as the men who have been presidents of the Board of Trade in Great Britain in times gone by, if he keeps on at the present rate, he will be regarded as not even having any conception whatever of what the duties of his office are. When a great strike occurred among the railway employees of Great Britain not very long ago, not only the president of the board of trade, but the whole Government were at once seized of the question and went to work with a view to overcome the diflieulty. On the contrary, the moment a big strike occurs in Canada, my hon. friend, forsooth, goes over to England to see how they do things over there. That is the part he plays in dealing with these labour problems in this country. Where is the line of legislation he has offered to Parliament since he occupied a seat in this House? Surely, after two and a half years of administration of a department, with all the development that has occurred in regard to these questiorfs in English-speaking countries and others, my hon. friend ought to have been able to find something that he might offer in the way of improvement of relations between capital and labour in Canada. But to-day he sits doing absolutely nothing so far as results are concerned, and his one defence is: thank God, he did nothing whatever for which he should be condemned. My hon. friend is supposed to have to do with the question of this Government and this Parliament taking a forward step in regard to technical education. My hon. friend has given no sign whatever that he has any views on that question. It is primarily a question that has to do with his department. So far as the Conservative press are concerned, so far as the indications one can gather outside go, my hon. friend does not propose, as a federal minister, to take any forward step in regard to technical education in Canada and, of course, if my hon. friend takes that position he will again be able to plead the defence that he did not do anything at all and therefore is not to be condemned. I have referred to the fact that my hon. friend has not attempted to deal in anyway whatever with the Industrial Disputes Act. But my hon. friend should remember

that a minister of the Crown has a right to so guide his department as to be able to defend himself from reasonable criticism such as hon. gentlemen were presenting to-night, without manifesting such a feeling of temper as he displayed. Imagine my hon. friend attacking as he has done the hon. member for Maisonneuve (Mr. Verville) ! My hon. friend's solicitude for labour and the rights of labour, has not been displayed in so great a degree of brilliancy either before or since he became Minister of Labour that it lies in his mouth to complain, of this worker representative who has been sent here as the representative of organized labour in this Parliament and as their spokesman? My hon. friend has no right to make the remarks he has of my hon. friend and colleague from Maisonneuve. The minister has not the confidence of organized labour, and as he knows that he naturally complains and becomes vituperative as regards the hon. gentleman who happens to have that confidence. I shall not labour the question. I submit that the evidence submitted to this House this afternoon proves conclusively the truth of the assertion contained in the resolution which we ask this House to adopt, that the story of my hon. friend's career as Minister of Labour is one of a do-nothing policy, that he has allowed a paralysing situation to develop in the West, without attempting to grapple with it, and that, in consequence, he is to-day receiving condemnation from the Conservative press of British Columbia, and he has a right to receive from this House that condemnation which this resolution would mete out to him if adopted in the terms in which it is moved.


Robert Laird Borden: Mr. Speaker, at this hour I shall not detain the House at any very great length, nor shall I say anything except with regard to the terms of the
1 a.m. motion which has been proposed by the hon. member from Maisonneuve (Mr. Verville). My hon. friend from Pictou (Mr. Macdonald) will forgive me if I do not go over the somewhat rambling speech wnich he has made.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: I had to follow your minister, so we will leave it at rambling.


Robert Laird Borden: I am glad my hon. friend will admit that it was a rambling speech; and I might say in passing that as he has alluded to the tone and manner of my colleague the Minister of Labour, I would
have expected a somewhat less agitated demeanour on his own part. However, under the circumstances, I am sure that a certain agitation of demeanour might well be forgiven to my hon. friend.
This motion is in somewhat peculiar terms:
Mr. Verville moves in amendment, seconded by Mr. Carroll, that Mr. Speaker do not now leave the Chair but that the whole conduct of the Minister of Labour in regard to the claims and rights of the coal miners of the island of Vancouver was marked by persistent negligence and absolutely indifference and deserves the censure of this House.
My hon. friend and colleague the Minister of Labour has alluded to a certain conference which went on yesterday in this House between the hon. member for Maisonneuve and the right hon. leader of the Opposition, and I would venture to say that while this motion was moved by the hon. member for Maisonneuve it bears the hall-mark of the right hon. leader of the Opposition. The hands are the hands of Esau but the voice is the voice of Jacob. Now, if we had a ' Hansard ' report of my right hon. friend's speech here to-night and could put it before him and could read it to him, I should say that for very shame's sake he dare not vote for that resolution on his own statement of the case. Mark the nature of it:
The whole conduct-
He does not attack any particular part, but the whole of the conduct of the Minister .of Labour-
The whole conduct of the Minister of Labour was marked by persistent negligence and absolute indifference and deserves the censure of this House.
And the right hon. gentleman who proposes to vote for that motion distinctly and positively stated that my hon. friend and colleague the Minister of Labour started out all right and kept on for a certain time all right. Now he proposes to eat his own words by voting for this resolution which says that the whole conduct of the minister is censurable.


Frank Broadstreet Carvell: He was all right for a
week.


Robert Laird Borden: Well, my right hon. friend the leader of the Opposition, not being able to speak for himself, has delegated that duty to the hon. member for Carleton.
I have not had an opportunity before tonight of reading over this correspondence

very carefully. Let us note one or two matters in connection with this. Already my right hon. friend has condemned the motion, because I took down his words as he uttered them. He held the Minister of Labour blameable in one respect only, namely, for not sending some person to investigate at an early date. That was the sum and substance of his challenge of the conduct of the Minister of Labour in this House; and notwithstanding that, he proposes in a few minutes to stand up and vote that the whole conduct of the minister was characterized by persistent negligence and absolute indifference. This is an illustration of the oft-repeated statement of my right hon. friend in this House that he is, after all, a partisan, because I think it would require not only a partisan, but the very strongest kind of a partisan to vote for that resolution after the exposition which has been given of the situation by my right hon. friend himself. The only challenge that he made from first to last of the conduct of the Minister of Labour was, that he did not send some person at an early date to investigate that matter; that is as far as I was able to understand his speech. If there was anything else in his speech, I challenge him to say what it was.


Wilfrid Laurier: 
Mr. BELAND:: I am paired with the hon. member for Ottawa. Had I voted I would have voted for the amendment.


Mr. KNOWLES:: I am paired with the hon. member for Comox-Atlin. Had I voted I would have voted for the amendment.


William F. Carroll: I am paired with the
hon. member for Kings, N.S. Had I voted I would have voted for the amendment.


Mr. McCRANEY:: I am paired with the hon. member for Victoria. Had I voted I would have voted for the amendment.


Mr. FOWLER:: I am paired with the hon. member for Queens-Sunbury. Had I voted I would have voted against the amendment.


Edward Mortimer Macdonald: I am paired with
the hon. the Minister of Trade and Commerce. I would have voted for the amendment.


Charles Joseph Doherty: I am paired with the
hon. member for Bonaventure. Had I voted I would have voted against the amendment.


George Perry Graham: I am paired with the
hon. the Minister of Railways. Had I voted I would have voted for the amendment.


Mr. G. C. WILSON:: I am paired witli the hon. member for Quebec West. Had 1 voted I would have voted against the amendment.
, Mr. ROSS: I am paired with the hon. member for Rainy River. Had I voted 1 would have voted for the amendment.
Amendment negatived and main motion agreed to.



SUPPLY.

[Stage Direction]
The House in Committee of Supply.-Mr. BIon din in the Chair.
[u'May I be allowed to\nmake a little explanation before the House adjourns. It is in the interest of the country, I think, that some person should draw this matter to.the attention of the House. I notice that an article in the London Times says that the cost of the Grand Trunk Pacific, from Winnipeg to Prince Rupert, is \xa330,000 per mile, exclusive of sleepers and rails. As a matter of fact, the cost is about $70,000 per mile, including sleepers and rails.']
Wilfrid Laurier: It is half-past one o'clock. I suppose it is not the intention of my right hon. friend to proceed in Committee of Supply?


Robert Laird Borden: We had better take some items.


Wilfrid Laurier: Sufficient to
the day is the evil thereof. I think we should adjourn now.


Robert Laird Borden: Very well. I move that the committee rise and report progress.
Progress reported.



[Stage Direction]
On motion of Mr. Borden for the adjournment of the House:
George Perry Graham: 
[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to, and the House adjourned at 1.37 a.m., Wednesday.
Wednesday, March 4, 1914.