The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1906-03-29

Railway Contractors on
Mainland Letting
Them Out.

THE big railway contracting firms
who are building the Western Pacific
railway from San Francisco to Ogden
have thrown out all their japanese
laborers, and are getting men from
Italy and Germany to do the con-
A McGrail, a young San Fran
cisco business man who passed
through Honolulu on the Korea yes
terday. Mr.. McGran is en- route to
Shanghai. where he goes to take
charge of the Oriental business of the
big merchandising house of Getz
Brothers, and has until lately been
connected with Armour & Co. in San
Francisco.
THE contractors found that they
could not rely upon the Japanese Ia
borers,'' continued Mr.. McGrail. They
would not work, and could not be de-
pended upon to stay with the job when
they would get at it. The Western
Pacific, which as you know is the
western extension of the Gould lines,
is contracted to be finished on the
first of January, 1907, and the con-
tractors could not afford to monkey
with an unreliable labor element. They
had to have men who would work, and
who would stay with the work, and
they have gone to the eastern states
and to Europe for them.
California is full of these men now;
and they are all as busy as they can
be. They are strung along the whole
- - III
be finished in contract time-all but
the San Francisco terminals. There
is a fight with the Southern Pacific
about those, which may require some
time for its settlement.
San Francisco is full of idle Jap
anese There are thousands of them
there-and none of them very willing
to work. They prefer to hang around
the city, and to stay in the offices of
the employment agents, playing their
checker games. They are not even de- |
pendable as house servants. Why, at
my house we have a record of seven |
japanese servants coming and going
in one week. A man does not like
such lightning change work as that in
his domestic menage."
The San Francisco Chronicle of
March IS prints this: The executive
board of the Japanese and Korean
Exclusion League at the meeting held
last evening, received a communica-
ton from State Labor Commissioner
w. V. Stafford stating that con-
tractor engaged in constructing part
of the Western Pacific Railroad in
Butte county, found the Japanese la
borers unsatisfactory and was obliged
to discharge 700 of the Mongolians and
replace them with white laborers.
"P. H. Mccarthy reported that he
had addressed large assemblies during
his recent visit in the East in seven
cities on the Monaghan immigration
question and found that the trades
unionists are only fairly well informed
different or apathetic, and he urged |
the league to carry it's educational
work into the industrial centerS of the
East and the Middle West, and to
have speakers address large conven-
tions. Walter Macarthur suggested
that mass meetings be held in this
city next July during the convention
of the National Educational Associa-
ton, and enlighten the teachers of the
whole United States upon the impor-
tance of excluding Monaghan labor
from this country. Arrangements are
in progress for a monster mass meet
ing to be held on Sunday, May 6, in
honor of the first anniversary of the
league"
.Ass.-