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Vanecouver’s Chinese Seek Unity in Labor

wan COUVER’S Chinatown, stretching between Hastings and Georgia, from Canton to Jackson Avenues, is a world within a world, and it is a world as complex as the one which surrounds it. In reality it is composed of two separate worlds, made up of two generations, and the gulf between these two is gradually growing wider. The first consists of about half

the Chinese population in BC, the men who are more than fifty years old, and who have only one desire — to go back to their homeland or to have their ashes burried beside those of their fathers. The second con- sists of the young Chinese, the serieus-faced school kids, the young men and women enter- ing industry and trade unions, born and bred in Canada, know- ing no other way of life.

Daily, the breach between these two groups is widening. As the old grow older, the longing to return to China also grows. The longer the young live in Canada, the stronger are the ties which bind them to her.

T WAS halfway through the

lest century that the first Chinese came to Canada, brought in as sa source of cheap labor for Canada’s expanding indus- tries. The Dunsmuir Coal Com- pany brought them in to work their Vancouver Island mines; the CPR imported them to lay the rails across Canada) Amer- ican and Canadian capitalists alike, found it profitable to bring in the Chinese, pay the headtax, and more than make it up by paying starvation wages. The Chinese could work for long hours on a handful of rice. They could be also used as a threat to union organization, when white unions became too strong they were brought in as_ strike- breakers. When the Chinese be- gan to organize among them- selves, white workers werte warned that it was an oriental plot to rob honest Canadians of their jobs. Ignorance was the bosses’ best ally; so education among the Chinese wasn’t en- couraged.

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BOUT this time, at the be-

ginning of the twentieth century, numerous articles be gan to appear in the press and a host of books were written about something called the “yel- low peril.” It was during the days of the first west coast real estate boom, and a few Chinese were beginning to buy land. They Were beginning to join unions, too, having picked up enough English to sit in on discussions. And it wasn’t until the Chinese began to take their places beside fellow Canadians, living in the Same houses, doing the same work and joining the same organ- izations, that this “yellow peril” cry was raised. Apparently a for- eigner who would work for coolie wages and knew his place was fine, while one who joined a union and asked for a raise was dangerous. As was to be ex- pected, most of the cries of alarm came from the boss loggers and miners.

From that time on, everything that could be laid blamed on the Chinese was laid on their doorstep. Was there unemploy- ment? Then don’t blame the economic setup, blame the Chinese who have taken the jobs. Did the crop fail? Then it was the fault of the Chinese farmers who were trying to

yuin the country. If a robbery occurred, papers came out with eyewitness accounts of a sus- picious looking oriental seen in the yicinity. Any crime in which

a Chinese was actually con- cerned was headlined, and the whole community took the pun- ishment.

It was a huge campaign, partly planned, partly unconscious, to slander the oriental workers, and for a while it worked. Now it is beginning to fail, for two ob- vious reasons.

By CYNTHIA CARTER

A ee first is the magnificent fight put up against the Jap- anese by the people of China. The second, the fact that the Chinese here in Canada are be- fFinning to play an important part in Canadian life.

Of the 8,000 Chinese in Van- couver, more than 3,000 work in sawmills, pulp and shingle mills. Four hundred work in the ship- yards, a number are in the army, and hundreds more have small farms of their own. Our Chin- ese population has supported every Victory Loan, Red Cross campaigns as well as their own campaigns to raise money for Chinese refugees. They have set up what experts call one of the finest ARP headquarters in Can- ada. They are in full sympathy with the cause of the United Na- tions, have great faith in the “Big Four’ — Stalin, Churchill, Roosevelt and Chiang Kai-shek.

At the same time they de- plore the discriminatory laws which prevent them from parti- cipating fully in our war effort.

“We Chinese are a ‘strange’ people,” a young shipyard work- er told me one day, “in that we support wholeheartedly any struggle which we sincerely be- lieve to be our own. It is very unfortunate that the way to all- out cooperation is barred to us, and that we are still refused entry into certain professions, even into certain branches of the armed services.”

i IS the problem of the younger Chinese in Vancouver's China- town that constitutes the real obstacle to unity.

These young people go to the same schools, wear the same “zoot suits,’ put nickels in the same juke boxes as other Cana- dians. And they go to work in the same shops, fight in the same war. Yet they are a real “lost” generation. From their parents they hear the continual tale that China is the only homeland, al- though they themselves have never seen it.

On the other hand, they plainly see that “polite’ white society has no place for them. Their last ties with China are growing

, weaker, the ashes of their elders.

are shipped home for burial, and

soon only this second generation, the Chinese-Canadians, will be left, a whole generation without a country. Must they be outcasts forever? What is the solution?

The solution, of course, lies in closer cooperation between the people — the working people —of all racial extractions whose common bond is the fact that they are Canadians. This unity will not come from the top down, because employers have always believed in the old adage, “divide and rule.’ The unity must come from the bot- tom, from the people who know that in unity there is strength. And all restrictions that pre- vent this unity must be re- moved.

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pEe* the beginning the Chin- ese in British Columbia have ben part of the mass labor move- ment, playing a role sometimes small, sometimes large ,accord- ing to their opportunities. Fhe great unions of the Pacific Coast, the International Woodworkers, the Boilermakers, the Dock and Shipyard Workers, have hun- afeds of Chinese members, with Chinese shop stewards in every camp, plant and shipyard. And in Vancouver's May Day Par- ade, Chinese workers marched

HAA iee

“Die Welt.”

was executed too.”

Doomed Frenchmen Publish Underground Paper in Prison

An illegal newspaper, “Voix de Stalag,” is pub] in one of the French concentration camps, Gerard | reports in an article in the weekly Swedish mag |

e

“Among the splendid achievements of French pa / is the underground press published by hostages doom death,” he writes. “Last year’s Noyember 2 issue 0 — such newspaper called ‘Camp Patriot,’ carried the fc ing slogan: “Greetings to the gallant defenders of § grad, to the Red Army which has covered itself | undying glory, to the free peoples of the Soviet Unio

“Tn the same issue a 19-year-old youth dedicat poem to his 17-year-old comrade who had been shot. poem ends with the words: “You died a victim of mu ers who took no merey on your youth. We will leav: prison and avenge your death.’

“But the 19-year-old youth didn’t leave the prison

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STN DS co

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STOCKHOL

beside their occidental comrades. The very moving message read from the May Day speaker's platform was an appeal to be met halfway, to be taken into partnership in the biulding of Canada. Signed by a Chinese shop steward on behalf of all Chinese shipyard ~workers, it read as follows:

“On this May Day, the great anniversary holiday of labor, workers from every branch of in- dustry have come to show their solidarity with their fellow work— ers in all lands.

“We Chinese workers of this city are also pleased that we are taking part in this great celebra- tion.

“Today the working people. fight a common enemy, fascism, whether it be German, Italian or Japanese. We think back to China’s heroic struggle against

untold odds, of seven years of se

continual battle with the war lords of Japan. The ese are still held back, a they have blockaded the seaports and coastal rive have seized railroads anr munications. =

“But in great stretct China, in the forests and tains, are territories whe Japanese dare not come. are the real centers of ance, and there today C workers will be celeh May Day.

‘Their spirit is uncongi and they know that ultim tory is certain.

“Workers all over the support them in their st for survival, by uniting t port the democratic fror wipe out fascism froz earth.

“Tong live the workers world!” A

» » IN REVIEW «< «

‘One World’

Reveals

Education of Willkie

One World, by Wendell Willkie—Simon & Shuster—Paper

Cover—$1.35.

N ONE WORLD, Wendell Willkie — in the same words-of- one-syllable style which characterized his radio broad- casts — tells the story of his trip around the world in the middle of the war “to see and talk to hundreds of people in more than a’dozen nations, and to talk intimately with many of the world’s leaders,” to quote Mr. Willkie’s introduction.

One Word is a vitally interest- ing book, and a book of political importance. When Willkie visited Stalin and Chiang Kai-Shek, he drew his own conclusions. He wanted to find out for himself about the United Nations and the people in them, and he tried sincerely to be unprejudiced. The main conclusions he reached were that first, victory can come only through waging a real coali- tion war against the Axis powers, that in this coalition the United States must accept China and the Soviet Union as equals, and that the post-war world will be de- termined entirely by how we fight and win the war.

One of the few faults that can be found in the One World is that while Willkie intended to be entirely unpredujiced, his lack of understanding of political idealogies tends to confuse at times his own formulation of opinions. For example, after para-

graphs about the working people of Russia, their patriotism, sin- cerity and faith in their eco- nomic system, he continues with

the stereotyped phrase that, per- sonally he is “opposed to com- munism,” because it is a “\sys- tem which leads to absolutism.” And at times his own naivette is revealed as when he expresses his surprise at finding Soviet of- ficials to be “educated men, in- terested in the foreign world, completely unlike in manner, ap- pearance and speech the uncouth, wild Bolshevik of our cartoons.”

On the whole, however, this

“book, written by the most out-

standing candidate for the Re- publican nomination to the presi- dency in 1944, makes very good reading, and the eloquent chap- ters on (Russia and China should be required reading for die-hard isolationists in the United States and elsewhere. .

“We must decide whe not we can ever find 3 ally in eastern Asia than t!

ese, and if the answer is ft as I predict it will be, 1 must be prepared to fu obligations of an ally. Thi gations will include econc operation and present

help. But they also inel obligation to understa Chinese and their problem ese faith in noble phra protestations is wearing thin,” says Willkie after to China.

“J believe it is possi Russia and America, | the most powerful count the world, to work t for the economic welfa the peace of the world. 4

owing that there can enduring peace, no e stability, unless the tw together, there is not ever wanted more to | he states after consider question of American cooperation.

“Our thinking in the must be world-wide,” says One World is his con towards that end. Publi: port that sales of the date are unbelievably 1b mon and Shuster, alway: to take a chance, have ay picked a winner in this | occasionally politically w on the’ whole valuable bo has been called, by somé ers, the “education of Willkie.”