Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

would be or will be levied, for it is said that it has only once been paid and then by a merchant. Whether that tale be strictly true or not, it is evident that laundry-workers and domestic servants cannot raise so large a sum, nor can they at present demand wages so high as to recoup themselves or their importers for such an outlay. The tax, if it were paid at all, would in the long run have to be paid by the employer, and Chinamen, valuable as in many ways they are, are not worth that price. The tax was meant to be, and is, prohibitive.

Even so Canada is more lax than the United States, where Chinamen have for years past been absolutely prohibited from landing, and the only yellow men who gained admission were a few who landed at Vancouver and contrived to smuggle themselves over the frontier. Canada is also much less drastic than Australia, where the federal Parliament has decided to deport the Kanakas, who are already in the country, and who for long years have worked the Queensland sugar plantations, sending them to some of the Solomon Is. lands, now standing empty (so it is said), on account of certain cannibal neighbors having eaten their former inhabitants. These complicated questions are troubling all the world, and all that one can do with certainty is to note the particular stage of the agitation reached in this country or that. In British Columbia all the Chinese labor available is that which is already there, a constantly diminishing quantity.

No men in the world know better than do the Chinese how to seize a personal advantage, and the Chinamen already in the field were first to see that whosoever might lose by the ordinance of the Dominion Parliament, they stood to win. Suddenly they were lifted above fear of competition. They promptly raised their rate of wages, and not content with that, they

became more independent, or, as some exasperated employers say, more impudent. There is a shortage of labor all over British Columbia, and Chinamen exhibit a strange adaptability in passing from one employment to another. This has been more remarkable since the head-tax was levied. For instance, in summer in Vancouver it is nearly impossible to get servants because they all go off to the canneries; but when the salmon have all gone down to the sea the cooks come back to their kitchens, and the households of Vancouver run smoothly again.

There are some white servants in Vancouver, though not nearly so many as are wanted; the only place where you never see them is in the same house with Chinamen. All white or all yellow is the rule in every employment, and one is told that no white man will work beside a yellow man, because he cannot compete with him and live. The real reason lies a good deal deeper than the rate of wage. Chinamen are often paid highly; as cooks, for instance, they earn easily £60 and £70 a year; a white woman earns no more. To be sure the Chinaman expects fewer holidays and gets through more work, and he can live and thrive on a little fish and rice costing but a few cents a day. But he will not live like that if he can help it. He appreciates good fare, and likes to be a cook because then he has control over the kitchen; and even for the sake of a lighter place he will seldom enter a household where there is not a good table and plenty of company. But these things are not necessary to him. His standard of comfort has been trained down for centuries as steadily as our European standard has been trained up; and it must always be a question at what point this continual rise in the standard of living must stop. or ought to stop, for a nation as a whole, or for the individual considered

separately. We seem to have decided to children; most surprising of all, he

that our own standard,-the standard of the Anglo-Saxon working-man in this present year of grace-is the lowest we ought to recognize, and that any individual or race that contrives to live below it is necessarily a blot on the landscape. Nevertheless, it is capable of argument that the Anglo-Saxon standard is a wasteful standard; that as good work could be done on less expenditure; that somewhere between China and British Columbia, say, should be our halting-place. It is capable of argument, though not of decision. It is too much a mere matter of habit and of training; it must be, moreover, carefully adjusted to the 'work a man has to do or can do; but the logical halting-place is where added luxury does not produce corresponding excellence in the individual or his work. More than enough nations and families have gone to ruin because they fixed their standard of living too high. Now as to the excellence of the work done in Canada by the white man with his high wages, there are none to question; but the Chinese also do excellent work. One hears it said that they are dirty, immoral, dishonest. No doubt they are some of them; but let us remember that these Chinamen who come over to do the work that our people disdain are often the lowest of coolies, outcasts of the coast provinces. Compare them with the lowest of our people imported to a strange land with few or no women. The history of (say) our mining camps, or of our tropical colonies has not been altogether spotless as regards dishonesty, immorality, and dirt; and it is unlikely that the lowest of our people placed under conditions as unfamillar would find as many employers to give them as good a character. A good Chinaman (and there seem to be many such) is hardworking, sober, clean, law-abiding, patient, resourceful, loyal, and very kind

is capable of strong personal attachment to his employers.

Two Chinese servants will manage a large house between them, and manage it well, and will go on working for year after year, with no more than a couple of days' holiday at long intervals. One does not wish white men or women to work like that, but one cannot help suspecting that it is not their vices but their virtues (virtues which the British union man has come to regard as vices) that made the Chinamen SO unpopular in many quarters.

But it is not as domestic servants that the Chinese are most needed in the new land. The employers who are really to be pitied are the farmers and fruit-growers, who took land in British Columbia in the reasonable faith that they could hire yellow labor to work it, and whose crops are now rotting in the ground or on the trees because of the sheer impossibility of garnering them single-handed. Often times the land was taken from this same Government that has shut the labor out. Meetings have been held, and petitions forwarded to Parliament praying that Chinamen may be permitted to come as domestic servants and farm-laborers only, but few even of the petitioners appear to hope for speedy relief. And if agriculturists are to get Chinese labor, why should not the canneries or the laundries? Why should not Chinamen be allowed to grow fruit and vegetables for the towns, which surely without their skill and patience would have a far worse dietary than at present? This was not a year when there was a glut of salmon at the canneries: that happens every four years, and this was not the due time; but if there had been, it was said that the fish must have been wasted for want of hands, and then tinned salmon would have risen in price. But scarce labor makes

all things increase in price, and the white man in British Columbia does not get the full benefit of his rise of wages; his wife gets even less, for she used to hire a Chinaman to do her heavy work, but now, the Chinamen's wages having risen as well as her husband's, she cannot afford it, even if she can find the Chinamen, for any Chinaman can leave his employer to-day certain of finding another to-morrow, and he is getting fastidious as to the nature of his work. Of course the same may be said of white men, and that is, no doubt, a fault on the right side, for it is better to have employers clamoring for labor than men clamoring for work and bread. Still, wages can only be exchanged for life; they are not life.

The question of color is likely to present itself under another form before long. Under recent treaties with Great Macmillan's Magazine.

Britain the Japanese cannot be excluded from any part of their ally's dominions. There are already many Japanese in British Columbia; they have, for instance, practically monopolized many branches of the salmon-fishing industry. Nobody appears to like Japanese servants quite so well as Chinese, but employers out West are not in a position to choose, and possibly a good many Japanese may find it worth while to come to British Columbia in the next few years. There are, however, as we all know, only forty millions of Japanese as against three hundred millions of Chinese, and the supply can hardly be as regular or as abundant. If it were, the Dominion Parliament is quite capable of taking a line of its own. And the present treaty with Japan runs for no more than ten years.

THE DUKE OF THE ABRUZZI'S CLIMB. BY SIR MARTIN CONWAY.

Ever since Stanley returned from his Emin Pasha expedition the name of Ruwenzori has been a familiar one to lovers of mountains. The snows of the Mountains of the Moon had indeed been seen by modern travellers before Stanley saw them, but it was Stanley who established the position of the range and showed that the old records of Arab geographers were in this matter also true to fact. Stanley was not a climber; but his companion, Stairs, felt that a mountain seen moderately near at hand should at least be attempted, and he made a bold assault upon it, with no previous mountaineering experience and no expert guides to help. That he only reached a height of something over 10,000 feet was not to his discredit. Since that day various explorers have approached, and some have actually attempted

the ascent, with more or less persistence.

The trouble with the mountain is its secretive ways. It shrouds itself most of the time in impenetrable mist. Now and again it shows one or more of the peaks of its serrated crest in a way to puzzle observers not habituated to mountain reconnoitering. Rarely indeed is the whole range clear from base to crest, and few are they who have so beheld it. Thus there were doubts as to which was the highest point and still greater doubts and varieties of opinion as to the altitudes of the peaks. Some maintained that they were 20,000 feet high, others that the highest peak was not much above 15,000 feet.

With no books at hand to refer to I cannot attempt to make a list of the various travellers who have at different times approached the range.

The more inexperienced asserted that the climbing was of excessive difficulty and one party, of military men, if I rightly remember, roundly asserted the ascent to be impossible. When, how ever, photographs of the range arrived in this country experienced climbers saw evidently enough that the ascents could scarcely be difficult and that the attainment of the various peaks could be accomplished readily enough, weather and equipment permitting.

It was, in fact, as ultimately turned out, a mere question of weather. You cannot climb high unknown peaks in fog, snow, and gale. You must be able to see ahead in order to pick out your route, and in intricate unknown glaciers you must also be able to see something of your way down again. As for equipment, the Uganda railway made transport to within an easy distance of the range a simple matter. What climbers asked, therefore, of residents familiar with the region was, "What is the right time of year for an ascent? When is fine weather most frequent at high levels?" Το these questions they could obtain no clear replies, and it was upon the correctness of the answer that success or failure depended.

Thus it happened that that experienced mountain traveller, Mr. D. W. Freshfield, accompanied by an able climber, Mr. A. L. Mumm, and by good Alpine guides, were sent a wild-goose chase into the recesses of Ruwenzori by false accounts of the seasons. They were told that the autumn was the time, and in the autumn they duly arrived, on their way back from the British Association meeting in South Africa. Without difficulty they reached the edge of the glaciers and obtained a momentary glimpse of the peaks, but climbing was utterly out of the question. Rains descended with little intermission; fog hung heavily on the snows. They could see nothing and

do nothing. After a fortnight's inaetion they were compelled to return.

It was the Freshfield party that finally settled the fact that June is practically the only month in the year in which a first ascent could be made. They could not wait from November on for the fine weeks to come round. so they had to leave the prize for others to capture. It was under these circumstances and after these preliminaries that the Duke of the Abruzzi decided to make the ascent. The rest was a mere matter of equipment, organization, and marching. The Duke has had plenty of experience and is himself an excellent climber. As an amateur he ranks along with the best and is so recognized in the confraternity of mountaineers, who do not bow in this before names or titles. He has served a long apprenticeship in the Alps, especially in that difficult range of craggy peaks that stretches southward from the Matterhorn down the west side of the Valpelline. With Mr. Mummery,

but without guides, he made the ascent of the Matterhorn by the Zmutt arête, which has seldom been climbed and is a totally different affair from the relatively easy ordinary

way.

As an organizer of expeditions he had had experience in Alaska, where he made the first successful ascent of Mount St. Elias, and again in the Arctic regions in his Franz Josef Land polar expedition.

For him the Ruwenzori expedition was really a simple affair. He had command of the necessary funds and influence, he could lay his hand with certainty on the best companions, and he possessed in himself the requisite physical powers and skill. That he

would succeed was not doubted for a moment. He not merely climbed the highest but all the important peaks of the range. He took with him the best mountain photographer in the world,

expert men of science, and expert surveyors. His choice of men, which was his own, seems to have been excellent. He has brought home splendid photographs, an admirable map, important scientific collections, and all the results that any expedition could have accomplished in the time. His countrymen are justly proud of him, The Academy.

and King Edward and the Royal Geographical Society rightly received him with honor. The lecture he delivered last Saturday at the Queen's Hall was interesting and was instructive. When in due course the book appears that will contain a full account of the journey it will be read nowhere with more appreciation than in this country.

GERMANY AT THE CROSS-ROADS.

A close examination will discount but will not attempt to deny the greatness of the Kaiser's victory. He was himself the supreme issue before the German electorate. The system of which he is so brilliant an exponent, the policies that have owed their initiative and prosecution to him, and the whole conception of government which he typifies, were all alike on trial; and the result of his appeal to the judgment of the nation is an endorsement not less striking and personal than Mr. Roosevelt won from his countrymen in 1904. Nor will any one in England either grudge or seek to belittle so emphatic a tribute. The Kaiser is a remarkable man and an inspiring ruler. The Hohenzollern idea has found in him a champion whose virility of mind and character, whose self-discipline, energy, and sense of duty, have for twenty unsparing years helped and guided the German Empire to greatness and success.

A national vote of confidence in such a monarch would hardly have been looked upon at any other time as more than the just recognition of personal worth. But under the peculiar circumstances of the moment it comes with far wider implications than that. It puts the stamp of popular approval not only upon the ruler but upon the Constitution he directs, and the pronouncement is all the more significant for being delivered at

a time when much had conspired to raise doubts and foster disaffection. The Kaiser's foreign policy had of late appeared more pyrotechnical than sound. A feeling had been deepening that Germany's international position, so far as it has advanced at all since Bismarck's dismissal, has done so through the mere negative accident of Russia's collapse, and so far as it has lost ground, has done so through the Kaiser's own insistence upon hasty and provocative adventure. A colonial war and some colonial scandals had deepened the distrust of a personal régime that seemed to be pursuing an Imperialist policy at vast expense and with little success. The meat famine had embittered every workingman against the selfish ascendency of the Agrarians. The contagion of democratic unrest in Russia and AustriaHungary had filled millions of Germans with a desire to make party government a reality by making Ministers responsible to the Reichstag instead of to the Crown. All these and many other factors joined forces in an attack upon the absolutism which the German form of Constitutional government veils but does not conceal. And the Kaiser, calling to his assistance every appeal to patriotic sentiment that his nimble electioneering mind could suggest, has wrestled with and has overthrown them all.

Or so at least the official organs in

« ZurückWeiter »