Japanese Fishermen

STEVESTON, the big cannery station on the Fraser River, is now under martial law.  The fishermen, as already noted in these columns, went out on strike because the canners would not yield to their demand of 25 cents per fish captured.  For a time the Japanese held out with the whitemen, but now the Japs have returned to work at the old scale, and the whitemen are left idle.  A couple of years ago the whiteman and the Indians did the fishing on the Fraser, but since then the great influx of Japanese and Chinamen has altered the condition of things, until now these people have practically a monopoly of the business, and another big industry has been handed over to the Oriental element in this country.  Without going into the merits or demerits of the case, it is regrettable to find the natives and whitemen of British Columbia being supplanted by the most undesirable class of foreigners.  The danger which threatens white labor in this province may be inferred from the fact that at present there are employed in the fishery industry alone some 7,000 Japanese and 4,000 Chinamen.  The two races do not agree under ordinary circumstances, but when it comes to a question of ousting the whitemen, and that in his own country, there is a unanimity worthy of a better cause.  It is a pitiable sight to see the militia called out to protect a horde of the most objectionable foreigners while doing a work which of right ought to belong to the native.  In no country in the world, we believe, would it be possible for a similar scene to be enacted.