A STARK PICTURE

Press, Volume LXXI, Issue 21470, 11 May 1935, Page 16

A STARK PICTURE

* ■ ' Unemployment In Canada PLIGHT OF MIGRANTS (By William Teeling.) 111. I went to Canada just about the time the slump began and all migration ceased when the, migrants who had been there for a few years realised that they could no longer make a profit. I visited large numbers of settlements mainly in Alberta, and I also found some very successful ones in South Ontario. Numbers of families came out to Alberta to settle on land that belonged to two great Canadian companies, the Canadian Pacific Railway and the Hudson Bay Company. Large tracts of land have been handed to these two organisations and they are trying to people these lands with the right type of migrant Wherever possible, if there are already settlements of Poles or Central Europeans, it is endeavoured to place j small groups of Britishers close by with the idea of inculcating British ideas into the neighbours. The Group Settlements Many of the group settlements were being "quite successful at the beginning of the slump because the companies not only provided them with land on which to grow wheat, but also with a certain amount of poultry, often some cattle, and always plots on which to grow vegetables. These people, therefore, have been able, up to a point, to weather the storm, but they have found that they cannot pay their instalments. The companies, however, are holding up their claims until better times come. There is no doubt that these people, though they may not be making a profit, are at any rate existing without coming on the State, either in Great Britain or in Canada, for assistance. It is, however, different in regard to the single men. One company that has been immensely successful in dealing with single men migrants is the Hudson Bay Company. They have got on their list of people who purchase from their stores, many thousands who are themselves British settlers and when a single man comes under their auspices they insist that he goes on the farm of a British settler and not on that of a Canadian or foreigner. They also insist that the farmer shall guarantee to keep the man for at least a vear. After that he always keeps in touch with the Hudson Bay Company's agent, and is stirongly recommended never to leave a job without communicating first direct with • Winnipeg, where are the headquarters.^ I have sat there with the' men in charge and seen wires coming in from these ydung settlers saying that they had lost their jobs and asking what thev should do. These wires are paid for'by the Hudson Bay Company who have arrangements with the telegraph office so that the men can send the wires without prepayment. The company then gets in touch with their nearest local representative, who does his best to nlace the man as near as possible to where he was before. Deported Immigrants Even so the slump has brought many thousands to the cities. There, as far as I could see, the Canadian Government is perhaps a little bit too strict in finding legal loopholes for returning the men to Great Britain. They are not allowed to stay in the country, if, during the first five years, they have become in any circumstances, a State charge. I spent some time travelling on trains across Canada with people who are about to be deported. It was an extremely unpleasant experience. There were two railway carnages set aside for these men and women. Sometimes during the summer the heat was intense and during the winter the cold outside and the central heating in the carriages made an even worse atmosphere. Every type of person was there. There was a man lying in one corner who said he was dying. The authorities said he <fcas not. He was a Norwegian by birth. He had been In Canada for several years but he had gone blind and the authorities said that he must have had a medical disability with regard to his eyes before landing, and hidden the fact—hence he was liable to be sent home. "Sent home" was rather an ironical term for this man. He was stone blind. He had left Norway some years befor-e. He had never married, and as far as he knew, he had no relations in Norway. He had no money. W r hat was going to happen to him nobody knew and nobody cared. I found young men who were being deported because they had been in prison. The reason why they had been to prison was rather typical of the times. They could not get food. They had been begging in the streets of Winnipeg in wintry weather, with the thermometer nearly at zero. Not getting anything at all they had decided to break the window of a Chinaman's shop, and they had stolen from it some bread. There were other cases of people who had stolen nothing. They had just broken windows in order to be sent to prison so that they might get a little regular food and later on be deported back to Great Britain. Those were bad days in Canada, but they are now nearly over. The vast majority of the settlers who had a piece of land of their own in the country had been allowed to stay on the land, which was good land, and had been lent food by the companies and organisations who, with millions of money behind them, realised that these people must be assets to the country as long as they were citizens of it. In Vancouver I spent a considerable time in Vancouver, where the climate is much more like England. A good many of the people, migrants and others, were out of work. There is no snow there in winter and the climate is usually fairly temperate. But the city was quite incapable of supporting the vast numbers of unemployed that drifted there without any claims of citizenship. For those that really had a claim there were some very good organisations One cf the best of them was run by young business men in the city who formed a sort of camp in the town They took a disused factory, and local firms put up beds and prepared the building for the men. They then got more than 200 of the unemployed and treated them exactly as if they were in the army during the war. They had definite hours, definite leave time, and these business men went there regularly for an hour in the morning before going to their offices, and for an hour in the afternoon before they returned home. They examined any cases that were necessary in the mornings, and passed sentence of fatigue and other punishments on those people who were not keeping the regulations. They placed for the rest of the day in charge of the men, others whom they called sergeants, and who were themselves unemployed. At first the men disliked it, after a week they began to like it, Train-Jumpers Last, one could go outside the town and see numbers of men, well wrapped up for a journey across the Rockies, jumping on to freight trains determined to get somehow out of Vancouver. They would go along on these trains for a two days' journey across the cold and dismal mountains in midwinter and finally, almost half-starved, would reach Calgary. There they would find the police authorities waiting to make sure they did not get off, and they would be passed over for another day or two's journey in the middle of the Canadian winter. Only the Salvation Army was there

ta give Uicm something to .est and drink on their journey. This all must sound a very pitiable tale, but it is exactly what I saw. It teaches one the lesson that migrants should not be allowed to come out to ! a country unless they have either personal relations or some non-political organisation to look after them. Otherwise they become nobody's friend, or too many people's friend, and in the latter case they become insufferable and will do nothing. When these people get back they are believed because they have been to these places. They are most unlikely no matter what is the truth ,of their suffering, to let anybody think that any of it has been their own fault, and they will, and do, tell everyone in the neighbourhood of the disadvantages rather than the possibilites of life in these new countries.