SURPLUS LABOUR IN CANADA.

Evening Post, Volume LXXV, Issue 41, 18 February 1908, Page 4

SURPLUS LABOUR IN CANADA.

A remarkablg story of the condition of "" the w J orkmg-"ela?s "rjopulatipn 'in panacla was ' told" at a" combined 'mepting of the Labour" Party arid 'the parliamentary, " committee of tbd Trades Uh'ipn" Congress in' London last month, by m X Trotter, who the Tribune states^' has come to England as a^ special commissioner °f rom- the Trades aiid^Lab^ ouc Congress" of Oana'da. ' " : Mr. "Trot'£er,"Vflo reminded his bearers that he -had come to England provided with 'affidavits'"^ victims of th 6 'misrepresentations of emigration' agents and other. . interested partiesr said that the flooding of Canada with workmen for whom, no employment c'mild ' be" found ha,d now reached a critical stago. 'For th*e, first half ' of this year more than 252,000 emigrants had entered Canada — an increase of nearly '63,000 upon the corresponding period "last year. Yet the number of homesteads taken up in the country districts had actually decreased b^'lo,'4ol, only 18,000 m all having been for. ' This evidonco " of the neglect pf the land by the emigrants was. p ; roof thaVthe towns were being overrun,'. " Many pf" the people who were placed, on" the land got back* to tho town's' as qpon as "they possibly could. The" Dominion Qoveihment 'knew very Syoll that there was "no room for skilled Cf|ftsm9n ih'iSanada, and, in s>pite of th^ repeated appeals of the manufacturers," only wanted the men in or919V t'o'^ bring down the pvice of labour, had studiously refused' tp 'invite such people to emigrate from England. All the emigration agencies in London were condemned by Mr. Trotter for pai'ticipa- ' tioji in" tne work of " misrepresentation ffciai \\as>" entailing 50 much' disappointmojit and misery "upon English "emigrants and their ■ families ' in Canada ; "but his severest" Strictures \vere "reserved for ,tha shipping companies," working upon a commission * which encouraged their activities. 'Lprd Strathcona, High Gommissioner fpr Canada, said, in the course of an interview on Mr. Trotter's satenients, that charitable agencies were sending out the wrong sort of people" to Canada, ' thus causing a surplus supply of 'labour in the towns. The latest official communication from Canada was to the effect that several Ontario factories nad recpntly decreased their outp\it, throwing a number of people out of work. The dags affected were chiefly people who had "been sent out by British charitable institutions, and * wore 'not of the class encouraged to go to Canada "by the Dominion Government.