COMING AND GOING

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLVI, Issue 164, 12 June 1926, Page 13

COMING AND GOING

“DRIFTERS'’ OF VANCOQVER. i • : ■■■• . STUDY OF TWO CLASSES. MEN OF DIFFERENT MOULDS. ; i VANCOUVER, May 5. Vancouver is shedding its winter “drifters” and preparing to receive its summer “drifters. ’ From both of them she gets a good advertisement, ’ east to the Great Lakes, south tq the Mexican border. From the prairie provinces, when the harvest is in and before spring sowing begins, an everincreasing army of men drift across the Rockies to Vancouver, where the winter is mild, under the influence of the warm sea currents that sweep across the Pacific from Japan. The • same influx is experienced by the seaport towns across the international border—Seattle and Portland. No matter what they earn in the wheat-fields or on the ranches of the empire,” a great many of these men have little or nothing left when they reach the coast, and depend for their upkeep on relief works; provided by the i Provincial Government or doles dispensed by the City I Corporation. Despite notices placarding prairie towns telling them that they will not be welcome, unless they have jobs to go to or means to keep them, these birds of passage flock into Vancouver in thousands. For three months of the winter these men throng the streets, the cafeterias, the pool room, and, if practicable, the beer parlours. Sometimes, misguided citizens accede to their request for a “dime for a cup of coffee.” When the city is blanketed by a London fog for three or four days at a time, many hold-ups of citizens, chiefly of young girls on the way home late from their employment, testify to the desperate condition of this social driftwood. For the most part they are the residuum of the migration movement from Southern Europe, with names the Police Court have difficulty in pronouncing. GOOD CHINESE EXAMPLE. While there are perhaps 5000 of the “drifters” roaming fhe streets of the city, Chinatown is recruited by the same number, ow’ing to the lumber mills and fish plants ceasing operations. But there are no' Chinese on the dole, nor do they beg in the streets, as the white man does. The explanation is simple. The Chinese worker saves enough from his eighteen pence an hour at the mill to tide him over the winter in comparative idleness at the coast. If he did not,- his keep w'ould be provided for him, on his promissory note, by the Chinese Benevolent Society, a marvellous organisation, that undertakes that Chinese do not get into the bad graces of the community—do not add fuel to the anti-Oriental fires that burst into white-hot flames at least twice a year in British Columbia, when the Provincial and Dominion Parliaments go into session. The summer “drifters” are of different mould and very welcome. t They arrive in automobiles from the Western States —Washington, Oregon, California—to the number of 30,000 a month. It is said that they spend about £1,000,000 in Vancouver every ' summer. The city authorities do not grudge a portion of their largesse to the “drifters” that come in at the fall. “DRIFTERS” FROM UNITED STATES. The American “drifters” are young for the most part. Chaperons are out-of-date with them. They race each other in their cars, from tiny “bugs” to limousines,- along the Pacific Highway, to reach the city by 7 p.m. on Saturday, when the liquor shops close, to get their week-end supplies. The young men are arrayed in glorious multi-coloured sweaters, which take the place of coats in summer, in the streets, the office, the hotel, the danceroom. The young women are heavily painted, with shaven eyebrows, and attenuated garments. They overflow the grill-room and tho ballroom at the big hotels. Vancouver gives them a very warm welcome. As being the nearest Canadian centre where liquor may be had, Vancouver is known right along the Pacific slope, down to San Diego and Ti Juana. An English lady, spending a holiday in liOs Angeles, observed that her destination was Vancouver, in Canada. “You mean Vancouver, in British Columbia,” her American friends corrected her. A ribbon on concrete, 1900 miles long, the longest paved highway in the world, cements the friendship of the two peoples in a firm, abiding entente.