THE VANCOUVER RIOTS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume L, Issue 60, 19 September 1907, Page 2

THE VANCOUVER RIOTS.

Mr. M. Fraser, who passed through Vancouver recently, informed a Daily .News reporter that he was not at all surprised to learn of the anti-Japanese riots. They were brewing when l.e passed through. British Columbia has in recent years been almost the hub of prosperity. The opening of the Cana-dian-Pacific Railway, with Vancouver as its western terminus, threw open the vast possibilities of British Columbia and the Xorth-Western territory. Vancouver doubled its population in four years. It now has about 00,000 people. The very rapid development of the primary resources of the country naturally caused an immense influx of population. In the harvesting season every available man has been kept fully employed. Labor became arrogant. The price of labor went up. White labor being too scarce, Japan commenced to use Vancouver as a dumping-ground for its excessive population. Japs were everywhere. Their work was purchased for the fisheries, the lumber trade, mining, smelting, and the fruitgrowing industry. The country is excellently suited for fruitgrowing. The hills are steep and wooded, and the land in the valleys is rich and well sheltered for fruitgrowing. The Japs began to get too numerous They were everywhere. Thirty or forty Japanese porters in the first-class hotels relieved the traveller of his coat, hat, and stick. A servile Jap came to his apartments for orders, holding out a pad for the written instructions, for he could not speak a word of English. It was Japs everywhere. The white man and/ his extravagant wages were not wanted, and he decided that the Jap opposition must go. Hence the riots.