Canada To-day and To-morrow

by Arthur E. Copping

“You have some very clever machinery,” I remarked.

“Yes,” agreed Mr. Barker. “But it is all going to be altered in the near future. The new way of canning does away with soldering, the lids being fixed by crimping—that is, by overlapping the joined edges with such exactitude that the junction is absolutely airtight. This year” (1910) “much of the California fruit is being packed that way. Why the innovation affected that industry before it reached the salmon canneries is easily explained. The heat of the soldering copper was apt to candy the sugar in the syrup, making it dark and sometimes causing black specks, which looked like dirt, to settle on the fruit.”

“Does soldering involve any similar disadvantage in the case of salmon?”

“No. But soldering necessitates skilled labour, while crimping is done by machinery. That is why we are compelled to make the change, which will put the canneries to very heavy capital expenditure. Skilled labour is becoming scarce and very dear. We have a great many Orientals in the canneries. Chinamen are most reliable and painstaking: they are good mechanics, they don’t strike, they don’t get drunk, and they are specially adapted for the work that has to be done in a cannery. Previously their labour was cheap, but now that the Government has imposed a head tax of five hundred dollars on every Chinaman who comes into the country, their labour has become dear. One reason why the work does not attract English labour is because it is not constant. The heavy part of it occurs from July 20th to August 25th, though, of course, the making of the cans takes place before then.

“I well remember when the Chinese first started. I worked then for a man named John West, who had a little cannery on the Columbia River. George W. Hume was the first man who hired Chinamen. He was forced to do so because of the lack of white labour and the unreliability of what he did get. In order to keep sixty or seventy men for two or three months he had to engage from three hundred and fifty to four hundred, because they kept leaving, and they were constantly getting drunk or striking. They were largely runaway sailors and men of that class, who just drifted around, earning a few dollars here and a few dollars there.”

“You took your share,” I suggested, “of the actual practical work?”

“Oh, yes,” said the president of the Packers’ Association. “Besides making nets, I fished and lent a hand in all departments.”

“No doubt,” I further suggested, “there were some interesting human characters in the salmon fisheries in those days?”

“There was Lighthouse Sam for one,” Mr. Barker answered. “They called him that because he had once worked in a lighthouse. He was the most reckless man I have ever known, and always getting into trouble. Again and again his boat was capsized and several of his partners were drowned; but Lighthouse Sam seemed to have a charmed life. I well remember the day when one of our men came running in—it was Phil Williams, from Orkney Island—and shouted: ‘Lighthouse Sam is gone at last!’ Then he told us that the poor fellow’s boat was pitching about, bottom-up, in the breakers, and that both hands were drowned. It seemed that he had left two men trying to rescue the boat—which they did not succeed in doing until an hour afterwards. Then they made an amazing discovery. Lighthouse Sam was underneath, and, although exhausted, quite unharmed, there having been enough air in the bottom of the boat to keep him alive. His mate, as usual, was drowned. After that, I am sorry to say, Lighthouse Sam took to drink, and in the following year he stole a boat, and, securing a partner, sailed up the Pacific coast to do a little fishing on his own account in Shoal Water Bay. The wind blew strongly from the south-east; they were in danger of being swamped, and the reckless mariner headed straight for the shore, undeterred by the sight of heavy breakers. The boat was smashed to pieces, the partner was duly drowned, but Lighthouse Sam got safely ashore. After that he was put into the penitentiary for stealing the boat, and I lost sight of him.

“By the by, Lighthouse Sam was not the only salmon fisherman who survived a cruise with his upturned boat on top of him. A man named Harriman was capsized at the mouth of the Columbia River one Friday at midnight, and when his craft was recovered, on the Monday afternoon, the poor fellow and his boat were high and dry on the beach. He was uninjured—in fact, was soon feeling quite fit again, and, so far as I know, he is fishing there to this day.