Scale of wages paid per day of ten hours Brooks-Scanlon Lumber Company, Scanlon, Minn., month of May, 1902, to 1908, inclusive.

Our average pay roll for the month of May during the period of seven years has been $22,877.50 per month in our sawmills and lumber yards.

I have examined the above figures and hereby certify as to their correctness and accuracy.

BROOKS-SCANLON LUMBER COMPANY,
M. J. SCANLON, Vice-President.

Wages higher in Canada.

In support of our contention that wages are higher in the lumber industry in Canada than in the United States, we have collected data from n ne Canadian mills, including the two testified to before your committee on November 20 by Mr. Lynch, and five United States mills, and from this data have made up a comparative table of the wages paid certain classes of employees. The detailed statements from which these averages were made will be found attached hereto, and except the figures for the Scanlon mill given above, it will be observed that in all of the classes, which were taken at random, the pay in the Canadian mills averages considerably higher, excepting in the case of firemen.

Comparative statement of wages paid per day to certain kinds of employees in sawmills in Ontario, Saskatchewan, British Columbia (mountain and coast), averaged, as compared with wages in Oregon and Washington (interior and coast) and Minnesota, averaged, five to nine mills in former class and five in latter.

The following table gives a good illustration of comparative wages paid in logging camps in the United States and Canada. It will be observed that the wages in the Canadian camps are uniformly higher than in the American camps.

Comparative statement of wages paid per day in logging camps in Canada and the United States.

All these laborers, skilled or unskilled, in the Canadian camps, are white men. The British Columbia law forbids the employment of orientals in logging operations on timber lands leased from the province, which are by a very large percentage the bulk of the entire timber area of the province.

Equipment and production cost higher in Canada.

The testimony adduced before your committee absolutely demonstrates that the cost of equipping a sawmill in Canada is much in excess of similar work in the States. Whether the machinery be American or Canadian made, it costs more than in the United States by the amount of the tariff, at least. The only difference is that in the case of American-made machinery imported into Canada the Canadian government gets that portion of the extra cost represented by the duty, while in the case of Canadian-made machinery the Canadian manufacturer gets it. What is true of milling machinery is largely true of logging camp equipment. However, much, therefore the cost of lumbering in the United States may have increased in recent years on account of the increase in the prices of the commodities the lumberman buys, his Canadian trade brother is still worse off.

In a statement by D. N. Winton, of the Thief River Falls Lumber Company, Thief River Falls, Minn., the Prince Albert Lumber Company (Limited), Prince Albert Saskatchewan, the Bemidji Lumber Company, Bemidji, Minn., and the Northwest Lumber Company, Kalispell, Mont., attached hereto, will be found some interesting information in regard to comparative cost of production in the United States and Canada. Omitting the cost of logs or the cost of stumpage and the expense of logging, driving, etc., Mr. Winton gives the cost of manufacture and the cost of selling and shipping at his Thief River Falls, Minn., mill at $3.482 in 1906 and $3.418 in 1907, while at the Prince Albert, Saskatchewan (Canada), mill the total cost of manufacture, shipping, and selling was in the same years $4.187, being more than 20 per cent more at the Canadian mill than at the American mill. The average price received for lumber at the American mill in 1907 was $21.10 per thousand, and at the Prince Albert mill $21.66 per thousand. Thus while the cost of manufacture at the Canadian mill was about 20 per cent more than at the American mill, the price received for lumber was only 2 per cent greater than at the American mill.

Lumber relatively higher than other commodities.

In this connection it is worth remembering, as Mr. Hill, of Connecticut, pointed out on November 20, that however much other commodities may have increased in price, lumber has surpassed, overhauled, and distanced all of them in the great hill-climbing contest. The following table taken from page 299, Bulletin No. 75 of the Bureau of Labor, Department of Commerce and Labor, presents incontrovertible evidence on this subject:

Oriental labor.

Much has been made of the use of oriental labor in British Columbia; much more than the facts warrant. There are no more Japs in British Columbia than there are in the Coast States, and the prejudice against employing them in occupations desired by whites is just as great, if not greater. The laws of British Columbia forbid the employment of either Chinese or Japanese in all logging operations on leased provincial timber lands, which are fully 90 per cent of the forest area of the Province. There is no law in the Coast States that so explicitly expresses the race prejudice as this. Moreover, Japanese are employed to some extent in American mills. At the time of the outburst of racial antipathy against the Japanese on the Pacific coast, two years ago, Vancouver was far more disturbed and agitated than any American city. Canada was even ahead of the United States in coming to an agreement with Japan regarding the exclusion of Japanese from Canada. By the present arrangement only an insignificant number of Japanese may land in Canada annually. As for Chinamen, while they are not excluded from British Columbia, the head tax of $500 is virtual prohibition, and there is no immigration of Chinese into the Province. Within the last three years several thousand Hindoos came to British Columbia, drawn there by reports of scarce labor and high wages. They have been driven across the line into Washington and driven back again. American mills employed them and they were mobbed. The Hindoos are not wanted in British Columbia, and the Canadian government is now planning to deport the whole colony, 3,000 or 4,000, all told, to Honduras. They are very inefficient workmen, because of their lack of muscular strength, their unfamiliarity with western methods, and their general ignorance. They draw from one-half to three-fourths as much pay as white men, and yet one employer considers that one white man is worth three Hindoos. The fact is that common white labor up to this time has been almost nonexistent in British Columbia, and the mill owners have had to use Chinamen, Japs, Indians, Hindoos-anything that had a trace of human intelligence not to save labor cost, but to get some sort of labor at any cost. There is no doubt that as a whole the oriental labor employed in the coast mills of British Columbia is costlier than white labor, because it is far less productive. It really proves nothing as to labor cost to show a few orientals in a payroll, because it is certain that as a very general rule their efficiency is much below that of whites. What orientals are employed are almost entirely in the tide-water mills. The mountain mills of British Columbia use few, if any, oriental laborers. Of four mountain mills on whom we have drawn for data, two do not employ any orientals, and the whole four only employ 20 orientals in their entire forces, and these are practically all as common laborers, who are employed side by side with white common laborers in the same mills at as high or higher wages than are paid in the State of Washington.

Summarized the oriental labor element in the problem amounts to nothing. Actually oriental labor is costlier than white, the supply is limited, and will decrease, and what is now used does not make the cost of production of lumber cheaper in British Columbia than in Washington. Certainly no American laborer will lose a job in the United States because of the employment of a few orientals in British

Columbia, and he can go to that Province at any time and take an oriental's job away from him at the same, if not higher, pay than he was getting in the States.

Probably the only reason that so much has been made by the high lumber tariff protagonists of the oriental labor employed in British Columbia is a demagogic one, viz, that of appealing to race prejudice with the purpose of confusing the problem. On the Pacific coast it is in some quarters quite enough to rally the crowd to any standard by associating yellow labor with the other standard. Every man who will make a calm study of the facts will agree that it is simply ridiculous to bring oriental labor into a consideration of the cost of producing lumber.

Cheap labor competition within the United States.

It is noteworthy, too, in this connection that the oriental laborer employed in some of the British Columbia mills is better paid than the common white or negro laborer in the southern mills. The white pine and fir lumbermen who have to pay the higher wages have now to compete with cheaper labor in the South than they would have to on the coast with Canada. Common laborers in the southern mills (see Mr. Scanlon's testimony) get only $1.25 a day.

Indeed, the testimony shows that even in the white-pine States common labor is hardly paid more than oriental labor on the Pacific coast. Mr. Scanlon testified that at his mill in Minnesota common labor was getting $1.75 per day, and $1.50 per day in the logging camps. A calculation made up from the pay rolls attached hereto for various British Columbia mills shows that common oriental laborers in those mills are paid from $1.25 to $2.35 per day, the average being $1.68 per day. White common laborers in the same mills average $2.30 per day, and the average of the whites and orientals together is $1.94 per day, which is much higher than the average paid to common labor in either the white-pine States or the southern yellow-pine States.

The plea for the shingle.

A special plea is made for the shingle mills of the Puget Sound country, on the ground that the employees of the British Columbia shingle mills are about 80 per cent oriental, and also that the British Columbia shingle is a better shingle than the American. It is not often that an American manufacturer argues for protection against the foreign product on the ground that it is better than his own, but this is done in the case of the shingle industry. It is a fact, well known to the lumber trade, that to-day the superior British Columbia shingle finds a ready market in the United States at a price higher than the Washington shingle by the amount of the duty, namely, 30 cents per thousand. The Washington shingle manufacturer can make as good a shingle as is made in British Columbia, but he prefers not to, and asks that he continue to be protected in the production of an inferior article. Curiously enough, he alleges that it is on account of the employment of oriental labor that a better shingle is made in British Columbia than in Washington. The reason of this is that the oriental works slower and takes more care than the