CANADA: Privy Seal Jim

Every time British statesmen resolve to grapple with the baffling problem of Britain’s 1,295,000 unemployed they turn first and instinctively to Canada. The granary of the Empire is underdeveloped, needs men. Britain is industrially overdeveloped, has too many men. In London the solution looks simple: send unemployed Britons to Canada. During the five years from 1923-28 some 263,000 have been sent. Too many have turned out n’er-do-wells and won’t-works. Today there is a swelling, angry chorus of Canadian protest against what is claimed to be the Mother Country’s policy of turning her daughter Dominion into a dumping ground for loafers. It was to patch up the Empire’s mother-daughter quarrel that big, likable, keen-witted James Henry (“Jim”) Thomas arrived in Ottawa last week from London, where he is Lord Privy Seal, Leader of the House of Lords, and Minister in Charge of Unemployment.

Humbug. “I’ve gone from ‘E. C.’ to ‘P. C.’,” boasted Mr. Thomas once to a British Laborite audience. “That is, I began as an Engine Cleaner and now I’m one of ‘is Majesty’s Privy Councilors, but I guess you all know I’m still Jim!” Last week the clubbable Minister in Charge of Unemployment soon warmed up Canadians to a personal liking for his breezy, Welsh-Cockney wrays. In his first Canadian press interview, smart Jim Thomas sought to spike the charge that Mother Britain is not playing square with Daughter Canada.

“The idea that we look upon migration as a solution of our unemployment problem is just humbug!” cried Privy Seal Jim. “We have no desire to dump our people anywhere. They are not decadent! They have passed through too many trials and tribulations to go under without a fight, and they are not going under!”

“However, I believe,” concluded Mr. Thomas persuasively, “that there are thousands of people of adventurous spirit in Great Britain who should have the chance to do some of the hard pioneer work that wants doing in Canada!”*

Coal Is Trump. Of course such ringing blarney was not the only trump in the hand of Privy Seal Jim (one of the best bridge players in London and always for highest stakes). His long suit was a scheme which he privately unfolded to that shrewd though cherub-faced statesman Rt. Hon. William Lyon Mackenzie King, Prime Minister in Canada.

Reduced to essentials the argument understood to have been presented by Mr. Thomas at Ottawa last week may be stated thus: 1) Canada is smarting today at the certainty that she will lose much of her export trade to the U. S. when the new higher tariff bill is passed at Washington (see p. 13); 2) Canadian newspapers are clamoring that the Dominion should retaliate by raising her tariff on goods which the U. S. is anxious to sell to Canada; 3) Canada has been importing every year some 50 million dollars worth of U. S. coal; 4) If Canada should choose to put a high tariff on “non-British coal” (i.e. on U. S. coal) she would first be retaliating potently upon the U. S., and second she would be in a position to buy nearly all her import coal from Great Britain, thus giving work to the thousands of jobless coal miners who form the bulk of Britain’s unemployed.

Conference? In his public remarks last week Privy Seal Jim only hinted in broadest terms at the subject of his several private conferences with Prime Minister King and numerous Canadian tycoons, including august Sir Henry Thornton, President of the Canadian National Railways. “I do not propose to tell the Canadian people how to carry on their business!” stoutly maintained Jim Thomas. “They know more about that than I do.” But he added. “We in Great Britain would like a share in the orders now going to foreign countries. It is a mistake to assume that Governments know nothing of business. Personally I would like to see an Empire Economic Conference held in Canada before many months.”

White Collar Son. Significantly in the party of Mr. and Mrs. Thomas last week was their son A. J. Thomas. He met them when they landed from the S.S. Duchess of Athol at Quebec. He is one of the Mother Country’s sons who have come over in the past five years to take a job with Daughter Canada. His job is Assistant to the Director of Shop Methods of the Canadian National Railways.

Not so many years ago Jim Thomas himself was tempted to take an executive, white-collar job with Britain’s Great Western Railway. He had just led a successful strike. When the white-collar was proffered with a temptingly high salary Mr. Thomas went home and talked to his wife. According to an inspiring, legendary-tradition in the British Labor Party Mrs. Thomas said: “Jim, if you ever desert the union I will never speak to you again!”

Last week Mrs. Thomas fondly embraced her white-collared son, proudly watched while he extended to Privy Seal Jim an official welcome in the name of the Canadian National Railways.

*Near “Mile 133” on the Algoma Central Canadian Railway, last week, virile Baggageman Robert Burns dealt in pioneer fashion with a she-wolf. Seizing the beast between neck and shoulders he strangled her into a coma, carried her home securely tied with baggage car twine to Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario.