SP FC 3803 U54 N_5-4-trk1c Jack Harrington.mp3 Recorded c. 1964

Transcribed by Donna Sacuta, 2025

 

Interviewer [00:00:00] This is an interview with Mr. Jack Harrington, who was active in miners’ unions in the Interior and in the Street Railwaymen. Is that right? How do you spell your name, sir?

 

Jack Harrington [00:00:15] H-A-R-R-I-N-G-T-O-N

 

Interviewer [00:00:20] I see, and perhaps you might as well— Were you born here?

 

Jack Harrington [00:00:23] No, I was born in Glasgow.

 

Interviewer [00:00:27] Glasgow. When did you come over?

 

Jack Harrington [00:00:29] I went to sea first of all, and then I worked in the United States back and forward and right across the continent and finally I come up here in 1904. I left Scotland in 1898.

 

Interviewer [00:01:02] What? You were 18?

 

Jack Harrington [00:01:04] 18.

 

Interviewer [00:01:05] 18 years old?

 

Jack Harrington [00:01:07] I was born in 1879. Interviewer [00:01:10] 1879, so you were 19 years old. Jack Harrington [00:01:11] Yeah.

Interviewer [00:01:12] I see.

 

Jack Harrington [00:01:16] I’d be practically, yeah 19.

 

Interviewer [00:01:20] When you came to Canada, were you a union member? Did you have any contacts with unions?

 

Jack Harrington [00:01:26] Oh, yes. I was a delegate to the Miners’ Convention for two years, to Indianapolis two years, and I was a delegate to the Lethbridge Provincial Convention or Regional Convention three times. At one of the Conventions I was at in Indianapolis the Lemieux Act had just been passed. The Lemieux Act was passed forbidding the miners to strike. They did strike at that time and there was a conviction in Winnipeg. The conviction was being executed when it was discovered they were in such a hurry to pass the Lemieux Act that they didn’t put into the Act any machinery to enforce it. So the next strike that took place, the miners didn’t call it a strike, they called it a fishing expedition. They went out into the streams, any old stream at all, any old road at all and just dangled a bent pin and a piece of twine into the stream and they were on the fishing expedition. However, that wasn’t necessary because when it came before the judge, a judge admitted that he was not a man who should have tried it and he couldn’t find

 

anything in the Act designating who should try. So the Act was thrown out. There was one conviction and they were all turned loose, the whole business was turned loose. That was in, I guess that was in 1906 or 1907. I just forget it.

 

Interviewer [00:03:40] But by that time you were in Canada.

 

Jack Harrington [00:03:43] I was in Canada then, but I was attending the Convention of the United Mine Workers in the Tomlinson Hall in Indianapolis when this was brought up before the Miners’ Convention. At that time there had been one conviction under the Act. But the second attempt to get a conviction under the Act failed because of the lack of machinery to enforce the Act. So that was one of the early experiences I had with the union. Previous to that I had belonged to the Seamen’s Union in Britain, the British Seamen’s Union. I followed the sea for five or six years. I had been and what I had been— whenever I came in contact with it I had been connected with the socialist movement.

 

Interviewer [00:05:01] You were a socialist in Britain already?

 

Jack Harrington [00:05:03] I was a socialist when I left the old country and I had been a contributor and I had been a reader of Blatchford’s literature and Blatchford’s Clarion for a long time before that. But when I came to this country and I discovered some socialists who call themselves socialists, and I couldn’t understand them at all. But they were Marxists, and I was a Blatchfordite which was entirely different. Bernard Shaw and Robert Blatchford and Thompson and those early socialists. There was only Hyndman that was acquainted with Marx, and I had occasionally run across some of Hyndman, Harry Quelch, were belonging to the Social Democratic Party. So I had at that time I had heard of Marx, but I’d just heard of him. Later I found that quite a sprinkling of Germans had gotten into the United States and they had carried the Marxian theory to the States and then I got acquainted with it there.

 

Interviewer [00:06:26] In the States?

 

Jack Harrington [00:06:29] In the States. Charles H. Kerr was the—they published most of the early Marxian literature published in the United States. Well, Danny De Leon who organized the Socialist Workers’ Party, independent, what did they call themselves?

 

Interviewer [00:06:50] It was the Socialist Labor Party.

 

Jack Harrington [00:06:51] Socialist Labor Party. Well, he had been publishing one or two and been speaking here and there on Marx. Then I fell in with Marx. When I came up into British Columbia, there I found Marx was the prominent—and Marxism—was the prominent ideas of the socialists up here. There I became acquainted with them and from then on I found year by year that Marx had a greater hold on me and was most revealing of all the writers.

 

Interviewer [00:07:42] When you came to Canada, who did you meet here that was advocating Marx in the Interior?

 

Jack Harrington [00:07:51] Well, the first man I met was an old boy by the name of Harry Sibley.

 

Interviewer [00:07:57] How do you spell that?

 

Jack Harrington [00:07:59] S-I-B-L-E-Y I think. I don’t know but I think that was it. He pulled out a paper, a Western Clarion, and he started to read from the Western Clarion. He had an editorial and the editorial appealed to me. It was written by old Kingsley. However, it appealed to me, and I met him about—I took a subscription for the Clarion, and I met him about a month later and he handed me a Clarion. He says, “Here,” he says, “Read this.” So I read it and he said, “It’s pretty good, eh?” A couple of days after that I found him reading this article to somebody else. Now the peculiar thing about this, it’s worth mentioning, he had a fabulous memory and he couldn’t read, but if he had an editorial read to him a couple of times, he could read it right off as though he was  reading it by ear, or by sight, not by ear. So that was my first experience. Then my next—

 

Interviewer [00:09:19] Where was this?

 

Jack Harrington [00:09:22] Fernie.

 

Interviewer [00:09:24] Fernie? Is that where he lived, this fellow?

 

Jack Harrington [00:09:26] No, no. He came from the Coast. He used to—

 

Interviewer [00:09:28] Used to travel around?

 

Jack Harrington [00:09:30] He used to travel around. Yeah.

 

Interviewer [00:09:32] And what party? Was he with any party?

 

Jack Harrington [00:09:37] Yes. He was the Socialist Party of Canada. I might as well go on with Harry Sibley. He used to butt into everything, forest ranger fighting and arrest by the Northwest Mounted Police and stuff like that. Another thing he used to do, he used to go into the offices of the banks and into the government offices and sell Marxian literature. One feature about this selling Marxian literature was he sold a set of Kapital. Well three volumes had been published then. He sold a volume, the first volume of Kapital to Cross, the Attorney General of Alberta, and R.B. Bennett who was Premier of Canada, Bennett, was a member for Calgary in the local House. He went into Cross’ office one day and he saw this Kapital on Cross’ desk and he said, “Do you read that stuff?” And Cross said, “Yes,” he says, “And you’d better read it too if you want to succeed in politics, because this man started modern politics.” He tapped the book. Well this is what Harry Sibley told a story, and written very well, believe it. Well, he introduced me to the socialist movement and he introduced a lot more. Well, later on I saw a big flag out of a window and it was the Socialist Party of Canada. So I went up there and there I met the local socialists. From then on I was hooked to the socialist movement. Now, I said that time United Mine Workers had just come in to Fernie. They’d been in about two years. Previous to them the Western Federation of Miners, which was a hardrock miners’ union, they controlled there but they had very, very, very late influence. They were just trying to get in. The United Mine Workers of America, they were also trying to get in, into the coal mines and organize the coal mines. Well, they got into the coal mines and the rock miners, they became the western end of it up here. Greenwood, Grand Forks, Phoenix and these other places.

They had them up here. Then the United Mine Workers had all the coal mines from Fernie down. Fernie, Michel, Morrissey and Coleman, Frank. Right the way down and then up and all the bank head. There’s two little mines in the north. The United Mine Workers controlled them. That was District 18. There was a little friction between the two, but finally it settled down to the United Mine Workers making good because they had good coal seams there and the companies were making money and the miners were making money.

 

Where on the other hand, the metal mines were running out and the union was dying and the union finally did die. The United Mine Workers, they became quite powerful and articles appeared in various newspapers, some The New York Times and The Chicago Tribune and even some of the English papers had articles about this wonderful place in British Columbia. It dealt with an attempt to keep people out of Fernie or the Crowsnest Pass. The Crowsnest Pass was built in ’98, 1898. There was an attempt to keep people out because people were being attracted by the high wages. They were paying—

 

Interviewer [00:14:31] This was the union that was trying to keep them out?

 

Jack Harrington [00:14:33] Yeah.

 

Interviewer [00:14:33] So they wouldn’t have a surplus?

 

Jack Harrington [00:14:35] So they’d have no competition. They were receiving—a miner could earn as much as $5.00 A day and some were earning more. Frank, which was an upright seam, which was responsible for the disasterous fall of the Frank mine. It fell across and buried quite a piece of the little town of Frank and three of four farms. I don’t know how many farms. They were making big money there because it was an upright seam and all the miner had to do was mine his coal around, get it ready, put his shots in, go down and shoot. The coal all came down, where in a flat seam or an incline seam you had to pick it up with a big heavy shovel and load it into a car. He got away from the face of the—and his car got left behind and he progressed with the face. He left the car behind and sometime it took him twice to get his coal in the car. He had to move it from the face toward the car, and then from where he finally got it back into the car, which entailed two shovelings. But in an upright seam it fell down the chute and he was measured by yardage, how much coal he’d taken out. He wasn’t measured by weight. Well, the flat seam man, they were measured by weight. So that they were making good money. Their average would be about $4.00 a day, and the day wage was $3.00 a day. If  they took them out of the mine, out of his face, his place in the mine and put him on company work he got paid $3.00 a day. A labourer got $2.50 a day, which was fabulous wages in those days. They brought quite a few people from the east. They brought gangs of maybe 10, maybe 15 men, anybody that was going to build a building. He used to bring them out.

He’d get them for about $2.00 a day, pay their way out, and he’d make money. There, in the Crowsnest Pass, they paid fabulous wages of $3.00 a day. They get $3.00 an hour now. That was the conditions there. I’ve read quite a few articles here and there about these miners trying to keep other people off their berry patch. They called it a berry patch. It really was a remarkable advance they made there toward the conditions of labour elsewhere. Now, I went from New York, I went down to the Edison factory and they were moving out of New York, Edison, Thomas Edison. He was moving out of New York and he was moving out to New Orange. So I went out there to New Orange and it was just a country town. It’s a big town now. It is East Orange now. I went out there and they were just laying the brick for the Edison people and I got a job carrying the hod in this place. He then asked what you’re going to be paid in those days. If you said, “What are you paying,” the boss would say, “Aw, you don’t want a job. Get the hell out of here.” Just like that. So you took what he gave you, and I said to one of the boys carrying a hod up, I said “What do they pay here?” So he said, “Aw, a shilling an hour.” Well, a shilling an hour was 25 cents an hour you see, in my calculation. But they called two bits—12.5 cents—they called that a shilling in the States. So when they told me they were paying a shilling an hour, I thought to myself, “Here’s where I get my Rolls Royce sort of. Its economic equivalent.” But when I was paid off, I was paid off at 12.5 cents an hour, which killed the job a little bit. But that will give you an idea of the wages paid there. It was 12.5 cents an hour. Now that

 

was for carrying a hod. For labouring, common labourer, carrying the hod was a little bit hard, a common labourer.

 

Jack Harrington [00:20:11] We saw a flag with the Socialist Party of Canada on it, flying up there and I joined the Socialist Party of Canada. At that time, we had Hawthornthwaite was elected from Nanaimo and Parker Williams from Newcastle and Davidson from the Boundary country and Jack McInnis from the Boundary country. In Fernie—

 

Interviewer [00:20:45] When was this? Which dates were those, do you know?

 

Jack Harrington [00:20:54] 1905. In Fernie we almost elected a man and in Greenwood we almost elected a man. There was a possibility of another three or four being elected. Prince George, we elected a man. So the socialist movement was in pretty healthy condition at that time. But according to the people who call themselves socialist today, they don’t recognize it. They don’t know that there was a socialist movement out then.

Funny thing about it, that Hawthornthwaite and Parker Williams and McInnis and Davidson, whenever they spoke in the House they impressed the House and the House listened to them. But when these people that we have today speak in the House, the House deride them. They are looked upon as just so much nuisances. So we had a fairly well-established socialist movement there then and we had a very well-established trade union movement growing up and it grew up and finally became quite strong. It remained strong until we ran into the various depressions, 1908, 1913, 1920 and 1929. Whenever these depressions hit us, why it hit the labor movement too. However, I think I was talking about the New Orange. Yeah.

 

Interviewer [00:22:52] The mines up in—

 

Jack Harrington [00:22:54] Yes. I was drawing a comparison between the conditions in the east of 10 cents an hour, and the conditions in the west of $3 a day, and an eight-hour day generally too.

 

Interviewer [00:23:05] An eight-hour day?

 

Jack Harrington [00:23:12] An eight-hour day. They had been working 10, 11 and 12 hours, but it gradually settled down to an eight-hour day. One or two little incidents that might give you an idea how the movement was moving. There was a big, quite a few stories going around about what Mackenzie King had done as Minister of Labor. He appears there. Well, he was—Lemieux was the Minister of Labor and Mackenzie King was the Deputy Minister of Labor. So one story that was quite amusing, was funny, the miners all considered it funny was that Mackenzie King had settled the miners’ strike in 1908 by his forceful attitude towards the whole situation. He took them all in and, as a matter of fact, some lively young people, a newspaper man, they wrote it up in gorgeous terms, told all about the meeting, the miners in their hall and going to the miners’ offices and the rest of it. As a matter of fact, there was no Miners’ Hall and the miners officers were under the hat so the presidents and vice presidents, they had practically no place. They were just beginning to establish themselves, those miners. Mackenzie King gets quite, he gets quite bushed in this 50th anniversary, on account of what he had accomplished in this miners’ strike.

 

Interviewer [00:25:35] Organized company unions for Standard Oil, didn’t he?.

 

Jack Harrington [00:25:38] He did and before this, before he was nominated here he was at the Cripple Creek disaster.

 

Interviewer [00:25:47] Which was that?

 

[00:25:49] The was where the miners were on strike, the metal miners were on strike and they were in tents and the Pinkertons they set fire to the tents and there were 13 or 14 miners and their children, miners’ wives—

 

Interviewer [00:26:07] In the States?

 

Jack Harrington [00:26:08] In the States. Cripple Creek, Colorado. He was sent out there afterwards. He wasn’t there at that time. He was sent out there afterwards. The young Rockefeller had an idea that he had enough money anyway and no use gouging any more out of the people, or the miners, when the oil —

 

Interviewer [00:26:43] We should get back to the miners here, right?

 

Jack Harrington [00:26:52] Standard Oil was then operating mines as well and railroads as well.

 

Interviewer [00:26:58] In BC too?

 

Jack Harrington [00:26:59] Not in BC, but down in Colorado. So that’s where Mackenzie King headed in. Then afterwards when Lemieux died, Mackenzie King was made Minister of Labor and from being Minister of Labor, he became the Prime Minister. But the story that we’re told then, of his ability as a negotiator were largely in the minds of people who were writing it up after he became Prime Minister. But at the time when he was Deputy Minister of Labor, he came through the Crowsnest Pass with this that Cross I told you about reading Karl Marx’s Kapital. They came through together. Cross was fairly level headed. He was from Alberta. Attorney General for Alberta, I think. But then he came through with Mackenzie King and they settled that strike. From that time until the first depression hit us, which was about 1910, 1910, yeah. It hit the Crowsnest Pass later than it hit most of the other places. The Crowsnest Pass, they at least were paid money for working, but in most of the places, they were paid script. They got a piece of script saying that they had worked for so long and that they would be paid when the company got money to pay them. They in turn told the landlady, and the landlady either took it for its full value, or she charged them so much for holding it. In the meantime the IWW had stared up. The Industrial Workers of the World. They branched off from the Socialist Labor Party and they cut quite a weight in the woods. They mostly took over the woods conditions and once in a while they would get a toehold in a sawmill or something like that, but mostly they were in the woods.

 

Interviewer [00:30:07] What about the mines?

 

Jack Harrington [00:30:09] No, they didn’t get into the mines. They were what you call—

 

Interviewer [00:30:15] Did they try to organize when you were there in the mines?

 

Jack Harrington [00:30:18] They did try to organize, but they didn’t have, they didn’t have the toehold. They didn’t have the work. They didn’t have the money. The miners were already organized in the East, and they subsidized the Western miners. Consequently,

 

when the IWW started, they were a western outfit , they started in the west. Now, when they started, they didn’t have much to go on. A different setup all together then. The organizers were not elected, but they were selected and they wandered through the country and they organized here, there and everywhere that they could but mostly they for the most part, they weren’t paid any wages. The position of the organizers of the working- class movements at that time was such that you would very often find them on a freight train riding the rods. Sometimes they’d stray up and run into one or two of the boys that they knew and you would introduce them to some of the other boys and they’d give him a quarter or something like to push him on his way, but very rarely paid his fare. Now, the people who are organized officials of the trade union movement now are fairly wealthy,

$18,000 a year for a Member of Parliament is an exaggerated wage, but normally $12,000,

$10,000 is the average wage of an official of a union today. In those days they had no wage.

 

Interviewer [00:32:36] And do you remember meeting any of the organizers of the IWW?

 

Jack Harrington [00:32:46] Oh, yes I met them in Spokane and down through there. I used to debate with them pointing out the basic philosophy that by joining an industrial and political union and combining the two, we would be able to lay seeds to the fortress of capitalism and reduce the money barons to toil for us instead of us toiling for them. They were quite eloquent and pulled their weight around quite a lot. Occasionally—

 

Interviewer [00:33:34] What about in BC though, did you meet any of them there?

 

Jack Harrington [00:33:37] In BC, well they came up here mostly. On one or two occasions I escorted them around and introduced them to the gang. Got a meeting for them. Very often we met on the street. We had a meeting on the street. Very often we couldn’t get a hall that would accommodate us. Very often there was no hall anyway, so we used to speak on the street and they got to be quite a nuisance. So much of a nuisance that the businessmen and small manufacturers and middlemen organized what they call the Citizens’ League. This Citizens’ League was successful for a little while. In Idaho and Colorado, they tried to railroad Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone of the Miners’ Union, of the Metal Miners’ Union. By the time I happened to get around, very often I’d go into some place where, some store or restaurant or somewhere where I had advance notice that, “Here you’d get pretty good hearing.” Probably this fellow would tell me just exactly how things lay and probably gave me in the direction of ease. I would say, “How about giving us a little support? How about taking a subscription to the Western Clarion?” or something like this and suggest him signing his name. “No!” in fury. “No, I won’t sign anything! The last thing I signed was one of those Simpson’s Alliance businesses and I haven’t done any good since.” So that give you an idea of the power of the working-class. It was regular rising, getting stronger, but you have no idea of how strenuous and strong the opposition was at that time. But—

 

Interviewer [00:36:26] This was the IWW?

 

Jack Harrington [00:36:28] The IWW.

 

Interviewer [00:36:30] That used to take part in political action?

 

Jack Harrington [00:36:31] Yeah.

 

Interviewer [00:36:32] That right?

 

Jack Harrington [00:36:32] The IWW

 

Interviewer [00:36:35] Do you remember any of the names of their organizers in BC?

 

Jack Harrington [00:36:39] No, we never really had. There are probably some in there, in Bennett’s little book, probably some of their names there, but mostly they came from the other side of the line.

 

Interviewer [00:36:59] But they never had much success here.

 

Jack Harrington [00:37:02] Well, they did. They organized the woods.

 

Interviewer [00:37:05] Yeah, I know. But not in the mining.

 

Jack Harrington [00:37:09] Not the mines. They didn’t organize the mines, but they did organize the woods. In those days you used to carry a blanket, what they called a bindlestiff, and this blanket was generally just a roll-up business and they bend over and put over their shoulder. But they decided, at one time, they decided that they wouldn’t carry any more blankets. So they tried to introduce that into their wage that blankets would be found for them. Clean blankets. But the bosses they bucked that, that was giving away too much. They bucked that. Finally, the IWW, they embarked on a ‘burn your blankets’ campaign. All over the place there was ‘burn your blankets’ and they burned their blankets. The boss found that he had a bunch of sleepy men on his hands. They had no blankets, so he had to furnish them with blankets. That was the beginning of a strong movement in the woods, the victory they won there.

 

Interviewer [00:38:37] When was that?

 

Jack Harrington [00:38:38] That had been 1907 and 1908, I think.

 

Interviewer [00:38:42] And this was successful?

 

Jack Harrington [00:38:44] And it was successful and they got decent living conditions. Some of the conditions under which they lived, you’d go into the sleeping room and on the big pot-bellied stove, that was the heating apparatus they had then. All around would be their clothes that they put in the rainy weather. They were really poor conditions that the woodsmen worked under in those days. However, the IWW, they made a big difference in the layout.

 

Interviewer [00:39:36] In the woods?

 

Jack Harrington [00:39:37] In the woods. They finally, they gave out. But they had meetings down on Carrall Street there and they used to sing songs and talk about the citadels of capitalism and stuff like that. For a long time, but they finally, they were displaced by the woodsmen as they are today, organized today. The IWW they ran into trouble here and there and everywhere. As a matter of fact, there was almost a continuous struggle between the organized workers and the organized bosses. The organized bosses, they used to publish a magazine called ‘The Lion’s Paw’. They had the philosophy of the good old American working man he should put on his banner, his philosophy, that ‘Might is Right’. Used to refer to the workers as ‘copper-riveted, blue overall workers’ and stuff like this. On the other hand, the IWW and the workers generally, they published their magazine

 

and they called it ‘The Wooden Shoe’. There’s the philosophy of both parties. One was Wooden Shoe was sabotage and the other was the Lion’s Paw might is right. See? They engaged in quite—they got to become quite good writers. Manufacturing trenchant sentences to get their point over on the part of the working-class. For instance, the editorials in The Wooden Shoe, they were really remarkable, and mostly they were written by men who never had any formal knowledge of writing. They just wrote as it came to them, and it came to them in forceful sentences and they were quite—

 

Interviewer [00:42:48] This was a BC magazine? The Wooden Shoe?

 

Jack Harrington [00:42:56] No, it was published in Chicago. The Wooden Shoe was published in Chicago I think. Maybe in San Francisco, but The Lion’s Paw was published in Chicago. Ragnar Redbeard was the editor of it. There was no hesitation about his position, that is, that these ‘copper-rivetted, overall-clad’ breakers of the law had to be abolished. Then there was another particularly aggressive Miners’ Union, or a paper. It was a paper, ‘The Appeal to Reason’. You’ve heard of that of course. The Appeal to Reason sold, occasionally they sold a million copies. I believe they even sold more than a million copies a month, a week, and Eugene B. Debs was editor of it for a while. Then Warren was another editor. Occasionally we used to get The Appeal to Reason distributed around the various meetings of local unions. One or two of the boys would subscribe to a bundle and they put these around the various places.

 

Interviewer [00:45:01] Would it be railway guys that come bring it around?

 

Jack Harrington [00:45:07] No, they just distributed it around.

 

Interviewer [00:45:10] The socialists or the railway workers, or what was—?

 

Jack Harrington [00:45:10] Well anywhere. Anybody that had a desire to see the movement move ahead, they would apply for a bun—they would pay for a bundle of five or maybe six, maybe a dozen, and they would get a rate and they would distribute this around. So occasionally the people who were opposed to the movement, they would come in and they would tear The Appeal to Reasons up and there promptly be a fight. Quite tough fight on several occasions to my knowledge. I remember one. This might be interesting. I remember one meeting we were at and one fellow got up and he protested against the use of our time, “By this ‘rag, they call The Appeal to Reason. It should be the Appeal to Treason.” He said, “On one page there was a base to a young girl how to snuff a kid. And on the next page would be an advertisement for somebody that could very well take care of a young fella’s clap.” He says, “It’s probably the time we had the sense to have this thing abolished and no more truck with it.” Then there’d be somebody jump up on the other side and insert the movement towards it and the forces would immediately appear. They would really fight among the working-class, you know. One portion of the—

 

Interviewer [00:47:28] Physical fight?

 

Jack Harrington [00:47:29] A physical fight. This the Catholic.

 

Interviewer [00:47:34] Was this at a union meeting?

 

Jack Harrington [00:47:34] At a union meeting.

 

Interviewer [00:47:36] Which union? Do you remember which union this was?

 

Jack Harrington [00:47:39] Well, I could tell you, one time we had in—

 

Interviewer [00:47:45] Was this in—you just told me—was this at a miners’ meeting?

 

Jack Harrington [00:47:49] Yeah.

 

Interviewer [00:47:53] Do you remember just when this was? Roughly?

 

Jack Harrington [00:47:59] About 1906 or 1907 I guess.

 

Interviewer [00:48:01] Can you say something about Rossland?

 

Jack Harrington [00:48:05] Well, I remember in Rossland there was a real scrap, they broke chairs and everything else, in the Rossland meeting. In another one at Phoenix. Up in Phoenix just before Phoenix went broke, went bust. Phoenix in those days was [unclear] Street was straight up and every year like this, floods everywhere in BC would wash the roads out of Phoenix. Phoenix would be built up. The road be built up, and the railroad would be built up they used to nail a 2×6 on one side of the mountain and then pull the topside down against the 2×6 and that was the road. Generally, it was pretty tough town.

When it finally petered out, when the Glory Hole operations were ended and the town was finished. Phoenix was finished. There’s a little activity there now. There’s one or two people still there, but in the early days, there were quite a lot of men there. They made, they used to get their wages of about $3 a day. They were all pretty well advanced in attempting to better the conditions and they paid. The people who now enjoy $20 a day and so forth, have got a good deal to be regard these old fellows as contributing to their comfort and their unity today. But in those days, The Appeal to  Reason, it did a lot of work. It was in The Appeal to Reason that Eugene B. Debs appealed to the workers everywhere in his editorial ‘Arouse Ye Slaves’. He published an editorial ‘Arouse Ye Slaves’. That was when they seized Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone in the headquarters and tried to railroad them. Tried to get people around there to hang them right away without a trial. But it came to a trial and they got off. Moyer was the secretary and Haywood was the president and Pettibone was the vice president, or somewhere around there anyway. But at any rate Bill Haywood was the president. He went to Russia after this revolution and they made a big song and dance about him.

 

Interviewer [00:51:28] This had a pretty big impact in BC? The paper was fairly widely read in the mines?

 

Jack Harrington [00:51:34] Appeal to Reason? Yes. Yes.

 

Interviewer [00:51:37] Did you ever meet Debs?

 

Jack Harrington [00:51:40] Yeah, I met Debs. I was in a convention with Debs, and I was in a convention with Bill Haywood.

 

Interviewer [00:51:47] Which conventions were those?

 

Jack Harrington [00:51:49] United Mine Workers.

 

Interviewer [00:51:55] That was what? That the international convention?

 

Jack Harrington [00:51:59] International convention.

 

Interviewer [00:52:00] Did you ever meet them coming up to BC? I think Debs was in Vancouver Trades and Labor Council a couple of times.

 

Jack Harrington [00:52:10] Well, he started the railroad union. He tried to start a union among the railroad workers, combining the whole industry. This met the objection of the well-paid engineers and the conductors and consequently was a failure. As I remember Bill Haywood putting it he says, “The trouble with the railroad is that you can’t organize them on account of having a scabby link between the men who work and the men who don’t work.” That is the scabby link was the conductors and the railroad engineers. Amazed they never did strike in those days. They never struck because whatever they asked for the bosses gave them conditions that they refused the general workers.

 

Interviewer [00:53:33] Did you meet Debs at all? Did Debs ever come to the Interior?

 

Jack Harrington [00:53:39] No, I never met Debs. I met Debs down in Chicago. I met him there. He was in the Western Socialist’s office one day, and I called in there on my way to Indianapolis, and A.M. Simons, who was the editor of the Western Socialist then, introduced me to him. Well, he just said, “This is one of the Canadian boys and this is Debs.” That’s about all. There were about three of us, I think three or four of us. I remember A.M. Simons saying, “They’re from Canada. You were up there a few years ago and and they’re all red.” Stuff like that. Shortly after that, the movement kind of lost out down there to the IWW.

 

Interviewer [00:54:52] You figure that’s what undercut—?

 

Jack Harrington [00:54:57] That undercut it quite a bit because there was, it appealed to them. Bill Haywood, he was doubtful, in fact he had a decided leaning towards the IWW even as the president of the Mine Workers. But the IWW philosophy kind of—

 

Interviewer [00:55:35] Didn’t work out?

 

Jack Harrington [00:55:41] Workers took to it. They had—

 

Interviewer [00:55:46] What about in BC? It never really caught on widely in British Columbia, did it?

 

Jack Harrington [00:55:53] We had down on Cordova Street they had a hall, an IWW hall. For a long time, they maintained a fairly strong organization in the woods, but never strong enough to resist the pressure of the other unions coming in. They were never strong enough to resist that pressure and finally it was pushed out and the woods people, they joined the present organization which took in the middles too. The IWW didn’t take in the middles in, not very much.

 

Interviewer [00:56:43] Would you say that if the IWW had been stronger in BC, if they had organized the mines and everything and so on, would it have weakened the socialist movement?

 

Jack Harrington [00:57:03] Well, yes. The socialist philosophy was, “Don’t strike. Strike at the ballot box. Stay on the job and vote.” But the IWW says, “Yes, strike at the ballot box with an axe.” That was the difference in the two philosophies. The socialists pointed out

 

the folly of the strike and the IWW pointed out the folly of voting unless you had the power to establish the vote. You had to have—the IWW claimed that the socialists had only one wing to their propaganda, but they had two wings. The two wings was the union and the political arm. But the socialists say they were just the union. The proposition, the difference between the socialists and the IWW are the other members of the working-class. The socialists with the philosophy of Marx, it wasn’t a question of wider gutters or deeper gutters such as they charged and such as sometimes was assumed. It was a question of an entire philosophy. That philosophy is embedded in the preface to one of Marx’s early works, ‘Critique of—’

 

Interviewer [00:59:10] Capitalist Economy?

 

Jack Harrington [00:59:10] ‘Political Economy’ which lays down the principle that in making their livelihood of this world, mankind is compelled to have certain rules and regulations and these rules and regulations are the result of this association. With each change in the method of producing their livelihood, then mankind changes with them, and that it is this, the fact that he operates a certain class of material that he gets from a certain portion of the earth. This determines his viewpoint entirely. That was the proposition of the Socialist Party of Canada and the Marxian socialists generally. That’s all been forgotten now. Now it’s a matter of how wide the gutter should be or how narrow they should be or how deep they should be and how shallow they should be.

 

Interviewer [01:00:31] Did the socialists—you were active in the socialists I gather quite early in the Interior when you were a miner? Did the socialists resist the IWW? Did you oppose them?

 

Jack Harrington [01:00:51] Yeah.

 

Interviewer [01:00:53] Now, you were also a unionist weren’t you?

 

Jack Harrington [01:00:55] Yeah.

 

Interviewer [01:00:56] Did you have any positions then, in the union?

 

Jack Harrington [01:00:59] No. I had a few minor positions like finance, Chairman of the Finance Committee or something like that. I had a few minor— but, I think aside from Wallis Lefaux, I think I ran as a socialist oftener than anybody else in Canada.

 

Interviewer [01:01:31] You were a candidate? Jack Harrington [01:01:32] A candidate in Fernie. Interviewer [01:01:36] When did you run in Fernie?

Jack Harrington [01:01:44] 1908, 1907 and 1908, 1911, and then I ran in McLeod and the Dominion. I ran in McLeod in 1906. I was a candidate for the Socialist Party for quite a while and every once in a while. We almost carried Fernie one time. In fact, one time we did carry it in the Dominion election but it happened to be—that is the provincial riding voted in the Dominion election, but was swamped by the other provincial ridings like when it came out in Cranbrook and places like that, the Fernie riding was swamped. Had it been a provincial election we would be elected a man then.

 

Interviewer [01:02:57] When was this—in 1906?

 

Jack Harrington [01:03:00] 1907. Bill Davidson, he ran. He was the member, provincial member for Sandon. We carried Fernie and Sandon, but he was defeated in Nelson and Cranbrook. But on a provincial level we would have had Sandon and Fernie. I think that’s how it lined up but I wasn’t running then. After, Tommy Uphill, he finally ran and he sat for the longest time in the local House here.

 

Interviewer [01:03:59] He took it in 1920 didn’t he? Did he take it before then?

 

Jack Harrington [01:04:04] No, he was elected about then.

 

Interviewer [01:04:09] Yeah, there was a 1920 election, and he and Sam Guthrie and—

 

Jack Harrington [01:04:12] Sam Guthrie was over here.

 

Interviewer [01:04:17] Harry Neelands.

 

Jack Harrington [01:04:24] Neelands was in Vancouver here.

 

Interviewer [01:04:25] So that was Independent Labor Party?

 

Jack Harrington [01:04:28] Yeah, that was Independent Labor Party. Tom Uphill ran before that as a Conservative.

 

Interviewer [01:04:37] He did?

 

Jack Harrington [01:04:37] Oh yeah, he ran as Conservative. Then, to beat the Socialist Party, the Liberals and Conservatives elected Tom Uphill as the Labor man and he was there as an Independent Labor man for a long time, oh, I think all the time he was elected. He was elected by the Conservatives. The Conservatives never ran a man against him.

 

Interviewer [01:05:04] And that’s why they ran him, to keep the Socialist Party out? Is that—

 

Jack Harrington [01:05:10] They ran him—

 

Interviewer [01:05:11] Did you run a candidate against him?

 

Jack Harrington [01:05:14] No, I never ran against Tommy Uphill.

 

Interviewer [01:05:18] But you were sort of outmaneuvered there? You were outmaneuvered then, more or less. Is that right?

 

Jack Harrington [01:05:26] Well, the Socialist Party was dead then. They were practically dead then. The Independent Labor Party had taken their place.

 

Interviewer [01:05:38] Were you a member then of the Independent Labor Party?

 

Jack Harrington [01:05:40] No, I wouldn’t join them.

 

Interviewer [01:05:46] Let’s go back to the union. What was the condition of the United Mine Workers? Were they in pretty healthy shape?

 

Jack Harrington [01:06:01] No, not after 1929.

 

Interviewer [01:06:05] No, what I mean, when you first in 1904, when you first came, they were pretty good shape?

 

Jack Harrington [01:06:09] They were in good shape. They had a membership probably in Fernie, they had a membership of maybe 3,000 and in Michel they had a membership of probably 3,000. They had good wages and good conditions. They had one strike, that was Lemieux strike.

 

Interviewer [01:06:32] What? What strike?

 

Jack Harrington [01:06:37] The Lemieux strike, and they beat that.

 

Interviewer [01:06:38] They won? Can you tell us anything about that one, that strike? What it was about?

 

Jack Harrington [01:06:45] Well, that was on the question of wages and conditions. There’s two ways. Fernie and Coal Creek—there are no mines in Fernie they’re up at Coal Creek, six miles up the mountain—but they used to have, they loaded coal, pulled the empty wagon up and the car. When they had the car loaded the undercash sprang a piece of timber up against the wheel. When it was loaded they knocked that out and that would run down and bring another car up. Well, for moving this what they called the maginty, from moving that up every time they had to get closer to the coal. Used to pay them $1.

But in the main winning section of the mines they had a big maginty, what they called a bullwheel and they used to pay them $3 for moving that, moving it up closer to the face. That was one of the questions was the price. The company wanted to pay all these maginty moves, what they call them maginty moves, it’s just a wheel with a rope around it, and a brake on it. You knock your pin out and let the loaded car pull the empty up. It was an easy matter to put a pole in for the small maginty. You just put a post up and you put it at the top and drove your wedges in at the bottom against it like this and by the weight of the coal came down you took your pole out. The weight of the coal come down. It descended this maginty pole and consequently there wasn’t much to it. But with the big maginty, they used to carry three, sometimes three loads would pull up three empties. You had to have a bigger pole to take up the first of the weight until the weight settled down. All around it, you had to have a bigger pole and that took longer to do it. It used to take half a day for a couple of men to fix one of these poles to move the big maginty. So that was one of the reasons for the strike. The union, the coal companies wanted to pay $1 for the move, each maginty. I remember one miner saying, he was interviewed by a bunch of reporters that came down from Vancouver, they wanted to know what was the difference. He was explaining them. “Well,” he says, “We have a wee maginty,” he began. He was a Scotsman. “And then we have a bloody big maginty. And for the wee maginty they pay us

$1. And for the big maginty they pay us $3, and they want to give us $1 for each maginty.” That was one of the differences.

 

Interviewer [01:10:48] What was the union position?

 

Jack Harrington [01:10:51] The union position was they must get $3 for the big maginty and they paid them $1 for the small maginty. That was one of the conditions. And another condition—

 

Interviewer [01:11:00] Company was $1 for any of them?

 

Jack Harrington [01:11:03] Company was $1 for any of them. Then there was brushing, taking the top down and taking the bottom up. That was a matter of yardage. They used to pay yardage for that. For the coal itself, they would pay by the ton and for moving a maginty and for timbering and for brushing the top down they got paid yardage for these and then you get paid $1 for moving a maginty and $1 for setting a boom or setting a slingler. That was what the strike was over, and the miners won that strike hands down of course.

 

Interviewer [01:11:54] How long did the strike last?

 

Jack Harrington [01:12:00] Oh, it only lasted about a couple of months.

 

Interviewer [01:12:04] What year was this? Do you remember?

 

Jack Harrington [01:12:10] In 1907 I think.

 

Interviewer [01:12:17] You were off from when to when, roughly?

 

Jack Harrington [01:12:19] Oh, I couldn’t say, but they won that strike. That was what they called the “Lemieux Strike”. They had passed the Lemieux Act forbidding the miners to strike in order to prevent this strike which actually was conducted by the miners, and they won that strike. They had, as I said before, they tried to enforce it and they couldn’t.

 

Interviewer [01:13:00] Was this the one they went out fishing, or—?

 

Jack Harrington [01:13:01] Yeah.

 

Interviewer [01:13:02] That’s what they called the fishing—

 

Jack Harrington [01:13:03] The new Act was read three times in one day, and passed. They were in such a hurry that they forgot to put in the machinery to operate it. That helped them on their way, but by 1928 and 1929, they had commenced to fire boilers with oil. That was the end of the coal mines. Actually, they were kind of foolish. They had a fairly strong union and they had fairly good conditions. But, they came out on strike in several places and the bosses then decided that it would be cheaper for them to use to two pipes. There was a 30-inch pipe, and a 20-inch pipe had been put in across the United States. In preparation for a general assault on Europe, Germany at that time was practically in control of Europe up ’til 1918. They put this pipe, these two pipes in the 30- inch I think and the 24-inch. 24-inch and the 30-inch. But they never used them. It cost them, I don’t know, many millions, but it’s easily ascertainable how many million it cost them to put this 24 and this 30-inch pipe in. Now, when the coal miners decided to strike, and they struck, they had a general strike and they won the strike.

 

Interviewer [01:15:51] When was this?

 

Jack Harrington [01:15:53] It had to be about 1920 after the First World War. Well then, it gradually dawned on the manufacturers, particularly the big steel companies who were interested in coal mines. It eventually dawned on them that, ‘Here was two conveniences that had never been used but had been installed’, and that if they were used, they could bring the oil from the Texas oil wells and the Californian oil wells and they could use it in the East. So gradually the oil was shipped all across the continent and it was cleaner, more efficient and cheaper than they could manufacture get out of the coal mine for the manufacturers. Gradually oil seeped all through the country from St. Louis back east.

These pipelines were carrying oil and they were so profitable that they put a bigger pipeline designed particularly to carry oil, you see. That broke the Miners’ Union who were getting extraordinary wages then and conditions. They got—

 

Interviewer [01:17:27] What were the wages and conditions, around 1920s?

 

Jack Harrington [01:17:48] They’d run to, I don’t know. Of course I wasn’t with them then. It run to about $12 or $15 a day and they got a pension. The railroads were the first to get a pension. It was a very meager pension. Then John L Lewis, he forced this pension on the coal mines. He not only forced the pension on the coal mine, but he forced a lot of other conditions on the coal mine. For instance, you used to get an eight-hour day, but it was eight hours work. Then they got eight hours bank-to-bank after you got your eyesight. Going into a mine, you have to sit down and get your eyesight. So you go into a mine right from the daylight, you’re blind and you have to wait until your eyes are accustomed to the darkness before you can travel. So after you got your eyesight you went on. But that all had to be done on your own time. Then they got the bank-to-bank. You had to be able to walk in everything from the time you sat down and walked into the mine, that was your business. Bank-to-bank, eight-hour day. Then they got light-to-light. From the time you got your lamp, your miners’ lamp, until you returned it. Sometimes it would be an hour getting your lamp and returning it. Half an hour to get it and half an hour to return it. Your lamp had to be tested. You took your lamp, you took it up to the fire boss, and he tested it, see if it was safe. They got that light-to-light which cut down another hour on your time. Then finally, they got from gate-to-gate, that after you passed through the gate you were on wages. See? So gradually they made it difficult to operate the mines in competition against coal. With coal you, ‘er with oil. With oil you had a tank and they came along and they put a little pipe down and they pumped the oil out of the oil wagon into your cellar, into your tank and that’s all there was to it. With coal they had to carry it in on their shoulder and a lot of inconveniences. Oil got to be not only convenient to the householder, but it got to be convenient, very convenient, to the manufacturer. The result was that coal was regularly pushed out of business. Then came the revolution. The factor of mining coal and all that went with it changed at once when oil was applied. So we find the Marxian principle that enters into it now. We find that mankind now is dependent on oil and it makes a big difference in his association with his fellow man to use oil. Then we have another factor, which helped it along, was the dawn of the internal combustion engine which also gave the pipelines a tremendous urge to get them down onto selling the gasoline and stuff like that, oil and different things.

 

SP FC 3803 U54 N_5-7-trk2 Jack Harrington.mp3 Recorded c. 1964

Transcribed by Donna Sacuta, 2025

 

Jack Harrington [00:00:00] Labour movement, although on one or two occasions, there was occasionally [unclear]. There was a strike in the coal mines in the early days, 1903 and 1904, in the Crowsnest Pass. They called the Mounted Police in then. The Western Federation of Miners they conducted their strikes. They had a policy and they used to carry that policy out in their strikes and it got them into trouble in various places and finally they went out of business. In the Crowsnest Pass they had a strike there and they seized the train in the Crowsnest Pass yards and they loaded all the scabs they could find in the train and they took the train to Michel, a matter of about 21 miles.

 

Jack Harrington [00:01:11] They went down to the railroad office and got the dispatch to clear the line for them and they took the train to Michel and by the time they walked back to Fernie again, where the train the railroad these scabs been brought by, was the detachment of the Mounted Police. That’s about the first evidence I had personally of any interference on the part of the Northwest Mounted.

 

Jack Harrington [00:01:46] But as I was saying, they were recruited largely from the elder constabulary of the old country. Quite a few sergeants and people like that, they came out here and they got jobs with the Northwest Mounted. They were paid probably, maybe, I think the sergeants got $35 or $40 dollars a month, but the Mounted Policemen got $30 a month. Now, when they were in London, Edinburgh, Blackpool or Liverpool or any of the big places, part of their duty was to go to a socialist meeting, because there had been trouble there. There was trouble there during the Chartist revolt. At that time, the police generally, one part of their duty was to attend a socialist meeting and see, if any, what was going on, and report to headquarters there. So that probably a dozen out of, maybe, I’d say about 10 percent of these people that went to these socialist meetings got to be socialists. Probably 10 percent of those who got to be socialists got to be sent over here because I met at least quite a few Northwest Mounted Police who were socialists.

 

Jack Harrington [00:03:22] Of course, there’s nothing to go by because at that particular time the working-class were in a [unclear]. There was the Taff Vale decision and one or two other decisions that had gone against them, and the Labour Party started up from Keir Hardie and went right through until they were sufficiently powerful to fit in the government. So the fact that a few of these had been in the constabulary and had drifted over and joined the South African, the Australian, and New Zealand or the Canadian constabulary, it wasn’t at all remarkable, because generally that was the attitude of the working-class at that time. It was generally an attitude of change. A change has taken place, by the way.

 

Jack Harrington [00:04:19] When I went to sea first, we used to get four pound 10 a month. I see the seamen here, they get $330 a month, and they’re asking for $40 a month of a raise, which was double what we got to start with. They’re getting $40 dollars a month on a raise. At least that’s what they’re asking. Well, that shows the attitude, the general attitude, between the working-class then and the working-class now, they’re much better off. Extremely much better off than we were in the beginning of the century. It was a scramble all the time, whatever you got, was a gain. For instance, the streetcar men got a raise of one cent an hour. You can imagine that when they accepted a raise of one cent an hour, which any worker would scorn now, 19 cents an hour, 20 cents an hour, 40 cents an hour, they’d scorn that, wouldn’t have it at all. But we were glad at that time to accept a

 

raise of one cent an hour. So you can see the enormous cleavage between those days and these days.

 

Interviewer [00:05:58] You said something about the Crowsnest, the Crowsnest Pass strikes last time, but checking back, it is one of the big disputes in the history of the labour movement in the province, isn’t it? It was a big strike up there. Now this may be, was this a later one?

 

Jack Harrington [00:06:21] Well, there was 1904, I think, was a big strike, but 1906 or 1907, I think, was probably what you refer to. It was a big strike then over two things. The moving of the maginty and the systematic timbering. Now, the coal companies wanted the miner to work his place until he was told to timber it by the fireman. But the miners refused. They demanded systematic timbering, to timber every 18 inches. That was one of the clauses. They must timber every 18 inches and the payment for the maginty moving, the maginty. Inclined coal, the maginty was a wheel that pulled, the loaded car pulled the empty up. So the miners wanted to have that under their direct control, not under the control of the fire boss. The fire boss could interfere either in height or in depth or in gas, and he could check on the condition of the timbering and various things like that. But he couldn’t order a timber put in a certain place outside of the systematic timbering. If he saw a place that was dangerous and he could order a certain kind of timber to be put in there to protect that place, but the miner didn’t have to do it.

 

Jack Harrington [00:08:28] The miner demanded the right to run his own place. He was a miner, a qualified miner, had a miner certificate and was competent to run his place. I’ll tell you that the fire boss was the boss. He knew gases and various other things, which the miner knew also, but wasn’t supposed to know. That is, he didn’t have to know to qualify as a miner. Well, that would probably be the strike you refer to. The first strike was over recognition of the union. The company refused to recognize the Western Federation of Miners, and the United Mine Workers took over. There was a strike on that occasion, but it didn’t last long. Well, that was the strike where they took the scabs out of town. It was a railroad train, and Mounted Police were in town when they got back. Before they took them out of town, they lined them all up and they made them all kneel down.

 

Jack Harrington [00:09:48] That was the Western Federation of Miners. Made them all kneel down and repeat an oath after the organizer of the strike, “That we hereby inform all comers that we shall in no particular divulge the names of those who now appear before us,” and a whole bunch of stuff like that. Quite spectacular. The miners in those days had no family there. They were mostly footloose, they could go back to the old country to their family. Or, they didn’t have a family, they were mostly footloose. They were accustomed to being chased all over the place, it was nothing to them just to pack their old telescope suitcase, what few goods they had, packed them in the old telescope suitcase, or roll them in a blanket and off to the next town. That’s nothing to them, different now. They have to take a house with them, and a family with them, and an automobile with them, and all that goes with that. Television and radio and a whole bunch of stuff. They have accumulated considerable property now.

 

Jack Harrington [00:11:23] But in those days, they didn’t have any property, and they were a dangerous bunch of men to deal with. I remember one instance of when they had a big explosion there. They were talking a lot in the various places, and one man happened to be calling in and heard the news, and he happened to say, he says, “Been an explosion at the mine?” “Yeah.” “Anybody killed?” “Oh, about 230.” And he happened say, so the story goes, I don’t know whether there’s any truth in it, I didn’t hear it, but I can’t imagine

 

the man being daft enough to say it, “Is that all?” Now, he could have said that in two respects, he could have said that indifferent to the number that was killed, or could have said that owing to the fact that that number of people killed in that explosion impressed on his emotions the reaction to which words failed to give properly expression. But they took and keelhauled him. They had a bridge across the West Fernie and they took him, tied a rope around him, and threw him over the bridge and pulled him through the water, back and forth, the same as you’re supposed to do in a boat, you know.

 

Interviewer [00:13:02] That’s the miners that keelhauled him?

 

Jack Harrington [00:13:04] The miners keelhauled him. Now, I wouldn’t, I didn’t see it done. But the story is that it was done. Then, in the magistrate’s office, they got a group of—the table was straight. They got a group and the magistrate, some judge, bound them over for so much to keep the peace or something. They raided the Majesty’s house that night and opened the safe and took all these documents out and burned them in the stove and the fellows that were supposed to keep the peace, they got out of town and they couldn’t find them, so that blew over. Well, that’s the kind of men they were then, kind of lawless.

 

Jack Harrington [00:14:16] They were lawless because they had nothing to fear from the law. They didn’t care. They could be those estates or they could be somewhere else. It would take too much trouble to catch them and they could convict them of any offence. It was also a difficult matter, so they pretty well let them go. In those days, they had nothing else to do but talk over their grievances. They had very little else to do to have their grievances attended to them. Mostly. Those strikes were, didn’t seem to have any great bearing on their condition of life, and they were quite content with what they got. What they got was just enough to get along on, but still it was enough to save a little on and buy one or two goods around them and invest in a corner lot or something like that. There was always an escape valve somewhere along the line. It wasn’t exactly condemned to stay in that state of life to which God had called it. There was an escape, and a lot of them did escape.

 

Interviewer [00:16:18] Were you in on this strike? In this protest strike?

 

Jack Harrington [00:16:24] Not the first strike, I was in on the second strike, but at the time I was in on it, I had a homestead. Instead of staying with the strike, I went out to do my homesteading duties. So I missed quite a bit of the fun. After a while I was doing my homesteading, I happened on one or two other homesteaders who were doing the same thing. They all regretted that they hadn’t been there to help in the strike, but the regret was there. However, the homesteading duties came first, and they went homesteading. I didn’t prove up on my homestead, but I had a homestead. There was a country to fill up and that’s one of the ways they had of filling it.

 

Jack Harrington [00:17:40] They had a saying that, ‘The government bet you $10 or the government bet you 160 acres against $10 that you couldn’t stay there for three years.’ That was the guide that went around. That’s right. But they’re all right for socialism.

 

Jack Harrington [00:18:09] I ran in the McLeod riding, 1906, I think. And in the southern end, where the mines were, I could have been elected. And in northern end, where the mines were, I could’ve been elected there. I got a considerable healthy vote throughout the rest of the country, but not enough to overcome the farmers who had come in from elsewhere and the tradespeople who had come in expecting to make a bunch of money. I

 

had a fairly respectable vote, about 600 or 700 out of 3,000 or 4,000. In those days. I met a group of people there, very very revealing. I met half a dozen, at least half a dozen old Civil War veterans had fought in 1860-1865, and they were all concerned about indifference. I remember one old fella saying, “In those days we fought to free the slaves that were actually slaves. But in these days, you are fighting to free slaves who are in our opinion are not slaves, they’re not purchased slaves. But we used to always refer to them as fellow slaves.” ‘Company chairmen and fellow slaves’ or something like that, you see.

 

Jack Harrington [00:20:23] Now these old fellows who fought in the Civil War, they remarked that when they came here to stock that It was peculiar that we should refer to them like that. It was also peculiar that the first man that called these modern workers a slave was Robbie Burns. He said, “If I am designed yon lordling’s slave, by nature’s laws designed, why was an independent wish implanted in my mind?” That’s the first time you see these people, in that particular sense. The first time you see these people referred to as slaves. To continue that comment, suggestion, that’s a good suggestion too, and often started following it out.

 

Jack Harrington [00:21:38] Robert Owen, who started the utopian, what they call “the utopian”, he married a girl from that particular region called Dale, Georgina Dale I think. His son, Robert Dale, of course, you probably remember him. He wrote a book on his father. Well, this girl that Robert Owen married was the chum of — I heard the neighbour singing it first song in the morning. “I’ve seen the dew drops clinging to the [unclear] just newly born [unclear], and another of Burns’ poems. This girl that Robert Owen married was their chum, I think. Robert Burns twice, is placed in history at the home of this Dale, the father of this girl. So it’s quite possible that Robert Owen, who came to Glasgow, by the way, there’s one or two stories of Robert Owen that’s rather funny, even in history you’ll find it, that he came to this, the hills of Scotland, way up in the hills in Scotland, and the very, very primitive country, and that primitive country is shown by the fact that when Robert Owen showed them a gold piece, they were afraid of it. They wouldn’t handle it, and they considered—.

 

Jack Harrington [00:23:44] Well, I know that’s not true, because Burns himself says, “The rank is but the guinea’s stamp. The man is gold for all that.” In two other places he mentions gold and Robert Louis Stevenson. He has his characters of that age also mention burying gold and digging gold up and transferring gold, so that’s not [unclear]. But they also don’t recognize that when Robert Owen went to New Lanark, he was not by any means a philanthropist, a philanthropic manufacturer. He actually became [unclear]. This Dale was quite radical himself, insofar as he was opposed to the church as it stood. Then so far as Burns himself had a racket with the church, it’s not at all impossible that Robert Owen didn’t get his socialism or his near-socialism from Robert Burns. It could be traced if somebody had the time to hunt it up.

 

Interviewer [00:25:06] Connected to Engels, or Engel’s mistress. Relates to Robert Burns, or Engels tried to prove it anyways.

 

Jack Harrington [00:25:11] In the [unclear], you know, in The Twa Dogs he has these two dogs talking to one another, and they talk in good sense, and a sensible language. Then he has all the other, right through. He has several letters that he wrote to various people.

In fact, one of them he pretty near got fired over, and he was—

 

Interviewer [00:25:38] Let’s get back to BC labour history.