CANNERIES SHANGHAI 200 JAPS!

STEAL JAPANSE COOLIES FROM RAILWAY

Cannery Bosses at Tacoma Make Away With Nearly Half a Shipment of Four Hundred Men From Hawaii.

Labor contractors doing business for the Puget Sound canneries, by a clever trick and the generous use of ham sandwiches, succeeded Wednesday night in abducting 175 Japanese laborers from Honolulu who were members of a party of 425 of the Mikado's subjects secured for track work on the Northern Pacific and other lines.

Less than 250 of the original number of Jap laborers reached the Northern Pacific employment agencies. The Japanese were landed at Victoria on a British steamer from Honolulu and transferred to the steamer Rosalie. They had not been fattened on their trip across the Pacific and they were hungry when they started from Victoria for Tacoma.

Armed with ham sandwiches and other delicacies dear to the stomachs of the hungry Jap laborers, the cannerymen went among the men on their arrival at Tacoma. The Japs had subsisted on the trip up-Sound, it is related, largely on soda crackers, hard tack and an occasional green apple. In the face of an immediate tender of ham sandwiches liberally larded with fat, and reinforced by promises of better pay than the railroad had promised them, the 175 dark-skinned laborers from the Hawaiian islands capitulated gratefully and smuggled aboard the Rosalie and taken to the canneries on the Lower Sound.

There is a great dearth of labor at the canneries, owing to the fact that the fish are running in abundance and the packers are working day and night on the big four-year run of sockeyes. Thousands of dollars have been lost by the canneries already because of the scarcity of labor at the packing centers. This placed a premium on labor of every kind, coolie preferred.

When the steamer Rosalie arrived at Tacoma late Thursday night the agents of the Northern Pacific Railway kept a close watch on the imported laborers. The force of watchers, however, were insufficient for the emergency, while the labor contractors were clever and persistent. The latter were further reinforced by several Japanese who know how to handle the ignorant article from the sugar plantations of Hawaii.

The Japanese had been transferred from the steamer to a special train of the Northern Pacific at the docks at Tacoma. Armed with ham sandwiches and other eatables, the emissaries of the cannery people went among the Japanese, scattering the food and promises of better pay everywhere. The guards employed by the Jap employment agency at Tacoma endeavored to drive the Chinese away, but without success.

Many Desert Railway.

Although the doors of the car were locked, about 175 of the Japanese who had been told of the gold that was to be earned at the canneries broke through the windows and escaped, to be guided later to a rendezvous by the labor contractors. The wages offered them seemed like princely salaries and they bit eagerly.

The Japanese kept secluded during Thursday night and early Friday morning they were again placed on the Rosalie and delivered to the canneries at Blaine. Anacortes and Bellingham. In all nearly 175 were handled in this manner, although it is claimed at Tacoma that a portion of the deserters were persuaded to return to the Northern Pacific before the Rosalie left for the lower Sound.

The Tacoma & Eastern Railway, which is doing much work at this time, had bargained for 100 of the Japanese laborers, but did not get one-fourth of that number. The others were destined for track work along the Northern Pacific at Montana and Idaho points.

The affair caused a mild sensation at Tacoma and the Japanese labor contractors were much chagrined by the coup d'etat worked by the labor contractors. The Japanese threaten reprisals and if a similar job is attempted at Tacoma, there may be trouble between the representatives of the two Oriental nations there.

Union labor officials are watching the importation of Jap coolies with undisguised alarm. They have found no way as yet to prevent this importation. The anti-contract labor law does not operate against American territory, which Hawaii now is. Had the men come direct from Japan they would have been refused admittance to the United States.