THE JAPANESE TIDAL WAVE

The Times Bureau.
Vancouver, B.C.

Tuesday, April 24.

"There are 5000 Japanese immigrants en route from Japan to British Columbia and the Sound and from what I can understand there is likely to be a further influx of about 25,000 Japanese laborers before the season is finished."

This was the statement made by United States Immigration Agent Healy to your correspondent today. Mr. Healy said that he believed the situation was alarming enough to warrant the United States and Canadian Governments taking joint action in the matter. He said he thought if this was not done that the trouble that he was now having with Japanese smuggling themselves over the practically unprotected boundary line from Canada into the United States would grow to such dimensions as to cause complications to arise and perhaps unavoidable friction between the two countries interested.

Slip Across the Border.

Healy said that already before the tremendous influx of Japanese had hardly commenced, he had reports from his staff watching the boundary line that parties of eight, ten and twenty Japanese attempting to get across the line had been turned back and it was quite likely, said Mr. Healy, that as soon as the United States officers had their backs turned these same parties would succeed in in slipping over the line.

Mr. Healy said he felt quite convinced that the Japanese landing in Victoria and Vancouver found their way into the United States, for the great majority of the three or four thousand Japanese that had arrived this month had disappeared somewhere out of Canada and they had not received passports from him in any numbers worth speaking of. Mr. Healy explained that this influx was entirely unexpected, and the machinery at his disposal to handle the Japanese properly was entirely inadequate; that along the border between Seattle and Blain, for about 150 miles, it was the easiest thing in the world for the thousands to slip over at night. Often officials got word of the approach of boundary jumpers, but the Japs nearly always evaded them by hiding in the bushes, running to cover like a covey of game birds. The forty miles of seacoast between Blaine and Seattle was also unprotected.

Really Contract Laborers.

Mr. Healy said the immigrants were not contract laborers when they arrived, but the Japanese contract laborers of Seattle, who usually ran bawdy houses as well, took a hand in here, and made them contract laborers in the eyes of the law, by arranging with contract laborers in Vancouver and Victoria to get them over the line into the United States, without permission from the United States immigration agent, so that they could fill their contracts for laborers with the Great Northern, Northern Pacific and Oregon Railway & Navigation Companies, who require about 2000 more men than usual on construction improvement and repair work.

Mr. Healy added that when the demand of the railway companies was supplied and the shingle mills, logging camps and canneries were provided for, the Governments of Canada and the United States would have to face the vexed question as to what is to be done with the enormous and ever increasing surplus Japanese population. He had ascertained, he said, that immigration companies in Japan were responsible for working up this Japanese North American boom.

Coming to Seattle.

Special Dispatch.

VICTORIA, B.C., Tuesday, April 24. -- The Braemar landed 800 Japanese. The remainder are bound to Portland and San Francisco. Of those landed, 133 are booked for Seattle.

Department Will Investigate.

Special Dispatch.

WASHINGTON, D.C., Tuesday, April 24.--The Treasury Department today decided to investigate the rumors of alleged illegal landing of Japanese on the West Coast. An inspector to go to Seattle and make a complete report on this matter. He left Washington for that city today.

J.S. VAN ANTWERP.