1938: British Columbia

Economic and Trade.

Except for serious rioting by a group of jobless youths in early summer. British Columbia enjoyed a relatively quiet and prosperous year in 1938. Business conditions remained good despite the American recession. The provincial finances were reported by Hon, John Hart, the Provincial Treasurer, to be in the best shape since 1929. The one dark spot was the sharp falling off of trade with the Far East owing to the Sino-Japanese conflict. For the first three months of the year. Japan's imports from the British Columbian ports were at a comparatively high level of nearly $7,000,000. For the three months ending June 30, they declined to $3,234,000, and continued at a low ebb throughout the remainder of the year. Canadian exports to China for the first six months of the year totalled only $1,308,000, or about half the 1937 figure for the same period. Imports from China were also cut in half.

Political Field.

Politically the year was an exceptionally dull one. The Liberals under Premier T. D. Pattulo continued their New Deal program of control over business by introducing legislation for regulation of the public utilities. Under a bill passed by the 1937 legislature regulating the coal and oil industries, the Government forced down the price of gasoline by three cents a gallon. Its Natural Products and Marketing Act, one of its first incursions into the field of economic control, was upheld by the Judiciary Committee of the Prav Council against a complaint inured by the independent dairy interests.

The continued strength of the Liberals was attested in a by election held in Dewdney, on May 20, to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Dr. Frank Patterson, leader of the Conservative opposition. The Liberal candidate. D. W. Stratchan, won with 2,030 votes against W. A. Jones, Conservative, with 1,905, and Miss Mildred Osterhout, C.C.F., with 1,641.

Unemployed Youths' Problem.

Perhaps the most serious problem to arise during the year was that of finding some way of dealing with some 1,500 homeless unemployed youths who organized in a Relief Project Workers Union to demand jobs. Trouble first broke out when the Provincial Government closed the camps which had been maintained during the winter months for these and other unemployed youth. Following the closing of the camps, the youths demanded that the Government provide jobs for them. This it flatly refused to do, although it offered to pay the fares of the youths back to the prairie provinces where most of them came from. Thereupon the youths marched on Vancouver where they occupied the Post Office and the Art Gallery. After a month of pleading with the youths to disband peacefully, the Government ordered the police to drive them out of the occupied buildings forcibly. A serious riot ensued in which the police, after freely making use of clubs and tear gas, finally succeeded in ousting the jobless youths. Several hundred of the youths then crossed to Victoria where they were housed and fed by sympathetic local citizens. Meanwhile, the beginning of public road construction, the harvest, and casual employment gradually absorbed the jobless until they were forced, temporarily at least, out of the public eye. Some observers feared, however, that the termination of special relief for transients in August would lead to a revival of disturbances with the coming of the winter months. In preparation for such a contingency, the Government issued special orders in the late summer for the immediate arrest of any group attempting to seize public buildings.