The Chinese Immigration Act has been passed by the House of Commons, and has gone to the Senate. There a Committee has been appointed specially to inquire into the contentious clause as to the admission of "merchants and students," particularly the former class. What is a merchant, was the puzzle; and so far as the House is concerned, it would appear that he must be a man with an actual business investment of consequence in China ad an actual merchant trader. But the Minister in charge of the Act preferred to leave the definition to regulation which could be amended by Order-in-Council to meet circumstances as they arose.
Under the Act Chinese who present themselves within three months of its passing will be permitted to enter on the payment of the $500 head tax which will be abolished. The Act has aroused the Chinese from coast to coast, and compatriots in the United (States have learned of Ottawa's action through leaflets in Chinese distributed by officials of Dr. Sun Yat-sen's embassy in New York. Nightly meetings have been held, culminating in the selection of a representative to accompany the delegation, comprising three Chinese from Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver, which will urge objections to the Act. The objections are the fact that Chinese merchants settling in Canada cannot send for their wives and children; the power given to the Immigration Department to deport the Chinese they consider to be in Canada illegally, and the regulation requiring finger-print records of such Chinese as do enter Canada. It_is claimed that the second of these opens the doors to corrupt officials who might levy blackmail, and the further hardship is stressed that the Minister of Immigration is the final appeal, no applications to the courts being allowed. As to the finger-print records the Chinese claim that such a procedure would stamp them as criminals.
TRADE RELATIONS WITH RUSSIA, Canada is taking considerable interest in the relations between British and the Soviet Governments as she has a direct concern in the Anglo-Russian trade relations with Russia being based upon it. News has reached Canada that Russia will have from three to four million tons of grain to export this year. Thrown on the British market in computation with Canadian wheat, as a good dea! of it will be if Britain continues her trading relations with Russia, it may introduce a competition which
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.