Secondly, as to men. This was the issue with Asiatic powers. The opposition to Asiatic immigration, so strong in Australia and South Africa as well as in the United States, prevailed in Western Canada. Working men demanded protection against the too cheap--and too efficient--labour of the Asiatic as validly as manufacturers objected to the importation of the products of European 'pauper labour.' Stronger, perhaps, was the cry for a White Canada based on the difficulty of assimilation and the danger to national unity of huge colonies of Asiatics in the thinly peopled province beyond the mountains. Chinese navvies first came to Canada to aid in building the government sections of the Canadian Pacific Railway. An immediate outcry followed, and in 1885 a head-tax of $50 was imposed on all Chinese immigrants not of the official, merchant, or scholar classes. During the nineties slightly over two thousand {253} a year paid the price of admission to the Promised Land. Then growing prosperity attracted greater swarms. Doubling the tax in 1901 only slightly checked the flow, but when it was raised to $500 in 1904 the number willing to pay the impost next year fell to eight. But higher wages, or the chance of slipping over the United States border, soon urged many to face even this barrier, and the number paying head-tax rose to sixteen hundred (1910) and later to seven thousand (1913). These rising numbers led British Columbia to demand total exclusion; but, thanks to the diffusion of the Chinese throughout the Dominion, their lack of assertiveness and their employment for the most part in industries which did not compete with union men or the smaller merchants, the agitation did not reach great proportions.