The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-08-25

ments. Nothing can be clearer than this. And In
three years from abandohmentof Of the protective
system the workingmen Of the country would
and 1851, and Britsh statesmen would be able,
as they then were, to comment upon the de-
preston Of American labor, and show that poverty
and pauperlsm were increasing rapidly in the
industrial centres of the United States in those
would Be an unspeaksbie blessing TO England 10
would revive her commerce and some of the lead
ing branches Of her languishing industry; She has
lower wages of the continent in the production Of
many articles, among which may name salt,
semer steel cast steel, and iron steamships with
all Of which she would supply our market in the
absence of protective duties and the venerable law
which prohibits the granting Of an American regis
ter to a foreign-buit vessel
But you may ask what has all this to do with the
question upon which Science Council directed me
TO request an expression of your views7 moments
reflection will show you it's pertnence. The dan
ger on would ward of is the competition of under
paid labor and If it be true that low wages in
distant countries, against which protective tariff
can defend you, may in its absence overwhelm and
destroy you, how much more enduringy destruc-
tive would be the effect of the importation of the
hordes Of men bonnd by contract to work in your
trian or English wages? If once established In
your midst, no law could protect you against their
your council that have too just sense of the
rights and dignity of labor and have toed too long
and hard to secure compensation even to the slave
for his work in the shop cotton, sugar, or rice
field, TO permit me to approve of such an arrange
ment, let it promise what incidental advantages it
may.
In conclusion, permit me to say again that am
not opposed to the voluntary emigration of the peo
impulses, and to pay the cost of the voyage, those
only win come who are of the better class and have
by energy and thrift been able to accumulate a
sum sufficient to bring them here and start them in
their new home; but under system by which each
mans passage paid and his subsistence while here
assured, we will probably get the most abject and
possibly only the most degraded denzens of the po
pulous cities Of China. Those who come voluntar-
AoNA Ahatr Nalxa sw.Na
their adopted country and its Institutions, acquire
our language, and adopt our habits. Such an immi-
grafton would, like that from other countries, sti
muate our general industries while increasing our
productive power; 1t would, by peopling our vast
territories that now lie waste and unproductive,
enhance the demand for labor by increasing our
home market and the carrying trade in which so
much of our capital and SO many of our people are
1t is in the power of the Chinese to estab-
lish among us many new and profitable in
of which would injure none and benefit ali of u.s. I
allude to tea and silk. For tea we send abroad
about 1000 annually, and for silk about 800
mentng in the production of raw silk, of which we
import about 80 500 900 per anDum for the of
and Philadelphia, in some of which, may remark,
machinery is now used that was once proftably en-
ployed in Coventry and Macclesheld.
We have immense natural fields for the cultiva-
ton of both tea and silk besides those of California
and Arkansas, and the Chinese, the earliest and
most successful cultivators of both, would benefit
us immensely by transferring their experience and
patient industry to our country Iwould not there
fore, exclude them by any general denunciation.
But to protect the right even of foreigners to fair
wages for work done in this country, and to avert
the dangers threatened to American mechanics by
the importation of hordes of coolies would pro-
vide by statute that any contract made in foreign
country by which a person proposing to emigrate
to any State or territory within the United States
shall bind himself to labor for any term of years
months, at rate of wages specified therein, shall
be null and void. .tG t6f
Believing that a law embodying these provisions
will be enacted by Congress at its next session, L
remain, Yours, very truly,
WIN. ID. KELLEY.