The workingman's advocate. [volume] (Chicago [Ill.]) 1864-1877, 1871-03-18

and would regulate the market, and would
literally force our farmers to ceme to their
terms or quit the business. The same is
true if they invested in manufacturing
they could control everything. In another
view of the case what is the result Each
million of Chinese laborers represent four
millions of our population, when we take
into account the families of our laboring
men which they have to feed and clOthe.
Thus, each million Of imported Chinese,
for they do not bring families with them,
deprives four millions Of our own people,
our own kindred, our own race, our own
Christian men, women, and children Of
their daily bread, of clothes to wear and
work to do to earn the same. In view Of
this infamous Chinese influx it behooves
the laboring classes to send up that simple
petition to the throne of grace, Give us
this day our daily bread" To enhance the
gains Of capitalists and noneyed corpora
tiens our own people are driven to pow
erty, destitutiOn, to despair and to the
grave
It may be argued that similar fears have
been entertained that labor-saving machines
would reduce the number of operators, that
the construction Of railroads would render
obsolete the, breeding Of draught- horses,
that the removal of prohibitOry duties would
ruin certain industries whereas the result
has proved exactly the reverse. 1t may be
said that there is no more reason in dread
ing that Chinese immigration will supersede
white labor than there was in the fear once
entertained that European immigrant labor
would prove ruinous to that Of the native
American, whereas its general effect was
to raise him from a newer of wood and
drawer of water, and from the condition of
one who worked with bis hands to that Of
one who worked with his brains and em-
ployed in his turn a newcomer in a similar
apprenticeship, process which resulted
bene6cially to all individuals concerned
and to the prosperity Of the country at
large
1t is urged, too, that cheap labor is
boon, that it gives rise to increased pro
ductiOn and new industries, that il we only
bad the labor cheaper than In Europe the
unlimited quantity Of coal, iren, and other
metals, the fertility Of our soil, the variety
of our climate, and our intelligence, would
afford good competition to the iron-work-
ers, the manufacturers and producers Of all
the main staples, as well as to the ship
builders and carriers of the world.
In reply to the first argument, let me
say we can find no snOlogy between the
precedents cited and the question before us.
The colossal proportions of the Chinese
question forbid it. There are contriVances
BY which you provide against the freshets
of a stream or river, or even against devas-
tating inundations-n by which you can
provide against the upheaval of the ocean
and its tidal waves raised by extraordinary
commissions of nature. If the population
in China increased only half the ratio Of our
own, in two years that increase would
amount to the whole number of the Ameri-
can people. There are now grown and able
bodied men, more in number than all the
artisans and laborers, white and colored,
in the United States, who would hardly be
missed in China, but who would leave their
own crowded country for their country
good, perhaps, ard who would be willing
and eager to come and work here at one
third Of the usual wages, if they could get
no more. There is enough Of them to drive
all workingmen, except percentage of in
structors and overseers, from every avOca
ton, reducing them to beggary and starva-
ton, and in thousands and tens of thous-
ands of cases there would be no alternative;
starvation would be inevitable, and death
would close the scene.
With regard to white artisans and la
borers as well as small capitalists and farm
ers becoming employers of Chinese, they
would have no more chance than the poor
man in the piny woods Of Florida had Of
owning a sugar plantation. Capital, large
capital, is the requisite for obtaining and
retaining cheap and reliable Chinese labor.
To import q Chinaman ana bring him to
the field of labor and instruct him in that
labor costs as much as a negro did gen
Grafton ago. One, two, or three negroes
might die or run away or prove worthless,
and thus ruin poor owner. He who had
hundred or more was insuaed by the av-
erage against such accidents, and was sure
to get bis outlay and his profits out Of
their labor. The same is tr-7e of the Chi
nese, for it is only slavery after all.
have in my mind now two railroad
companies, one of which, the Alabama and
Chattanooga think that is the name
discharged their laborers, white and colored,
whose wages " forty dollars per month.
Their places Mere supplied by Chinese, who
work for sixteen dollars per month, and are
allowed four dollars more for boarding.
Here is clear saving to the company of
twenty dollars per month on each hand en-
plOyed. They work fifteen hundred hands,
and make a net saving of $780, 900 per
month, or 36O, 900 a year. Another in
South Carolina, of which the directors are
all northern men and Republicans, who,
after investigating the working Of the sys-
TEN, contracted, as a beginning, for SIX
hundred Chinese laborers, who were to lie
on the line Of road ready for work on the
1st day of this month, and presume they
are there now. The same proportionate
saving to the company, and dismissal Of
white and colored laborers, of course fol-
low. This company found the negro labor
unreliable and as dear as the white labor Of
the North, they claim. 1t is wrong for
them to speak disparagingly Of the ne
grOes, whom they acknowledged as their
equals.
This impOrtstion Of labor is, in fact, the
revival Of virtual slave Oligarchy not Of
southern planters, with their tens Of hun
dreds Of negroes with their characteristic
vices or virtues, but Of shoddyites and
mOnOpolists with their thousands and tens
of thousands of Chinese Cheap labor is
no doubt desirable, and in wide range
may or may not coexist with low wages !;
but | hold that he who furnishes the labor
should receive such money compensation as.