New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1880-04-22
4 Word TO OUR WORKINGMEM

Here are two or three significant facts, taken
from our dispatches of the last week, to which
we wish to call the attention of American work
ingmen and women.
1. During the last six days thirteen large
steamships have left the Mcrscy for North Amer
lean ports, loaded with cmiCrants, nearly all of
whom are bound for the United States. The
number is unprecedented.
70 During the last month the tide of emf
grafton has increased to IN unexampled extent
at this season of the year, not only from Ire
land, but Germany, England and the Scandina-
Wan nations. Most of the emigrants from every
country but Ireland are reported to be me-
chanics, skilled workingmen or servants.
8. The demand for this foreign labor is
still greater than the supply. The superinten-
dent at Castle Garden has hundreds of applica-
tions for women servants in advance Of their
arrival. Swedish, Danish and French women
are preferred because they skilful, respectful
and neat, or, in other words, because having
taken up domestic service az men do a trade,
they carry into il the qualities which enable
them to succeed. Good homes and liberal
wages arc waiting for them. Now, every
American city and village is full, on the one
hand, of hOusekeepers who want such servants,
and of American girls, shrewd, nimble-fngered
and intelligent, who either prefer to starvc at
some other work, or if they 90 to service sCOrn
to make themselves either skilful, neat OF re-
spcctful.
There is q fact for the consideration Of our
wOrkingwomen; now for the workingmen.
4. Applications are sent in, far beyond the
supply of emigrants to I'll, for mechanics of
every grade, carpenters, wcavers, gardeners,
workers in every kind of metal, etc. As our
readers know, bodies of skilled workmen have
been imported during the last six months by our
manufacturing firms by tho hundreds to so
large an extent as to close many of the mills in
England. Yet every American town and vii
lage is crowded with ido boys and young
men; not idle Of their own choice, hut seeking
vainly to find work as boOkkeepers, clerks,
or perhaps starving as briehess lawyers and
patientless doctors. Comfort and a competence
await the foreign mechanic, while the American
Of the same class goes hungry. The principal
cause of this is that our trades a generation
ago closed their doors on apprentices in order
to keep down competition.
The owner of the largest printing establish
ment in Philadelphia tried in vain, n few years
ago, to find admission for his son as an appTen-
tice in his own establishment. The same rigOr
has been observed in almost every trade.
While, however, they can keep their own and
their neighbors' sons out, they cannot exclude
the foreign mechanic, WHO, as we have shown,
is coming by the hundreds and the thousands to
step quietly into the comfortable places from
which our own people are'shut out.
It is time that our working people should
waken to the folly Of this suicidal policy. It is
all very well for us to boast that America offers
o refuge fol the oppressed of every nation.
She has done It In the past and long will con-
tlnue to do 1t. But it is hardly consistent
with such character Of universal benevOlence
that her own children should DO the only ones