Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1886-05-13
The Importation Of "Cheapv Labor.

porlallOn OF contract labor, either from
Europe or Asia, was placed upon the
national statute book none too soon,
but rather too late and has been too
laxly executed. The platform of the
Republican National Convention of
1884 says:
The Republican party go is unalterably OPP
posed to placing our workmen in competition
win any form OF servile labor. In this spirit
we denounce the importation Of contract labor.
Whether from Europe or Asia, as an Offense
against the spirit OF American institutions.
The next winter Congress passed
law forbidding the importation of la
borers under contract, but there is rea-
son to believe that this law is enforced
in few cases. The great corporate
companies have been in the habit of
sending agents to gather up laborers
from the lowest and most degraded
classes of Europe, men too poor and ig-
norant ever to reach these shores by
their own unaided enterprise, sending
them to this country by ship-loads like
cattle. paying their passage on a con-
tract that the laborers shall work for
the companies and that the expenses of
the passage shall be deducted from their
triAing wages. This these companies
have done because these ignorant and
degraded laborers will work for wages
which would be pauperism to an Amer
lean workman with family to support
and educate. These imported serfs are
taken mostly from Hungary, Bohemia
and Poland--countries which have been
TOR generations under the crushing
tyranny of Austria till their peasants
are ground down to the lowest point at
which human being can exist. They
have no families to support, no self
respect to maintain-they can work
cheap. They do not come seeking cit
izenship, but as serfs TO obtain a bare
existence. They are entirely different
class from the voluntary immigrant
who comes here, by his own enterprise
and on his own means. bringing his
family with him, intending to become
an American citizen with all that the
term implies. Like the oppressed peas
antry of all despotic countries, they
have learned to look upon the law as
their natural and constant enemy, to be
obeyed only through fear, and to be
struck down whenever opportunity Of
fers. They have none of that respect
for law which is bred in the American
citizen along with the idea that he him.
self is alawmaker. Ignorant of the in
situations of freedom, they have all the
treacherous ferocity characteristic of
peasantry bred in despotsm. Of this
class DeTocqueville, in his noted work,
democracy in America" very Justly
remarks, "Wmle in Europe this class
sometimes recalcitrates against even
the supreme authority, an American
submits without murmur to the au-
thority of the pettiest magistrate" This
was the class which made the bloody
riots in Chicago and Milwaukee, which
American workmen of every guild were
quick and hot to denounce, rs we'll they
might be, for this very class forms the
''servile labor spoken of in the Repub-
lican platform.
Twice before have the selfish folly and
danger to the nation of the importation
of servile aud degraded cheap labor into
this country been demonstrated First,
when the great landed proprietors of
America caused the importation of At
rican negro laborers. They were obey
ing ''the memorable law of supply and
demand;" they were acting up to the
maxim of buying labor in the cheap
est market and selling it in the dearest"
This labor was ''cheap" and, to some,
profitable; but it was very unpro ltable
to the country. 1t made the Southern
landowners the secession slavocrats
and the Northern ship-owners the
'broad-clo mob" who tried to lynch
Garrison in Boston; but it blighted the
industry and enterprise of the whole
South and made fifty years of political
turmoil, eliminating in the greatest
and bloodiest war the world ever saw.
And the negro trouble is not yet settled.
1t still hangs a threatening cloud along
our political horizon.
The importation of the Chinese
coolies was another example. 1t was
profitable to the importers and to the
employers on a large scale, and I'M
doubleday the Pacific coast region was
developed more suddenly than it would
have been by American labor alone.
But if the Importation had gone on un-
checked, it would probably have had
even u worse result than the importa-
ton of African negro labor.
Tho time has como to the United
States when II vast immigration is no
longer desirable. Every rank is be-
coming crowded, from the common la
borer to the ''learned professions. The
tide Of voluntary immigr alton we can
hardly check, unless means can be de-
vised to suppress the lying, flaming
circulars scattered over Europe by our
land-grant railroad companies to induce
Europeans to think wealth can be
picked up almost without exertion here
But we can and ought to sternly stop
all Importation of contract slaves,
criminals and paupers.
The state of Wisconsin has COVER
nor in fact rs well as in name. From
the first intimation of trouble he has
been active in caring for the public
peace and safety. He summoned in
force the troops whose presence he knew
would be necessary. He disposed them
with an eye to effective work. He
showed himself an active man of affairs
and not a figurehead to hold out 3
wooden hand for votes. That his fore.
thought has not prevented bloodshed in
Milwaukee is not due TO any negligence
on his part, but 10 the fact that there
are at Milwaukee elements of danger as
great as at Chicago All experience
demonstrates that there is one way and
but one of dealing with such mobs as
these. 1t would be another thing if the
rioters were real laborers, rising against