The Indiana State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis) 1868-1895, 1889-06-12
How the "Hunsn Got Here.

The miserable "Huns" who have been
illustrating the lowest possibilities of
human nature, by robbing the dead
bodies OF the victims OF the Conemaugh
disaster, were imported by protected
manufacturers and mining operators 10
take the places of American working
men, for whose benefit the tariff is
supposed to exist. These imported la
borers are but little above animals in point
OF intelligence. They are ignorant, de-
graded, filthy creatures, who can live and
save money on wages at which decent
American workingmen would starve.
Their condition is one OF virtual slavery.
a letter written from Scranton. Pa, to
the New York Times before the Cone
maugh disaster thus describes them:
Outside the slave and the lash in the darkest
districts OF the South before the civil war
there has not been a more DEGRADED class in
this country since the days of Columbus than
the Huns" They are hired out in gangs and
receive whatever pay the labOr-broker sees fit
TO give them for their work. Even their
identity becomes lost. Their names are known
only to themselves and to the padrone, who
makes good livelihood by securing such gangs
for those who want them short notice. The
laborers themselves are numbered for identif-
cation and the employer or the boss takes no
heed whatever OF their names. If he wants
No he calls the number, and the man who
bgures under this name responds. No. 100
does likewise, when he is called by his figure.
name, and so IL goes. When a railroad is
10 he built, or piece OF labor of any con-
siderable magnitude is to be done, the con-
tractors communicate with the labor-broker
who Is generally a cunning Italian, and
al
of both sides for his services. The contractor
says he wants hundred laborers at the same
prices as the last lot or he may want 500.
Dealing wholesale in this way he gets them
much cheaper than If he engaged them in
blocks of five" undertook to organize the
gang himself. The labor-monger communicates
with the gang-master as soon as he receives the
order and in short time the pick-and-shovel
brigade reports for duty. The labor-monger
gets his commission from the contractor at
once, and he exacts his money from the men
for whom he thus obtained employment when
they get their first months pay. The gang-mas-
ter attends TO that matter Indeed, this is one
of the principal duties for which he
selected. While this slavish system which is
little better than that abolished in the South a
few years ago, is going on, intelligent American
labor languisheS because the protection" rail-
road builders have solved the free-trade prob
lem in toll to suit their purposes and their
pockets.
The Times correspondent declares that
if free-trade ideas prevail in Pennsylvania
in the next national campaign, it will be
because of the greed of the monopolists,
who appropriate TO themselves all the
profits resulting from the protective sys-
tenn and discriminate against intelligent
workingmen, native and naturalized, who
are citizens and voters. 1t is impossible
to compute the amount of injury
which has been wrought in this
country-materially morally, socially and
politically-by the importation of tens
of thousands of laborers of the type of the
british and degraded 'Huns" who have
caused decent people everywhere to blush
for their species by their Satanic conductin
the Conemaugh valley. 1t is infamous that
American workingmen should be forced
to compete in the labor market with such
wretches. 1t becomes doubly infamous
when tits remembered that these wretches
are here through the agency and for the
benefit of millionaires, made such by
tariff claimed to be levied for the protec-
ton of our own workingmen against the
''pauper labor of Europe" and which in
creases the cost of everything they eat,
and drink and wear