Bismarck weekly tribune. [volume] (Bismarck, Dakota [N.D.]) 1884-1943, 1890-05-09
Congressman Owen makes a LArrthy
Report on the Italian lmmi-
grafton gu, sti,n.
The Commissioner ct the General
Land Office Renders all In
portant Decision.
The Committee ou Foreign Affairs
Strongly FavOrs Commercial
Union With Gun da.
Congress FavOrs the 8-Hour Day.

WASHINGTON, May LIN the house to-
day Reilly of Pennsylvania offered a res
olution r%eciting the 8-hour law of June,
1868, declaring that mechanics, workmen
and laborers, composing as they do the
great bulk of our patriotic citizens, are
o n this, the first day of May, 1890,
agitating and demanding that henceforth
eight hours shall constitute a legal days
work, and resolving "that it is the sem
of this house that this demand is reason
able and just and that it is our belief
that the inauguration OF said system of
eight hours for a days work would
be conducive to public veal and calcu-
lated to advance the industrial, CONNER
cial, intellectual and moral welfare of
the people," Referred
THE DAGo QUESTION.
A joint meeting of the house and senate
committees on irrigation was held to-day.
Representative Owen, chairman of tine
house committee who, with Representa-
tives Lehlbach and Stump, investigated
the subject of immigration at New York,
made a statement to the committee of
the result of the labors of the sub-com-
mittee. The inspection OF immigrants
at Castle Garden he pronounced a farce,
and said the immigrants we're 1eeced by
boarding house harpies. The observation
of the immigrant officials is that an un-
desirable element is increasing. Italians
are coming in herds. without n
without clothes except what they wear or
carry in bags. Each is provided with a
passport, and all bound for Mulberry
street. Owen said that the italian bank
ers in this country send agents to Italy
to solicit the natives of that country to
come to America. These agents swindle
the Italians, charging them as high as
$50 for a ticket from Naples to New
York, the price of which is 1926. Arriv-
ing at New York they go to boarding
houses kept or controlled by these Ital-
ian bankers, and thence are sent out to
labor under contracts made by the bank
ers or padrones with employers. If their
pay is fixed at $1.25 per day the padrones
take rs cents of it. Besides he fur
niehes a shanty in which the men live
while at work, and has a man in charge
of that. The Italians are timid
and suspicious, so that it is
almost impossible for Americans to
get at them. Within the past eight years
they lave almost enterely %supplanted
other races in the ranks Of unskilled Ia
Dor in New York city; In one square
mile in New York there are, said Owen,
10000 people, 5000 more than in any
other square mile on the earth's surface.
These people speak foreign language
Qtalian) observe foreign customs and are
surrounded by q Chinese wall over which
they never come, and over which no
American can go. The qualitg of immi-
grafton is deteriorating, the per cent. of
Germans and Swedes is decreasing and
that of Italians and Hungarians increas-
ing. Lehlback expressed as his opinion
that the contract labor law in it's present
form was a farce.
In a letter to the speaker Of the house
of representatives, the secretary of inter-
ior estimates that it will require 1885,
652 annually to give service pensions to
every survivor of the late war not now on
the rolls, $6,942,817 annually to increase
the pensions of those now on the rolls to
So per month, and 49, 76, 768 to widows
of deceased soldiers. Total annual ex-
penditure, $10O,226,3335.