Rock Island daily Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1886-1893, 1892-11-17
LABOR'S PROBLEM.
Powderiy Proposes Some Meth
DDS for Its Solution.
VIEWS ON FOREIGN IMMIGRATION.

All To Be Sent Rack who Cannot Sup
port Themselves on Their Capital for q
Xear-what Is Needed in Europe-Com-
men.s On the Troubles at Homestead
and ElsewheFe--The Polls the Proper
Battlefield and Laws To Be Made to
Suit the Laborer.
ST. LOUIS, Nov. 1.-THE important thing
before the X. of l.. convention yesterday
was Powderly's annual address, much
of the first portion of which is
devoted to the immigration question. He
began by referring to the condition of the
order. which he said was good with mem
bership on the increase. At no time had
the X. Of J.. mad on its rolls more than &C.,
300 members He complained that labor
divided while capital consolidated, and DC
,lared the crying need of the labor people
1t this time to be an organization that
will embrace them ALL He next went into
the immigration question.
Wants to Put Up the Bars.
Here he was prepared for radical meas
ures He believed in the total exclusion of
all immigrants who are not self-sustaining
On landing il this country. There should
be fixed term of years, ten would below
enough, during which no immigrant should
be permitted to land with a view of re-
naming unless he could prove that he he'd
sufficient means to sustain himself and
those depending on hin for one year.
There was great danger that in the Babel
OF tongues we might forget that we are
freemen IN this country, and in losing
sight of that fact might allow the incom-
ing horues to Europeanize us before we can
Americanize them. Hundreds of thou
sands of foreigners We're thrust upon this
country every year, some allured by mis-
representations, others sent direct from the
penitentiaries and prison pens of the old
world, others hired on the other side of the
water by those who would lower the stand
ard of wages in this country.
Calls for Revolution in Europe.
1t was not because he could not earn a
livelihood in his own land that the for
eigner came here, but because the institu-
lions of greed are OF older growth across
the water and have taken deeper root
There are as productive labors in Europe
as in this land. The men born there are
just as good we are. They have the
same natural right to the soil they were
born on as we have to the soil of America
1t was their right and their duty to remain
on that soil, redeem it from the twin evils
of landlordisn and kingcraft, and take
the fruits OF the earth for themselves and
their families, instead of fleeing from their
own homes to 4 land in which they stand
| in doubles ut every point at which the
| stroke OF hammer or pick is required.
Another Remedy Proposed.
The rapacitY of employers of labor, the
greed of the owners Of steamships and the
moral cowardice of our public men had pre-
vented the enactment of legislation which
would have long since reEevad the strain.
They could better afford to aid the Europe
an in crushing down the institutions which
| Cypress him at home than to continue a
system which will inevitably reduce Amer;-
can workman to worse conditions than
those now experienced abroad by those
that are now looking to this land for relief.
He asked the general assembly what it
| would do on the question of immigration.