The San Francisco call., 1896-09-30

equipplng Asiatic nations with all our
best-perfected mechanical appliances, and
when at length this has been done Asia
will have equal mechanical appliances
with us plus limitless cheap labor, which
will make the industrial efficiency of the
Far East as much greater than that of the
West as her labor is on a more cheap and
abundant scale.
"That AsiatIc nations are wanting in ad-
ministrative ability and capital, and that
without these their cheap labor cannot be
made available"
The fuidlty of capital is q fact. 1t seeks
the place of best employment as unerr-
ingly as water seeks its level. 1t knows
no country or national allegiance. H1th-
erto capital has flown to America because
America has been honest, but let BRYAN
ism and reputation settle with 53-cent
dollar debts that were created by the bor-
rowing of q gold dollar, and our National
dishonor will not only drive out foreign
capital invested here, but it will Danish
our own capital. Money will go where an
honest accounting for it can be compelled
by the stout arm OF army and navy, and
with it will go the administrative ability
requisite for its employment and for the
mobilization and organization OF the
cheap labor of the world. Besides, the
fact OF the existence in San Francisco of
factories employing white bosses and
white girls by the score, yet owned and
managed by Chinese, together with the
fact that the products of hundreds of
orchards are handled by white help and
Chinese employers In this State, shows
that the Asiatic is not 80 devoid of ad-
ministrative ability as these theorists
would have US believe.
IL is contended that, inasmuch as ''men
produce that they may sell and buy, that
they may consume" as the Asiatlcs be-
come greater producers consumption will
nnndiI,. TX
buy as much as they sell.
1t may be admitted that i'll the fullness
OF time all men on the earth Will be equal,
that equal wages for equal work will be
the condition of the earth from pole to
pole and zone to zone, but when? 1t is
not this final consummation which
threatens American labor with degrada-
tion. If all the world paid American
wages, America could trade free with all
the world. 1t is the process of read Just
ment that hurts. Look again at the ac-
companying map and ask yourself, gentle
reader, how the United Stats, so small
compared TO the habitable globe, is to
main tain the dignity of its labor and the
generous recompense of its wages until
the poorly paid labor of Europe, the
pauper labor of Asia, of Africa, and of all
the rest of the globe, has been lifted to the
American standard, and when you have
done this you will have propounded the
CIuCldI Qu6SblOu VI Tie COOLING age.
Finally, the contention is made that
the wage-earners of Asia, like those of
Europe and America, will organize trade
guilds and through power of organization
advance their wages as their productive
power, enhanced Sby the adoption of
Western machinery, becomes enhanced.
We may grant this and then offset the
concession by asking: When? What Will
have taken place meantime? AS a gifted
advocate of the above contention has said,
"a half-century in the history of nations
Is q period as recent as the yesterday of an
individual life" A half-century has been
scarcely more than a yesterday in the
period which has been required to elevate
American and English labor to its present
estate, but it might be quite time enough
to undo all hat organized labor has ac-
complished for itself, and would be if sub
jected to unrestricted competition with
the limitless pauper labor of Asia. A
building that 1t took q year to build was
burnt IN an hour. The golden age of
English labor was from 1401 to 1925, but
during the next century it sank 10 a con-
dltion of utter helplessness. Three CEN
turies OF incessant struggle ensued before
the right of organization in self-defense
and self-help was conceded by the laws of
civilized countries, so easily is the diguity
of labor lost and so hard is it regained.
But what OF the rights of labor in Asia
boring classes any rights, as we under
stand them, which the laws are bound to
respect. The guilds already formed are
chiefly employers guilds, not guilds of
laborers. There are no middle classes to
whose sense of justice the down-trodden
laborers can appeal. Society is divided
into two classes-those no make the laws
and those whose only concern is to obey
the laws which others made. From this
status TO that of American labor, which
makes the laws as well as obeys them, is
long and wearisome journey in any
country and by any people, and the labor.
ing classes of Asia have not started upon
that journey yet.
the contentious of the advocates of low
tariff are idle. The danger from Asiatic
ompetition is real and imminent. AL
ready it is being felt in many channels of
trade and those who read the signs of the
times Alright know that what has already
taken place Is only the beginning of
mighty struggle with the powers of dark
ness and that tie beginning of the end of
it is yet long way off. How shall the
brown man be lifted out of the mire and
the white man be not drawn in2 That is
to be the crucial question of the coming
age and, perhaps, of all the ages of human
history.
The only means of safeguarding Ameri-
can labor against the consequences of COM
petition with Asiatic hordes is to stand by
the American system of protection to
home industries and stand for the main
tenance of National honor. To both of
these high purposes the Republican party
and its candidates stand pledged in the
most solemn manner, and behind these
pledges, as further guaranty of good
faith, is an unblemished party and per-
sonal record of persistent championship
of them. What this party, its leaders and
its followers cannot do for the preserva-
tion and elevation of American labor can
not and will not be done. Labor has no
other safeguard, no other puissant power
to deliver it from the body of this death.
Arrayed against this great National
party, its candidates and its cause there is
marshaled nondescript aggregation of
political forces which refuses classification
and analyzation ard is mainly concerned
for Office. In the yesterday of its history
it stood for one thing, in its tomorrow it
will stand for heaven knows what, but to-
day it does stand for putting the United
States on an Oriental monetary basis and
for the reduction of the standard of Amer
lean wages and living 10 another stand
ard which will be European, if not Asiatic,
in its character Its professions may point