The islander. [volume] (Friday Harbor, Wash.) 1891-1899, 1897-10-07
The Official Paper Of San Juan County
THURSDAY. OCTOBER 18th, 1897.
AND ARBITKATION.

The statements are made in the cur
rent number of the Review of Reviews
thai "For the past two years the I'M
migrants coming from Austrla-Hun-
gary Italy, Poland and Russia have
constituted 50 per cent of our immigra-
ton. Their average llliteracy is 40 per
cent, as compared with about 81 per
cent among immigrants from Great
Britain and Ireland, France, Germany
and Scandinavia. Only one in about
TWENTY-FIVE of the immigrants from
southeastern Europe is a skilled work
man."
A little consideration of these figures,
in connection with the unpleasant
facts which every great labor strike
in the coal mining regions brings into
prominence, ought to speedily convince
congress of the importance of further
immigration restrictions and greater
vigilance in the enforcement OF the
law, and also of the establishment OF
state and national boards of arbitra-
ton for the settlement of all differ
ences between organized labor and Or
ganized capital. 1t seems to us that
the masses have abundant cause to
view with alarm the importation of
the most ignorant, unskilled and I'M
desirable laborers of Europe in such
numbers that they constitute more than
one half of the total immigration of the
country. The laws of the land ought
to be such as to make it possible for
rich combinations of employers of
labor to bring to this country hordes
of: ignorant and turbulent foreigners to
force down the price of labor and take
the places of men to intelligent and
ambitious for themselves and their
children to descend to the level to
which the lower classes of Poles, Hun
garians, Italians, Slavonlans and Bo-
hemians who come to this country
have always been accustomed, and
above which they would never rise.
1t is not many years since the miners
of the anthracite regions of Pennsyl-
vania belonged almost exclusively to
nationalities which readily became
part and parcel of great body polite
and are easily assimilable into our
citizenship. A great many were of old
native American stock and those who
were not were largely Irish, English,
Welsh, German or Scandinavian origin.
They were fairly well paid and "aver-
aged tolerably well as regards thrift,
character and intelligence" But ques-
tons of wages, rents, excessive charges
at company stores, ETC., all of which
allght have been adjusted under an
intelligent system of arbitration, led to
the gradual importations of the hun
CRY hordes from the south of Europe to
take the places of the old miners and
force them into other fields and occu-
pations to get bread for themselves and
their families. 1t has long been evil
dent that the contract labor law has
been honored more in the breach than
ia the observance. Capital seems to
experience little difficulty infinding a
way to circumvent it. The mu1titudin-
Gus evasions of it are almost without ex-
ception in the interest of capital and to
the detriment of intelligent labor. We
have no patience with ordinary labor
agitators who stir up strife for the love
of it and precipitate strikes which
mean hunger to tens of thousands
who are innocent of any intent to
wrong, and we believe that there
would be fewer agitators and fewer
strikes if the government would do its
duty to its own citizens by excluding
the pauper labor of Europe and by es-
tablishing boards of arbitration for the
settlement of wage questions.