Kansas agitator. [volume] (Garnett, Kan.) 1890-1905, 1899-02-17

The labor commissioner of Indiana
wants laws made to prevent the impor-
tation of cheap labor into that state,
to compete with home labor He evil
IDENTIFY wants law that would compel
the governor of Indiana to act as Gov
ernor Tanner of Illinois chose to act in
the Virden affair." Whether such law
would stand, under existing national
and state institutions, l do not know;
but that it's passage is demanded is
gratifying of itself, because it shows
that here and there efforts are being
made to put an end to one of the most
disastrous evils that ever visited labor
ing men.
| know of nothing more demoraliz-
Ing to efforts to improve the condition
of labor than the fact that it rests abb
solutely in the power of an employer to
pit one set of men against another,
each man out-bidding the other as to
how much more work he will do for
so much less pay. And this is the con-
| dition that directly confronts much,
and indirectly menaces all, labor today.
do not object to that fair, honest
competition that exists between men of
the same town or locality, or even
within wider limits. But when / see
the cities, villages and prison camps OF
Alabama secured in search OF men to
take places in Illinois mines that no
man in Illinois was willing to take to
the detriment of those who had been
filing them, l need no wise man to
tell me that it isn't fair competition
that's at work. And when we see the
most benighted parts of Europe-the
''way-back" regions of Italy, Austria
Hungary, Russian Poland-visited by
agents of mining and railroad corpora
lions, who bring back at one trip a
small army of several thousand men
who never before had enough money
to buy a passage from their home to
the boundary of their country, much
less to cross the water, We have no diff
ficulty about deciding that there's no
natural competition" in it. It's sim
ply a FLOODED scheme to depress
the condition of certain classes OF
home labor.
What does the importer of this labor
do? Always the same thing, as far as
/ have been able to observe. He un-
loads his human freight at points
where there is about enough work for
| the people already there. BY doing
this he cuts that work in two. Then
he cries Competition between labor
ing men, and sets his importation to
undertaking the others. The result,
as I have noted, is that nobody earns
enough to make decent living; but
there is a great deal of valuable work
done for miserably low price.
This is the kind of competition"
labor is seeking to wipe out. Some
thing has been done by congress in the
way of providing for inspection of i'm
migrants. Much more should be done,
for | see no substantial decrease in the
number of freshly-imported foreign
contract laborers whenever a mining
or railroad company has need of them.
Governor Tanner undertook to put
stop to this kind of work when it is
proposed to do it altogether in the
States: the labor commissioner Of In
diana wants laws made that will ac-
complish the same result.
| American labor Is liberal in its
ideas. 1t has no grudge against home
or foreign capital, or against foreign
labor. 1t has never been exacting in
demanding even its rights-a full
equivalent for the service it renders
But when it sees gigantic industries
managed in such way that millions
upon millions of net profits go into the
pockets of few people, while the la
borer is indifferently paid when at
work, and has no security that he
won't be out of work in week simply
because change of employees, the i'm
nortation of somebody from one of the
our ends OF the earth, will increase
hese millions and make the man who
helped make this wealth pauper, he
forced to do some thinking, and
hen, / take it, he begins to suspect
hat if he had got his just share of the
,ood things he helped make there
would not be SO many millionaires.
Below l give synopsis of tho in