Connecticut western news., 1904-09-08
ditions of living we can crowd your American workman to the wall"
 Protect American Iuhorers

l high our tariff walls to protect capital and not at the same time lift high our | walls of immigration laws to protect our native workers? Is not the Amer | ican laborer's sturdy arm as valuable | in the sight of our government as the | capitalists pocketbook? What do you
 mean by such a statement as thatT'
 some one asks. Would you start an | other Know Nothing party? Would | your ballot box slogan be American work only for the American born | American political offices only to be 1 held by those cradled under the shad- | ows of Mount Washington and Pike's 1 peakT" Oh, no, 1 am not preaching 1 any such political nonsense. l do not | believe there ever was political party wrapped in the swaddling clothes of | so many errors as that born in 1853, and which, with ex-President Willard Fillmore as its presidential candidate, l swept many of our northern states in | 1856 with the political cry, America l only for the American born" Ameri- can liberties and American prowess | both on land and sea, militarily and in- l dustrially,, have been won and built up by America's adopted sons as well as by her native born children. Were there not foreigners among George Washington's mightiest companions in arms? Baron Johann De Kalb, who was shot at Camden in 1780, and Kosciusko and Lafayette and many others-they
 were all foreign born. Who was the Sta 611rfnU h. ington's administration next to the president himself2 Alexander Hamil- ton, who was foreign born. Who was John Ericsson, the inventor of the Monitor, that revolutioniZed naval war fare and saved the American navy off Newport News? He was a Swedish American; he was foreign born. Some
 of our greatest merchants, like A. T. Stewart of New York; our greatest
 foundrymen, like Andrew Carnegie of
 Pittsburg; our greatest scientists, like
 Agassiz of Harvard; our social reform
 CTS, like Jacob A. Riis of New York,
 and the most eminent political leaders
 of our day, like Carl SchurZ, once sen-
 ator from Missouri and member of
 President Hayes cabinet-they were a1l foreign born. If you blot out from
 our nations history all the deeds which
 America's foster sons and daughters
 have accomplished for the land of their
 adoption you blot out some of it's
 brightest pages.
 Where to Draw the Line.
 But while we, as American citizens,
 would welcome gladly into our midst the German or Englishman or Scotch
 man or Swede and the men of any
 foreign nationality who with intelli-
 gence would come among us and say,
 Brother, give me thy hand, for today
 I would be one with you and become an American citizen," yet today we would not welcome the ignorant, the idle, the filthy, the pauper, the lazza- roni or the criminal offscourings of Europe or Asia, who would come to this land, not to become American citi- zens, but to stay here just long enough to scrape together a few thou sand dollars and then go back to the land of their birth. We would not welcome the ignorant and depraved of foreign lands, who would underbid our American workmen and compel our American boys and girls to live in dugouts or as rats in a cellar as they live These classes have neither part nor parcel in the glorious tnheritance of freedom and equality for which our forefathers fought and bled. While we would gladly open our gates to the oppressed of other lands, we would shut them against a horde that can have no appreciation for the precious privilege of American citizenship and no sympathy with our national aims and ambitions, and whose coming is as much of menace to our people as the cloud of lOcusts Is to harvest field. Nations, like individuals, should be wise as well as generous in their hos pitality. We must protect ourselves against the industrial locusts of the old world by wise and discriminating laws which shall do injustice to none, and which, while vindicating our an- cient hospitality as a worldwide asy- lum for the lovers of liberty and in- dependence, shall shut out the swarms of mere mercenaries and the 'inde- scribable elements' which other lands seek to thrust upon us, from whatever quarter they may come.
 Labor's next great aff1iction is to be found in the absurd and tyrannical de- mands made by some labor unions,
 which seem to have the suicidal policy. of antagonizing capital at all times and under all pretexts and of widening the breach between capital and labor, with the result that labor itself is the heav- fest sufferer through their insane fol lies. The most brutal tyrant the south ern negro knew in antebellum days was not the white man, but the negro himself who was made the overseer of the plantation. In the same way in many cases the most brutal tyrant the laboring man has today 1S not the capi- talist, but the walking delegate" or the mercenary political trickster who, as laboring man, manipulates the ex- ecutive committees which govern the labor unions for their own ruin. Of course this indictment Is not universal in It's application. There are many honest and upright and beneficent labor organizations, like that of which the late Mir. Arthur was president namely, the Brotherhood of Locomo- tive Engineers. MT. Arthur brought that organization up to such perfec- ton that 1t not only looked after the interests of the owners of the different railroads, but after the interests of the engineers themselves. There are many clear brained, sagacious and mo- ble minded labor leaders whose object Is not to disorganize the labor market, but to steady 1t, so that employers as well as the employed may have their due. T do not believe In strikes for the laboring man," said Terence V. Powderly q few months ago. "It is true we had some when I was at the head of the Knights of Labor, but we settled 1I00 labor disputes without strikes. Indeed, might say we pre- vented over 1000 strikes" Yet, strange