Los Angeles herald., 1907-09-16
CHEAP LABOR

Mexican capital, in discussing
Il the Bellingham and Vancouver
incidents editorially. pertinently asks
''The lawlessness displayed by the
American workmen at Bellingham
wash, is certainly to be condemned
|and the leaders in the rioting there yes
terday should be severely dealt with
but. while this is true, the question
remains, Is the labor that lives cheaply,
buys little of the small merchant and
does little toward building homes really
cheap for the community at larger"
In these pregnant inquiries is in
volved much of more than passing
interest to the American voter. The
demand for cheap labor is always from
the men of means who undertake great
public or private building enterprises.
and, under the plea of bettering the
country, hide the inherent wrong to the
middle and working classes involved.
A review and examination of the case
as 1t was with the Chinese will leservc
here. Some 10000 Chinese were at work
on the Pacific coast at one time, and
the sailing day of the China steamer
witnessed regularly string of express
wagons stretching from First and
Brannan streets often fully two
squares up to Third street. in the city
of San Francisco, each wagon con-
tanning several boxes of silver coin for
shipment to China, being the earnings
of some clan or company lin each
wagon), en- route to their people at
home, Where these coolies labored and
earned that money no grocer or dealer
in any line of trade could live, and all
the supplies for these coolies came
through Chinese dealers in Chinatown.
On one passage the steamship China
carried s104,0O0 in silver, all of it
boarded in this way, and the service
then was bi-monthly, showing it had
been collected in two weeks.
Aside from the fact that this money
was taken from white labor, it is also
true it was taken from the retail
butcher, baker and candlestick maker
who go to make up that class of our
people on which the stability of trade
rests. 1t is true that these coolies
helped to build the great railroad
arteries that now gridiron the west
coast, but, aside from that fact, there
is no visible result of good to this
country.
Nowhere in all the great reach of
domain may be found homes or home
6r influences springing from
them; no available asset commercially,
morally or physically to show
for it, only the labor done, and that
could have been better done by white
men who, even if they claimed a higher
wage, would have spent it in the coun-
try and built homes and helped on the
political development of Pacific coast
states.
Waving all matters extraneous to the
inquiry under comment, Was this coolie
labor cheap to the country after all?
1t was cheap to the mail company who
its freight both ways at exorbitant
rates; it was cheap to rascalIy con-
tractors and mean-hearted railroad
directors I'm making big earnings and
big dividends possible, but was it cheap
to the American people?
AS it was with the Chinese, before
the exclusion act went into effect. so
it cannot help but be with the Japanese
and Hindu coolie (regardless of caste
standing they are all coolies in this
country If they shall be permitted to
flood the labor market now; and as the
need of pioneer railroad construction
does not exist these hordes will be
more of a menace to white labor than
were the Chinese "a decade ago.
While the theater of the coolie war
was on our side of the Canadian line
SNUG diplomats scoffed at the cry of
the laboripg and small trader elements
among us, but now that the British OK
is gored by the same opponent the
labored and tardy utterances of these
same diplomats damn all their previous
deliverances as official insincerity and
leaves them naked to the whig of ne
cessity, just as were ''the states" till
the exclusion act was wrung from an
unwilling congress.
Cheap labor that enriches the few at
the cost of penury to the many may
be made to stick under a monarchical
form of government, but the thing is
alien to republican government, grossly
repugnant to it's principles and holds
the dread germs of internecine war.
Do the American people want it?