The Democratic advocate. [volume] (Westminster, Md.) 1865-1972, 1908-09-25
DRIVING OUT AMERICAN LABOR.
Beneficiaries of High Tariff Employ
Foreign WOrkmen.

We do not suppose that the most
incorrigible stand patter will deny
that the system of protection has
yielded an annual crop of millionaires
from among its beneficiaries of the
steel, iron and beef oil and other
protected trusts. Rather will he
point to the list as evidence of the
beneficence of the system, and if the
sword could be made to cut both
ways not much fault could be found
with him. The claim is made persist
emily, in season and out of season,
that the chief beneficiary of the tar
| if is the American workingman, and
that it is imposed for the sole pur-
pose of protecting him against the
competition of the pauper labor of
Europe.
We say emphatically this is not
true, and visit to any steel and iron
making locality or coal region of
Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio,
Illinois, or the far west will confirm
the statement. Nine-tenths of the
workmen in the mills and mines in
the States named, were English speak
ing people twenty years ago. They
are nearly all foreigners now. When
ever an accident occurs in a mill Or
mine the casualty list contains scarce
ly familiar name-they are all I'M
American. How did they get there.
They were brought in by the opera
tors in small numbers, few at time,
to take the places of men whom, the
protected magnates had deluded into
the belief that the tariff was protect
ing them in wages and employment.
Almost all of these foreigners came
from conditions of degradation, power
ty and squalor, and they brought those
conditions with them. AS they lived
In the old country, SO they live here.
They speak strange language and
do not readily assimilate with our
people. Their mode of life is that of
the oppressed and half-starved work
ing class of the over-crowded coun-
tries of Europe, and they are brought
here to reduce the American working
man to their level. That is the way
in which the tariff protects the work.
ingman in his wages and his employ
ment. Are his eyes being opened to
the system that creates millionaires
at one end and degraded serfs at the
other?
Set any interested humanitarian
visit the shack towns around the
mines of West Virginia and Penn
sylvania, and he will soon be in doubt
as to his being in the United States.
There is the unkempt home, the filth
and squalor of extreme shiftlessness
and poverty, but it is not American,
it is the product of protection as adj
ministered by the trusts under the
system of high tariff. They want lab
or they can manage, and they have
got it.
The coal region of this State has
to a great extent so far escaped this
unwholesome transformation from
American to foreign conditions, but
the shadow of the European hut and
the echo of voices made up of discor-
dant cOnsonants, is within hearing
distance. The old American miner,
the good, intelligent citizen who is a
part of the community in which he
lives, whose personality is felt in it's
affairs, and who has a stake in the
community will soon be driven out
of the mills and the mines under the
glorious system of protection as adj
ministered by the trusts. 1t is pre-
dicted by far-seeing persons that in
five years the tally" the ''hunky"
and "slav" will replace the old citizen
in the mines of this county, and all
under the glorious cry of protection
to American labor. - Cumberland
Times