232 



CONGRESS. (FoBEiGN CONTEAOT LABOE.) 



I do not pretend to say that the majority of 

 them reason carefully as to the difference be- 

 tween governmental institutions, but they be- 

 lieve that here they can get better wages for 

 their labor, live in better houses, be able to 

 clothe and educate themselves and their chil- 

 dren to better advantage, and therefore they 

 come. They are the vast majority of the peo- 

 ple who come here. 



"What are the exceptions to this general 

 fact ? I will acknowledge that there are some 

 evils. I will acknowledge that it is against the 

 true policy of settlement here to encourage the 

 coming of numbers of very ignorant laborers 

 from abroad, an ignorant and a degraded class 

 of laborers, who are willing to come here and 

 engage themselves before they come to work 

 at a very small price ; but I think it has very 

 seldom happened that they have not found out 

 before they have been here long that they can 

 get better wages. There have been very few 

 who have come here so ignorant as not to dis- 

 cover that they could get a dollar and a half 

 instead of a dollar and a quarter, and they 

 are pretty apt to ask what their labor is worth 

 after they have been here a short time. 



" Should some of these laborers violate the 

 contract that brought them to our shores, I do 

 not see what remedy the employer is to have, 

 for the laborer is not a slave. He can bring 

 his action for a violation of the contract, and 

 the damages he would get from an American 

 court may be imagined. For example, a labor- 

 er came here under an agreement to work two 

 years for fifty cents a day; what damages would 

 court and jury be likely to give the employer 

 who obtained judgment against a penniless and 

 ignorant laborer for the violation of a contract 

 made in a foreign country ? Is it likely that 

 men are employed for a long time in this coun- 

 try upon very low wages, wages that are a 

 degradation to the laborers themselves or to 

 the laborers around them ? 



u So I think the evil is exaggerated. But I 

 am willing to acknowledge that there is an 

 evil. It is a very discreditable and disgraceful 

 thing, unjust to American citizens, that a body 

 of men should be invited over here virtually to 

 assume the condition of slaves or of peasants 

 or peons ; and if there were a way of correct- 

 ing that, I should be glad to do it. Perhaps 

 there is; perhaps this body will do it; but the 

 bill is in contravention of natural right, and 

 should be very carefully considered." 



On the other, hand, Mr. Blair stated the pur- 

 pose of the bill as follows: "The bill is aimed 

 at slavery rather than freedom. It is designed 

 to prevent substantially the cooly practices 

 which have been initiated and carried on to a 

 considerable extent between America and Eu- 

 rope, and which we have undertaken to pro- 

 hibit, not alone in the forum of general public 

 sentiment, but in the legislation which both 

 parties and the majorities in both branches of 

 Congrese have seen fit to enact. 



" The bill does not aim to prohibit the nat- 



ural flow of immigration from any other land 

 to the United States. It leaves all natural 

 laws, business laws, social laws, industrial 

 laws to their natural effect and operation. 

 But it does undertake to prohibit the efforts 

 of corporations and of individuals, of capi- 

 talists, which have been put forth to some ex- 

 tent in this country to introduce into it the 

 cheap and servile labor of foreign lands, and, 

 when it is not necessary to do so for the good 

 of the American people and the promotion of 

 American industries, the skilled labor of other 

 countries, because that labor, as we know, can 

 be commanded at very greatly reduced wages 

 as compared with what we pay to the working 

 people of our own country. 



" There have been repeated instances in all 

 the great industries of this country where such 

 importation has been made for the purpose 

 of effecting a reduction of the natural rate of 

 wages in this country such as our working 

 people seem to be entitled to, such as are indis- 

 pensable in order that they may participate by 

 purchase (for we have nothing that we do not 

 pay for with money in this world) in their due 

 and just proportion of the benefits of civiliza- 

 tion and of the principles of American liberty 

 realized. It was in evidence before the com- 

 mittee of the House, and I was so informed 

 personally by some of the leading representa- 

 tives of the laboring element of the glass in- 

 dustry in this country, that the introduction of 

 skilled glass workmen from the old countries 

 by the practice which is prohibited by the bill 

 that is, by contracts made in advance for the 

 services of skilled laborers abroad had the 

 effect to reduce at least 25 per cent, the pre- 

 viously existing rates and the natural rates of 

 wages to those workmen who were engaged in 

 that industry." 



Mr. Ingalls, of Kansas, favored the measure 

 as excluding dangerous elements: "Sir, the 

 condition of society is serious and demands 

 comment. The nations of the earth, under 

 this doctrine of natural right the right of 

 every man on the face of the planet to come 

 to the United States if he wants to have been 

 for a generation dumping their paupers, their 

 dangerous and criminal classes, upon our 

 shores under one pretext and another, until 

 I am well-nigh persuaded, in view of recent 

 demonstrations in New York, in Cincinnati, 

 in Pittsburg, and Chicago, that the time has 

 come to consider whether it may not be pa- 

 triotic and prudent in some degree to modify 

 existing views as to the significance of the 

 Declaration of American Independence and 

 the universal rights of man. I hazard nothing 

 of veracity in saying that there are elements in 

 this country at work now which will require, 

 as I said the other day in debate upon another 

 subject, the very active coalition of the con- 

 servative forces of our system if we desire to 

 prevent organic changes in our form of govern- 

 ment through destructive assaults upon our 

 institutions, upon our accumulations, upon our 



