CONGRESS. (FOREIGN CONTRACT LABOR.) 



233 



industries, upon everything that by the grace 

 of God under our civilization has made Amer- 

 ica what we are proud to claim it to be 

 to-day. 



" The recent violent demonstrations in vari- 

 ous parts of this country forebode a perilous 

 crisis, and unless measures are taken to protect 

 the American people, to protect this great civil- 

 ization that we have builded here by education, 

 by religion, by the acknowledgment of the nat- 

 ural rights of man, within a brief space dangers 

 as great as those that have overthrown mon- 

 archs and despots may with ruthless rage assail 

 the institutions of republican freedom. 



u The socialistic and agrarian demonstrations 

 that are nightly made in our great cities must 

 give us pause. War has been declared upon 

 property. The declaration has been openly 

 announced that property is robbery ; and the 

 open avowals of that class of men who have 

 been admitted into this country under the spe- 

 cious application of the doctrine of the natural 

 rights of man to go whither he will, irrespec- 

 tive of the purposes for which he migrates, 

 leave little room to doubt that, in the event of 

 another great financial crash or panic in this 

 country, dangerous outbreaks may be expected 

 in our great commercial centers. Already ap- 

 peals are made to the unemployed, men who 

 have come here under one pretext or another 

 to better their condition, to commence their 

 assaults upon what they are pleased to term 

 the unjust accumulations of our manufacturers 

 and merchants, to secure what is called in the 

 language of these apostles of anarchy the forci- 

 ble distribution of property, under the doctrine 

 of the natural right of one man to have just as 

 much as any other man has. 



u I do not regard the bill as a perfect meas- 

 ure ; it has some provisions to which I yield' 

 reluctant assent; I should be glad to see it 

 modified ; but it is a movement in the right 

 direction. It calls the attention of the people 

 to the most formidable danger that threatens 

 us, and that is this ceaseless, endless incursion 

 of elements that come not for the purpose of 

 building up, of elevating, but for the purpose 

 of overthrowing and destroying. 



"Inasmuch as the object of the bill pro- 

 pounded by the Senator from NQW Hampshire 

 is to exclude those men sought to be imported 

 here under contract made in a foreign country 

 for the purpose of laboring at less wages than 

 those already employed can afford to accept, I 

 shall vote for it with pleasure. We have for 

 years past been declaring that the interests of 

 American labor should be protected ; and we 

 are now to say whether the interests of the 

 American laborer shall not be protected, not 

 alone against the competition of the pauper 

 and ill-paid labor of Europe, but against that 

 most infamous free trade in labor itself which 

 imports men here under a servile contract that 

 is worse than the African slavery of the South, 

 an ignoble and degrading competition ignoble 

 and degrading alike to those who make the con- 



tract and those who are subjected to its per- 

 nicious and destructive influences." 



Mr. Platt, of Connecticut, argued that the 

 prosperity of our institutions depends upon 

 the prosperity of the working people, and as- 

 serted the necessity of preventing all schemes 

 that make for the degradation of labor : 



" A majority of the citizens of this republic 

 are wage-workers. Possibly the statistics of 

 the census do not quite bear me out in that 

 statement. I think, although I have not the 

 statistics at hand, that the number of those en- 

 gaged in gainful occupations, as they are called, 

 is stated at 47 per cent, of the entire popula- 

 tion, but there are many other persons to be 

 added to that list who do not come within the 

 census classification. So I think I am correct 

 in my statement that more than one half of 

 the citizens of this republic are engaged to- 

 day in earning wages. 



" They are the majority of the voters of this 

 land, laborers, men who earn their bread by 

 the sweat of their brow. The most important 

 problem presented to the American people to- 

 day is what shall be the condition, what the 

 character of that class of its citizens. Other 

 governments based upon other principles, mo- 

 narchical governments, arbitrary governments, 

 governments of the strong hand, may live and 

 prosper and thrive to a certain extent, although 

 the character, the social, the mental, and the 

 moral condition of its laboring classes may be 

 neglected, and may not be deemed proper sub- 

 jects for legislation. But in a republic I be- 

 lieve, and I state as the result of mature thought 

 that it is impossible for the system of govern- 

 ment long to survive unless there be passed 

 such laws, unless there be adopted such poli- 

 cies as tend to elevate, to dignify, and to enno- 

 ble all its laboring classes. In this Govern- 

 ment the working-man votes, and hungry men 

 do not vote intelligently. Men who can only 

 receive as the result of their toil just enough 

 to keep from starvation and the poor-house, 

 are not patriotic, or if they are will not long 

 be patriotic to the extent of being willing to 

 fight for and defend the institutions of their 

 government. 



" It becomes, then, the duty of all men who 

 have to do with the legislation of the country 

 to see, first of all, that such policies are adopt- 

 ed and such laws enacted as will tend to ele- 

 vate the laboring citizens of the country. I 

 said, therefore, that you must add to virtue 

 and intelligence the prosperity of the citizen, 

 if you expect the republic to endure; and 

 prosperity of the citizen means fair, remunera- 

 tive wages for his labor. The tendency in a 

 country which seeks to lower the standard of 

 wages below fair remuneration is wrong and 

 vicious and destructive of republican institu- 

 tions. We owe our marvelous growth in this 

 country more to the character of the men who 

 have worked with their hands from the founda- 

 tion of the Government to this time than to 

 any other one cause. It has been so hereto- 



