[69] Fleming, pp. 692, 693.
[70] “If I were asked what one factor makes most for the amicable relations between the races in the Delta, I should say, without hesitation, the absence of a white laboring class, particularly of field laborers.”—Stone, “The Negro in the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta,” p. 241. “There is comparatively little crime in the Black Belt and in the White Belt. It is in the counties where the races meet on something like numerical equality and in economic competition that the maximum of crime is charged against negroes.”—Atlanta University Publications, No. 9, p. 48.
[71] In 1905, after losing a strike in New York, the General Executive Board of the United Garment Workers of America, consisting with one exception of Russian Jews, adopted the following resolutions:—
Resolved, That the unprecedented movement of the very poor in America from Europe in the last three years has resulted in wholly changing the previous social, political, and economic aspects of the immigration question. The enormous accessions to the ranks of our competing wage-workers, being to a great extent unemployed, or only partly employed at uncertain wages, are lowering the standard of living among the masses of the working people of this country, without giving promise to uplift the great body of immigrants themselves. The overstocking of the labor market has become a menace to many trade-unions, especially those of the lesser skilled workers. Little or no benefit can possibly accrue to an increasing proportion of the great numbers yet coming; they are unfitted to battle intelligently for their rights in this republic, to whose present burdens they but add others still greater. The fate of the majority of the foreign wage-workers now here has served to demonstrate on the largest possible scale that immigration is no solution of the world-wide problem of poverty.
Resolved, That we call on American trade unionists to oppose emphatically the proposed scheme of government distribution of immigrants, since it would be an obvious means of directly and cheaply furnishing strike breakers to the combined capitalists now seeking destruction of the trade-unions.
Resolved, That we condemn all forms of assisted immigration, through charitable agencies or otherwise.
Resolved, That we warn the poor of the earth against coming to America with false hopes; it is our duty to inform them that the economic situation in this country is changing with the same rapidity as the methods of industry and commerce.
Resolved, That with respect to immigration we call on the government of the United States for a righteous relief of the wage-workers now in America. We desire that Congress should either (1) suspend immigration totally for a term of years; or (2) put into force such an illiteracy test as will exclude the ignorant, and also impose such a head tax as will compel immigrants to pay their full footing here and be sufficient to send back all those who within a stated period should become public dependants.
[72] Smith, “Emigration and Immigration,” pp. 238-263.
[73] Act of March 3, 1903, Sec. 2.