The Joliet Steel Mills suspended "indefinitely" upon the publication of Cleveland's message to Congress, because "we can just as well as not, and we wish to impress upon our workmen the necessity of maintaining the tariff." Very timid is capital, and very shy when it uses its power to starve a thousand men into voting for its interest and against their own!
That very much of this idleness is caused by these attempts on the part of protected industries to limit the production of commodities at home, is probably true. That voluntary immigration into a country already cursed with a large idle population is the cause of much of it is probably also true; but not to so great an extent as the imported contract foreign labor. Voluntary immigrants usually come intending to go far west and take up land. They come with intelligent purposes, and intelligently carry them out. The imported laborers are of a very different type.
A Pennsylvania newspaper states: "There were six hundred and forty Bulgarians just from Europe, by way of Castle Garden, marched to the mouth of a coal-shaft at Johnstown yesterday and halted at the entrance like soldiers. On the opposite side of a close board fence six hundred and forty of the old miners marched out and were discharged. The new men, great, burly, blank-faced fellows, then marched into the dark hole and took up the task laid down by the malcontents. We doubt if one of the 'new arrivals' knew a word of English, or how much they were to receive for their labor. What grand opportunities these animals will have to study the beauties of our institutions!"
There is in New York a company, with a capital of $50,000, chartered by the State to furnish Italian and Hungarian laborers, in defiance of the laws of Congress. That a committee has been appointed to "investigate" this matter of the importation of foreign labor under contract would be a healthful sign, had not these investigations become so diseased by contamination with corporate influences that most of them end at the "gate." The immigration for the first six months of 1888 exceeds that of any year since 1880, and it must follow that a vast percentage of this is either imported under contract, or, what amounts to the same thing, deceived by the lying promises of the agents of those interested in flooding the American labor market. There is certainly no crying need for additional laborers in this country, except to accomplish the purposes of a circular not long ago issued from a New York banking house, stating that "to check the demands of labor for excessive wages, it is necessary to augment the tide of immigration to the United States." The excessive demands of labor average $1.16 per day.
It is not, however, much that New York should charter a company to violate the law of the land, when an Illinois legislature elects to the United States Senate a "high-protective-tariff" man who is building the State House of Texas with foreign contract laborers, brought there in defiance of the law passed by the Senate to which he was elected. Just how many of the four hundred thousand immigrants arriving annually are brought here under contract, or lured by deceptive promises and advertisements of those most interested in making laborers so plentiful that labor shall be cheap, it is of course impossible to tell. But that the fact is one of evil omen admits of no doubt. Rome drew nearer and nearer her end as the army of idle, hungry men increased. Feeding them from her public granaries may have postponed, it could not prevent, her final collapse. "Enforced idleness, or the cheapening of men," says a writer, "is not the sign of decadence, it is decadence." It is laudable and praiseworthy to make money by just and legitimate means, but it is damnable to unmake men in order to make money. To study the causes for this vast and constantly increasing army of unemployed, and then do something to check those causes and prevent their effects, while it might not be so good partisanship, would be much better statesmanship than to "fire the Northern heart" by "bloody shirt" speeches in the Senate, and the raking up of old letters to "expose" the views some men held twenty-five years ago.
Ethelbert Stewart.
P. S.—Since writing the above, several hosiery works and woollen mills have closed because of a "tariff agitation" which, if successful, will give them cheaper raw material! "No matter," says a leading hose manufacturer in a Chicago paper, "whether the result of the proposed tariff-tinkering will benefit or injure us ultimately, any sort of agitation of the question immediately blocks trade. People will not buy when there is the remotest hope that goods will be cheaper after a while. The manufacturing industries at this time cannot stand any tariff agitation." No sane person believes that there is a man, woman, or child in the United States going without stockings until they see whether the Mills bill will pass the Senate! No sane man believes that one pair less of hose is sold in the United States because of tariff agitation. The underlying fact is, that the protected industries propose to "shut down" and throw their employés out of work for the purpose of starving them into voting for a continuation of the present iniquitous tariff schedules. It is the refined "shot-gun electioneering system" of the North.