Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 3, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 February 1884 — IMPORTED LABOR. [ARTICLE]

IMPORTED LABOR.

Its Degraded Condition—Evils ofthe System. [Washington Dispatch to Cleveland Herald.] For two or three days the House Committee on Labor have been engaged in taking testimony on the importation, under contract, of foreign labor. Some forty witnesses have already been examined, representing trades unions in Ohio, Indiana, Pennsylvania, New York, and other States. The inquiry is with special reference to the bill introduced early in the session by Representative Foran. Mr. Foran says the importation of foreign contract labor has been growing within the past four or five years, until the evils of the system have become unbearable, and justice to our industrial classes demands a remedy by efficient legislation. The testimony taken here has disclosed the degraded condition, physically and morally, of the people who come to this country from Italy, France Belgium, Hungary, and other countries by virtue of these contracts, under which they are paid 40 per tent, less wages than our owe workmen. They live in squalid poverty 1 , ignoring in the habits of the sexes all rules of decency and morality, and have a most demoralizing effect upon the community in which they live. A notable illustration is afforded by the wretched condition of 2,010 Hungarians employed by the coke manufacturers at Uniontown, Pa. Their wages are so small that every one who can earn a penny, man, woman, or child, must work. Cases were cited of women being ehgaged in shoveling coke up to within twenty-four hours of confinement. Large numbers of glass-blowers have also been imported, to the great injury of that branch of industry.