Jasper County Democrat, Volume 13, Number 10, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 May 1910 — FOREIGN CHEAP LABOR. [ARTICLE]

FOREIGN CHEAP LABOR.

Protaction Uses It to Supplant American Higher Priced Latopr. The cry of “Protect the American workman against the foreigner!” has helped the protectionist party to get many votes. A more deceitful or absurd party cry was never invented. Our protected industries employ mostly foreigners—right froth the ship in many cases—so that it is the foreigner who gets the protection such as it is. The workmen who have replaced the organized labor which was driven from the Carnegie mills at the time of the Homestead riots many years ago are" not Americans, but Poles, Slovaks, Lithuanians, Roumanians, Croatians, Bohemians and other European races, who are. content with inferior wages and an inferior standard of comfort. The workpeople who fill the factories of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania are largely foreign born, and they are there because they undersell American labor. According to the census of 1900, Massachusetts had 846,000 foreign born people, Rhode Island 134,000, New Jersey 431,000, New York 1,900,000 and Pennsylvania 985,000. The foreign born population of these states and their children comprise a majority of the whole population, except in the case of Pennsylvania. These foreigners work for a dollar a day in. the mills and-factories, and the native American element seeks more lucrative employment The foreign pauper laborer is here. He comes with protection.