Rensselaer Republican, Volume 23, Number 3, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 September 1890 — LAWS TO HELP LABOR. [ARTICLE]

LAWS TO HELP LABOR.

What Has Been Done In Aid of Industrial Reform by This Congress—A f Striking Review of Facts Showing How Carefully the Interests of the Poorer People Have Been Guarded Against Encroachments of AU KindsThis was among the declarations which the/ Republican National Convention of 18b8 submitted to the peo-' pie for their approval: * “We declare our hostility to the introduction into this country of foreign contract labor and of Chinese labor, and favor such immediate legislation as will exclude such labor from our shores.”

It may fairly be said that the only direct assurance of legislation in accordance with what may be called “labor’s demands” which the Republican party has given, and which it became the duty of this Congress to pass, related to the prohibition of cheap and and degraded labor. But in ' performance the Grand Old Party has far exceeded its promises. It does not recognize the existence of sections and classes among the people, each to be coddled and wooed for election purposes. The Republican party regards the people as a mass, itself of that Wiass, inspired bytbat mass, andr moved by the will of its intelligent and fiatriotic majority. It has not passed abor bills as class bills but as measures vitally affecting the interests of the whole people. Every important piece of legislation passed by this House has been a “labor bill.” The Elections law is eminently a labor bill, for if the will of the poor and lowly voter—he who constitutes four-fifths ■of the people ■ can be thwarted by an arrogant: aristocracy, or. an. _u nscru pulous company of political bandits free government is on a gallop to its grave. The tariff bill and the Silver bill, the Bankruptcy act, the land grant forfeitures, the shipping bills, all these, as we have seen, are moving toward the development of trade with the resistless force of so many Corliss engines. They are all ■•labor bi Is.” But it is also true to say that no House of Representatives that has assembled at the National Capital since Washington first set the machinery of government in motion has done so much as this House in response to the appeals of labor organizations for measures directly affecting the social and industrial reforms they have at heart. Democratic Congresses have set year after year all heedless of the cries of the workingmen— deaf, dumb and blind to anything qlse than their pet sophistry, Free Trade! Their every effort has been to spread mortgages all over American farming lands and to fasten chains upon American factories !

In one week of this session the. Republican majority, of course against Democratic objection and obstruction, has passed no less than five labor bills, pure and simple—measures asked for by the labor societies of the land. Look at the list: 1. An effective prohibition of alien contract labor, 2. eight-hour law, constituting eight hours a full day’s work fqr Government employes. 3. An adjustment law, enabling claimants under the old eight-hour law tp submit their cases to judicial arbitrament. 4. A law prohibiting the employment of convict labor on Government works. 5. A law prohibiting the use of the product of convict Idbor by the Government in any of its dep irtments.