Speech #480053538

It has given the coalminersof Lackawanna and Luzerne Counties employment three days in each week. and has afforded them an income from their labor just about large enough to keep soul and body together. I may be met here with the statement that the protective tariff has nothing to do with the mining of anthracite coal. but let me say in answer to that that the men engaged in the protected manufactures in Northeastern Pennsylvania. arethe monopolists who control almost wholly the entire anthracite coal business of the State. In their desire to aid. protect. and guard the "interests of American labor " in the section I speak of they have pursued for years the plan of encouraging and stimulating immigration to such an extent that nowthe number of laborers asking for work exceeds the demand. and as a result those who do work are kept on " halftime" and starvation wages. Their policy. deliberately marked out and pursued. has brought a swann of Hungarian and other cheap labor into the State. and the "American laborers " I for whom they have always claimed to feel such deep solicitude are compelled in many places to compete on American soil with the socalled pauper labor of Europe. Thus. while a high protective tariff. laid ostensibly in the interest of American labor. has served the purpose of building up great corporations and putting fbrtunes in the pockets of manufacturers and capitalists. the benefitsthat might have accrued to the mechanic and laborer have been neutralized and almost entirely taken away by the action of these very manufacturers and capitalists in importing pauper labor to compete with the intelligent labor of our country. The claim of the manufacturers constantly made that they desire a protective tariff in in order that American labor may be protected is a sham and a fraud. They have imported by contract hundreds and thousands of the pauper laborers of Europe. And in my State have set them to work at a rate of wages averaging 60 cents per day. American laborers who formerly did the work now given to the Hungarians have been driven from the mines and shops because of their inability to compete with this pauper labor. We are constantly met with the charge that the failure to give steady employment to labor results from overproduction. We hear frequently that the market is overstocked with coal. iron. steel. &c.. and that a suspension of work for a time becomes. therelbre. a necessity. I charge that overproduction in my State is brought about by the deliberate action of the corporations. A system. deliberately devised and steadily pursued for years by the corporations of Eastern Pennsylvania has led to the immigration of thousands of Europeans. whose labor was not required. Coal breakers. iron mills. and manufacturing establishments have been erected. and these immigrants put at work. The result in the anthracite coalfields has been that fbr the past two or three years the men have worked "half time" and for small wages. The wages paid them is just about sufficient to support themselves and families. and they are thus kept in a condition of ahnost helplessness.