Speech #510059090

In the last Presidential campaign the Republican party stated to the country that on the question of the tariff they stood for two things: First. unselfish devotion to the workingman. and. second. violent antagonism to all foreign countries in active competition with us. Capital gladly contributed. in the interest of labor. with which it is engaged seemingly in an incessant warfare. an unusually large sum of money for election purposes. Out of its disinterested love of labor it Testricts the market in which it must buy. while necessarily leaving open the floodgates of immigration to underbid it for employment. It says to commerce. You must not land on our shores the products of alien labor. and the foreigner thus deprived of employment at home it welcomes as a competitor in the labor market to underbid the American operative. When under unreasonable restrictions. made to prohibit the landing of foreign products on the quays of New York. you force the human stream of the unemployed of other lands. tojoin the multitude competing for the right to work in our own. and bring to our shores the powerful foreign syndicates now rapidly purchasing and controlling the very industries which you have unduly protected. how are you protecting American labor? If you desire absolute isolation. the logic of this bill leads to prohibition of immigration and stringent laws against the investment of foreign capital. then behind these barricades against the universe. these fortifications against human intercourse. paternal and class government will undoubtedly prevail. and having made your country a huge jail to imprison commerce and foreign intercourse. boast of freedom if you will. If the foreigner can not compete under reasonable terms in the open market. he will of necessity bring his capital within the shelter of the prohibitive law. but still open to the labor of the worldcontrol your industries. and drain our land of the profits of the toil of our people to benefit himself and his own country. If you dam the water at one point. allowing no egress. it must of necessity overflow your dam or force a vent in some other way. Is it any wonder. therefore. that your depots can not accommodate the throng of immigrants. and the English newspapers bristle with the advertisements of syndicates to purchase American industries or to control American land and interests. Our land in 1888 was littered with the flying tracts of Republican propagandists and the wild exaggerations of the beneficiaries of present and proposed abuses. crying out the intensitv of their Americanism. Men who spend their wealth. wrung from American labor. coddling the British aristocracy. and willing to partake of the social crumbs that fall from the tables of the foreign classes. men who are transported into rapturous delight if they can by American dollars purchase an alliance with the bankrupt. ddbilitated. and debauched remnants of an almost defunct European titled vagabondocracy. were the first to denounce Democrats as nothing short of traitors to their country because they threatened the swelling of their profits and the permanency of their rule.