Speech #510121836

There is a class of labor numerically many times as large. which is outside of the protected shop and factory. which can not be and is not sought to be protected by the provisions of this bill. It is for them that I speak. as well as for those who are more particularly interested in the tax on tinplate and who live in my own State and are my immediate constituents. To protect a few hundred thousand laborers in protected mills and mauufhctories from the competition of socalled pauper labor. say the advocates of the bill. is its object. I would ask. then. why it is that that class of labor should seek to transfer all the results of the competition with pauper labor to the farmers and laboring men of thiscountry who are not so protected. That is what that argument amounts to. Says the proposed builder of a tinplate mill: "We can not compete with this pauper labor in Wales. and therefore we must have a tax on tinplates in order that we shall have no risk of competition with tinplate produced by such labor. The absence of this competition makes our business secure and gives it all the advantage of monopoly. In order that we may escape this competition we invoke the taxing power of the United States. and by the imposition of this tax we transfer to the farmers the disadvantage of this competition with pauper labor. which we are unwilling ourselves to undertake." There is no fault in the logic of this man. He doe3 simply transfer all the cost and burden of such competition from his shoulders to those of the grower of fruits and vegetables who depends upon the canning factories.