Speech #510138942

Speaker. the Committee on Labor have substantially exhausted not only the subject of this bill. but the time allotted to its discussion. But I desire to add a few words of commendation to the object of the bill and to the bill itself. This country has been the haven of the oppressed and libertyloving immigrants from the days of the pilgrim fathers down to the present time. The intelligent and industrious settler is. and has always been. welcone to our shores. Every honest man who lands in this country to cast his lot with us who has come of his own volition and at his own expense should be received with hospitality. He may still feel a yearning for the hills of his fatherland. for a love of the place of ones birth is one of the natural emotions of the human heart. But love of liberty and a desire to better his condition have led him to cast his lot with us. and his children and his childrens children will be Americans. From immigrants of this class the country is in no danger. But when in searching for lower priced labor the byways of the Old World are ransacked. and aliens. not only by birth but in feeling. are imported by contract like cattle. a new peril is added to those already environing our Commonwealth. The barbarians who overthrew Rome marched on foot through the dark forests and across the mountain barriers with arms in their hands. But in our day a single vessel can carry in ease and comfort a small army of these contracted laborers. A law of natural selection brings by voluntary immigration the best of foreign population to our shores. but a system of contract labor aims at quantity alone and brings to us men who will agree to work cheap regardless of all their other qualifications. The laws on this subject have been severe. but have not proved fully adequate to the evil. The bill proposed will. it is believed. supply the defects of the former law and render it impossible for scheming contractors to break down and destroy the prices commanded by American labor.