The savingsbanks are full of the savings of workingmen. money is offered at 5 per cent. per annum. Government bonds. drawing 3 per cent. interest per annum. are at a premium. stocks of private corporations which pay from 8 to 10 per cent. per annum dividends are far above par. some of them as high as 200 per cent.. and with this surplus capital and with 64.000.000 people ready to enter into any enterprise that promises to pay a reasonable return. it is absurd to say that Aaerican competition is not sufficient to keep down the prices of all manufactured articles as low as they can be manufactured and preserve the wages of American workmen. What our friends on the other side want is not American competition and not goods as cheap as they can be manufactured by American laborers and American manufacturers. with a resonable return to capital and fair wages to labor. but what they want is the competition of the pauper labor of European countries. The Senator from Kentucky the other day contrasted the revenue system of Great Britain and that of the United States. and undertook to tell the Senate that. considering the cost of living. the wages of laboring men in Great Britain. as I undertsood him. was substantially equal to that in the United States.
Identified stereotypes
European laborers are described as 'pauper labor' and a threat to American wages.