Speech #540077647

But which is the Aryan element and which the Iberian I believe no man can tell. and lie who affirms that any quality needful for this. that. or the other form of political organization is present in the one and absent in the other makes a statement which I believe to be as baseless in natural science as it is mischievous in politics.-Pall Mall Gazette. January 10. 1870. It may. however. be urged that our great immigration has depressed. or will depress. the price of labor. This might be true if American labor was content to remain in the rut of mere labor. but our experience in the East and all over the country has demonstrated that the large influx of foreign labor has led American labor to seek higher pursuits and more profitable callings. The result has been. on the whole. the promotion of American labor to greater and more enlarged spheres of usefulness. When the American girl was crowded out of the itchen and dining room by her foreignborn sister. she entered the schoolroom as a teacher. the store as a cashier or saleswoman. and the countinghouse as an accountant or bookkeeper. and when the American boy was crowded out of the factory. the mine. and the rolling mill by his foreignborn brother. he became a captain or a lieutenant of industry. and sought and assumed higher callings in various directions. And the process that has thus been going on between the native and the foreign born has also been going on among the foreignborn themselves. High wages and good living under the sunshine of American institutions have rendered an earlier crop of foreignborn laborers fit and anxious to be crowded out of their labor sphere and placed on a higher industrial level by a later arrival of foreignborn labor. And thus it has come to pass that continued immigration. so far from depressing the scale of wages. has rather resulted in gradually promoting labor to a higher level. And this is a great gain. Brute toil and the almighty dollar is not the chief aim of our existence. All who are fit to survive. fit to stay in the ranks of a great nation. by their very nature aspire to a higher plane of development. and the space above. in the social and economic world. results in a large degree from the pressure below. The crude ore becomes pig iron. and the latter becomes the finished engine. I shall not. however. take up your time any further on this feature of the case. but shall content myself with quoting from the report of the Immigration Investigation Commission for the year 1895 the following evidence as to the effect of immigration upon wages: The influence of immigration on wages is too large and complex a subject for the commission to discuss with any fullness at the present stage of its investigations. The opinion is widespread that wages have fallen since the great tide of immigration set in. The facts do not bear this out. The statistics of immigration already given (see page 8) show that large immigration has almost invariably been coincident with (not necessarily the cause of) prosperity. and the report of the Senate subcommittee of 1891. which was charged with the duty of ascertaining the course of prices and wages of labor. shows further that wages have been highest during these same periods of prosperity. Not only. according to this report. have wages steadily increased during the last three decades of steadily increasing immigration. but they have been the highest during those years in which immigration has been thelargest (page 10). But finally the objection is made that the immigrants furnish an undue proportion of criminals. A superficial examination of our statistics may lead to this opinion. but a more careful consideration and study of the subject in all its aspects makes it plain that such opinion is incorrect and unfounded. and that the immigrants do not. as a matter of fact. furnish more than their proportionate share of criminals. and. in many localities and places. even less. A short time ago I requested the Hon. Hastings H.