In 1890 we had 455.000 immigrants. You then passed the McKinley law and enabled the steamship and railroad companies again to circularize Europe with the statement of the increased wages you were going to pay to common labor. and the next year you brought 560.000 immigrants here. and the next year 623.000. Then. after the 1892 election. and the WilsonGormnan bill went into effect. immigration began to drop off. until. in 1895. it was only 279.000. and in 1896 it was only 343.000. So. if you will take those figures. you will see that bach tariff agitation and every proposed increase of prices meant an advertisement to the hordes of Europe that you would increase the wages of labor here. and then these very companies that ask you for high tariffs imported cheap labor from foreign lands by the shipload and the train loal. and brought it here to turn out your own American laborers to become tramps and beggars. That is the result of your hightariff agitation and campaign promises of higher wages. History and the immigration figures prove it. I defy any man who is here urging high tariffs to explain this immigration table on any other theory. Now. my friends. in 1892 we had the Homestead horrors and thousands of other strikes. not because we were increasing the currency of this country. but because the Republican tariff policy was increasing the immigration to this country and forcing American laborers to stand aside and see cheap foreign labor rob them of their places at the furnace. in the mines. the shops and factories. and even on the farms. [Here the hammer fell.]
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