Speech #550049157

A low wage scale is not consistent -with the most wholesome development of the count and of its people. The consideration of the pending measure. as Mkr. Blamne sald of the Chinese exclusion act. "connects itself intimately and inseparably with the labor question." No statistics are subtle enough to measure the extent of the depression of wages by the increase of the number of wage earners in an already redundant Iabor market. but that the direct effect is injurious is established by common experience and by numerous specific instances. The fact that wages have been higher during periods of greatest prosperity and largest immigration does not prove that increased immigration did not injuriously affect them. How much higher would they have risen without the addd foreign supply and how much longer would the final collapse have been delayed are questionswhich ony can be asked. The special immigration investigating commission of 1895 found that wages have been lower in localities where there has been congestion of migratory Itajans. Hungarians. and Slays. without trade union affiliations. brought in to supplant native labor in Pennsylvania mines. The introduction of machinery enabled the unskilled alien to readily displace native labor. It is estimated that since 1885. 4.000 to 50.000 immigrants were given employment in and about the mines of Pennsylvania. thereby supplanting domestio XXXI33 miners an laborers. who were unable to support home and family on the low wages established by the newcomers. The wages of miners and laborers have suffered as a consequence not only in Pennsylvania. but in Maryland. WestVirginia.