No man can deny that the question of wages has got to be decided by the law of supply and demand. Why did we vote almost unanimously for the Chineseexclusion bill? Because every man said and every man believed that to bring in possibly five or ten million Chinese immigrants would sooner or later reduce the price of wages in this country. Is there anyone who believes that this great body of five or six hundred thousand immigrants can continue to come in yearly without reducing the average price paid to wageearners as soon as bad times come. and come they will. necessarily. And if there shall be in this country. whose Government rests upon universal suffrage. large masses of men who are not paid sufficient sums to satisfy their needs and to enable them to maintain their present condition of comfort. discontented. half paid. and half employedis there any man in this committee who does not believe we shall have social troubles far more dangerous than those which arose from the existence of slavery fifty years ago? The advantage of the amendment of the gentleman from Alabama is that it will. to a very considerable extent. lessen the body of immigration coming into the country by excluding those who can not read. It is idle to say. no matter what the condition of prosperity may be. that any employer of labor pays more than he must pay. I do not care how much any man is making. he does not pay the wageearner $2 a day if any other man turns up -who is willing to accept t dollar a day.
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immigrants immigration