Speech #600006426

This is why the West has been developed from a waste of prairie into the richest and most productive region in the world. The story of increased wealth everywhere is the story of increased labor that pre ceded it. It is exactly for this reason that the South. lying dormant and inactive under the burden of her undeveloped natural wealth. is clamoring for the immigration from Europe Mr. Chairman. I would rather lose my power of speech than to advocate any measure that would prove detrimental to th cause of labor. There is not a man in this .body who will go further to aid the cause of labor than I will. Th circumstances and surroundings of my life have been such as would permit me to see and to understand the hardships and the sacrifices that workingmen must endure in order to gain a living. We all know and statistics prove that notwithstanding the great influx of immigrants during the last few years wages have increased from 12 to 14 per cent. And had it not been for the fact that the criminal and thieving trusts and the unlawful combinations. aided by a high protective tariff. have raised the prices of the necessities of life so outrageously. and had not the manipulations of the Wall street gamblers and speculators. aided by a faulty currency system. thrown our country into a panic. these last few years would have been the most prosperous ones this country ever had. It is the trusts and the unlawful combinations. rather than immigration. that has kept the American laboring man from deriving the full and just benefits and rewards of his labor. In the years 1905. 1906. and 1907 immigration to this country from Europe was heavier than it ever was before. and allow me to call your attention to the fact that never before was the country so prosperous as it was during those years. Isnt this significant? Doesnt this show that there is a direct relation between immigration and high wages? Go through the East and the Middle West and you will find wages a hundred per cent higher than they are in the South. yet all of the immigrants from Europe settle in the East and the Middle West and very few of them reach the South. How. then. can it be successfully maintained that immigration has anything to do with keeping wages at a low level? I think that if the gentlemen will study the situation carefully they will find that imnmigration has just the opposite effect. and that without this great army of workers from Europe we could have had neither increased wages nor increased prosperity. To prove to tLe gentlemen that the country has been materially benefited by immigration let me cite a few figures. In 1871 our immigration was 321.350. and for the following ten years it averaged something over 219.000 a year. In 1871 our exports were only $442.820.078. while our imports were $520.223.684. or a balance of trade against us of $77.401.000. For the six years subsequent to 1870. when our immigration was at such a low tide. the balance of trade against us was the enormous amount of $243.706.469. During the last ten yelrs our immigration averaged 722.122 a year. or nearly three and onehalf times as much as it did in the years from 1870 to 1876. inclusive. And for these years we find that our. exports exceeded our imports by an average of $516.617.819 each year. and that the total amount in our favor for those years was $5.161.781.913. From these figures it can 4e readily seen that without our increased immigration we could not have produced the great wealth that allows us to pile up such a tremendous balance of trade. and which allows us to rank as the foremost nation of the world. Mr. Chairman. my district in Chicago is peopled by representatives of nearly every nation in the world.