Speech #600038384

From statistics prepared by the Japanese and Korean Eclusion League. covering thousands of Japanese workmen. it is shown that the Japanese laborer works from ten to fourteen hours per day. where the white laborer works about nine hours. No one can successfully maintain that such competition as this does not tend to lower the conditions of the white laborer. The white laborer is not accustomed to living as the coolie laborer of the Orient lives. He demands better food and better homes. A single room will furnish all there is of home for six or eight or ten Japanese. Chinese. or Korean laborers. and this same squalid quarters would not be considered as worthy by the most modest American workman. Living in such quarters. working longer hours for lower wages. the coolie laborer is a menace to the great body of American workingmen and a great menace to the best interest of our entire people. It has been urged that the coolie laborer does the work that the American laborer will not do. Yet such is not the case. The bright Japanese has entered the lists against workmen in almost every line of labor. There are tailors and there are printers. there are engineers and machinists. There are miners. clerks. shoemakers. barbers. jewelers. office boys. hotel and restaurant keepers. photographers. section hands. carpenters. painters. bricklayers. paperhangers. plasterers. gardeners and farmers. and scores and scores of other workmen who are Japanese. and they are in our own country and competing with our own labor. It is no wonder. then. that the American laborer. no matter whether he is skilled or unskilled. looks upon the tremendous immigration from the Orient as constituting a grave danger to American ideals and American opportunities. not only for the present but for all time. If a halt is not called. what will be the condition within a few years of every trade throughout the West? What will bd the condition of the laboring man. whether skilled or unskilled?