Speech #610027932

We have lost sight in this debate of changes in the costof production. that from 1860 to 1909 wages have more than doubled. that they have advanced 25 per cent since the Dingley bill was enacted. that the hours of labor have been reduced from a third to a quarter. and that. inasmuch as in every. production labor is from 60 to 90 per cent of the cost. we have thus increased our cost from 25 to 50 per cent. We have lost sight of the fact that this beneficent but almost revolutionary movement for the benefit of the workers has not advanced in anything like the same proportion in European countries. Our labor leaders recognize that one of the acute difficulties which meet them is that the immigrants who come here are glad at first to accept from a quarter to a third less in wages than. we are accustomed to. It is only the labor unions and the contractlabor laws against immigration which prevent us being swamped in this respect. Congestion of population always results in lower wages and longer hours. When the line is closely drawn between employment and starvation. because there are two. or three. or four. or ten hungry for a single job. there is a loss of independence and individuality. and the doctrine of selfpreservation compels conditions which art abhorrent to us. The first principle of that American citizenship upon which must rest our future. as has rested our past. is adequate compensation for the American standard of living and the comforts of the American home. Immigrants. when they first come here and receive our wages on a scale to which they have never been accustomed. are apt to live as they did in their own country. with the result that they save 60 per cent. and in a few years are able to return to the land of their birth as capitalists. That process is going on constantly with us to the extent of hundreds of thousands a year. It is not healthy for our body politic to have that kind of citizenship.