The price of labor is fixed by the demand and the supply. Upon the one side the number of people with dollars. willing and able to hire labor. upon the other side the number of men seeking to be hired. these are the two sides of the equation which fixes. the price of labor. From the other side of the Chamber we have heard much about the protection of American labor from the products of the pauper labor of Europe. I have always said that if there had been any sincerity in the reason given for advocating the protection policy advocated upon the other side its advocates would have gone to the source of the evil for the purpose of protecting American labor directly from the direct competition in America of incoming pauper labor. Although you can not say that illiterate labor is necessarily pauper labor or that pauper labor is necessarily illiterate labor. in nine times out of ten it is true. The man is made unskilled. he is made in a sense a pauper laborer by his ignorance. His ignorance is not his fault. I have the highest degree of sympathy for him. but I also have some degree of sympathy for the American laboring man. already here. and the class of them that most needs protection from this illiterate. densely ignorant class. who must take the first job they can get at any price they can get it for. is not our native American population.
Identified stereotypes
Illiterate labor is equated with pauper labor and seen as a threat to American labor.