There is no reason why the work of railway building and track laying. the work of section hands. of street laying. or sewer building should be considered dirty work or below an American standard. These tasks are certainly not harder or more disagreeable than that of the mining of precious metals. in which thousands of native Americans are engaged. If. first of all. employers insist upon an inadequate wage scale. and then the work is called dirty work and deeied socially beneath any but newly arrived immigrants. we may be sure that it is we who have created a demand for conditions that go to destroy democracyconditions that call for continuing importations of people willing to live below what we consider an American standardand. with this constant influx. all our efforts to establish social and economic justice come to naught. The protected sugar industry in the western part of our country and also in the Hawaiian Islands is a remarkable example of this insistence upon an inadequate wage scale as a prerequisite to employment. We find here that the tariff privilege works social damage as well as economic injustice. In whose interest. from our own American standpoint. is the cry raised for everincreasing multitudes of people that do not understand our institutions. that can not learn nor appreciate their own rights until a vast amount of unpaid labor is extorted from them? First of all. we find the transAtlantic steamship companies making their rakeoff from the transportation business. It has been abundantly shown how vigorous they are in their campaign for assisted immigration. There follow the railroads. that can hardly be brought to realize that tracklaying can be done by the inhabitants already in the country if only adequate wages are paid. I have already noted the wails of the protected sugar industry for any sort of labor that will work cheaply.
Identified stereotypes
Newly arrived immigrants are willing to live below what we consider an American standard.