The immigrant provides the cheap, unskilled labor. As he becomes
influenced by American customs, he requires better clothes, a room
for himself instead of sharing his room with ten other men, more pay
as he becomes more skilled. He wants shoes for his wife. The American
law compels him to send his children to school instead of making them
wage-earners while little children. As his expenses increase he demands
more money that he may live as the people about him live. Then the
employer begins to replace him by labor costing what he formerly cost.
Herein is a remarkable story that would fill many little books like this.
It accounts for the procession of the Welsh, Scotch, Irish, Germans,
and Huns in the coal regions. It accounts for practically all the civil
war, in the form of bloody strikes, carried on in the Pennsylvania coal
fields, and much of that which occurs in other industries throughout the
country, this method of the employer seeking to replace those demanding
higher wages by those willing to work more cheaply.
OPPRESSION
_The Sicilian._ Many come because of oppression in the home land.
The Sicilian lives in a beautiful country, but while the sea and the
mountains are good to look upon, the people are very poor. The farm
worker cannot send his boy to school as boys go in America, for the
rural schools are few. He must pay such heavy taxes he has little left
for himself. Then, a few rich people own almost all the land and he must
work for them, or starve. They pay him such small wages he cannot buy
good, nourishing food for his children and they often suffer greatly
in consequence. You draw a long breath when you are told his wages are
from eight to thirty-two cents per day. Many of us use more each day in
car-fare than a laborer in Sicily receives though he works from the time
the top of Etna is crimson with morning, until the birds go to sleep.
Even salt, so cheap with us, is taxed so heavily he cannot use it and
when he cooks his corn meal in the salt water from the sea he is accused
of smuggling. Oppression is what makes many of these people our neighbors.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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