Any system of protection established in the interest of labor would have excluded all immigrants accustomed to a low standard of living. But as a matter of fact the immigration of cheap foreign labor was actively encouraged by the employers in whose interest the high tariff on foreign goods was maintained. The efforts of the wage-earning class to secure for themselves some of the benefits of protection by organizing to obtain an advance or prevent a reduction in wages was largely defeated through the wholesale importation of cheap foreign labor by the large manufacturing, mining and transportation companies. The agitation against this evil carried on by the labor unions finally resulted in the enactment by Congress of legislation forbidding the importation of labor under contract of employment. This, however, did not, and even if it had been efficiently enforced, would not have given the American workingman any real protection against cheap foreign labor. The incoming tide of foreign immigration has been rising and the civic quality of the immigrant has visibly declined. The free lands which formerly attracted the best class of European immigrants are now practically a thing of the past, and with the disappearance of this opportunity for remunerative self-employment the last support of high wages has been removed. With unrestricted immigration the American laboring man must soon be deprived of any economic advantage which he has heretofore enjoyed over the laboring classes of other countries. There has been one notable exception to this immigration policy. The invasion of cheap Asiatic labor upon the Pacific coast aroused a storm of protest from the laboring population, which compelled Congress to pass the Chinese Exclusion Act. But this legislation, while shutting out Chinese laborers, has not checked the immigration from other countries where a low standard of living prevails. In fact the most noticeable feature of the labor conditions in this country has been the continual displacement of the earlier and better class of immigrants and native workers by recent immigrants who have a lower standard of living and are willing to work for lower wages. This has occurred, too, in some of the industries in which the employer has been most effectually protected against the competition of foreign goods.[181] The time has certainly arrived when the policy of protection ought to be more broadly considered and dealt with in a public-spirited and statesman-like manner. If it is to be continued as a national policy, the interests of employees as well as employers must be taken into account. The chief evils of the protective system have been due to the fact that it has been too largely a class policy, and while maintained in the interest of a class, it has been adroitly defended as a means of benefiting the classes who derived little or no benefit--who were, indeed, often injured by our tariff legislation.