Any one who has observed the life of the working-man on both sides of the Atlantic knows that wages, conditions, opportunities, are vastly superior as a whole in the United States. It is a New World, with a New World’s hopes. But it is only the blind and deaf who do not realize that the same forces of allied greed and privilege which have made life so hard for so many in the Old World are at work, seeking to repeat here what they have done there. The favorite device of those who are engaged in this attempt is picturing the contrast between the most favored labor of the United States, and the least favored of Europe. It is a device which “Pig Iron” Kelley used throughout his career with utter disregard of facts. Mr. McKinley followed him. In the course of his defence of the tin plate duty he read, with that incredible satisfaction which the prohibitive protectionist takes in the thought that his policy may cripple the industry of another nation, an English view of the effect the proposed duty would have in Wales. “The great obstacle to tin plate making on a large scale in the states,” said the article, “is the entire absence of cheap female labor.” Mr. McKinley paused and said impressively, “We do not have cheap female labor here under the protective system, I thank God for that.” And yet at that moment in the textile mills of New England, of New York, and of Pennsylvania, not only were thousands of women working ten, eleven, and more hours a day, because their labor was cheap, but thousands of children under twelve years of age were doing the same.