Foreign worker

“ My own personal experience in the foreign work convinces me that the easiest, most economical, and most effective way of solving the foreign problem is through the American church and the American worker directly. This for the following reasons: First, mission work established for the foreigner strictly in his own tongue is not particularly acceptable to him, and to some it is even offensive. ”

“ The answer to this is that these same laborers emigrate and give their foreign employers the reliable and continuous service which they consistently withhold from the employer at home because they are paid more and treated better abroad. ”

“ A: ‘The interests of foreign workers were always looked after; missions were sent to the various concentrations of East Workers to find out how they were progressing and what kind of treatment they were receiving. ”

“ But who is to remedy this unfornate susceptibility on the part of foreigners? The foreign employé has his work to do—diplomatic, professional, or commercial; the native is in no particular hurry to court the esteem of outsiders, being quite contented with his own high estimate of himself. Must it always be an officer "on short leave," or a journalist in a hurry, who undertakes to record superficial impressions of a passing spectacle? ”

“ The way to conquer the foreign artisan, is, not to kill him, but to beat his work. And the Crystal Palaces and World Fairs, with their committees and prizes on all kinds of industry, are the result of this feeling. The American workman who strikes ten blows with his hammer, whilst the foreign workman only strikes one, is as really vanquishing that foreigner, as if the blows were aimed at and told on his person. I look on that man as happy, who, when there is question of success, looks into his work for a reply, not into the market, not into opinion, not into patronage. ”

“ The establishment here of foreign standards of living is unquestionably detrimental. The immigrant is tempted by the wages paid laborers here, which are four or five times greater than those paid laborers in Europe ”

“ Yet, if we cared for men more than for money, and were consistent with our principles of protection, why, we should exclude all foreign workmen, as well as their work, and so raise the wages of the native hands. ”

“ Other domestic industries, having a national importance, and which might, after temporary protection, compete with foreign labor on equal terms, merited, he said, the same attention in a subordinate degree. ”

“ It is this way, you see, our working classes have to compete with other nations, all of which enjoy protective duties. I ask you, is it reasonable that we should let a foreign article come into England? ”

“ If an employer has a job that no American is willing to take, we need to find a way to fill that demand by matching willing employers with willing workers from foreign countries on a temporary and legal basis. ”

“ American wage-workers work with their heads as well as their hands. Moreover, they take a keen pride in what they are doing; so that, independent of the reward, they wish to turn out a perfect job. This is the great secret of our success in competition with the labor of foreign countries. ”

“ All the native tradesmen are in league with your servants, and while you know that you are being swindled it would be quite impossible to prove it, for should a shopkeeper or butcher tell you what his prices really were he would lose much of his business, as [30] servants in foreign employ would, in time, by some means or other, take the custom elsewhere. ”

“ The coolies who wilfully jostle Europeans in Queen's and Des Vœux Roads, and snatch watches and purses from ladies and children, the house-servants who are impertinent to their European mistresses in their masters' absence, and the shopkeepers who blink rudely at their foreign customers and remain seated, sleepily fanning their paunches, when according to their own canons of good manners they should be on their feet murmuring polite salutations—all these are persons to whom a glimpse of Western civilisation seems to have done nothing but harm. ”

“ Travelling journeymen. No apprentice can obtain his freedom, and be competent to set up in business for himself, till he has spent several years in travelling, and in working at his trade in foreign countries. ”

“ The new employers aided by the immigration of foreign laborers.—Success in manufacture still depended largely on the quality of labor, and one great advantage which England owed to her political and religious freedom was the immigration of skilled laborers seeking refuge from the persecutions of the Continent. ”

“ With the foreign peoples that we have with us today, the situation is somewhat different. Certain general principles are common to the course of all these migrations. They originate, on the one hand, in economic pressure, complicated not unfrequently with religious wars or persecutions, and on the other, in the expectation of better times in a new country. They meet the demands of a new country, asking for labor, and are further subject to the inducements of agents. ”

“ Is there any other class of foreign labor that you think has a tendency to render labor disreputable?
“Ans. Yes, I mean all whom we regard as inferior; to whom we consign the work—all who are really inferior. ”

“ Herein lies perhaps the greatest and most popular argument for immigration. It is claimed that without our foreign laboring force it would have been impossible to develop the resources of the country so rapidly and completely as they have been developed, and that if the supply were cut off now, it would seriously cripple the entire industry of the country. It is certainly true that under the present organization of industry in this country, production in many lines depends to a very important degree upon foreign labor. ”

“ If the work of the country be in our own hands, where is the difficulty in remunerating those who do it? He who provides the employment is bound to be the master,— it cannot be otherwise. And in assessing our wages the foreign master will naturally not be neglectful of his own pocket. ”

“ The one is in a certain sense the concomitant of the other, but the movement acquires an additional significance because of the fact that during the past fifteen years the labor class has been so recruited by a tide of foreign immigration that this class is now largely made up of persons of foreign parentage, and the lines of cleavage which begin to appear in this country between capital and labor have been accentuated by distinctions of nationality. ”

“ A young Englishman in another factory declared: "It takes five men here to do work that I and my mate would take care of at home." An American vice-consul told me that it takes three or four times as much Japanese as foreign labor to look after an equal number of looms. ”

“ The American pioneering breed had rare courage and initiative, and the European immigrants who came to settle in the Great West may well have topped the average of their people in these traits. Those who follow the lure of high wages in a foreign labor market will sub-represent their people in ability. The educated, the propertied, the established, the well-connected, having prospects at home, have no motive to submit themselves to the hardships of the steerage. ”

“ Whenever conditions became such that the native laboring force, if left to themselves, might have successfully demanded better conditions or higher remuneration, there has appeared an inexhaustible supply of foreign laborers, ready and willing to take what was unsatisfactory to the natives, or less. ”

“ When labourers are imported, or emigrate out of one country into another, it is generally because they have a lower standard of comfort than the natives whom they will come in competition with, and are prepared to work for lower wages. ”

“ For instance, our officials in the United States are constantly occupied, in assisting British immigrant working men and women who are suffering hardships under the stringent provisions of the United States immigration laws.
(2) The furthering of British trade. It is the duty of the whole Foreign Office organisation, but especially of the Consuls, to give advice to the representatives of commercial firms, to report openings for the sale of British goods abroad, and generally to give assistance to British trade in its competition with foreign trade. ”

“ Whereas, One of the greatest evils of unrestricted foreign immigration is the reduction of the wages of the American working-man and working-woman to the level of the underfed and underpaid labor of foreign countries ”

“ Another line of advance now coming into practical view is the use of various nationalities, according to their abilities for different kinds of works in foreign countries. We have seen, in Europe, Italian miners taken to many lands for tunnelling and submarine work, we have Norwegians largely employed in our shipping, and English engineers find many careers abroad. Of recent years the great mass of cheap skilled labour of China and Japan has been getting its due share of the world's work. ”

“ Granting this, the question still remains, would not the American workman have enjoyed a much greater increase in real wages during this period, if he had been allowed to reap the full advantage of his economic position in the country, without having to meet the competition of vast numbers of foreign laborers? ”

“ It is bad enough to have foreign labourers competing with our people. But if they are going to send over, bodily, their mills and other labour shops, John Bull will be obliged to put his foot down and kick somebody. ”

“ Some of the American industrial centres offer extremely favorable conditions for the comparative study of nationality. I have visited many manufacturing establishments in which almost all workers are immigrants from foreign countries and in which up to twenty different nationalities are represented. ”

“ Alarmed at the idea that the present flight from England may tend to give the labourer power to select his employer, and to have some control over the amount of his reward, the London Times suggests the expediency of importing cheap labourers from Germany and other parts of the continent, to aid in underworking their fellow-labourers in America and in India. ”

“ And thus it is that the young men, shunning farm and workshop, crowd the cities and haunt stores and counting rooms for employment in constantly increasing numbers, while it is a notorious fact that the American people, the people born and raised upon American soil, turn out so small a proportion of artizans and manual laborers generally, that we have to look in a large measure to foreign immigration to supply that want of society. ”

“ Many of them find their level in clerical and professional occupations, but they escape the manual toil which to them is the token of subordination. These manual portions are the peculiar province of the foreign immigrant, and foreign immigration is mainly a movement from the farms of Europe to the cities of America. ”

“ The term foreign labor contracting activity means recruiting, soliciting, hiring, employing, sponsoring, managing, furnishing, processing visa applications for, transporting, or housing an individual who resides outside of the United States in furtherance of employment in the United States, including when such activity occurs wholly outside of the United States. ”

“ LISTEN to a message from the country: "Give new freedom to our railroads and our dying merchant marine so that they can aid our crusade for foreign trade, and permit American labor employers to combine abroad so as successfully to compete there against foreign combinations paying much lower wages." ”

“ This contempt of foreigners is not confined to the upper ranks, or men in office, but pervades the very lowest class who, whilst they make no scruple of entering into the service of foreign merchants residing in the country, and accepting the most menial employments under them, performing the duties of their several offices with diligence, punctuality, and fidelity, affect, at the same time, to despise their employers, and to consider them as placed, in the scale of human beings, many degrees below them. ”

“ The degree of definiteness in these 278arrangements varies all the way from cases where agents go over to foreign countries, definitely charged with securing laborers for some employer, to those where the employer simply lets it be known among his employees that there will be work for all their friends or relatives who wish to come, and leaves the leaven to work. It is becoming more rare for agents in this country to go abroad in person; the tendency is for them to work in connection with agents established on the other side. ”

“ The employment of over 100,000 Chinese by foreign residents, many in highly confidential capacities, both in the office and the household, and as many more on board foreign ships, tends to confirm the general verdict that the people, in an individual sense, are civil, obliging, and even hospitable towards the foreigner, and well-disposed especially towards the English trader, who treats them fairly good-humouredly, and without offending their national prejudices. ”

“ The present scheme for proscribing strangers is in every way a fatal step. Have we not innumerable examples in the past of the employment of foreigners, to the greater glory of the State and to the infinite advantage of the people? ”

“ It is too much so in bringing home our brethren and our sisters to this country and not furnishing them labor. It is a very pleasing thought that occasionally companies of 400 or 500 people, or even 1,000, are delivered here from abroad. ”