d to be paid.
Protective arguments based on economic reasoning were supported by a
plain necessity for revenue which admitted no dispute.

=A Liberal Immigration Policy.=--Linked with industry was the labor
supply. The problem of manning industries became a pressing matter, and
Republican leaders grappled with it. In the platform of the Union party
adopted in 1864 it was declared "that foreign immigration, which in the
past has added so much to the wealth, the development of resources, and
the increase of power to this nation--the asylum of the oppressed of all
nations--should be fostered and encouraged by a liberal and just
policy." In that very year Congress, recognizing the importance of the
problem, passed a measure of high significance, creating a bureau of
immigration, and authorizing a modified form of indentured labor, by
making it legal for immigrants to pledge their wages in advance to pay
their passage over. Though the bill was soon repealed, the practice
authorized by it was long continued. The cheapness of the passage
shortened the term of service; but the principle was older than the
days of William Penn.

=The Homestead Act of 1862.=--In the immigration measure guaranteeing a
continuous and adequate labor supply, the manufacturers saw an offset to
the Homestead Act of 1862 granting free lands to settlers. The Homestead
law they had resisted in a long and bitter congressional battle.
Naturally, they had not taken kindly to a scheme which lured men away
from the factories or enabled them to make unlimited demands for higher
wages as the price of remaining. Southern planters likewise had feared
free homesteads for the very good reason that they only promised to add
to the overbalancing power of the North.

In spite of the opposition, supporters of a liberal land policy made
steady gains. Free-soil Democrats,--Jacksonian farmers and
mechanics,--labor reformers, and political leaders, like Stephen A.
Douglas of Illinois and Andrew Johnson of Tennessee, kept up the
agitation in season and out. More than once were they able to force a
homestead bill through the House of Representatives only to have it
blocked in the Senate where Southern interests were intrenched. Then,
after the Senate was won over, a Democratic President, James Buchanan,
vetoed the bill. Still the issue lived. The Republicans, strong among
the farmers of the Northwest, favored it from the beginning and pressed
it upon the attention of the c