matter of the importation of foreign labor under contract would be
a healthful sign, had not these investigations become so diseased by
contamination with corporate influences that most of them end at the
"gate." The immigration for the first six months of 1888 exceeds that of
any year since 1880, and it must follow that a vast percentage of this
is either imported under contract, or, what amounts to the same thing,
deceived by the lying promises of the agents of those interested in
flooding the American labor market. There is certainly no crying need
for additional laborers in this country, except to accomplish the
purposes of a circular not long ago issued from a New York banking
house, stating that "to check the demands of labor for excessive wages,
it is necessary to augment the tide of immigration to the United
States." The excessive demands of labor average $1.16 per day.

It is not, however, much that New York should charter a company to
violate the law of the land, when an Illinois legislature elects to the
United States Senate a "high-protective-tariff" man who is building the
State House of Texas with foreign contract laborers, brought there in
defiance of the law passed by the Senate to which he was elected. Just
how many of the four hundred thousand immigrants arriving annually are
brought here under contract, or lured by deceptive promises and
advertisements of those most interested in making laborers so plentiful
that labor shall be cheap, it is of course impossible to tell. But that
the fact is one of evil omen admits of no doubt. Rome drew nearer and
nearer her end as the army of idle, hungry men increased. Feeding them
from her public granaries may have postponed, it could not prevent, her
final collapse. "Enforced idleness, or the cheapening of men," says a
writer, "is not the sign of decadence, it _is_ decadence." It is
laudable and praiseworthy to make money by just and legitimate means,
but it is damnable to _unmake_ men in order to make money. To study the
causes for this vast and constantly increasing army of unemployed, and
then _do something_ to check those causes and prevent their effects,
while it might not be so good partisanship, would be much better
statesmanship than to "fire the Northern heart" by "bloody shirt"
speeches in the Senate, and the raking up of old letters to "expose" the
views some men held twenty-five years ago.

ETHELBERT STEWART.

P. S.--Since writing the above, sever