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About The west shore. (Portland, Or.) 1875-1891 | View Entire Issue (March 28, 1891)
200 THE WEST SHORE. THE WEST SHORE, ILLUSTRATED, As we!! expect to cure consumption witn a porous piasicr io ,m t -t .L- k.. nnliH- frnm th ills that now any extensive or permanent reuei ui me uuuj i". PCBUSHEU KvtkV SATt UAV. AT THE Co.E OP CoLlMSIA AND VATE SHEETS, PORTLAND, ORKGON. New Yon OfricE. So. 48 Tuti'M Bui.disg. Subscription Price, Four Dollars per Year. Single Copy, Ttn Cents. Aooau Au CeMiuacArKM Mm Au. nutmMon hHftl ID THE WEST SHORE PUBLISHING COMPANY, PORTLAND. OREOON. IMTUH8 AT Tr4 fOtt 0 AT AftATUMA 0MO Kfl 1WMM4N TNAQlAtM TM IAAJ AT MCONO CLAM MTU. SATURDAY, MARCH 28, 1891. Justice, with the hearty and voluntary aid ol the Portland gamblers and police force, has successfully performed the scale-balancing act at Hillsboro, and decided that a man who lay in wait for his victim and shot him in cold blood, who was twice convicted of murder in the first degree and was given new trials upon the flimsiest of technicalities, and who was finally convicted of manslaughter, shall spend one little year in stale's prison. It is such legal farces as this that are responsible for mob law in America. Judge Taylor should move to Portland ; the bosses need him. The action of the state board of agriculture in trying to give definite form again to a movement to have Oregon represented at the Chicago fair is very commendable, and in some such manner as that suggested the work will have to be done. The idea originally suggested by THE West Shiire last sum mer, when it began the campaign that was waged so vigorously and ended so disastrously in the legislature, seems still to be the most practicable. This is for the state board of commerce to call a convention of delegates from every county, which convention shall determine how much money should be raised and by what means, and shall, elect an executive committee. What is necessary to make arj exhibit a success is to put it under the management of one man of ability and executive force, who is directly responsible to an active, but unsalaried, executive committee. Through no fault of their own 4,000 miners at Butte City and Anaconda w ere throw n suddenly out of employment, not because the business was not pay ing, not because it was necessary for any purpose to temporarily cease opera tions, but simply because the managers of the Anaconda property and the Montana Union railroad had dilfrrrnt opinions of the value ol the services ol tlve latter for transortation. There was no question raised about excessive charges for freight consuming the profits, for it is well known that the Ana conda properties are yielding their owners enormous incomes, so great that they can afford to close down for an indefinite time and feel no embarrassment A man certainly has a legal right to do as he may choose with his own, but his moral right is confined within much closer bounds, w hich are far too limited to include such a willful disregard of the welfare of 4,000 human beings. Our friends of the farmers' alliance are preparing to fight the devil with fire. I'tterly opposed to trusts upon principle, they are organizing a trust of their own, whkh they fondly hope will completely eclipse and overthrow the trusts of other people, and thus the -right shall triumph, even though following in (lie footstep of tlie wrong. A huge grain and live stock trust is to be formed, embracing the producer of Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri and Iowa. Cold storage warehouses and grain elevators will be erected, and all products will be marketed through the trust, which will so manipulate the supply that prices will constantly be maintained at the highe possible point. W hile this is ( very wicked thing for manufacturers of boots and shoes, sugar or clothing to do, it is highly proper and godlike for the producer of food, and he who is so willfully blind as not to see a difference in them is beyond all ho of redemption, and must be looked upon as an enemy. Here is illustrated a great feature in human nature, and the one that stands as an immovable wall in the path of the socialist and llelUmyist the instinct of selfishness that leads us to condemn in others the very thing that we do ourselves w hen we find if for our own interest. Our war cry is " ln with trusts unless we are in them ! " Nevertheless, trusts in their broadest and most offensive form can not long remain to outrage public opinion in thi country, whether they be trusts of oil producer of trusts of wheal producers. to 1 derived from the new immigration law. That law provides for the exclusion of lunatics ; but it is not the crazy people who come here who menace our institutions. Indeed, if more of them were crazy, and could be locked up in asylums, there would be some hope for us. It excludes those afflicted with contagious disease, polygamists and persons convicted of crime and those whose passage has been paid by another or who come under con tract to labor. With these exceptions, the moral and intellectual riffraff and scum of Europe can come to this country as freely as ever. There is no provision denying admission to the man who has no conception of the value of the elecuve franchise and goes to swell the ranks of those thousands who sell their votes at every election. It puts up no bars against those who have no sympathy with our laws and system of government and no regard for those sturdy principles that have made our nation great and whose abandon ment means our downfall ; and, worst of all it affords no protection whatever, save the easily-evaded contract labor clause, for the American laborer from the demoralizing competition of illiterate, irresponsible and degrading laborers from other countries. Ours is a government not only by the people but for the people, and the word means all the individuals composing it, rich or poor. Its strength lies in the intelligence, morality and political honesty of those who compose it, of whom four-fifths are found in the ranks of those who toil daily to earn their bread, and this intelligence, morality and honor are founded upon, and preserved in, the American home, a home of books and flowers, standing within the shadow of the public school. When this home shall dis appear then will America as we and our fathers have known it also disappear. But how can this home be maintained if wages are constantly to be reduced to the level of those to which these swarms of irresponsible laborers have been accustomed in their own countries? It is upon this ground, rather than thai of others more prominently urged, that the exclusion of the Chinese is jus tifiable, and that the total exclusion of some other nations would be equally so. There are already many sections of the United States where the conditions of labor do not admit of the maintenance of the American home, where the home of the workingman has been swept away by the irresistible cyclone of immigration, where the man reared in American ideas and customs feels like a stranger in a strange land. When the company boarding house, the cheap hotel, the hovel and the saloon take the place of the home then is the founda tion of our national life broken up. If there is one doctrine more than another that is identified with our growth, and has a strong hold upon the people, it is that the national govern ment is expected to take measures for the protection of the interests of the people against foreign and conflicting interests. It is this sentiment that sup ports the tariff, which is designed for the protection of our manufacturers, but which, while it makes the cost of living higher to laborers, affords them no benefits at all proportional to (hose derived by the manufacturer. II the same principle were applied in the case of the laborer, and he received the same protection against foreign laborers that the manufacturer receives against for eign goods, the beneficent effects of the tariff would be more equitably dis tributed. But so long as cheap goods are kept out and cheap labor admitted, the condition of the workingman in America will gradually grow worse instead of better, wages will have a steadily downward tendency, and one by one the home of the intelligent, slunly and self reliant workingman the bone and sinew of the nation will give place to the hut and hovel of the industrial slave. The founders of this government never contemplated the existence of the enormously rich or the hopelessly poor in America, two classes that our present system is rapidly creating. What is the remedy? It certainly is not the little porous plaster given us by congress. We passed a law of total exclusion against the Chinese, and the true remedy lies in thai direction. If immigration were absolutely suspended for a period of ten years it would be of incalculable benefit to us as a nation. As the law would apply equally to all nations no complaint could be made of discrimination. To the objection that this would exclude many desirable persons, it can be replied that we can easily dispense with them if il be necessary in onler to keep the others out. We do not absolutely need a single soul to leave any foreign country and make his home here, and the loss of the few who might do so to our advan tage would be a cheap price to pay for salvation from the thousands who are now doing so to our disadvantage. This is the remedy, but public opinion requires a great deal of educating before it will support such a measure. Partial remedies, such as the imposition of a head tax of $100 to $500, and the securing of a certificate from a United States consul, would do much good ; but there is only one way to effect a permanent cure, and that is to close live doors absolutely until the great mass of inharmonious matter now here can become assimilated and Americanized.