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.