H.): Examination of the Proposal to Prerent Competition by Foreign Pauper Labor.

51. The protectionist says that he does not want the American laborer to compete with the foreign “pauper laborer” (see § 99). He assumes that if the foreign laborer is a woolen operative, the only American who may have to compete with him is a woolen operative here. His device for saving our operatives from the assumed competition is to tax the American cotton or wheat grower on the cloth he wears, to make up and offset to the woolen operative the disadvantage under which he labors. If then, the case were true as the protectionist states it, and if his remedy were correct, he would, when he had finished his operation, simply have allowed the American woolen operative to escape, by transferring to the American cotton or wheat grower the evil results of competition with “foreign pauper labor.”

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