upon the presence of this labor for their prosperity, should become influential enough to move the Government to protect this influx, and, under the form and pretense of law, to suppress popular protests against it, would it not be possible for a complete change in the constitution of our society to be established in the course of a couple of centuries? Had the immigration continued, the introduction of this labor into the South was extremely probable; and its introduction into the East was not improbable. The white planters of the South had long been greatly dissatisfied with the negro laborers; especially when the negroes were leaving in great numbers for the new Western States was the discontent extreme. At that time it was proposed to introduce Chinese laborers upon a large scale; and the tide of Mongol immigration would have been turned in that direction had it not been for the policy of exclusion adopted in 1880. Once introduced into the South, and, after a few years, in Louisiana alone a hundred thousand of these Chinese males would have been seen working in the fields as serviceable and tractable laborers, in place of negroes.

Were this social change to be consummated, its ultimate effect would be to wreck our institutions. Were society divided into an opulent class on the one hand, and, upon the other hand, a class of propertyless laborers, consisting in part of the Chinese, but comprising also the major portion of the white population, our institutions would have to undergo rapid change. Among the degraded white laborers, communism would find efficient instruments. Popular tumults would threaten to overturn society. Unchecked, they would tend to the demolition of existing social and political creations, to the destruction of existing vested rights of property, and to anarchy. The instinct of self-preservation would drive the wealthy classes to change the character of our Government, and to make it, with its judiciary and military establishment, the instrument for the maintenance of their fortunes and class position against the majority of the population. The protection of property, the preservation of the only vested rights in society, would be held a holy and just cause by the sentiment of the influential, the cultured, and the intelligent classes. It would be their rights which were threatened, and their sentiments would conform to their interests. A radical alteration of our existing system of popular rule would inevitably follow as the only means of preserving its material interests, its culture, its learning,

and of preventing the rule of ignorance, passion, and communism, and hence the reign of anarchy and of universal spoliation.

It is not, however, necessary to show that any such social change would be worked over our whole national territory. It is sufficient to show that the presence of the Chinese laborers tends to produce this change in all labor fields in which they establish themselves. It follows, then, as a consequence, that the immigration in its present character does not improve the condition of the Chinese, while it ruinously affects the welfare of our laboring and middle classes. As the magnitude of the Chinese population increases, just in that proportion does it degrade the condition of our laborers, and just in that proportion does it tend to eliminate the middle classes of moderate means from our society, and to augment the fortunes of a limited and constantly narrowing class. These changes, were they continued, would be productive in future of popular distress, and of popular disturbances more terrible than any yet experienced in our country. In California, laborers who are subject to the direct competition of the Chinamen are about equal in number to the Chinese laborers in that State 70,000. The Kearney agitation had a real moving cause in the hardship this competition had produced among the laboring classes in the year 1880. Aside from the causes of distress to be found in the improvidence of laborers, an abnormal depression of wages had in fact occurred. The Chinese had, as a matter of fact, depressed wages and made employment to some extent abnormally scarce at that time. Comparative destitution prevailed among the laboring classes, unexampled in California. The result was this agitation. Its consequences have been seen in intemperate attacks upon great interests in California. This is but a foretaste of the terrible commotions that would disturb our country were the Chinese influx to continue.

When the presence of these laborers is calculated to work such evil to our working and middle classes, and to so menace our institutions without permanent benefit to themselves, it is clear that the American policy does not require their admission on the ground that this great country is the asylum of the oppressed of all nations. That policy contemplates the improvement of the condition of the immigrant. In this case, that condition is not improved. It contemplates the elevation of the moral, mental, and physical condition of ordinary humanity.

This immigration defeats that end. That policy assumes, also. that such immigrants as are admitted will not tend to destroy the democratic constitution of society and the honorable, independent, and happy condition of our laboring and middle classes, who form the bulk of our nation and give strength to our institutions. This immigration threatens to destroy the democratic constitution of our society, to diminish, if not to obliterate, the middle class, and to hopelessly degrade the laboring class. The policy of exclusion in this light is not a narrow and illiberal policy. It is a policy of self-preservation, which looks not only to our own welfare, but to the continued existence of our helpfulness as a people to other people.

If, now, the object of our national policy is to secure the accumulation of great wealth in our country, regardless of the effect upon the condition of the mass of men, and regardless of the resulting distribution of wealth, then the only great desideratum is cheap labor under any circumstances, and the Chinese ought to be admitted. If it is better to have a slower development of wealth, but therewith a development of the welfare and intelligence of the masses, the laborers, and small property-holders, then this cry of cheap labor cannot be too severely condemned. It is hardly necessary to add that the reasons for the exclusion of the Chinese do not operate in the case of immigrants from Europe. Whether those immigrants come from England, Ireland, or Germany, they come with their families, and are as anxious to raise their standard of living and to acquire property as is our own native population. They do not tend to drag down our laboring population to a condition of comparative destitution and of hopeless and irredeemable poverty.

It is especially incumbent upon capital in the United States to discourage every influence which tends to depress wages abnormally, and thus to make laborers throughout the country uniformly propertyless and poverty-stricken; which tends to diminish the numbers of our middle class of modest fortunes by preventing accession to it from the ranks of mere laborers. Everywhere in the West, attacks have been made upon accumulated wealth, especially when invested in the form of railroads. These attacks have been comparatively harmless because of the protection afforded by our national constitution and our national judicial system. But the national constitution and

judicial system were efficient for the purpose of protection, because the great majority of the population had property rights whose security depended upon the integrity of our national constitution and judicial system only. Make that majority propertyless, make them suffer permanent destitution, and opinion among that majority would soon require governmental action amounting to the confiscation of wealth. Universal suffrage would secure such governmental action. The restraint of our national constitution would be opposed to the interests, desires, and sentiments of the majority of our population. That majority composed of all the ignorance and passion of society, and embittered by destitution, would not listen to any reasons urged to restrain them. The constitution would have to yield, and virtual revolution would be accomplished.

JOHN H. DURST.

EVILS OF THE TARIFF SYSTEM.

THERE is no one subject in respect to which all thoughtful men are at present more anxious and perplexed than the extraordinary and prolonged industrial and financial depression and disturbance of the country, and the outlook for what is to be in the future. It is proposed, in the limited space here allowed, to ask the consideration mainly of a single point, namely, the connection between what has happened and is likely to happen, and our existing tariff policy; or the extent to which speedy and radical, but at the same time judicious, tariff reforms are essential to continued national prosperity and national development.

To the head of one of the largest manufacturing establishments (not textile) in the country, who was recently complaining of business depression, no profits, and an apparent necessity for a speedy suspension of his operations (which last has since occurred), the following question put by the writer, "When do you expect better times?" promptly elicited the following reply: "Not until I can sell at a reasonable profit what I have the capacity and the desire to manufacture. In default of this, I cannot expect to earn interest on my investments (on buildings or machinery) or give employment to my operatives." Here, then, we have the present condition of industrial affairs, and the proximate remedy for most of what is at present industrially unsatisfactory, simply outlined by an intelligent man, who, at the time of speaking, was not thinking of the tariff, and who afterward expressed himself as in opposition to free trade. In other words, the country has more commodities- agricultural and manufactured-of its own production than can be sold in existing available markets at a profit, or even at cost; and it has more capacity for producing them than can be kept steadily employed under existing circumstances.

To illustrate and demonstrate these assertions more specifically, let us consider first the condition of agriculture.