September 04, 2005
Labor Day vs. Day Labor
Then
I looked up at Nye,
And he gazed upon me;
And he rose with a sigh,
And said, "Can this be?
We are ruined by Chinese cheap labor,"
"Plain Language from Truthful James" by Bret
Harte
That was Harte's little joke in his
famous poem about two American frontier cardsharks,
circa 1870, who find themselves out-cheated by a
Chinese immigrant gambler.
"Chinese cheap labor" was a
common phrase in the 19th century when the labor
movement in America was starting up.
Employers would import contract
labor from China and elsewhere to break strikes and
maintain control of the
labor force. The early struggles of
American labor were not only against employers—they
were also against immigrants.
[A]n
Irish immigrant, Dennis Kearney, was a leader of the
agitation that halted Chinese immigration into
California. (His —probably mythical—slogan: "Americay
for Americans, Begorrah!") Peter Brimelow,
Alien Nation,
P.21
A progressive historian wrote in
New Politics that
“A SPECTER IS HAUNTING
AMERICA'S LABOR HISTORIANS: It is the apparition
of the Chinese worker. Long gone from his once insecure
place in the fields, factories, industries, mines, and
railways on the western frontier, as well as from the
shoe and cutlery manufactories where he once served as a
short-term strikebreaking laborer in the Northeast, the
Asian immigrant from what was once called the Middle
Kingdom is today being raised from the ignominious grave
to which earlier labor historians had consigned him. But
now he serves as a foil in an ongoing debate over
whether organized labor's history contains a rich
heritage of left-multiracial virtues or a clandestine
legacy of right-racist vices.” [
The
"Chinese Question" and American Labor Historians
Stanford M. Lyman [New Politics, Winter 2000]
Unprogressive readers may choose to
reverse the virtues and vices in that statement, but
it's a fact that by 1897, President McKinley had
appointed
Terence V. Powderly, founder of the
Knights of Labor, as his Commissioner of
Immigration, charged with
enforcing, among other things, the
Chinese Exclusion Act. Powderly was succeeded in
office by two other labor leaders.
Apparently, in the nineteenth
century, the government had come to the realization that
labor had a certain stake in immigration matters.
Fastforwarding to the 21st Century,
the
Bush Administration has tried appointing first
James Ziglar, a man who didn't believe that
deporting illegal aliens was
"practical or reasonable" and then Eduardo
Aguirre, who
Michelle Malkin called
"Another Clueless Banker."
Modern day
labor unionism is frequently associated with
far-left politics, subsidized by
compulsory dues. The labor unions, if asked why a
Republican working man is being asked to
subsidize Democratic pols, will reply that Democrats
in office will be more likely to give in to the unions
on special privileges for union labor, and thus serving
the members economic self interest.
The dissenting conservative union
member might point out that issues like missile defense,
gun control, crime control, et cetera, are more
important than economic issues, since they involve life
and death.
However, on the immigration issue,
this dissenting conservative union member loses twice:
the
deformation professionelle that turns union
leaders from the shop steward up into
leftist ideologues means that they have decided
in favor of mass immigration—partly because they
think it's the right thing to do in "social justice"
terms, and partly because they want to
shore up their declining membership with foreign
workers.
In the meantime, that hypothetical
conservative union member, if he got his
union dues back from his left-wing labor leaders,
wouldn't find a lot of support for his
immigration concerns in the modern Republican
Party…would he?
Happy Labor Day to all our readers,
and here's some of the work we've done on Labor Days
past:
September 02, 2001 - Happy (Fairly Priced) Labor Day!
August 30, 2002 - View from Lodi, CA: A Labor Day Lament
August 31, 2003 - Unhappy Labor (Investor Taxpayer) Day?
September 03, 2003: WSJ Edit Page’s Labor Day
Revisionism
September 03, 2004 - UnConventional Opinions for Labor
Day
September 05, 2004 - Thinking About Jobs On Labor Day
September 02, 2005 - View From Lodi, CA: Labor Day—As
the Rich Get Richer….
