High Priced Cheap Labor

     Who is responsible for the killing of the President?
     Perhaps the steadfast patrons and importers of so-called cheap foreign labor.
     So-called cheap labor has some drawbacks. Labor is supposed to be cheap in the country to which Czolgosz belongs, though really it isn’t, but merely laborers’ time that is cheap. Other things are cheap there, among them human life. This supposedly cheap labor and cheapness of human life are generally found together.
     What will it profit to hire a man for ten cents a day if every time he has a grievance he will attempt assassination as the only remedy?
     In countries like Russia and Italy, where wages are miserable and liberty most curtailed, the people regard violence as the only way to secure relief.
     In countries like the United States, England, France and Germany, particularly the two former, the people depend upon agitation, public opinion, labor organization, the ballot, etc.
     Abuses must be remedied in some way. It is a matter of choice. If labor organizations with arbitration, or strikes, are not liked, employers can frequently engage workmen who do not understand or practice such methods but who do understand and practice violence.
     Some employers do this, and many of them who have, do not know how near they have sometimes been to the assassin’s knife. The American workmen, who have worked alongside these people in some sections of the country, know far better than manufacturers the chances which the latter have taken[.]
     Some people are so over-anxious to “make a dollar” that they will risk getting their throats cut. To take such chances for the sake of employing men who are only apparently cheap is indeed foolish. The daily wage they get is low enough, but the daily service they render is more than correspondingly small.
     We have secured a lot of this sort of cheap labor and have lost a president, and the people who make the loudest pretences [sic] of sorrow, and call most loudly for something being done to prevent such an occurrence in the future will immediately proceed to encourage the importation of more of this exceedingly high priced so-called cheap labor[.]