Title: Fair's Fair: McDonnell Argues for Acceptance of Aliens
Headings: 
Fair’s Fair: McDonnell Argues for Acceptance of Aliens
The Chinese Must Go

Content: It now ill becomes those, or the descendants of those, against whom this cry was raised in past years, to raise a similar tocsin against a class of foreigners who have been degraded by ages of oppression. The “Know Nothing” movement had its REAL origin in the dread of native workmen that they would be undersold in the labor market by the cheap labor of Great Britain, Germany and other European countries. The American workingmen were accustomed to wear better clothes, live in better habitations, eat better food, and consequently, received better wages than the workingmen of Europe. For these reasons they dreaded the immigration of Europeans, whose habits were not so independent, and whose style of living was so inferior, because they saw clearly that the new comers would be satisfied with a rate of wages that would provide them with the class of living they had been accustomed to. The feeling at the bottom of the “Know Nothing” movement IN ITS EARLY DAYS was certainly a general one against low wages, and if it had raised the cry: No low wages
No cheap labor! instead of sounding the intolerant, silly, and shameful cry against Irishmen, Englishmen, Germans and all other “foreigners,” it would have accomplished incalculable good. As it was it fell into the hands of infamous, scheming politicians, who pandered to the worst prejudices of the masses by raising a cry against men of various religious faiths and foreign nationalities. This policy suited them; it raised them to prominence and office and allowed what they IN THEIR HEARTS desired, the onward march of low wages.