Another, apprehended by the laboring classes, who are already suspicious from their experience with the Chinese, would be an enormous influx, either of cheap labor or of its products, to beat down their wages.
Reid highlights the fears of laboring classes regarding the influx of cheap labor affecting their wages.
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Public sentiment was against the sale of lands to the Yankees; “Get white laborers,” they urged, “and in a year you’ll make enough to be able to hold on to your lands.
Brushing aside, then, these bugbears, gentlemen, what are the obvious duties of the hour?
It seems to me, then, idle to thresh over old straw when the grain is not only winnowed, but gone to the mill.
In November nothing could exceed the hatred which seemed everywhere felt to the freedmen.