Capital Control

Capital saw great opportunity for profit through development of our vast natural resources. Foreign capital was attracted. Combinations were formed. These groups were able to obtain concessions and rights, quickly developing a power of control over industry which placed in the hands of a comparative few the economic life of America. Need for cheap labor. - With capital consolidated, only labor was required for this exploitation of our natural resources. America was too vast in area and too small in population to furnish the labor. By then-existing immigration laws the doors were open - the world might enter. Capital needed labor, and it must be cheap labor. The new immigration. - "The man with the hoe" was invited and urged to find in free America his great opportunity. He came by thousands, then tens and hundreds of thousands . The former class of immigrant had come to America to take up land and become farmers and builders of homes and communities. They were followed by the thousands who worked in the noise and sweat of our great steel mills, in our coal mines, and in the factories which quickly built up within our cities large congested areas, with great sections almost entirely composed of single nationalities. Labor was exploited, voted, worked, or left unemployed.