\
Immigration and Labor
The Economic Aspects of European
Immigration to the United States
By
Isaac A. Hourwich, Ph.D.
Second Edition
Revised
New York
B. W. HUEBSCH,
1922
COPYRIGHT, 1912
BY
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
COPYRIGHT. 1923
BY
ISAAC A. HOURWICH, PH.D.
Printed by Harper & Brother*
New York
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
IMMIGRATION is treated in this book solely as an eco-
1 nomic question. In this the author followed the Immi-
gration Commission, which was created by Congress in 1907,
and presented its report in 1910. He was not unaware of
the existence of a sentiment against immigration, based upon
other than economic considerations. Indeed, most of the
first chapter, and a part of the third, are devoted to this
aspect of the question. But he concurs in the opinion of the
experts of the Immigration Commission, and of the Com-
mission on Industrial Relations, that the objections to im-
migration are fundamentally of an economic nature^ Prior
to the war, the only real power behind the agitation in favor
of restriction of immigration was organized labor. Our
statesmen in Washington took scant notice of the academic
disquisitions in the domains of anthropology, ethnology,
sociology, eugenics, and political science, which presented
the old arguments of the Know-Nothings dressed up in a
modern scientific garb. But they listened to union officials
who proposed to reward their friends and punish their
enemies on election "day. Yet the opposition of labor to
immigration was outweighed by the influence of capital,
which regarded free trade in the labor market as indispensable
for the expansion of American industry. The social revolu-
tion in Russia and its echoes in Hungary, Germany, and
Italy, as well as the growth of the Socialist and Communist
parties in all European countries, have aroused a fear of
immigration among American capitalists. Labor and capital
now united in the demand for restrictive legislation. Or-
ganized labor favofta "complete exclusion of immigration,
capital favored a "selective \\test meant to bar all immi-
iii
/V tPr-efctce to the Second Edition
'" Bolshevism," which is a comprehensive
term for every variety of economic and political heresy. A
compromise was reached by the passage of the recent immi-
gration act, supplemented by the order of the State De-
partment requiring the visaing of the passports of all in-
tending immigrants by American consuls in the countries
of emigration. Both are merely emergency measures, and
the matter will again be before Congress at its regular
session. The object of this edition is to aid in the public
discussion of this question.
The first edition of this book appeared less than two years
before the World War. No changes in the structure of
society manifest themselves within two years under ordinary
conditions. No new immigration legislation was enacted
during that time. It is, therefore, reasonable to assume that
the normal effects of immigration on the eve of the war
were the same as at the time when this book was first pub-
lished. The outbreak of the European war produced a
revolutionary change. As an ardent advocate of restriction
exultingly put it, "the war did to immigration what all the
restrictionist agitation in the world could not have accom-
plished it stopped it altogether." 1 Here was an opportunity
to test the effects of the cessation of immigration upon the
condition of labor in the United States. This subject is
treated in the new chapter, "The Lessons of the War,"
dealing with labor conditions during the late war. The
forecast of the probable effects of restriction of immigration,
which was the concluding chapter of the first edition, has
been retained, with the omission of the discussion of some of
the recommendations of the Immigration Commission which
are now out of date. The reader is thus enabled to verify
the deductions drawn from the history of immigration prior
to the war, by the experience of labor during a period without
immigration. The new chapter may serve as an answer to
the main criticisms of the first edition.
A reviewer in The Quarterly Journal of Economics scouted
1 Prof. Henry P. Fairchild in The New York Times of October 12, 1919.
Preface to the Second Edition v
the "elaborate treatment . . . accorded the question 'has
emigration from Southern and Eastern Europe checked emi
gration from Northern and Western Europe?'" It seemed
to him that "restrictionists ... who plan and expect a re-
vival of the older immigration, are not conspicuous." Yet
this is the avowed aim of the 3 per cent quota of the immi-
gration law which was enacted last spring.
A detailed analysis of the points raised by critics will be
found in the Appendix.
ISAAC A. HOURWICH.
NEW YORK, September 15, 1921.
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION
THE Immigration Commission, after three years of
investigation, reached the conclusion that our immi-
gration policy "should be based primarily upon economic or
business considerations." ' This conclusion has determined
the scope of the present book: it treats immigration solely
as an economic question. For the same reason the dis-
cussion is confined to European immigration, Oriental
immigration being viewed by many students primarily as
a race question, which reaches out beyond the domain of
economics.
The author gratefully acknowledges his indebtedness to
Mr. William W. Bishop, superintendent of the Reading
Room, Library of Congress, who obligingly placed at his
disposal the exceptional facilities of the Library; to Mr.
W. W. Husband, secretary of the Immigration Commission,
who courteously gave him access to the proof sheets of the
reports of the Commission, in advance of their publication;
and to the young men and women who assisted him in the
preparation of the material for this book.
I. A. rl.
WASHINGTON, D. C., July 23, 1912-
CONTENTS
PART I.
SUMMARY REVIEW.
PACK
Difference between the old and the new immigration quantitative,
not qualitative. ..... !
Immigration and emigration regulated by demand for labor . . 3
The myth of imported immigrants 2
Unemployment the result of industrial maladjustment . . 4
Unemployment varies inversely with immigration . . . 5
Limited demand for immigrant labor in agriculture ... 7
Effect of immigration not racial displacement, but evolution of
an English-speaking aristocracy of labor .... 9
Causes of the decrease of emigration from Northern and Western
Europe 13
Race suicide unrelated to immigration . . . . .18
Economic reason for the predominance of unskilled laborers among
the immigrants i
The standard of living of the recent immigrant not inferior to that
of his predecessors 19
Higher standard of living of the American workman maintained
with the aid of his children's wages 22
Native workmen and older immigrants not underbid by recent
immigrants 23
Employment of immigrants in large numbers going together with
advances in wages 24^,
Reduction of child labor in States with a large immigrant popu-
lation. Child labor a substitute for immigration . . 26
Reduction of the workday 27
Work accidents not the result of immigration .... 29
Immigration and trade-unionism. Union membership rising and
falling with the rise and fall of immigration . 30
Organization among the unskilled 3 2
Regulation of terms of employment by conferences between organ-
ized capital and organized labor . 33
vi i
J
viii Contents
PAGE
Immigration not the cause of the labor problem . . -34
Restriction of immigration no relief for unemployment . . 35
The lesson of the late war; decline of real wages amidst industrial
prosperity, in the absence of immigration . 36
PART II.
TOPICAL ANALYSIS.
CHAPTER I.
STATEMENT OF THE QUESTION.
Objections to immigration 40
Old and new immigration 41
What is "undesirable" immigration 41
The problem of assimilation 42
Restriction of competition demanded by organized labor . . 44
Cosmopolitanism and the theory of "seclusion and isolation" . 45
CHAPTER II.
THE REPORT OF THE IMMIGRATION COMMISSION.
Conclusions of the Commission: Immigration an economic
problem 48'
Defects of the Report:
Absence of a historical view 50
Lack of statistical evidence to support its conclusions . 51
Race distinction the dominant idea of the investigation . 55
Deceptive statistical generalizations . . i . . .58
CHAPTER III. k
OLD AND NEW IMMIGRATION.
The immigrant of bygone days as popularly pictured . 61
The bulk of immigrants a century ago indentured servants . 62
Destitution of the free immigrants before the era of the "new
immigration" 63
Congestion in the settlements of past generations of immi-
grants in New York City . .- . . .65
Aversion of the early Irish immigrants to employment in
farming 67
Contents
IX
PACK
Majority of the old immigration unskilled laborers ... 67
Percentage of skilled mechanics about the same for the last
half century 69
No evidence of a lowered standard of immigration ... 69
The average immigrant intellectually above the average of his
countrymen at home 70
Social prejudice against immigrants in the past 73
The "bird of passage" .74
The problem of assimilation . 75
Opposition of organized labor antedates the "new immigration" 78
Note: The Statistics of Italian Illiteracy.^, 80
CHAPTER/IV^ 1r
f IMMIGRATION AND THE LABOR MARKET.
Demand for labor increasing faster than population ... 82
Immigration follows business conditions 86
How the volume of immigration is regulated .... 93
Importation of contract laborers infrequent .... 99
Character of immigration determined by demand for labor . 101
CHAPTER V.
THE DEMAND FOR LABOR IN AGRICULTURE.
Relative and absolute decrease of the rural population . .103
Migration of Americans of native stock to the city . . .104
Comparative demand for labor in agriculture and industry . 104
Differentiation of manufacturing from farming . . .106
Centralization of industry and its effect upon farming . .107
Introduction of labor-saving machinery 108
Displacement of the wage-earner IO 9
Low wages . . . . no
Long hours IIQ
Limits to further growth of agricultural population . . .112
CHAPTER VI.
UNEMPLOYMENT.
A. The Causes of Unemployment.
Unemployment not the result of over-population . . "4
Differentiation of manufacturing from farming leads to un-
employment . . 1*4
x Contents
PAGE
Seasonal trade variations 115
Lack of mobility of skilled labor 117
Cyclical fluctuations of employment 121
Dissipation of the demand for labor 121
The labor reserve 124
B. Unemployment and Immigration.
Native and foreign-born workmen equally affected by un-
employment 125
Unemployment is in inverse ratio to the relative number of
foreign-born 128
Annual variations of the relative number unemployed . 137
Annual variations of the number of working days . .140
Immigration not a contributory cause of unemployment . 145
A remedy against unemployment 146
CHAPTER VII.
RACIAL STRATIFICATION.
Migratory character of the population of the United States . 148
Industrial growth of the country west of the Atlantic Seaboard
States 150
Adjustment of native and foreign elements on the scale of
occupations 150
Actual displacement of American wage-earners by immigrants a
rare exception ........ 151
Extraordinary expansion of the iron and steel industry. Native
Americans employed in increased numbers since immigration
from Southern and Eastern Europe has become conspicuous. 158
Economic opportunity for the advancement of English-speaking
wage-earners created by immigration . . . .161
"Racial displacement" a negligible quantity . ' . . .165
CHAPTER VIII.
EMIGRATION FROM NORTHERN AND WESTERN EUROPE.
A. Introductory: Emigration from Northern and Western
Europe cannot keep pace with the demand for immigrant
labor in the United States ... .177
B. Germany.
Excess of immigration to, over emigration from Germany . 180
Sources of immigration to Germany: Southern and Eastern
Europe 181
Contents xi
PAGE
Industrial expansion j8 2
Increased demand for labor . . . . .185
Improvement of the condition of labor . . . .185
Progress of labor legislation . . . . . .188
Agricultural progress. Advance in the wages of farm labor. 189
Co-operation ......... 191
Effects of the repeal, in 1890, of the exceptional laws of
1878 191
Immigration of German unskilled laborers to the United
States has increased with the increasing tide of immi-
gration from Southern and Eastern Europe . . . 192
C. The Scandinavians.
Immigration of Scandinavian breadwinners to the United
States highest in 1901-1910 196
Scandinavians seeking employment in competition with im-
migrants from Southern and Eastern Europe . . 198
D. Norway.
Total number of Norwegian immigrants highest in 1901-1910 202
Recent industrial development of Norway . . . 202
E. Denmark.
Conditions of the Danish peasants greatly improved since
theSo's. Success of agricultural co-operation . . 203
Polish migration to Denmark 204
Progress of the manufacturing industry. Strong organization
oflabor 204
P. Sweden.
Cause of the decline of emigration from rural districts: Small
demand for farm help in the United States . . 205
Immigration to Sweden 206
Recent industrial development 207
Progress of organized labor 208
G. The United Kingdom.
Development of the British colonies drawing immigrants from
the mother country 209
Effect of colonial restriction of foreign immigration . 210
Encouragement of immigration of British subjects by the
Canadian and the Australian Governments . .210
Emigration from the British Isles to the United States in
1880-1909 not below normal. Rising tide in 1898-1907 . 211
Improvement of living conditions in Great Britain . . 2i4
xii Contents
FAGB
H. Ireland.
Emigration from Ireland decreasing since 1860 . . .215
Effects of land reform 217
Welfare work of the country governments . . . .218
The co-operative movement . . . . . .218
Rise in wages of farm laborers 218
Improvement of the condition of the people . . .219
/. Conclusion: Immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe
could not be replaced by immigration from Northern and
Western Europe 220
CHAPTER IX.
RACE SUICIDE.
General Walker's explanation of the decline in the native birth-
rate: Native stock replaced by immigration . . .221
Decline of the birth-rate begins in 1810-1830 .... 223
A world-wide phenomenon 224
Race suicide universal among social classes not affected by im-
migrant competition 224
CHAPTER X.
THE STANDARD OF LIVING.
A. Introductory: The subject of inquiry comparative stand-
ards of unskilled laborers, past and present . . . 228
B. Congestion in New York City.
Overcrowding and filth in the first half of the past century . 229
Squalid rooms of native American sewing women . .231
The shanty dwellers in the middle of the nineteenth century 231
The Irish and German colonies in the 60 's . . . 232
Improved conditions of the Jewish and Italian districts of
our day 234
Industrial causes of congestion 235
Effect of congestion upon cost of living and wages . . 240
C. Housing Conditions in the Country at Large.
Housing conditions of New England working girls in the 40*3 . 241
Filthy and unsanitary tenements in Boston in the days of the
old immigration . . . . . . .241
The same conditions in smaller towns .... 243
Shanty dwellers in Massachusetts 244
Contents xiii
PACK
Comparison with housing conditions in Ireland . . 245
Housing conditions of native white unskilled laborers in
Southern mill towns ...... 246
Cause of bad housing conditions economic, not racial . . 247
Responsibility of the landlords . . . . . 247
Company houses 248
Tendency of the Immigration Commission to shift the blame
to the tenant ........ 249
Fallacy of the race classification adopted by the Commission . 250
Rental paid by immigrants as high as, or higher than, that
paid by native wage-earners . . . . . 250
Native American wage-earners in small towns with low rents
able to underbid the immigrant workers of large cities
with high rents 255
D. Food: Existence of a race standard of living not proved . 256
E. Clothing.
Prices paid by recent immigrants the same as those paid by
native Americans ....... 265
Race variations insignificant 266
F. Savings.
Small margin of income left for savings . . . .. 267
American wage-earners not injured by the investments of
immigrants in their home countries .... 269
The Mercantilist objection to the exportation of money . 271
CHAPTER XL
HOME OWNERSHIP.
Point of view of the Immigration Commission not that of the
wage-earner 2 74
Irregularity of employment a bar to home ownership . . 274
Handicap in labor disputes . 2 7 6
Tenancy in Boston in 1790, 1845, 1890, and 1900 . .^ . 276
Native home owners before the period of the "new immi-
gration"
Home ownership decreasing with the increase of land values . 278
Immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe not long enough
in the United States to have acquired homes
Tenancy increasing with the growth of urban population . . 282
xiv Contents
CHAPTER XII.
EFFECT OF IMMIGRATION ON WAGES.
PAGE
Difference in wages due to grade of service, not to country of
birth 284
Native American and Americanized families maintain a higher
standard with the aid of children's earnings . . . 285
Recently -landed immigrants not engaged at less than the prevail-
ing rates of wages 285
Machinery and immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe. 28$
Defects of wage statistics . . . . . . 292
Wages in urban and rural manufactures: Country competition
of native Americans tends to lower the wages of immigrants 297
Rates of wages not affected by immigration .... 299
Increase of wages result of industrial expansion . . . 302
Wages of railroad employees 302
Low salaries of clerical help 304
Wages in coal mines and steel mills 305
What would have been the increase of wages without immigration
from Southern and Eastern Europe? .... 306
Wages of older employees kept up by immigration from Southern
and Eastern Europe . 309
x CHAPTER XIII.
HOURS OF LABOR.
Hours of labor of native American mill hands in the ante-immi-
gration period 311
Reduction of hours contemporaneous with immigration . . 313
Foreign unskilled laborers in the steel industry working shorter
hours than English-speaking skilled and semi-skilled em-
ployees 314
Reduction of the working day in the cotton mills . . .315
Comparative reduction of hours in New York City and in the
remainder of New York State, 1901-1910 .... 315
CHAPTER XIV. *
CHILD LABOR.
Child labor in the early days of the factory system . . . 318
Decrease in the employment of children contemporaneous with in-
crease of immigration 318
Contents xv
PAGE
Employment of children in the South relatively greater than in
States with a large immigrant population . . . .319
Child labor in rural Missouri 322
CHAPTER XV. f
LABOR ORGANIZATIONS.
Conclusions of the Immigration Commission contradicted by its
statistics: Trade union affiliation of Jewish and Italian cloth-
ing workers in New York City above the average for the
wage-earners of the country at large 325
Membership in labor unions unaffected by race . . . 326
Organization among immigrants from Southern and Eastern
Europe as strong as among natives and immigrants from
Northern and Western Europe 327
Labor unions previous to 1880 ephemeral .... 329
Greatest progress coincides with the great tide of immigration of
the last decade 330
Union membership in New York State rising and falling with
rise and fall of immigration 335
Trade-unionism stronger in New York than in Kansas with its
decreasing foreign-born population 337
Trade unions stronger in New York City than in the remainder
of the State . . .341
Strikes increasing with immigration 343
Trade unions mostly confined to skilled crafts. Unskilled laborers
not eligible for membership in craft unions . . . 34 6
Discrimination against immigrants . . . . . . 347
Conflicting interests of the skilled and the unskilled . . -347
Example of the Lawrence strike 34^
Possibilities of organization among the unskilled . . . 349
Home training of immigrants in organization . r . . . 349
Effect of machinery upon craft unions 35 1
Trusts against unions 35 2
CHAPTER XVI.
PAUPERISM AND CRIME.
A. Introductory: The period of the greatest immigration at-
tended by a decrease of pauperism and crime . . 353
B. Pauperism.
Pauperism less frequent among the new immigration than
among the old. . 354
xvi Contents
Difference not due to "racial displacement. "
Pauperism the result of industrial invalidism
C. Crime.
Supposed criminal proclivities of the foreigner: Popular
prejudice unfounded ...
Increase of immigration coincident with decrease of crime.
PART III.
IMMIGRANTS IN THE LEADING INDUSTRIES.
CHAPTER XVII.
THE GARMENT WORKERS.
Origin of the sweating system antedates immigration
Real wages of sewing women of past generations lower than
to-day. Long hours in the past
Competition of farm-house labor in the middle of the nineteenth
century . ....
Expansion of the clothing industry the result of immigration
Introduction of the factory system followed by increase of wages.
Rates of wages not influenced by racial factors
Earnings of recent immigrant women higher than those of native
Americans . .
American garment workers in the country accepting a lower rate of
wages than Jewish city workers ....
Organization among clothing workers more effective than among
other industrial workers in the United States
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE COTTON MILLS.
Wages in 1875-1908: intermittent advances and reductions prior
to the "new immigration"; upward movement since.
Effect of immigration on organization of labor ....
No competition between union labor and unorganized immigrants.
In labor contests immigrants have supported the unions.
Competition of the Southern mills: Cheap white labor of the
South keeping down the wages of immigrants in the North.
CHAPTER XIX.
THE WOOLEN MILLS.
The Lawrence strike and public opinion . . .
Contents xvii
MM!
Native Americans left the woolen mills before 1880, not forced
out by recent immigrants. . . . . ,g s
Americans of native stock coming back to the mills since the
arrival of the new immigrants 386
Recent expansion of the woolen industry 387
Wages stationary prior to the new immigration, increasing since.
Wages of unskilled laborers increased at a higher rate than
those of skilled operatives . . . . . . 388
Tales of induced immigration unconfirmed .... 390
Strike record of English-speaking operatives exceeded by recent
immigrants .' ^ . . 392
CHAPTER XX.
THE IRON AND STEEL WORKERS.
The "princes of labor" and the "white coolies." . . . 394
No "crowding out " of English-speaking workmen by immigrants . 395
Highly paid men a small fraction of the force in the past, as in
the present . . . . . . . . 395
Wages of unskilled laborers rising . . . . . 397
Technical revolution in the iron and steel industry . . . 398
Retention of skilled men conditioned upon the employment of in-
creasing numbers of unskilled laborers .... 400
New immigrants not working for less pay than natives or older
immigrants 401
Wages in the iron and steel industry vary directly as the ratio of
recent immigrants . .401
Sunday work and long hours the general rule long before the period
of the "new immigration." Demand of employers for an
eight-hour day in the 8o's resisted by organized skilled iron v
and steel workers. Piece-workers firm for a twelve-hour day . 409
The Amalgamated Association a union of skilled workers only.
Common laborers barred from membership . . . 411
Decline of the organization due to substitution of machinery for
skill \ 4
Attempt of recent immigrants to organize along industrial lines. 413
CHAPTER XXI.
THE COAL MINERS.
The "racial displacement" theory of the Immigration Com-
mission ....... 4*4
Opening of new mining fields the real cause of the westward move-
ment of coal miners. . ... 4*6
xviii Contents
PAGE
Advancement of experienced miners 421
Other avenues opened by the general expansion of industry . 422
Caste prejudice against the immigrant the outgrowth of occupa-
tional stratification 424
Displacement of the pick-miner by the mining machine: employ-
ment of unskilled immigrants the effect, not the cause, of the
introduction of mining machines 425
Fluctuations in the demand for coal 432
Part-time employment in lieu of unemployment . . . 434
The migratory worker the product, not the cause, of irregularity
of employment 435
Average number of days per man has increased with recent immi-
gration 436
Rise in wages 438
The company house and the company store as old as the coal-
mining industry . 443
History of the miners' unions in the bituminous coal fields. . 445
Biennial conferences between the mine operators and the United
Mine Workers in the bituminous coal fields . . . 447
Competition of unorganized Americans of native stock . . 447
Southern and Eastern European immigrants affiliated with miners'
organizations since the early 8o's; have joined in every strike . 449
Violence in strikes not a special characteristic of the recent immi-
grants .......... 450
Failure of the organization in West Virginia and the Southern
fields not due to immigration 451
The language question solved in practice 452
Recognition of the union by the Steel Trust .... 453
Miners' unions in the anthracite fields short-lived prior to 1897. 454
Capacity of Slavs for compact organization .... 455
The strike of 1902: significance of the award of the Anthracite
Coal Strike Commission 456
CHAPTER XXII. f
WORK ACCIDENTS.
Work accidents attributed to recent immigration. An adaptation
of the common-law theory of liability for accidents . . 458
Competition among coal operators the primary cause of waste of
life in coal mines 462
Majority of accidents preventable by mining legislation and
efficient inspection of coal mines ^ 468
Misleading comparisons between English-speaking and non-
English-speaking employees 471
Contents
XIX
Decrease of the accident rate in anthracite coal mines . 473
Increase of the fatal accident rate in bituminous mines explained
by their gradual exhaustion .... 4 g o
"Negligence" of the miners, psychological effect of mine
accidents 48o
Speeding the cause of "carelessness" in the steel mills . . 481
"Assumption of risk" by the new immigrants .... 482
Accident rates in coal mines and on railroads compared . . 483
Statistics of strikes against dangerous working conditions in the
United States . . 485
PART IV.
CONCLUSION.
CHAPTER XXIII.
PROBABLE EFFECTS OF RESTRICTION A FORECAST.
Plan to improve the condition of labor by checking the develop-
ment of industry 487
Unemployment can not be reduced by restriction of immigration. 488
Scarcity of labor not necessarily followed by scarcity wages:
agricultural labor as an illustration 489
Labor-saving machinery as a substitute for immigration . . 490
Farmers and agricultural laborers as a labor reserve . . . 490
Extension of child labor as a possibility 490
Further depopulation of rural districts must increase the cost of
living .......... 491
Emigration and capital 491
Effects of a slow expansion of industry 492
CHAPTER XXIV.
THE LESSONS OF THE WAR.
Decline of immigration 493
"Salutary effects" predicted by the Commission on Industrial
Relations 493
Growth of manufactures, mining, and transportation . . 494
Enormous profits 495
Shortage of labor .... ..498
Importation of Mexican peons permitted by the Department of
Labor . . . . 499
xx Contents
Mobility of labor 499
Scholastic theory of wages 500
Decline of the purchasing power of wages .... 500
Increase of the proportion of malnourished children . . . 504
Increase in the number of strikes ...... 505
Collective bargaining, encouraged by the government . . 505
Foreign-born workers not responsible for decline in real wages . 506
Movement of labor from the farms to the factories . . . 506
Agricultural production stationary, exports and prices of farm
products increasing ....... 506
Migration of Negroes from the South to the North, as a substitute
for immigration . . . . . . . . 507
Increased employment of women and children .... 508
American capital seeking investment in Europe . . .510
Monopolistic price control 510
Restriction of immigration no remedy 511
APPENDIX
In answer to critics . . , 515
Note. Importation of Mexican contract-laborers . . . 530
Statistical Tables . .. . . . . . . . 531
Alphabetical Index 561
LIST OF TABLES
TABLE
1. Per cent who speak English, by years, in the United States. 58
2. Per cent distribution of immigrants by occupations: 1861-
1910 67
3. Ratio of laborers to immigrant breadwinners ... 68
4. Per cent of illiteracy among the population of Russia, Bul-
garia, Servia, and Greece, and among the immigrants
from the same countries 71
5. Visits abroad made by foreign-born employees in iron and
steel mills, by races 75
6. Per cent of Polish and German employees of packing houses
in Kansas City, and their foreign-born children six years
of age or over, who speak English, by years in the
United States . .78
7. Immigration from Europe compared with increase of popu-
lation born in Europe . . . . . .88
8. Movement of third-class passengers between the United
States and European ports, 1899 to 1909 . . 90
9. Average monthly immigration and emigration, 1907-1909 . 92
10. Immigrants' connections in the United States ... 94
n. Assisted immigration ....... 96
12. Population and immigration 101
13. Decrease of the population of rural territory, 1900-1910 . 104
14. Average annual earnings of farm laborers in Kansas, com-
pared with earnings in similar non-agricultural occupa-
tions in the same state, 1900 m-
15. Distribution of white male laborers, employed in agriculture
and other pursuits in California, by rates of wages per
week (without board), 1906 . . . . . in
1 6. Range of fluctuations of employment, 1899 and 1904 . . 123
17. Per cent distribution of native and foreign-born male iron
and steel workers sixteen years of age and over, by num-
ber of months of employment . . . 127
1 8. Comparative percentages of unemployed and of foreign-born
breadwinners, by geographical divisions, 1900 . .128
19. Greatest and least number of male wage-earners employed in
manufactures during any one month of the year 1899,
greatest number of unemployed, and percentage of
foreign-born males engaged in manufactures and me-
chanical pursuits in 1900, by groups of states . .13
xxii Contents
TABLE PAGB
20. Greatest and least number of female wage-earners employed
in manufactures during any one month of the year 1899,
greatest number of unemployed, and percentage of
foreign-born females engaged in manufactures and me-
chanical pursuits, in 1900, by groups of states . .131
21. Laborers (male), foreign-born, and unemployed, 1900 . 136
22. Cotton-mill operatives (male), foreign-born, and unem-
ployed, 1900 136
23. Ratio of unemployment in Massachusetts, 1888-1908 . 138
24. Average number of days worked in bituminous coal mines
of Pennsylvania, average production per employee per
day worked, and number of immigrant miners and
laborers destined for Pennsylvania, 1901-1909 . . 140
25. Average number of wage-earners employed in manufactures,
1879-1909 . .... 151
26. Per cent distribution of male breadwinners twenty-one years
of age and over, by nativity and class of occupations, 1 900 151
27. Occupations in which the number of native-born decreased,
1890-1900 152
28. Decrease from all causes, compared with loss by death among
native white males of native parentage, in selected oc-
cupations, 1890-1900 153
29. Increase of the number of laborers in the United States, clas-
sified by race and nativity, 1890-1900 . . .156
30. Increase of the number of miners in the United States, clas-
sified by nativity, 1890-1900 . . . . .157
31. Decrease of the number of native white miners, 1890-1900 . 158
32. Number of iron and steel workers in the United States, by
race and nativity, 1880, 1890, and 1900 . . .159
33. Increase of the number of iron and steel workers in the prin-
cipal cities of the Middle West, by race and nativity,
1890-1900 160
34. Number and per cent of skilled and unskilled laborers in one
iron and steel concern, 1907 . . . . .162
35. Number of English, Welsh, Irish, and German male bread-
winners, 1890 and 1900 ...... 166
36. Shifiing of English and Welsh male breadwinners in selected
occupations, 1890-1900 168
37. Shifting of Irish male breadwinners in selected occupations,
1890-1900 169
38. Shifting of German male breadwinners in selected occupa-
tions, 1890-1900 . . . . . . .170
39. Principal nationalities of male breadwinners classified by
occupation groups (per cent), 1900 . . . .171
Contents xxiii
TABLE pA
40. Per cent distribution of foreign-born male breadwinners ac-
cording to nationality and grade of occupation, 1900 . 172
41. Increase and decrease of the number of breadwinners in
Massachusetts classified by sex, nativity, and occupa-
tion groups, 1900-1905 I74
42. Specified occupations in Massachusetts with a decreasing
number of native breadwinners, classified by sex and
nativity, 1900-1905 I75
43. Foreign-born population of Germany, net emigration and
net immigration !g o
44. Migration of workers from Russian Poland to Germany for
temporary employment, 1890-1904 . . . .181
45. Comparative growth of railroad mileage and freight traffic in
Germany and the United States, 1890-1900 . .183
46. Per cent increase of the population of Germany and of the
number of breadwinners in trade and manufactures,
1882-1907^ 185
47. Average annual^earnings in Prussian coal mines, 1890-1910 . 186
48. Membership of trade-unions in Germany, 1890-1900 . .187
49. Progress of organization among female wage-earners, in Ger-
many, 1895-1910 188
50. Comparative summary of the principal expenses of the
national organizations affiliated with the "General Com-
mission of the Trade-Unions of Germany," 1895-1910 . 189
51. Agricultural progress in Germany, 1895-1909 . . .190
52. Co-operative associations in Germany, 1903-1908 . . 191
53. Annual average immigration from Germany, 1875-1910 . 192
54. Emigration from Germany to all countries outside the
United States, 1890-1904 194
55. Scandinavian immigration to the United States, 1881-1910 . 196
56. Increase of foreign born from the Scandinavian countries and
from Eastern and Southern Europe, 1880-1910, by geo-
graphic divisions .... . 199
57. Distribution of Scandinavian immigrant breadwinners by
main classes of occupations, 1881-1910 . . . 201
58. Immigration from Norway to the United States . . 202
59. Immigration from Denmark to the United States, 1820-1910 203
60. Annual average emigration from Sweden by destination,
1861-1908 .205
61. Average annual emigration from cities and rural districts of
Sweden, 1881-1907 206
62. Annual average emigration from Sweden to other European
countries, and immigration to Sweden from other Euro-
pean countries, 1881-1908 ..... 207
xxiv Contents
TABLE PAGE
63. Per cent of wage-earners employed under the system of col-
lective bargaining in the principal industries of
Sweden ........ 209
64. Number of emigrants from the United Kingdom by destina-
tion, 1840-1909 212
65. Net emigration of British subjects from the United Kingdom
by countries of destination, 1895-1909 . . .210
66. Average real wages in Great Britain, 1850-1900 . . .215
67. Annual average emigration from Ireland, May I, 1851, to
March 31, 1908 ....... 216
68. Annual average emigration from Ireland by destination,
1876-1908 . . 217
69. Families occupying each class of inhabited houses in rural
areas of Ireland, 1861-1901 ..... 219
70. Per cent ratio of native white children under five years of
age, born of native mothers, to native white females,
fifteen to forty-four years of age, in cities of less than
25,000 inhabitants and rural territory, and per cent ratio
of native white male farmers, planters, and overseers,
to the total number of white male breadwinners, 1900,
by areas comprising states and territories grouped ac-
cording to ratio of children, 1900 .... 225
71. Per cent distribution of the families of Boston according to
number of families per house, 1855 and 1900 . . 242
72. Number of tenements of one room occupied by three or more
persons, 1901 ........ 245
73. Per cent of families keeping boarders or lodgers among the
races of the old immigration 252
74. Per cent of foreign-born families in which wife has employ-
ment or keeps boarders or lodgers, by yearly earnings
of husband . . . . . . . . 253
75. Average annual rent per family and per individual in normal
families, by nativity, in Northern states . . . 254
76. Annual rent per family and per individual in normal families,
by nativity of head of family ..... 255
77. Average expenditure per man per day of selected families or
South Italian and native white workers in the iron and
steel district of the South . . . .258
78. Average food expenditures per man per day, by income and
nationality 260-261
79. Expenditures for food in normal families with an income
from $400 to $700, classified by nativity and income . 262
80. Expenditure for clothing in normal families of unskilled
laborers, classified by income and nativity . . 267
Contents xxv
TABLE p ACB
81. Surplus of income over expenditure of normal families, clas-
sified by country of birth 268
82. Per cent of home-owners in the population of Boston, 1845-
1900 . 377
83. Percentage of native white home-owners to all occupants,
classified by parent nativity, in cities with a population
of 50,000 and over . 278
84. Percentages of home-owners classified by value of homes, 1 890 278
85. Home ownership and value of real estate in areas, with ratio
of home-owners to total families above and below the
average, 1890 . . .' 279
86. Number of houses and apartments advertised for rent to
white tenants in Washington, D. C., on the last Satur-
day in July, 1900 and 1910 282
87. Average annual deficit per working family in Ohio, by occu-
pations, 1885 . . . . . . . . 297
88. Average earnings of factory workers, for a year of 300 working
days, 1904 . . . . . 298
89. Average annual earnings of male employees in manufactures,
collated with the percentages of foreign-born, in the
principal states, 1900 300-301
90. Average annual earnings of female employees in manufactures,
collated with the percentages of foreign-born, in the prin-
cipal states, 1900 . . . . . . . 3 QI
91. Weekly hours of labor in Massachusetts, 1872 and 1903 . 313
92. Per cent distribution of factory operatives by weekly hours of
labor in New York City and in New York state outside
of New York City, 1901-1910 . . . 3*7
93. Per cent of children under sixteen employed in factories, in
the United States and in six leading manufacturing
states, and per cent of foreign-born, 1909 . 3'9
94. Distribution, by parent nativity and color, of the number of
children of both sexes, ten to fifteen years of age, engaged
in manufactures and mechanical pursuits, by geographi-
cal divisions, 1900 ..... 3 20
95. Cotton-mill operatives under fourteen years of age in the
principal manufacturing states, 1900
96. Organization of native and immigrant labor . . -327
97. Organization of immigrant labor ... .328
98. Number and date of organization of active labor unions in
six industrial states . . 334
99. Total wages paid to factory operatives in the United States
and in the states of New York and Kansas, 1899 and
1909 . . . 33
xxvi Contents
TABLE PACB
100. Per cent ratio of trade-union membership to urban popula-
tion in New York and Kansas, 1900-1909 . . . 339
101. Comparative union membership in the state of New York
and in the city of New York, 1900 .... 342
1 02. Comparative union membership in the state of New York
and in the city of New York, 1900-1910 . . . 343
103. Number of strikes in Massachusetts, 1830-1905, and Penn-
sylvania, 1835-1905 344
104. Strikes and immigration of breadwinners by decennial peri-
ods, 1861-1905 . .... 345
105. Agricultural labor unions and strikes among agricultural
laborers in Italy 350
1 06. Per cent distribution, by nativity, of lodgers at municipal
lodging-house in New York City during January, Feb-
ruary, and March, 1908, and of the male population
twenty-one years of age and over at the XII. Census . 355
107. Per cent distribution, by nativity, of foreign-born recipients
of charity, 1854-1860 and 1885-1895, and of the popu-
lation of New York City, 1855 and 1890 . . 356
.108. Comparative percentages of English and Irish paupers in
Boston, 1837-1845, and in New York City, 1885-1895 356
109. Per cent distribution of charity cases in New York City, by
nativity and causes of need 357
no. Comparative growth of the value of the products of the cloth-
ing industry in New York and Baltimore, 1890-1905 . 369
in. Per cent distribution of foreign-born adult male clothing
workers, eighteen years of age and over, residing in the
United States less than five years, by race and weekly
earnings 370
112. Per cent of striking employees in the clothing industry and in
all the United States, 1887-1905 . . . .373
113. Percentage of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe
among the textile mill operatives of Massachusetts,
1880-1900 379
114. Average yearly earnings of cotton-mill operatives, by sex and
age, in the principal states, 1904 .... 383
115. Distribution of the operatives of both sexes in the woollen
and worsted mills of Lawrence, Mass., by parent nativ-
ity, 1900 386
1 16. Number of native Americans of native parentage employed
in the woolen and worsted mills of Lawrence, 1 900 and 1 909 387
117. Per cent increase in the rates of wages paid by one of the two
largest worsted mills in Lawrence to skilled and un-
skilled operatives, in 1889-1899 and 1899-1909 . 389
Contents xxvii
TABLE PAGE
1 1 8. Classification of employees in selected rolling mills of Ohio,
by rates of weekly wages, 1884 . . . . 395
119. Daily wages of employees in steel company No. i, 1880-
1908 398
120. Comparative wages of laborers in rolling mills, Ohio, 1884-
1902 .. 39 8
121. Employees of Carnegie Steel Company plants in Allegheny
County, Pa., classified by skill and racial group, March,
1907 402
122. Per cent of skilled iron and steel workers, by location . . 406
123. Per cent of skilled iron and steel workers, with specified earn-
ings in Eastern and Southern mills .... 407
124. Per cent of employees in each department earning twenty-five
cents and over per hour, in the Pittsburgh and the
Southern District ....... 408
125. Growth of population and of the production of coal, 1880-
1910 . 419
126. Number of wage-earners employed in anthracite coal mines,
and production of coal by five-year periods, 1870-1909 . 437
127. Union scale of wages in bituminous coal mines, 1898-1908 . 440
128. Wage scale of employees in the coal mines of one steel com-
pany in Pennsylvania, 1895-1908 .... 441
129. Per cent of adult bituminous coal-mine workers of selected
races earning each specified amount per day, by
locality 44 2
130. Membership of the United Mine Workers of America, 1890-
1904 .... -447
131. Number and per cent distribution of fatal accidents in coal
mines of West Virginia, by principal causes and nativity
of persons killed, 1899-1908, and per cent distribution
of employees by nativity, 1900 474
132. Number and per cent of total accidents to coal miners, clas-
sified by nativity and length of experience in West Vir-
ginia, 1899-1908 . . 477
133. Indices of manufactures, mining, and transportation: 1910,
1914, 1918 . -495
134. Net immigration or emigration of breadwinners, 1915*
I 9 I9 .... ; 498
135. Purchasing power of union wage rates, measured by retail
prices of food, 1913-1918 . S^ 1
136. Proportion of malnourished school children in the Borough
of Manhattan, New York City 5<>4
137. Wheat produced, exported, and retained for consumption,
1911-1918 . , , . i , 5 06
xxviii Contents
TABLE PACK
138. Index numbers of the yearly production, and prices of veg-
etable products, 1913-1918 . 507
APPENDIX
I. Annual average immigration distributed by occupa-
tions, 1861-1910 531
II. Fluctuations of employment of male wage-earners in
the month of May, 1899 . . 53 1
III. Maximum and minimum numbers of wage-earners em-
ployed in manufactures during any one month,
number and per cent unemployed, 1899, and per
cent foreign-born engaged in manufacturing and
mechanical pursuits, 1900^ by sex and by states, 533
IV. Percentage ratios of unemployed and of foreign white
breadwinners in the principal occupations, 1900, 536
V. Bituminous coal mines: greatest and least numbers
employed, per cent unemployed at any time during
the year 1902, and per cent foreign white miners in
1900, in the principal states .... 538
VI. Laborers, male: per cent foreign white, and per cent
unemployed, by states, 1900 . . . -539
VII. Cotton-mill operatives, male: per cent foreign white
and per cent unemployed, by states, 1900 . . 540
VIII. Persons employed in all industries of Massachusetts,
1888-1908 541
IX. Immigrant breadwinners destined for Massachusetts,
1897-1908 . . . . . . . 541
X. Increase or decrease of the number of breadwinners,
classified by sex, nativity, and occupation, in the
United States, 1890-1900 . . . 542
XI. Number and increase or decrease, of foreign-born white
male breadwinners, classified by nationality and
occupation, 1890-1900 . . Facing 544
XII. Foreign-born engaged in gainful occupations in Ger-
many, 1900 . -545
XIII. Foreign born in Germany, by country of birth, 1880-
1900 545
XIV. Foreign-born population from the Scandinavian coun-
tries and from Southern and Eastern Europe, by
states, 1880, 1890, 1900, and 1910 . . . 546
XV. Emigration from the United Kingdom, by destination
of emigrants, 1840-1909 . . . . . 546
Contents xxix
TABLH
XVI. Congestion in Dublin: classification of tenements of
four rooms or less, by number of rooms and by num-
ber of persons per tenement, 1901 . . .548
XVII. Representative household expenditures for food in the
iron district of the South, for the period of one week
in 1909 ........ 549
XVIII. Earnings and expenses in Massachusetts, 1800, 1830,
and 1860 ....... 549
XIX. Average income and expenditures of wage-earners in
specified occupations, in New Jersey, 1885 . 550
XX. Average income and expenditures of unskilled laborers
in New Jersey, classified by nativity and source of
income, 1885 ....... 550
XXI. Average wages and average expenses of working families
with deficits, in Ohio, 1885 55 1
XXII. Organized workers and male white breadwinners, en-
gaged in non-agricultural pursuits, in Illinois and
New Jersey, classified by nativity . . . 552
XXIII. Male labor-union membership and immigration, New
York state, 1897-1910 ..... 552
XXIV. Urban population, membership of labor unions and per-
centage of organized industrial wage-earners in
New York and Kansas, 1900-1909 . . -553
XXV. Daily wages in steel company No. i, 1880-1908 . . 553
XXVI. Per cent of machine-mined bituminous coal, and per
cent ratio of foreign born from Southern and East-
ern Europe for each of the principal coal-producing
states, 1900 and 1910 . ... 555
XXVII. Per cent of miners of Southern and Eastern European
parentage, lives lost per million tons, and per 1,000
employees, in bituminous coal mines . . . 555
XXVIII. Number of employees, and fatal accident rates in the
anthracite mines of Pennsylvania, 1870-1909 . 556
XXIX. Number of fatal accidents, and ratio per 1,000 em-
ployees on railroads and in coal mines, 1889-1908 . 557
XXX. Arrival and departure of aliens, 1908-1920 . . 558
XXXI. Immigration and emigration of breadwinners, 1915-
1919 ..... 559
XXXII. Comparison of persons seeking work and workers called
for by employers at public employment offices in
the state of New York, 1916-1918 . . 559
XXXIII. Exports or principal breadstuffs, other than wheat, from
the United States, 1910-1918 . . .560
LIST OF DIAGRAMS
DIAGRAM PAGB
I. Immigration and business conditions, 1880-1910 . 87
II. Movement of third-class passengers between the United
States and European ports, 1899-1909 . 89
III. Monthly immigration and emigration, from July, 1907,
to May, 1909 . ... -91
IV. Relative per capita production of coal, agricultural
staples and live stock I0 5
V. Average number of male wage-earners employed in
manufactures in the United States and in principal
states, by months, 1899 118
VI. Per cent unemployed 122
VII. Per cent unemployed at any time during the year, and
per cent of foreign born in fifty leading occupations,
1900 . 133
VIII. Ratio of unemployment in bituminous coal mines, 1902,
and percentage of foreign-born miners, 1900 . 134
IX. Ratio of unemployment of factory workert m Massachu-
setts, and number of immigrant breadwinners des-
tined for Massachusetts, 1897-1908 . . -139
X. Average number of days worked in the bituminous coal
mines of Pennsylvania, and number of immigrant
miners and laborers destined for Pennsylvania,
1901-1909 141
XI. Days of employment in organized trades in the state
of New York, and number of immigrant breadwin-
- ners destined for New York, 1897-1909 . .144
XII. Per cent of increase of the production of coal in the
United States, Germany, and Great Britain, 1890-
1909 .184
XIII. Production of pig iron in Germany, the United States,
and the United Kingdom, 1880-1910 . . 184
XIV. Emigration from Germany to all countries outside of
the United States, and per cent of Southern and
Eastern European immigration to the total immi-
gration to the United States, 1890-1904 . . 195
XV. Increase of Scandinavians and of Southern and Eastern
Europeans in a group of eleven western states and
in the remainder of the United States, 1 880- 1 9 1 o . 197
Contents
DIAGRAM PACK
XVI. Net emigration from the United Kingdom, by destina-
tion, 1895-1909 214
XVII. Per cent ratio of home owners and tenants to all families,
classified by age periods and by geographical divi-
sions, 1890 280-281
XVIII. Average daily wages of railroad employees, 1891-1909 . 304
XIX. Medians of relative cost of living and average of bien-
nial medians of relative wages, 1861-1865 . . 308
XX. Labor-union membership in the state of New York,
number of immigrant breadwinners destined for
the state of New York, and combined imports and
exports through the port of New York, 1897-1910 336
XXI. Male union membership in the states of New York and
Kansas, 1900-1909, per cent ratio to the number
of industrial wage-earners in 1900 . . . 340
XXII. Number of persons employed in bituminous coal mines,
1880, 1889, and 1907 ..... 420
XXIII. Per cent of bituminous coal mined by machine, 1900
and 1910, compared with per cent ratio of Southern
and Eastern European miners to all miners, 1900;
and with per cent ratio of Southern and Eastern
Europeans to the total population, 1910, for the
principal states ...... 429
XXIV. Coal production by months, in Illinois, 1906-1910 . 433
XXV. Fatal accident rates in coal mines per 1,000 workmen
employed in the United States and foreign coun-
tries 469
XXVI. Fatal accident rates in coal mines, 1889-1908, and per-
centage of miners of 'Slavic and Italian parentage
in 1900, in the principal states . . . 472
XXVII. Fatal accident rates in anthracite coal mines, 1870-1909 479
XXVIII. Fatal accident rates per 1,000 employees on railroads
and in coal mines, 1889-1908 .... 485
XXIX. Indices of physical production for agriculture, mining,
and manufacture, 1899-1919 .... 496
MAPS
Per cent ratio of native white children under five years of age, born
of native mothers, to native white females fifteen to forty-
four years of age in cities of less than 25,000 inhabitants and
rural territory, 1900 . . . Facing 227
Production of coal in states with an annual output of not less than
1,000,000 tons 416-417
Immigration and Labor
PART I
SUMMARY REVIEW
IT is the purpose of this review to state briefly for the
benefit of the busy reader the results of our inquiry into
the various phases of the immigration question. Such a
summary must necessarily be dogmatic in form. Every
proposition is advanced here, however, merely as a theorem,
whose demonstration is presented in its proper place, in
another part of the book.
It is recognized on all sides that the present movement for
restriction of immigration has a purely economic object: the
restriction of competition in the labor market. Organized
labor demands the extension of the protectionist policy to
the home market in which "hands" the laborer 's only
commodity are offered for sale. The advocates of restric-
tion believe that every immigrant admitted to this country
takes the place of some American workingman. At the
inception of the restrictionist movement, in the 8o's and the
early 90*8, they were avowedly opposed to immigration in
general. The subsequent decline of immigration from the
British Isles, Germany, and the Scandinavian countries
and the increase of immigration from Southern and Eastern
Europe have diverted the attack from immigration in general
to "the new immigration" from Southern and Eastern
2
2 Immigration and Labor
Europe an4 the Asiatic provinces of Turkey. Yet while the
root of 'allevil is now sought in the racial makeup of the new
imniigratioi?; as contrasted- with the old, every objection to
the immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe is but
an echo of the complaints which were made at an earlier day
against the then new immigration from Ireland, Germany,
and even from England. Three quarters of a century
ago, as to-day, the only good immigrants were the dead
immigrants.
There is no real ground for the popular opinion that the
immigrants of the present generation are drawn from a
poorer class than their predecessors. It is a historical fact
that prior to 1820 the great majority of the immigrants were
too poor to prepay their passage, which never cost as much
as $50 per steerage passenger; the usual way for a poor man
to secure transportation for himself and family was to con-
tract to be sold into servitude after arrival. The next gene-
ration of immigrants was not much better off. According to
contemporary testimony, the millions of Irish and Germans
who came in the middle of the nineteenth century were
ignorant and accustomed to a very low standard of living.
Since the races of Southern and Eastern Europe have
become predominant among immigrants to the United
States, the steerage rates have been doubled, the increase
being equivalent to a heavy head tax. The higher cost of
transportation must have raised the financial standard
of the new immigration, as compared with the immigrant?
of the 70*5 and the early 8o's. This inference is borne out
by the fact that the percentage of illiteracy is much lower
among the immigrants than among their countrymen who
remain at home. Illiteracy is generally the effect of pov-
erty. The higher literacy of the immigrant may be accep-
ted as evidence that economically the immigrant must be
above the average of his mother country.
The complaint that the new immigrants do not easily
"assimilate" is also as old as immigration itself. To-day
the Germans are reckoned by courtesy among the " English-
"Summary Review 3
speaking races." But as late as the middle of the nineteenth
century the growth of German colonies in all large cities
caused the same apprehension in the minds of their Ameri-
can contemporaries as the Jewish, the Italian, and the Slav
colonies of our day. Statistics show, however, that the new
immigrant races number among them as large a percentage
of English-speaking persons as the Germans who have lived
in the United States the same length of time.
The only real difference between the old immigration and
the new is that of numbers. To the workman wKo com-
plains that he has been crowded out of his job by another,
it would afford little comfort to feel that the man who had
taken his place was of Teuton or Celtic, rather than of
Latin or Slav stock. The true reason why the "old immi-
gration " is preferred is that there is very much less of it.
As stated, the demand for restriction proceeds from the
assumption that the American labor market is overstocked ;
by immigration. Comparative statistics of industry and
population in the United States show, however,' that immi-
gration merely follows opportunities for employment. In
times of business expansion immigrants enter in increasing
numbers; in times of business dcglfcjsion their numbers
decline. The immigration movemW^.is further balanced
by emigration from the United States. As a rule, the causes
which retard immigration also accelerate the return move-
ment from this country. It is customary to condemn the
"bird of passage," but so long as there are variations in
business activity from season to season and from year to
year, the American wage-earner has no cause to complain of
the immigrants who choose to leave this country tempo-
rarily while there is no demand for their services, thereby
reducing unemployment in its acutest stage.
It is broadly asserted by restriction advocates that the
hundreds of thousands of Slav, Italian, Greek, Syrian, and
other immigrant mine and mill workers have been "im-
ported" by capitalists- in other words, that they are all con-
tract laborers. This belief offers to the student of folk-lore
4 Immigration and Labor
a typical example of twentieth century myth-building. None
of the official investigations of immigration has disclosed
any evidence of importation of laborers under contract
on a large scale, although prior to the enactment of
the law of 1885 excluding contract laborers there was no
reason to conceal the fact. It is quite conceivable that in
the case of a strike a great corporation might have resorted
to the importation of a large force of strikebreakers re-
gardless of cost. As a general rule, however, with hundreds
of thousands of immigrants coming to this country an-
nually, it would be a waste of money to "induce" immi-
gration. The few actual violations of the contract labor
law that elude the vigilance of the immigration authorities
cannot affect the labor market.
The real agents who regulate the immigration movement
are the millions of earlier immigrants already in the United
States. It is they that advance the cost of passage of a^
large proportion of the new immigrants. When the outlook
for employment is good, they send for their relatives, or
encourage their friends to come. When the demand for
labor is slack, the foreign-born workman must hold his
savings in reserve, JJorovide for possible loss of employ-
ment. At such tim(Jpo wage-earner will assume the bur-
den of providing for a relative or friend, who might for a long
time be unable to secure employment. It is in this way
that the business situation in the United States reacts upon
the volume of immigration. The fluctuating supply of
immigrant labor, like that of any other commodity, may
sometimes outrun the demand and at other times lag behind
it, yet, if we compare the totals for industrial cycles, com-
prising years of panic, of depression, and of prosperity,
within the past sixty years, we find that the ratio of immi-
gration to population has been well-nigh constant. In the
long run immigration adjusts itself to the demand for labor.
This proposition seems to be inconsistent with the pres-
ence at all times of a vast number of unemployed. Ap-
parently, there are already more men than jobs in the
Summary Review
United States; every new immigrant, in order to live, must
take away the job from some one else who has been here
before. On closer study, however, it is found that unem- "jgT:
ployment is not the effect of an absolute surplus population. .'
It arises, notwithstanding a growing demand for labor, from
the fluctuations in the distribution of the demand. The
most generally recognized cause of unemployment is sea-
sonal variation of business activity. There are trades
dependent largely upon climatic conditions and partly upon
social customs. In the period of maximum activity the
demand for labor in such trades may often so far exceed the
supply as to necessitate overtime work; yet this shortage of
labor will not save a portion of the force from idleness at
other times of the year. The only class of labor which is L/
capable of shifting from one industry to another in response
to variations in demand is unskilled labor. But the locali-
zation of industries sets a limit to the mobility of unskilled
labor. In order to eliminate unemployment it would be
necessary to dovetail the busy and the slack seasons in the
various industries upon such a plan as would produce an
even distribution of the work of thej^^n over all seasons
of the year. This might be possij^ ^tonines, mills, and
transportation lines were operatedB Ration- wide trust.
So long, however, as production iSHPned by many com-
peting employers, each subject to his own vicissitudes of
business, insecurity of employment is inevitable. The
normal state of every industry is o have a larger force
than can ever find employment in it at any one time. The
labor reserve is as much a part of the industrial system as
the regular force. /
Still, the labor market being normally overstocked, it
sounds plausible that the immigrant, who is accustomed to
a lower standard of living at home than the American work-
man, will be able to underbid and displace his American
competitor. : 'lf this view were correct, we should find, in
the first place, a higher percentage of unemployment among j
*v, - than among the foreign-born breadwinners.
Immigration and Labor
Statistics, however, show that the proportion of unemploy-
ment is the same for native and foreign-born wage-earners.
The immigrant has no advantage over the native American
in securing or retaining employment. In the next place,
, we should find more unemployment in those sections of the
United States where the immigrants are most numerous.
In fact, however, the ratio of unemployment in manufac-
tures is the same in the North Atlantic States with a large
immigrant population as in the South Atlantic States where
the percentage of foreign-born is negligible. Coal miners are
thought to have suffered most from immigration. Yet it ap-
pears that Pennsylvania, which is among the States with the
highest percentages of foreign-born miners, has the second
lowest percentage of unemployment. The highest ratio of
unemployment , according to the latest published census data,
was found in West Virginia, where the percentage of foreign-
born miners was next to the lowest. A similar relation
between unemployment and the proportion of immigrants is
observed among cotton-mill operatives and common labor-
ers: immigrants are not attracted to those States where
opportunities for j^ular employment are less favorable.
Furthermore, ijfl Hoisted a causal connection between
immigration anr: i fcyment, there should have been
more unemployrnMMMRose years when immigration was
greater, and vice versa. The figures show, on the contrary,
that there was less unemployment during the first seven
years of the present century with immigration at a high
tide than during the preceding decade when immigration
was at a low ebb.
Still an oversupply of labor may produce a latent form of
unemployment which could be described as underemploy-
ment: all employees may be kept on the rolls, and yet be
idle a part of every week. Again, however, we find that the
average number of days of employment per wage-earner
increases as immigration increases^-and declines as immi-
gration declines.
Summary Review 7
The relation between immigration and unemployment
may thus be su> -JV^J 1 ^J 16 following propositions:
Unemployment and immigf ati6tf are the effects of economic
\forces working in opposite directions: those^ which produce
business expansion reduce unemployment and attract immi-
gration; those which produce business depression increase
unemployment and reduce immigration.
Yet it may be said that while immigration is not a con-
tributory cause of unemployment, restriction of immigra-
tion might nevertheless reduce unemployment. This sup-
position is negatived by the experience of Australia, where
emigration exceeds immigration. Australia is a new coun-
try with an area as great as that of the United States, while
its population at the census of 1906 was half a million short
of the population of New York City at the census of 1910. /
Yet Australia has as much unemployment as the State of
New York, which is teeming with immigrants. It is evident
that unemployment is produced by the modern organiza-
tion of industry even in the absence of immigration.
There is a widespread belief that, although on the whole
the United States is in need of immigrant labor, "the new
immigration" has a tendency to stagnate in the overpopu-
lated cities, while there is a keen demand for hands in agri-
cultural sections. A retrospective view of the history of
Immigration shows that this tendency is not peculiar to
"the new immigration." For the past ninety years public
men ancf social theorists have sought to relieve unemploy-
ment in the cities by directing the current of immigration
to the farm, but the immigrants have always preferred to
seek employment in the cities. The popular mind Which
accounts for individual conduct by the "free will" of the
individual applies the same criterion to social phenomena:
the Italians and the Slavs concentrate in the cjties because
they have a "racial tendency" to concentrate^ the cities.
That most of the immigrants of those nationalities have
grownup in agricultural communities a'nd that many of them
after working a few years in a great American city return
8 Immigration and Labor
home and go back to the soil, argues against the assumption
"lota "racial" dislike for agriculture. The real cause of the
Concentration of immigrants in the cities is economic. Even
the "desirable" immigrant from Northern and Western
. Europe who lands with a capital of fifty and odd dollars
** lacks the funds to rent a farm. At best he can obtain em-
ployment only as a farm hand. Since the early days of Irish
V and German immigration, however, the growing industries
of the cities have offered a better market for labor than
agriculture.
The industrial development of the United States has
manifested itself in a relative, and in some sections an
absolute, depopulation of rural territory. There is a large
migration of native Americans of native stock from country
to city. This movement is the result of the revolution
, in American farming conditions and methods, which has
* tended to reduce the demand for labor on the farm. The
American farm of the first half of the nineteenth century was
.the seat of a highly diversified industry. The members of a
farm household made their own tools and part of the furni-
ture; they were spinners and weavers; they made their own
Clothes, and soap and candles for their own use. WitlTsuch
a variety of occupations there was work for a hired man at
all seasons of the year. But industrial differentiation has
removed from the farm one industry after another. The
time during which a hired man can be kept employed on the
farm has been reduced in consequence to a few months in
the year. Still until the middle of the nineteenth century the
mills were quite commonly run by water power, which
made for decentralization of manufactures. The small
country towns accordingly offered to the farm laborer a
prospect of employment when work was scarce on the farm.
But the general substitution of steam for water power led to
the removal of factories from small towns to great commer-
/xaal centers. The opportunity to. earn a full year's wages
( in a rural community was gone.
While in manufacturing 'the invention of labor-saving
Summary Review 9
machinery has resulted in the gradual displacement of the
small proprietor by the wage-earner, in American agriculture,
on the contrary, the machine has tended to eliminate the
wage-earner. As late as the middle of the nineteenth century
the agricultural methods of the American farmer differed
little from those of his ancestors. Grass was mowed with a
scythe. Grain was cut with a sickle and threshed with a
flail. Flailing and winnowing grain was the chief farm
work of the winter. Corn was planted by hand, cultivated
with the hoe, and shelled by scraping the ears against the
handle of a frying pan. The cultivation of a farm in this
primitive way sustained a demand for steady farm help in
all seasons. To-day there is some implement or machine
for every kind of farm work. It is estimated that the quan-
tity of labor saved by machinery represents the services
of one and a half million men working every week day in
the year.
In consequence of limited demand', agricultural labor is
the least remunerative of all occupations. The hours of
labor* on the farm are longer than even in the steel mills of
Pennsylvania. Small pay, long hours, and irregular
employment is what the immigrant can expect on a farm.
His preference for city work which pays better can be easily
explained without delving into the mysteries of race psy-
chology. It merely confirms the rule that immigration
follows the demand for labor.
The effect of immigration upon labor in the United States ^_
has been, a readjustment of the population on the scalejof ^
occupations. The majority of Americans of native paren-
tage are engaged in farrning, in business, in trie? professions,
and in clerical pursuits, f The majority of the immigrants, ^
on the other hand, are industrial wage-earners. Only in
exceptional cases has this readjustment been attended by
actual displacement of the native or Americanized wage-
earner. In the course o^trial evolution some fr^es
have declined owing to thr !i :; reduction of new methods ot
production. In such cases there was naturally a decrease of
io Immigration and Labor
the number of native as well as of foreign-born workers.
As a rule, however, the supply of immigrant labor has been
absorbed by the increasing demand for labor in all industries
without leaving a surplus sufficient to displace the native or
older immigrant wage-earner. There were but a few occu-
pations which showed an actual, not a relative decrease of
native Americans of native stock. This decrease was due
to the disinclination of the young generation to follow the
pursuits of their fathers; the new accessions from native
stock were insufficient to replace the older men as they were
dying off, and the vacancies were gradually filled up by
immigrants. But for every position given up by a native
American there were many new openings filled by native
American wage-earners.
The westward movement of American and Americanized
wage-earners and the concentration of immigrants in a few
Eastern and Central States have been interpreted as the
"displacement" of the English-speaking workmen from the
mills and mines of the East by the new immigration. An
examination of the figures shows, however, that durinf the
past thirty years mining and manufacturing grew much
faster in the West and South than in the East and drew some
of the native workers and earlier immigrants from the older
manufacturing. States. But the demand for labor grew in
the old States as well. The places left vacant by the old
employees who had gone westward had to be filled by new
immigrants.
The desertion of mills and factories by native American
girls has also been explained as their "displacement" by
immigrants. The motive assigned is not economic, but
racial : it is the social prejudice against the immigrant that
has forced the American girl to quit. It seems, however,
that this explanation mistakes cause for effect: the social
stigma attaching to working association with immigrants is
not the cause but the effect of the desertion of the mills and
factories by native American women. The psychological
interpretation overlooks one of the greatest economic
Summary Review n
changes that has taken place in the United States since the
Civil War: the admission of women to most of the pursuits
which were formerly regarded as peculiarly masculine. For
every native woman of American parentage who left the
mill or clothing factory there were forty women of the same
nativity who found new openings. The increase of the
number of native American professional women was nearly
five times as great as the decrease of the number of native
American factory girls. The marvelous progress of the,
American educational system has fitted the native American^
woman for other work than manual labor and has at the
same time opened to her a new field in which she does not
meet the competition of the immigrant.
There is absolutely no statistical proof of an oversupply
of unskilled labor resulting in the displacement of native *
by immigrant laborers. No decrease of the number of
common laborers among the native white of native or for-
eign parentage appears in any of the great States which
serve as receptacles for immigration. The same is true of
miners. In none of the States affected by the new immi-
gration has there been a decrease in the number of native
miners. Such States as Pennsylvania and Illinois showed
large increases in the number of native miners, both of for-
eign and native parentage. The iron and steel mills are
another industry from which the recent immigrants are
popularly believed to have forced out the native workmen
and older English-speaking immigrants.. The fact is, that
in the earlier period of the industry, when immigration from
Southern and Eastern Europe was negligible, the number
of American employees increased very slowly; during the
recent period, on the contrary, since the immigrants from
Southern and Eastern Europe have been coming in large
numbers, the number of American-born employees of every
nativity has more than doubled. The increased employment
of native Americans is recorded in the figures for every im-
portant iron- and steel-producing State, as well as for every
city holding a leading place in the iron and steel industry.
12 Immigration and Labor
The effect of immigration upon the occupational distribu-
tion of the industrial wage-earners has been the elevation of
the English-speaking workmen to the status of an aris-
tocracy of labor, while the immigrants have been employed
to perform the rough work of all industries. Though the in-
troduction of machinery has had the tendency to reduce the
relative number of skilled mechanics, yet the rapid pace of
industrial expansion has increased the number of skilled and
supervisory positions so fast that practically all the English-
^ speaking employees have had the opportunity to rise on the
scale of occupations. This opportunity, however, was con-
ditioned upon a corresponding increase of the totM opera-
ting force. It is only because the new immigration has
! furnished the class of unskilled laborers that the native
"~ workmen and older immigrants have been raisedVt <Afche
^ plane of an aristocracy of labor. $ y
Yet, while the number of native American workmen in ajl
industries has increased, it is true that in some occupation^
there has been an actual decrease of the number of English,
Welsh, Irish, and German workers, which has been con-
strued as ' ' displacement ' ' of Americanized workers by immi-
. grants from Southern and Eastern Europe with a lower
standard of living. This interpretation overlooks the fact
that native workers of native parentage, presumably with as
high a standard of living as the Irish, are found in the same
occupations in larger numbers than formerly. Another v
fact that contradicts the popular view is the increase of the
number of Scotch immigrants in those ver} r occupations
which show a decline in the number of English and Irish.
Judged by any standard, the Scotch are not inferior to other
immigrants from the United Kingdom. The increased
employment of the Scotch in the principal occupations,
including even common laborers, warrants the conclusion
that the decline in the numbers of English and Irish must
have been due to other causes than ;the competition of recent
immigrants with lower standards c Hiving. A further fact
that must be considered in thit, connection is that the
Summary Review 13
English, Welsh, and Irish farmers exhibit a greater decrease,
both absolute and relative, than any other occupational
group among the same nationalities. Evidently no new
farmers came to fill the places of their countrymen who
were carried off by death, although the aliens from Southern
and Eastern Europe kept away from the fanning sections
and left the field open for English, Welsh, and Irish
immigrants. /
The real explanation of the decrease in the number of
immigrants from Northern and Western Europe in the occu-
pations which rank lowest in the social scale is that the
earlier immigrants have worked their way upward. Among
the breadwinners born in Northern and Western Europe,
farmers, business men, professional men, and skilled mechan-
ics outnumber those who are employed in the coarser grades
of labor. The latter have been left to immigrants from
Southern and Eastern Europe. ^
There has been a great deal of speculation to the effect
that had immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe
been kept out of the United States, the immigrants from
'Northern and Western Europe would, as of old, have sup-
plied the demand of American industry for unskilled labor.
The fallacy of this assumption is apparent from a consid-
eration of the comparative growth of population in the
United States and in the countries of Northern and Western
Europe, as well as of the economic conditions in those coun-
tries. As stated before, immigration in the long run bears !
a constant relation to the population of the United States.
Inasmuch, however, as the latter increases faster than the
population of Europe, especially that of the emigration
countries, the rate of emigration from those countries must
increase much faster than their population in order to sup-
ply the American industries with the number of immigrants
they can employ. Yet the volume of emigration from any
country can not increase beyond a certain limit set by the.
size of its population. When that point is reached, further
industri--" o in the United States must draw upon
14 Immigration and Labor
the labor supply of other countries. In order to replace the
immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe that were
absorbed by the industrial expansion of the past decade,
immigration from Great Britain, Germany, and the Scan-
dinavian countries should have risen to the Irish level,
whereas Ireland ought to have been depopulated at a
greater rate than in the years of the Irish famine. The
recent development of those countries, however, has had a
decided tendency to check emigration.
In the closing years of the nineteenth century Germany
ceased to be a country of emigration, and became a country
of immigration. Inasmuch as Germany draws her immigrant
supply from the same sources as the United States, it is
evident that the German wage-earner does not stay away
from the United States in order to escape the competition
of the immigrant from Southern and Eastern Europe. The
transformation of Germany from an emigrant-furnishing
nation to a country of immigration is the direct result of her
recent economic development. Until the middle of the
nineteenth century Germany was principally an agricultural
country. About that time German agriculture reached the
point where the growth of land values made the tradi-
tional methods of the peasant unprofitable and necessi-
tated a transition to intensive systems of cultivation.
Many a peasant who lacked the requisite capital for a
.change of methods was forced to dispose of his land and to
seek a new home in the United States. In Prussian Poland
this crisis came in the 70*5 and the early 8o's and drove large
numbers of Polish peasants to the United States. But the
rapid growth of manufacturing and mining during the last
twenty-five years has absorbed the whole natural increase of
the rural population. At the same time, German agricul-
ture has also made substantial progress. As a result, there
is a scarcity of agricultural laborers during the busy season.
The combined effect of all these causes, coupled with the
disappearance of cheap lands ir X1 " TT -* A ~ J o^^ %
reflected in a decline of the em ration g
Summary Review 15
laborers to the United States. The increased demand for
labor has resulted in a substantial increase of the rates of
wages, simultaneously with a marked reduction of the work-
ing day. These gains are in no small way due to the pro-
gress of organization among German wage-earners, which
was practically prohibited prior to 1891. Since that time
the membership of labor organizations has advanced by
leaps and bounds, leaving behind the older British and
American trade-unions. The growth of the labor move-
ment in Germany has directly and indirectly stimulated
labor legislation, which has conferred material benefits upon
the German wage-earner. Whereas industrial progress in
modern times has generally led to the elimination of the
independent artisan who has been pushed into the ranks of
wage-earners, in Germany this process has been checked by
the development of co-operation. The general improve-
ment of the economic conditions of all classes of the working
people necessarily affected the rate of emigration for the past
twenty years.
Yet it is worthy of note that whije immigration from
Germany to the United States has in recent years been much
below the level of the early 8o's, the average annual immi-
gration from Germany was much higher during the past
decade than during the last decade of the nineteenth
century. In other words, German immigration increased
with the increase of Italian and Slav immigration to the
United States.
Coming next to Scandinavian immigration we find that the
number of breadwinners coming to compete in the American
labor market virtually reached its maximum during the
past decade. The only change is that, whereas the earlier
Scandinavian immigration was mostly of a family type,
among the recent Scandinavian immigrants single persons
vastly predominate. This change is due to the fact that
the old Scandinavian immigrants came largely to settle on
wher^k family was a help, while the new Scandina-
ntSglike the new immigration from Southern
.*.'
16 Immigration and Labor
and Eastern Europe, come chiefly to seek industrial employ-
ment. That Scandinavian immigration to the United
States was in no way affected by immigration from South-
ern and Eastern Europe is evidenced by the change in
the direction of the former: whereas prior to 1890 the
greater part of Scandinavian immigration was directed to
the agricultural States of the Central West and Northwest,
since 1890 the majority of the Scandinavian immigrants
follow the current of immigration from Southern and East-
ern Europe. The bulk of the Scandinavian immigrants
are laborers from agricultural districts or farm workers
without special mechanical skill. It is these unskilled
Scandinavian laborers that have in recent years sought
employment in competition with unskilled Slav and Italian
laborers. The reason why the number of these Scandi-
navian immigrants has not grown fast enough to keep pace
with the needs of American industry must be sought in the
economic conditions of the Scandinavian countries. Since
the opportunity eventually to secure a homestead in the
United States is gone, the agricultural laborer who is dis-
satisfied with his condition must seek employment in indus-
try. And here the recent industrial progress of the Scandi-
navian countries offers him many an opportunity at home.
The industrial development of Sweden is contempo-
raneous with the latest progress in engineering, which has
harnessed the water power furnished in abundance by her
mountains. The growth of Swedish industries has far out-
run the increase of her population. As a result, Sweden
has become a country of immigration. The immigration to
Sweden has in recent years left a surplus over emigration.
In Denmark the last fifteen years of the nineteenth cen-
tury witnessed a rise of the peasant farmer, due chiefly to
the rapid spread of co-operation in all branches of farming.
The progress of agriculture has attracted immigration to
Denmark. During every agricultural season considerable
numbers of Polish peasants come to work of the farms in
Denmark.
Summary Review 17
While the wave of emigration from Great Britain and
Ireland to the United States has receded from the high-
water mark reached in 1880-1889, yet, eliminating that
exceptional decade, we find that during the 2O-year period
1890-1909, marked by the influx of immigrants from South-
ern and Eastern Europe, the United States received more
immigrants from Great Britain and Ireland than during the
20-year period 1860-1879. Another fact that must not be
lost sight of is the recent development of Canada, Australia,
New Zealand, and South Africa, which has naturally drawn"
a part of the emigration from Great Britain and Ireland.
The policy of restriction adopted in Australia, New Zealand,
and South Africa has conferred a special privilege upon
immigrants of British nationality. On the other hand,
the governments of Canada and Australia are making sys-
tematic efforts to induce and assist immigration from the
mother country. That the financial assistance offered to
immigrants from the United Kingdom has diverted a part
of them from the United States is but natural.
The decline of Irish immigration began as far back as
1861. It rose again in the 8o's, in the turbulent years of
the Irish Land League agitation, and once more during the
past decade. That the "new immigration" to the United
States was not the cause of the decline of Irish immigration
is clear from the fact that the emigration movement from
Ireland to other countries lias also' declined, while, on the
other hand, of those Irish who did emigrate the proportion
destined to the United States was higher during the period
of the great influx of immigrants from Southern and Eastern
Europe than in 1876-1890, when immigration from South-
ern and Eastern Europe was negligible. There have been
forces at work to reduce the number of Irish seeking to
better their condition away from home. The great Irish
unrest of the 8o's forced the British Parliament to enact
remedial legislation, which gave to the tenant-at-will a legal
title to his holding, besides reducing his rent, and converted
about one third of the tenants into land proprietors. These
1 8 Immigration and Labor
far-reaching reforms in a country with a predominantly
peasant population sufficiently account for the decline of
emigration from Ireland.
It can be seen from this brief survey that immigration
from Northern and Western Europe has declined, not
because the condition of labor has deteriorated in the United
States, but because those countries have become better
homes for their citizens.
Another popular fallacy is the theory originated by Gen-
eral Walker, that the immigrants have displaced unborn
-generations of native Americans. It rests on no other foun-
dation than a computation made in 1 8 1 5 from the increase of
the population of the United States between 1790 and 1810.
During the century that has elapsed, the declining birth-
rate has become a world-wide social phenomenon. In the
Australian Commonwealth, with her vast continent as yet
unsettled, with a purely Anglo-Saxon population and prac-
tically no immigration, the decline of the birth-rate has been
as rapid as among Americans of native stock. Prof. Wilcox
has proved by an analysis of population statistics that the
decrease in the proportion of children began in the United
States as early as 1810. The native birth-rate has declined
with the, increase of the urban population and the relative
decrease of the number of farmers. The rearing of children
on a farm requires less of the mother's time and attention
than in the city. Moreover, the child on a farm begins to
work at an earlier age than in the city. A numerous family
on a farm has the advantages of a co-operative group, where-
as every addition td the family of the wage-earner or of the
salaried man with a fixed income tends to lower the family's
standard of living. It is significant that the decline of the
birth-rate is universal among those classes which are scarcely,
if at all, affected by immigrant competition. Their stand- .
ard of living is higher than that of the wage-earner. Yet it :
is precisely the desire to preservelhis higher standard that
accounts for the practice of race suicide. Granting, for the
sake of argument, that the absence of immigration in the
Summary Review 19
past would have raised the native wage-earner's standard
of living to that of the middle class, it does not follow that
the natural increase among the native-born would have
sufficed to supply the needs of the rapidly expanding indus-
tries of the United States.
There was clearly no other source from which American i
industry could have drawn its labor supply than immigra-
tion from the countries of Southern and Eastern Europe.
Without the immigrants from those countries the recent
development of American industry would have been im-
possible.
An invidious distinction is drawn between the old and
the new immigrants by reason of the fact that the bulk of
the latter are incapable of any. but unskilled work. A com-
parative statistical study of immigration shows that the old
immigrants, like those of the present generation, were I
mostly unskilled laborers and farm hands. The proper- \
tion of skilled mechanics has at no time within the past fifty
years been as high as one fourth of all immigrant bread-
winners, for the very obvious reason that the demand in the
American labor market has been mainly for unskilled
laborers. Invention of machinery has had the tendency to .
reduce the demand for mechanical skill, and most of that
demand has been supplied by native Americans. In the
industrial army the commissioned and non-commissioned
officers are outnumbered by the privates. It is a mis-
conception of modern industrial organization to confuse
lack of "skill," i. e., ignorance of a trade, with "low ef-
ficiency. ' ' If every immigrant were a skilled mechanic, most
of them would nevertheless have to accept employment as
unskilled laborers. The special skill of the engineer would
give him no superiority at loading coal over a common
laborer, nor would the ability to read Shakespeare in the
vernacular assure higher wages to a mule-driver.
The objection to the unskilled$riHsr grant is based upon .
the belief that because of his lower Standard 6* living he is ^
satisfied with lower wages than the American or the older
2O Immigration and Labor
immigrant. It is therefore taken for granted that the
effect of the great tide of immigration in recent years
has been to reduce the rate of wages or to prevent it from
advancing. The fallacy of this reasoning is due to the at-
tempt to compare the wages and standard of living of the
unskilled laborer with those of the skilled mechanic. In
order to prove that the new immigrants have introduced a
lower standard of living, the latter ought to be compared
with the standard of living of unskilled laborers in the past.
Housing conditions have been most dwelt upon in the dis-
cussion of the standard of living of the immigrant, because
they strike the eye of the outsider. Historical studies of
housing conditions show, however, that congestion was
recognized as a serious evil in New York City as far back as
the first half of the nineteenth century. The evil was not
confined to the foreign-born population. American-born
working- women lived on filthy streets in poorly ventilated
houses, crowding in one or two rooms which were used both
as dwelling and workshop. No better were the living con-
ditions of the daughters of American farmers in the small
mill towns of New England. They lived in company
houses, half a dozen in one attic room, without tables, or
chairs, or even washstands. Comparative statistics of house
tenancy in Boston show that in the middle of the nineteenth
century the tenement-house population was as numerous,
in proportion, as in our day. The conversion of the old
single-family residence into a tenement house, where a
whole family was jammed in every room, was productive of
filth. The inconvenience suffered by the people of New
York City during the recent strike of the street cleaners was
but a faint reminder of the normal conditions of the immi-
grant sections of New York or Boston half a century ago.
These conditions are a thing of the past. The typical tene-
ment house in the Jewish and Italian sections of New York
to-day is a decided improvement upon the dwellings of the
older immigrant races in the same sections a generation or
two ago. On the other hand, in the South, where many of
Summary Review 21
the coal mines are operated without immigrant labor, and
native white Americans are employed as unskilled laborers,
their homes are primitive and insanitary.
It is evident that the cause of bad housing conditions isT
not racial, but economic. Congestion in great cities is
produced by industrial factors over which the immigrants
have no control. The fundamental cause of congestion
with all its attendant evils is the necessity for the wage-
worker to live within an accessible distance from his place
of work. In mining towns the mine company is usually he
landlord, and the mine worker has no choice in the matter of
housing accommodations. In so far, however, as housing
conditions might affect the rates of wages of native and im-
migrant workmen, it is the amount of rent, not the equiva-
lent in domestic comfort, that has to be considered. And
here it is found that immigrants have to pay the same rent
as, and often a higher rent than, native American wage-
earners. A certain proportion among the immigrants seek
to reduce their rent by taking in boarders, but the practice
is not universal, and the wages of the others must therefore
provide for the payment of normal rent. Moreover, the
recent immigrants are mostly concentrated in great cities,
where rent is high, while the native American workmen live
mostly in small towns with low rents.
Nor are the food standards of the recent immigrant in-
ferior to those of native Americans with the same income.
Meat, the most expensive article of food, is consumed by
the Slav in larger quantities than by native Americans.
Rent and food claim by far the greater part of a workman's
wages. It is thus apparent that whatever may have been
the immigrant's standard of living in his home country, his
expenditure in the United States is determined by the prices
ruling in the United States. Contrary to common assertion,
the living expenses of the native American workman in
small cities and rural districts are lower than those of the
recent immigrants in 1he great industrial centers. It is
therefore not the recent immigrant that is able to underbid
22 Immigration and Labor
the native American workman, but it is, on the contrary,
the latter that is in a position to accept a cheaper wage.
There is, of course, a difference between the expenses of a
single and of a married workman. The necessary expenses
of a single man are lower than those of one who has a family
to support, and a large proportion of the recent immigrants
are either single or have left their families abroad. But,
while an unmarried American workman may either save or
spend the difference, the recent immigrant is obliged to save
a part of his earnings. He must repay the cost of his own
passage; if he has left a family at home, he must save up
money to pay for their passage, besides supporting them in
the meantime. So when the recent immigrant is seen to
deny himself every comfort in order to reduce his personal
expenses to a minimum, it is a mistake to assume that he
will accept a wage just sufficient to provide for his own sub-
sistence. The Italian section hand who lives on vegetables
does not save money for the railroad company. The eco-
nomic interests of the American wage-earner are therefore
not affected by the tendency of the recent immigrant to live
as cheaply as possible and to save as much as possible.
Whether he spends his wages for rent and dress, or saves his
money to buy steamship tickets for his family; whether he
invests his savings in a home in the United States or sends
them to his parents for improving the home farm, his wants
in one case are as urgent as in the other, and he must
demand a wage which will enable him to satisfy them.
On the other hand, though the standard of living of the
native or Americanized wage-earners be higher than that of
the new immigrants, this difference is not necessarily indica-
tive of a higher rate of wages: the higher standard is very
often maintained with the earnings of the children, whereas
the Southern and Eastern European immigrants are mostly
young people whose children have not reached working age.
The supposed differeneeim the standard of livin n there-
fore have no effect V^pon the comparative rater> .ges of
English-speakii "~kmen and of decent imnr : ts.
Summary Review 23
But it is argued that the newly arrived immigrant must
have work at once and is therefore glad to accept any terms.
The Immigration Commission after a study of the earnings
of more than half a million employees in mines and manu-
factures, has discovered no evidence that immigrants have
been hired for less than the prevailing rates of wages.
The primary cause which has determined the movement
of wages in the United States during the past thirty years
has been the introduction of labor-saving machinery. The
effect of the substitution of mechanical devices for human
skill is the displacement of the skilled mechanic by the
unskilled laborer. This tendency has been counteracted in
the United States by the expansion of industry: while the*
ratio of skilled mechanics to the total operating force was
decreasing, the increasing scale of operations prevented an
actual reduction in numbers. Of course this adjustment did
not proceed without friction. While, in the long run, there
has been no displacement of skilled mechanics J3y unskilled
laborers in the industrial field as a whole, yet at certain
times and places individual skilled mechanics were doubtless
dispensed with and had to seek new employment. The
unskilled laborers who replaced them were naturally
engaged at lower wages. The fact that most of these
unskilled laborers were immigrants disguised the substance
of the change the substitution of unskilled for skilled
labor and made it appear as the displacement of highly-
paid native by cheap immigrant labor.
To prove that immigration has virtually lowered the rates
of wages, would require a comparative study of wages paid
for the same class of labor in various occupations before and
after the great influx of immigration. This, however, has
never been attempted by the advocates of restriction. In
fact, the -chaotic state of our wage statistics precludes any
but a fragmentary comparison for different periods. In a
general way, however, all available data for the period of
" the old immigration" agree in that the wages of unskilled
laborers, and even of some of the skilled mechanics, did not
24 Immigration and Labor
fully provide for the support of the wage-earner and his
family in accordance with their usual standards of living.
The shortage had to be made up by the labor of the wife
and children.
If the tendency of the new immigration were to lower the
rate of wages or to retard the advance of wages, it should be
expected that wages would be lower in great cities where the
recent immigrants are concentrated, than in rural districts
where the population is mostly of native birth. All wage
statistics, concur, however, in the opposite conclusion.
Since the United States has become a manufacturing coun-
try average earnings per worker have been higher in the
cities than in the country. The same difference exists
within the same trades between the large and the small
cities. Country competition of native Americans often
acts as a depressing factor upon the wages of recent
immigrants. This fact has been demonstrated in the
clothing industry, in the cotton mills, in the coal mines,
etc.
Furthermore, if immigration tends to depress wages,
this tendency must manifest itself in lower average earnings
in States with a large immigrant population than in States
with a predominant native population. No such tendency,
however, is discernible from wage statistics. As a rule,
annual earnings are higher in States with a higher per-
centage of foreign-born workers.
The conditions in some of the leading industries employ-
ing large numbers of recent immigrants point to the same
conclusions. In the Pittsburgh steel mills the rates of wages
of various grades of employees have varied directly with the
proportion of recent immigrants. The wageL of the aristo-
crats of labor, none of whom are Southern or Eastern
Europeans, have been reduced in some cases as much as 40
per cent; the money wages of the skilled and semi-skilled
workers, two thirds of -whom are natives or old immigrants,
have not advanced notwithstanding the increased cost of
living, while the wages of the unskilled laborers, the bulk
Summary Review 25
of whom are immigrants from Southern and Eastern
Europe, have been going up. "
Another typical immigrant industry is the manufacture
of clothing. The clothing industry has become associated
in the public mind with the sweating system, and since the
employees are, with few exceptions, immigrants from South-
ern and Eastern Europe, the conclusion is readily reached
that the root of the sweating system is in the character of
the new immigration. Yet the origin of the sweating sys-
tem preceded the Jewish clothing workers by more than half
a century. Throughout the second quarter of the past
century native American and Irish women worked in the
s,weat shops of New York, Boston, and Philadelphia for only
board and lodging, or even for board alone, depending upon
their families for other necessities, whereas the Jewish fac-
tory girls of the present day are at least self-supporting.
In the cotton mills of New England the last quarter of the
nineteenth century, when the operatives were practically all
of the English-speaking races, was a period of intermittent
advances and reductions in wages ; on the whole, wages re-
mained stationary. The first years of the present century,
up to the crisis of 1908, were marked by the advent of
the Southern and Eastern Europeans into the cotton mills,
and by an uninterrupted upward movement of wages.
The competition of the cheap American labor of the
Southern cotton mills, however, tends to keep down the
wages of the Southern and Eastern European, Armenian,
and Syrian immigrants employed in the New England
mills.
As a general rule, the employment of large numbers of
recent immigrants has gone together with substantial
advances in wages. This correlation between the move-^ " '
ments of wages and immigration is not the manifestation of
some mysterious racial trait, but the plain working of the
law of supply and demand. The employment of a high^ ,
percentage of immigrants in any section, industry, oroccupa-~ -
tion, is an indication of an active demand for labor in pv-.ss
26 Immigration and Labor
of the native supply. Absence of immigrants is a sign of
a dull labor market.
To be sure, the rise in wages is paralleled by a similar
movement of prices. The employer of labor seeks to recoup
the advance in wages by advancing the price of his product
to the consumer. When the advance in the price of manu-
factured products becomes general, the wage-earner as a
consumer is forced in effect to give up a part or all of his
gain in the money rate of wages. The increased cost of
living then stimulates further demands for advances in
wages. Since combinations of capital in all fields of industry
have reduced competition among employers of labor to a
minimum, the wage-earners have been at a disadvantage in
this continuous bargaining. In general it has been observed
by economists that wages, as a rule, do not rise as fast as
prices. That this rule holds true irrespective of immigra-
tion, is illustrated by the movement of wages and prices
during the Civil War. With the exception of the first year,
the period was one of prosperity in every branch of industry.
The wage-earners were apparently in a favorable situation.
The army drew hundreds of thousands of workers from
industrial pursuits, while immigration declined. There
were at that time no immigrants from Southern and Eastern
Europe, nor was there any oversupply of unskilled labor.
Yet while the depreciation of the currency caused a rapid
increase in the cost of living, money wages did not keep
pace with prices. In other words, real wages decreased.
It must be noted that during the war a lively labor agitation
was going on; strikes were usually successful. Withal,
labor was unable to win increases in wages commensurate
with the increased cost of living.
Among the factors tending to depress the rate of wages
child labor holds a prominent place. The most significant
fact to be noted concerning the relation between child labor
\and immigration is the large proportion of children em-
. ployed in factories in States where there is practically no
immigrant population, whereas the lowest per cent is found
Summary Review 27
in New York, which is overrun by immigrants. The
growth of manufacturing industries in the South being re-
stricted by the natural increase of her native population, the
manufacturers, in order to extend their operations, must
resort to the employment of children, as did their prede-
cessors in New England a century ago, before immigration
came to supply the needs of American industry. This situ-
ation is by no means confined to the South. Absence of !
foreign immigration has created a demand for the labor of
native American children in the canneries and shoe factories
of rural and semi-rural Missouri. The principal induce-
ment for locating new shoe factories in rural sections of
Missouri appears to be the availability of the cheap labor
of native American women and children, who can underbid
the male immigrants employed in the shoe factories of
Massachusetts. On the other hand, taking the United
States as a whole, we find that during the ten-year period
from 1899 to 1909, with its unprecedented immigration, the
average number of children employed in factories did not
increase, while their relative number decreased.
An unerring measure of the effects of immigration on\
labor conditions is furnished by the length of the working
day. Aside from the benefits of shorter hours for the physi-
cal and mental well-being of the wage-earner, every reduc-
tion of the hours of labor, even when not accompanied by
an increase of the daily or weekly wage, is equivalent to an
increase of the hourly wage. Going back to the beginnings
of the factory system in the United States, when the opera-
tives were sons and daughters of American farmers, we find
that the hours of labor in the factories were from sunrise
to sunset, the same as on the farms to-day. The retirement
of the native element and their replacement by Irish immi-
grants was followed by a reduction of the hours of labor in
the textile mills. In recent vears the mills have been run
with a polyglot help made up of representatives of all the
races of Southern and Eastern Europe and Asiatic Turkey.
Compared with the time when the operatives were mostly
8 Immigration and Labor
Irish, the factory workers have again won a reduction of an
hour and a quarter a day. One need not take an optimistic
view of labor conditions in the Massachusetts textile mills
to recognize that fifty-four hours a week is a great stride in
advance since the time when the regular working day was
from sunrise to sunset.
The effects of the recent immigration upon the length of
the working day can be best observed in the State of New
York, which is affected by immigration more than any other
State in the Union. The first decade of the present century
has witnessed the greatest volume of immigration known in
the history of the United States, and the bulk of that immi-
gration has come from the countries of Southern and East-
ern Europe. And yet the reports of the factory inspectors
of the State of New York, covering an average of nearly a
. million factory employees annually, show for that decade a
I gradual reduction of the hours of labor in the State of New
I York. Comparing the city of New York with the remain-
der of the State, we find that the population of Southern and
Eastern European birth in the great city increased during
the same period from one sixth to about one fourth of the
total population, whereas in the State outside the city of
New York the immigrants from Southern and Eastern
Europe constituted in 1910 only one sixteenth of the total
population; yet after a decade of "undesirable immigration "
more than two thirds of all factory operatives in New York
City work ten hours or less on week days with a half holiday
on Saturday, whereas in the remainder of the State, with a
working population predominantly native, the majority
still work longer hours. The lower wages of tiie native
American wage-earners in small cities and country towns
might be explained by the lower cost of living, which per-
mits the native country worker to enjoy a greater measure
of comfort than the more highly paid recent immigrant
living in a large city. But the longer hours of the native
American wage-earner in the country admit of no such
explanation.
Summary Review 29
Among the many charges against the recent immigrants
not the least important one is that their ignorant acquies-
cence in dangerous and unsanitary working conditions is a
menace to the safety of the older employees. The Immi-
gration Commission has accepted without criticism the
employers' defense in work accidents, viz., that the majority
of accidents arise from the negligence, the ignorance, and
inexperience of the employees. There is, however, another
side to the question. Many experts hold that most of the
risks are humanly preventable, and their continuance is due
to economic conditions beyond the control of the employee,
Effective prevention of accidents in mines presupposes a
carefully planned equipment involving considerable ex-
pense. But competition forces the mine operator to follow
unsafe mining methods, which inevitably result in unneces-
sary sacrifice of human life. It is not the carelessness of
the mine workers, but the carelessness of mine operators and
their representatives that is, according to expert opinion, the
cause of the high fatality rate in American mines. Similar
dangerous conditions once existed in France and Belgium,
but they were removed by stringent legislation and by an
effective enforcement of the law. The theory which shifts
the blame for accidents from the mine operator to the Slav
miner tends to prevent the enactment of such legislation in
the United States,^/
In the iron and steel mills there is the same popular dispo-
sition to shift the responsibility for accidents to "the
ignorant foreigner," whereas expert opinion views the tre-
mendous speed at which the plants are run as the real cause
of danger. The greatest risk of death and personal injury is
assumed by railway trainmen, who are all either Americans
or natives of Northern and Western Europe. They have
strong organizations and could not be replaced by non-
English-speaking immigrants. Yet "acquiescence in dan-
gerous and unsanitary working conditions" appears to be
the general attitude of organized and unorganized workers
alike, irrespective of nationality. Obviously, organized
30 Immigration and Labor
labor does not feel strong enough to make demands which
would involve large outlays by employers for safe equip-
ment.
Organization of labor is nowadays generally recognized
in the United States as the most effective of all existing
agencies for the increase of wages and improvement of work-
ing conditions. It would therefore be a cause for grave con-
cern if it were true, as claimed, that the recent immigrants
.were not organizable, and that their employment threat-
ened the existing labor organizations with disruption.
'f The fact is, however, that the origin and growth of orga-
nized labor in the United States are contemporaneous with
the period of "the new immigration," and that the immi-
grants from Southern and Eastern Europe are the backbone
of some of the strongest labor unions. A notable example
is the coal-mining industry, where the mine workers' organi-
zation has gained strength only since the Southern and
Eastern Europeans have become the predominant element
among them. One of the most troublesome problems which
the organization of these immigrants has had to face has
been the competition of the unorganized Americans of
.native stock.
"^ ^. Before 1880 all labor organizations were small in member-
ship and their effect upon economic conditions was negli-
gible. Like everywhere, during the infancy of organized
labor, a union would spring into existence under the impulse
of a strike, would flourish for a while, if successful, and would
soon disintegrate. The work of organization has since been
proceeding at an ever increasing pace. During the first
decade of the new immigration, 1880-1890, more labor
unions were organized than throughout the previous history
s-l of the United States. The majority of the trade-unionists
and Knights of Labor were of foreign birth, whereas the
native Americans contributed less Jhan their qftota to the
membership of labor organizations. The greatest success
rewarded the efforts of union organizers during the first
decade of the present century, the membership of labor
Summary Review 31
organizations growing faster than the number of wage-
earners. Thus the greatest activity in the field of organi- I
zation coincided with the unparalleled immigration of the I
past decade. The best field for observation of the effects of
immigration upon trade-unionism is the State of New York,
which receives more than its proportionate share of immi-
grants from Southern and Eastern Europe. A comparative
study of trade-union statistics compiled by the New York
Bureau of Labor and of the federal immigration statistics
shows that union membership rises and falls with the rise -
and fall of immigration. The fluctuations of union mem-
bership depend upon the business situation, which likewise
determines the fluctuations of immigration. The harmoni-
ous movement of immigration and organization among
wage-earners is thus accounted for by the fact that both are
stimulated by business prosperity and discouraged by busi-
ness depression.
The question arises, however, whether the progress of
trade-unionism would not have been greater had there been
no immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe during
the past decade of industrial expansion. An answer to thil '
question is furnished by the comparative growth of trade-
union membership in New York and in Kansas. The ratio
of foreign-born in Kansas has been steadily decreasing since
1880. At the same time Kansas has shared in the recent
industrial expansion. Statistics show that the relative
number of organized workmen is much higher in New York
with its large and growing Southern and Eastern European
population than in Kansas, where more than nine tenths of
the population are of native birth.
These comparisons prove that recent immigration has
not retarded the progress of trade-unionism, except, of
course, where it is the policy of the unions to exclude the
recent immigrants by prohibitive initiation dues and other
restrictive regulations intended to limit the number of com-
petitors within their trades.
Language is nowadays no longer a bar to organization
JL -
32 Immigration and Labor
among immigrants. The membership of every union in-
cludes a sufficient number of men of every nationality
through whom their countrymen can be reached.
Many of the more recent immigrants from Southern and
Eastern Europe had acquired a familiarity with the prin-
ciples of organization in their home countries. In Italy
organization has lately made rapid progress not only among
industrial workers, but also among agricultural laborers.
In Russia, previous to the uprising of 1905, labor organi-
zations and strikes were treated as conspiracies, but the
revolutionary year 1905 outmatched the labor-union record
of any other country. The strikes of that year affected one
third of all the factories employing three fifths of all factory
workers. The total number of strikers, at a conservative
estimate, exceeded three and a half millions. The strikers
drew together wage-earners of all those nationalities which
make up the bulk of our immigration from the Russian Em-
pire: Hebrews, Poles, Lithuanians, Russians, and Ukrain-
ians. 1 In this connection, it is worthy of note that the
organizations of clothing workers in New York City, nearly
all of whom are Russian and Polish Jews and Italians, com-
prise a higher proportion of the total number employed in
the industry than the average trade-union in the United
States.
If organized labor in the United States has not succeeded
in welding together a majority of the wage-earners, the fault
is neither with immigration in general, nor with immigration
from Southern and Eastern Europe in particular. The
primary cause is the substitution of machinery for human
skill, which is taking the ground from the craft union. The
latter, however, as a rule, does not seek to organize the un-
skilled laborers. Situations have arisen where the interests
of the craft union have been antagonistic to organization
among the unskilled. That organization among the unskilled j
J The revolution of 1917 has made organized labor a part of the
machinery of government. .
Summary Review 33
is feasible, however, has been demonstrated in the coal-mining
industry, " - +he Lawrence strike, and in the recent strikes of
the steel workers.
Another obstacle to the progress of trade-unionism is that
the principal industries to-day are controlled by combina-
tions, which have reduced competition among employers
of labor to a minimum. In a contest of endurance between
a trust and a trade-union, the former is able to hold out
longer, since it can shift the losses to the consumers. The
only successful strikes against trusts have been those in
which the majority of the strikers were immigrants from
Southern and Eastern Europe, viz., the strikes in the anthra-
cite coal mines of Pennsylvania and in the woolen mills of
Lawrence.
One of the reasons for the greater power of resistance
exhibited by the Southern and Eastern Europeans is the
predominance among them of men without families. 1 The
single European wage-earner who manages to save a portion
of his earnings can fall back on his savings, if necessary.
This relieves the pressure upon the strike fund. On the
other hand, the families of recent immigrants, being inured
to the most simple life in their home countries, can more
easily endure the hardships of a strike than the families of
native American wage-earners. The Southern and Eastern
European strikers are therefore able to hold out longer in a
wage contest than the native wage-earner.
The defeat of many strikes is charged against the immi-
grant, who, though supposedly too tractable under normal
conditions, is said to be inclined to violence when aroused.
Suffice it to say that strike riots are as old as strikes in the
United States.
1 The proportion of married men among the recent immigrants
employed in bituminous coal mines varied from 49.4 per cent to 77.2 per
cent; the proportion of married men whose families were living abroad
averaged 27.9 per cent for all races, varying from 19.5 to 80.4 per cent.
Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 6, Tables 102 and 104.
34 Immigration and Labor
On the other hand, however, the United Mine Workers
of America, whose members are mostly immigrants from
Southern and Eastern Europe, has put into practical opera-
| tion an industrial parliament, with separate representation
ifor employers and employees, for the regulation of the terms
of employment. It can not be said then "as a general
proposition . . . that all improvement in conditions and in-
creases in rates of pay have been secured in spite of the
presence of the recent immigrant." 1
The results of the preceding discussion can be summed up
as follows:
(1) Recent immigration has displaced none of the native
American wage-earners or of the earlier immigrants, but has
only covered the shortage of labor resulting from the excess
of the demand over the domestic supply.
(2) Immigration varies inversely with unemployment;
it has not increased the rate of unemployment.
(3) The standard of living of the recent immigrants is
not lower than the standard of living of the past generations
of immigrants engaged in the same occupations. Recent
immigration has not lowered the standard of living of Ameri-
cans and older immigrant wage-earners.
(4) Recent immigration has not reduced the rates of
wages, nor has it prevented an increase in the rates of wages ;
it has pushed the native and older immigrant wage-earners
upward on the scale of occupations.
(5) The hours of labor have been reduced contempo-
raneously with recent immigration: s *
(6) The membership of labor organizations has grown
apace with recent immigration; the new immigrants have
contributed their proportionate quota to the membership
1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. I, p. 541. Since the
days of the Immigration Commission another experiment in industrial
government, inaugurated by recent immigrants in the clothing factory
of Hart, Schaffner and Marx, has attracted wide notice among labor
leaders and social workers.
Summary Review
of every labor organization which has not di.
against them, and they have firmly stood by their ,
dons in every contest.
^There is consequently no specific "immigration proble.
There is a general labor problem, which comprises man>
special problems, such as organization of labor, reduction of
hours of labor, child labor, unemployment, prevention of
work-accidents, etc. None of these problems being affected
by immigration, their solution can not be advanced by
restriction or even by complete prohibition of immigration. >
The advocates of restriction are conscious of the fact that i
without immigration the industrial expansion of the past^
twenty years would have been impossible. But they be-
lieve that the pace of progress has been too fast and that
the interests of labor would be furthered by a slower devel-
opment of industry which would dispense with Southern and
Eastern European unskilled laborers. This was the gist of
the recommendations of the Immigration Commission.
The weak point in this argument is that it takes no cogni-
zance of the cardinal principle of modern division of labor,
viz., that in every industrial establishment there is a fixed
proportion of skilled to unskilled laborers. Were the expan-
sion of industry to slow down in consequence of a reduced
supply of unskilled labor, the demand for skilled mechanics
would eventually decline in proportion. The slow growth of
industry would tend to curtail the opportunities for advance-*
ment of the wage-earners who are already here. The skilled
crafts whose organizations favor the exclusion of unskilled
immigrants would be the first to suffer in consequence|
On the other hand, the unemployed could gain nothing -
from a slow growth of industry. Seasonal and cyclical
variations in the general demand for labor, as well as varia-
tions in the demands of individual employers, would continue
on a reduced scale -of national production. The mere ex-
clusion of immigrants will not provide employment for sail-
ors in the winter, or for the full winter force of a Wisconsin
Immigration and Labor
camp in the summer; nor will it revolutionize the
A of fashion. In order to provide regular employment
^r all workers, it would be necessary to run all industries
upon a common time schedule, like railway trains are run
on connecting lines. No plan of such a readjustment has as
yet been suggested by the advocates of immigration restric-
tion. Certainly an adjustment of the busy and slack seasons
of a quarter of a million factories will not spring up spon-
taneously from an act of Congress closing the gates against
immigrants. The present -crisis, which has followed a period
with immigration reduced to insignificant proportions, dem-
onstrates how ineffectual restriction of immigration would be
as a remedy -against unemployment resulting from cyclical
disturbances of capitalistic industry.
As a speculative proposition, it seems quite plausible, that
f if restriction of immigration resulted in a scarcity of labor,
employers would be forced to pay scarcity rates of wages.
A standing refutation of this theory is presented by the con-
dition which actually exists in the United States throughout
the agricultural sections. Few immigrants seek employment
on the farms. The number of Southern and Eastern Euro-
pean farm laborers in the United States is negligible. More-
over, there is a constant stream of native labor from the farms
to the cities, which has led to an actual decrease of the rural
population in many agricultural counties. Farmers generally
complain of scarcity of farm labor during the agricultural
season. Nevertheless, the wages of farm laborers are lower
than the wages of unskilled laborers in mines and mills where
recent jmmigrants predominate. Scarcity of labor has not
forced the farmer to pay scarcity wages, but has merely re-
tarded the growth of farming.
I The World War offered an opportunity to test the effects
pf restriction of immigration under the most favorable con-
ditions. The United States became the chief producer of
war supplies for the allied nations. ' Beginning with the spring
of 1916 the supply of labor in the United States fell short of
Summary Review 37
the demand. The entrance of the United States into the
war withdrew more than two million workers from industry.
Officers of the American Federation of Labor and avowed
friends of labor were put in charge of the various war boards
which were entrusted with the function of regulating wages
in the leading industries. If the economic condition of the
American wage-earner could be improved by suspension of
immigration, its beneficial effects should have materialized
during the war.
Volumes of statistics on every aspect of the economic
situation during the war period have been published. They
show a growth' of production much in excess of the rate of
the pre-war years. This unparalleled growth of industry was
marked by extraordinary profits, which were far beyond
anything that was necessary to stimulate initiative and
enterprise.
At the same time, the growth of population lagged behind J
the industrial expansion. To meet the abnormal demand for
common labor caused by the cessation of immigration, the
Secretary of Labor, a former labor leader, was obliged to
suspend the law to permit mine operators and other employers
in the Southwest to import Mexican laborers under contract.
This abnormal condition brought about an unprecedented I
mobility of labor. Reports from every section of the country
to Bradstreefs complained of employees "constantly being
enticed from their jobs by competition between employers." 1
Employers were offering high rates of wages to union and non-
union workers alike.
What, f hen, was the effect of this most favorable com-
bination of economic factors upon the condition of the Ameri-
can wage worker?
In such war-time industries as munition plants, some of
the occupations enjoyed increases in wages more than suffi-
cient to compensate for the increase in the cost of living.
1 The Literary Digest, December I, 1917, P- 80.
38 Immigration and Labor
On the other hand, the wages of the railroad workers, coal
miners, and farm laborers, lagged behind the increase in
j prices. On the whole, wages did not keep pace with the
increasing cost of living. The workers merely struggled to
keep their old standards of living, and even in this struggle
they did not always succeed.
The most telling corroboration of the decline in real wages
is furnished by the investigations of medical authorities,
which show a decided increase of the proportion of underfed
school children during the World War.
We have thus witnessed a repetition of the labor conditions
which prevailed during the Civil War. This lagging of wages
/behind the advancing cost of living cannot be explained by
i the alleged submissiveness of the immigrant wage- workers,
Who are said to be willing to acquiesce in the terms offered
to them by the employers. The statistics of strikes during
the World War show that during the three years 1916-1918
the number of strikes per year was more than twice the
annual average for the period from 1881 to 1905. More than
four fifths of the war-time strikes were led by unions. The
annual average number of strikers rose to the unprecedented
figure of 1,310,000. Moreover, during the war, the principle
of collective bargaining was recognized, under the pressure
of the government, by all employers engaged on government
orders or in the production of essentials.
That the foreign worker can not be held responsible for the
decline of real wages is further proved by the fact that the
real wages of common laborers in the iron and steel industry,
most of whom are foreign born, went up, whereas those of
locomotive firemen, most of whom are native-born Ameri-
cans, declined to a point much below the minimum budget
under American standards.
Among the potent factors in the decline of real wages must
/ be noted the movement of labor from agriculture to urban
1 industries. As a result, agricultural "production during the
war remained almost stationary, while the demand for bread-
Summary Review 39
stuffs was increased by exports abroad. The big interests
which control the produce market were thereby enabled
to raise the prices of food. What the wage-earner gained in i
money wages he was forced to surrender in the higher prices j
of necessities of life. .
Let us now examine what were the substitutes for immi-
grant labor during the war years. The movement of workers
from agriculture to urban industries has already been ad-
verted to. Public attention was attracted by the migration!
of Negroes from the agricultural South to the industrialj
North. The volume of that migration is officially estimated
at nearly half a million. Agricultural regions of the Southern
states began to suffer for want of the Negro worker. Another
substitute for immigrant labor was found in the increased
nr\\nyr$er\t QJ jwmrTen^aidchildrer>. The main"torce which
was driving childrenlnto inclustry r was the excessive cost of
living. Labor commissioners and factory inspectors com-
plained of the difficulty experienced during the war years in
administering child-labor laws. The scarcity of adult labor
made the employer ready to take minors into his employ.
What, then, is the outlook in the ligl^of the experience of
labor in the late war? We are passmg* 'through one of the
cyclical disturbances of modern industry with Jtheir attend-
ant acute unemployment. But this ericas will-be over, and
American industry wiH~resume. s its usual course. If restric-
tion of immigration is to become the settled policy of the
United States, substitutes for immigrant labor will be sought.
The mines and mills of the Southern states which have
failed to attract immigrants utilize the labor of farmers and
their sons. The millions of tenant-farmers offer great pos-
sibilities as an industrial reserve available during the winter
months. The farm being their main source of subsistence,
they have been willing to offer their labor during the idle
winter months more cheaply than freshly landed immigrants.
The efforts of trade-union organizers among this class of
English-speaking workers have met with scant success. The
39 a Immigration and Labor
substitution of the cheap labor of the American farmer foi
the labor of the Slav or Italian immigrant, would tend to
weaken the unions and to keep down wages. A stimulated
movement of labor from the farm to the factory would check
the growth of farming; the prices of foodstuffs would rise in
consequence, which would tend to offset the advantages to
the wage-earners from a possible rise of money wages.
The discontinuance of fresh supplies of immigrant labor
for the mills and factories of New England would give a
new impetus to the establishment of factories in the South,
where there is an abundant supply of child labor.
Still, should all the substitutes for immigration prove in-
adequate, it does not necessarily follow that scarcity prices
would rule in the American labor market. It must be borne
in mind that capital is international. Billions of American
capital are already invested in foreign enterprises. Hereto-
fore these investments could not compare with the profits of
American industries annually reinvested at home/ If, how-
ever, a permanent scarcity of labor were created in the
United States, more American capital would seek investment
abroad. The increased investment of American capital in
the industrial development of foreign countries, with cheap
labor, must eventually react upon labor conditions in the
United States. Certain of the most important American in-
dustries depend in part upon the export trade. A scarcity
of labor in the United States would induce many American
manufacturers to follow the example of their European com-
petitors, who have found it more profitable to establish fac-
tories in foreign countries than to export their products to
those countries. It is learned from an official report of the
Commercial Secretary of the British Embassy in Berlin, that
arrangements have been in progress between American capi-
talists and German corporations, looking toward the invest-
ment of American capital in German industry. There are
other reports to the same effect. Such an emigration of
American capital would materially affect the export trade of
Summary Review
the United States and eventually cut off the avenues of em--
ployment for a number of American wage-earners.
It is evident that while restriction of immigration can limit
the supply of labor, It is powerless to prevent a corresponding
limitation of the demand for labor.
The true cause of the decline of real wages during the late
war is to be found in the fact that advances in wages are the
outcome of the slow process of. collective bargaining, with
occasional industrial warfare, whereas the prices of commodi-
ties are controlled by monopolistic combinations, which
promptly shift every advance in wages to the consumer.
Thus the rise of wages in one industry or occupation is, in
effect, charged up to the working class as a whole. What is
wanted in order to secure to the worker a real advance in
wages is regulation of profits in the interest of the consumers,
of whom the wage-earners are the most numerous element.
Restriction of the supply of labor does not touch the problem
of price control. Immigration laws can prevent the American
capitalist from employing foreign labor in the United States.
But he may find it as profitable to employ the same labor in
Europe ;n the manufacture of goods for the world market.
The reduction of the supply of labor will be neutralized by a
reduction of the demand for labor in the United States.
PART II.
TOPICAL ANALYSIS
CHAPTER I
STATEMENT OF THE QUESTION
A STUDY of the immigration question involves an ex-
amination of every important phase of American eco-
nomic, political, and social life. There is scarcely an ailment
of our body politic that is not diagnosed in prose and
in verse as the effect of unrestricted immigration. The
immigrants are blamed for unemployment, female and child
labor, the introduction of machinery, unsafe coal mines,
lack of organization among wage-earners, congestion in
great cities, industrial crises, inability to gain a controlling
interest in stock corporations, J pauperism, crime, insanity,
race suicide, gambling, the continental Sunday, parochial
schools, atheism, political corruption, municipal misrule.
The latest count in this long indictment is the McNamara
conspiracy, which a noted sociologist has somehow connec-
ted with unrestricted immigration. 2 Not only has "recent
immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe" lowered
the American standard of living, but it threatens to lower
"the average stature of the American. "3
1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 16, p. 655.
* Prof. E. A. Ross, in The Survey, December 30, 1911, p. 1425.
Robert Hunter: Poverty, p. 269.
40
Statement of the Question 41
It is conceded that in the past immigration has been a
material factor in the economic development of the United
States. It is claimed, however, that the new immigrant
races are of a different social type lacking the sturdy quali-
ties of the old immigration. * ' In the early years of immigra-
tion, when it was difficult, if not actually dangerous, to come
to the United States, there was a natural selection of the
best and hardiest inhabitants of the old world, men willing
to risk their all in going to a new country." x . The pioneers
of those days were eager for an opportunity to develop
the untouched resources of a new land and to advance
the march of civilization into the wilderness. The
new immigrant, on the contrary, is attracted by the
glamor of the city. To be sure, a large percentage of the
new immigration comes from the farming sections of
Europe ; but brought up, as they are, amidst the congestion
of the small agricultural towns of the old world, these new
immigrants recoil at the isolation of the American farm and
prefer to crowd in the congested districts of the large manu-
facturing cities.
The cure for the evils of immigration upon which all seem
to be agreed is some method of selection which would admit
all desirable immigrants and keep out the "undesirable."
There is, however, no authoritative definition of a "de-
sirable" and an "undesirable " immigrant. Mr. Prescdtt F.
Hall, Secretary of the Immigration Restriction League,
regards as "undesirable immigration" that " which .fe ig-
norant of a trade," 2 while another writer maintains that
the races having the highest percentages of unskilled
laborers are the most desirable, because they do not com-
pete with American mechanics, but men who are "skilled in
tailoring, shoemaking, baking, or other trades which do not
require much physical strength ... are undesirable immi-
grants," because "they enter into direct competition with
1 John Mitchell : Organized Labor, p. 1 77.
'Prescott F. Hall: "Selection of Immigration." Annals of the
American Academy of Social and Political Science, July, 1904, P- i?5.
& Immigration and Labor
the American mechanic." 1 Again Mr. Hall would treat
as "undesirable immigration" that "which is averse to
country life and tends to congregate in the slums of large
cities," though "if our recent immigrants were able and
willing to go to the West and South, these States do not
want them." 2 Along with the Southeastern European
immigrant who is accordingly not wanted either in the large
cities, or in the agricultural West and South, the same
author would class as "undesirable" all immigration
"which fails to assimilate in a reasonable time." 3
Prof. Mayo-Smith is more specific in his definition and
favors the selection of immigrants with a view, among other
things, to the preservation of the "social morality of the
Puritans." 4
With respect to assimilation, conditions are said to have
undergone a material change. The old immigrants, scat-
tered amidst the native American population, were quickly
assimilated. Moreover, they were practically all of Teuton
and Celtic stock and came from countries with a represen-
tative form of government. The recent immigrants, on the
other hand, have had no training in self-government at
home, and being herded together in foreign colonies, out of
touch with native Americans, they are incapable of assimi-
lation and present a growing danger to the integrity of
American democratic institutions. 5
According to some students, this country is facing a new
x Dr. Allan McLaughlin: "Distrust of the Immigrant." Popular
Science Monthly, January, 1903, p. 232.
2 Prescott F. Hall, loc. cit., pp. 175, 179. * Ibid., p. 175.
* Richmond Mayo-Smith: Emigration and Immigration, p. 5.
sA writer, discussing the "perils" of "un-American immigration*
in 1894, gave warning that "if foreign immigration continues at the
present rate and such immigration continues to come from Middle,
Southern, and Northeastern Europe, in 1900 the Anglo-Saxon and
Anglo-Saxon institutions will no longer J&e the dominant powers in
moulding American life and legislation." Rena M. Atchison, Un-
American Immigration: Its Present and Future Perils, p. 148. (Chicago
1894.)
Statement of the Question 43
race problem, similar to the negro problem. In the opinion
of a member of the Immigration Commission the Southern
Italian is not "a white man," nor is the Syrian. 1 The
presence of these races in large numbers among the working
forces of our mines and mills has attached a social stigma to
certain occupations; as a result of this race prejudice the
native American workmen have withdrawn from those
employments where they must work side by side with recent
arrivals and overcrowd the less remunerative, but more
respectable occupations. 2
Still the fact is that while the root of all evil is sought in
the racial make-up of the new immigration, as contrasted
with the old, every complaint against the immigrants from
Eastern and Southern Europe is but an echo of the com-
plaints which were made at an earlier day against the then
new immigration from Ireland, Germany, and even from
England. As observed by the Industrial Commission a
decade ago, "on the whole, it does not seem that the newer
immigration offers any greater or more serious problems
than the old, except in so far as they add to the total
numbers . " 3 A retrospective view of immigration will show
the problems presented by a polyglot population to be by
no means peculiar to our own day. If "assimilation" is
taken to mean the substitution of the English language in
daily intercourse for the mother tongue of the immigrant,
then a century of experience proves it to be an unattainable
ideal. But, if "assimilation" means an understanding of
1 Hearings before the House Committee on Immigration and Natural-
ization. 6ist Congress. Testimony of Hon. John L. Burnett, of Ala-
bama, p. 407. In 1885, in reply to inquiries sent out by the Iowa
Bureau of Labor Statistics, a laboring man complained that "the
Bohemians . . . will get a job in preference to a white man." (VI.
Biennial Report, Iowa Bureau of Labor Statistics, p. 189.) Since that
time the Bohemians have been advanced in the publications of the
Immigration Restriction League to a place among the "desirable" im-
migrants from Northern and Western Europe.
2 Jenks and Lauck: The Immigration Problem, pp. 75-76-
a Reports of the Industrial Commission, vol. xv., p. 491.
44 Immigration and Labor
American institutions, it will readily occur to the student
that one of the standard works on the constitutional history
of the United States was written in German by von Hoist,
an alumnus of a Russian university, and another standard
book on the organization of American political parties was
written in French by Ostrogorsky, a Russian Jew. The
politician who comes in closest personal contact with the
mass of citizenship has long since adjusted himself to the
conditions created by immigration and finds no difficulty
in presenting the issues and the candidates of his party to a
mixed constituency in a variety of languages. Moreover,
a deeper insight into the social life of the immigrant will dis-
cover powerful forces making for social assimilation, in those
very institutions which are popularly frowned upon as
tending to perpetuate the isolation of the foreigner from
American influences. The newspaper printed in a foreign
language is virtually a sign of Americanization; the Lithu-
anian peasant at home had no newspaper in his own
language; the demand for a newspaper has grown on
American soil. That it apparently serves its purpose, is
conceded by prominent advocates of restriction. 1 The
theater where the immigrant sees a play produced in his
mother tongue is likewise the outgrowth of the democratic
spirit of American social life ; the theater in Eastern Europe
caters only to the upper classes. The numerous foreign-
speaking organizations owe their existence to the political
freedom of the United States. It is through all these social
agencies using his native tongue as a medium of communi-
cation, that the immigrant who is not a scholar is enabled
to partake of the advantages of American civilization.
It is realized by the clear-sighted advocates of restriction
that "too rnuch emphasis, in the discussion of immigration,
within recent years, has been placed upon the social and
political results of recent immigration. The problem at
1 "So large a number of periodicals are published in various foreign
tongues that it is by no means essential that the immigrant read Eng-
lish. " Jenks and Lauck, loc. cit., p. 32.
Statement of the Question 45
present is really fundamentally an industrial one." 1 The
reason the appeals for restriction to-day find a more favor-
able hearing than in the days of the Know-Nothing agita-
tion, is the growth of organized labor, which demands
restriction of immigration as an extension of the protective
principle to the home market in which "hands" the
laborer's only commodity are offered for sale. All doc-
trinaire theories of a civic character are accepted by orga-
nized labor in so far as they may be helpful in its campaign
for restriction of immigration. The real attitude of orga-
nized labor, however, is candidly stated in the testimony
of Mr. Roe, representing the railroad brotherhoods, before
the House Committee on Immigration and Naturaliza-
tion: "Every foreign workman who comes into this
country takes the place of some American workingman who
wants higher wages and a higher standard of living than the
foreigner." 2
All opposition to restriction of immigration is viewed with
suspicion by organized labor, as emanating from the employ-
ing class or from the steamship companies, which are hiding
selfish interests under a cloak of humanitarianism. This
view overlooks the millions of foreign-born wage-earners
who are bound by family ties with millions of workers across
the sea and want them to share in the opportunities which
this country holds out to the immigrant for bettering his
economic and social conditions. 3 Their appeal from the
present-day policy of restriction to old American traditions
springs from personal affection and friendship.
It must be understood, however, that the United States
no longer recognizes the Kantian "ideal demand of the new
1 Ibid., p. 197.
a H. R. 6ist. Congress. Hearings before Committee on Immigra-
tion and Naturalization, p. 254.
s The claim of the pessimists, that the condition of the immigrant
workman in the United States is to-day no better than in his native
country (Robert Hunter: Poverty, p. 280), is refuted by the millions,
of European workers who come to this country to stay and send for
their relatives.
46 Immigration and Labor
law of nations," x that the individual may have the freedom
of the world to choose his domicil, regardless of state boun-
daries. The enactment of the Chinese exclusion law signa-
lized a reversion of the United States to the old doctrine of
sovereignty, which invests the state with the absolute right
to exclude aliens from its territory. In opposition to the
cosmopolitan theory underlying the free immigration policy
of the past, the policy of restriction has elaborated its own
social philosophy in the following words of Mr. John
Mitchell:
To a large extent the progress of nations can best be secured by the
policy of seclusion and isolation. By means of barriers which regulate,
but do not prohibit, immigration, the various countries of Europe and
America can individually work out their salvation, and a permanent
increase in the efficiency and remuneration of the workers of the world
can thus be obtained. By the maintenance of these barriers the best
workingmen in each country can rise to the top, and the great mass of
the workingmen can secure a larger share of the wealth produced. 2
It goes without saying that this theory of progress can
lay no claim to originality, "the policy of seclusion and
isolation" having been consistently followed for many
centuries by China.
Without venturing, however, into the realm of sociologi-
cal speculation, and allowing that if ' ' every foreign work-
man who comes into this country takes the place of some
American workingman" immigration ought to be pro-
hibited, the unprejudiced student of the immigration ques-
tion will demand proof that the premises are true. When a
million workers are reported to be out of employment and
an equal number of immigrants are shown to have been
admitted during the same year, the man in the street is apt
to jump to the conclusion that the new arrivals have dis-
1 J. C. Bluntschli: Die Bedeutung und die Fortschritte des modern en
Volkerrechts, p. 36. _
a John Mitchell: Organized Labor, p. 181. It is stated on p. viii
of the book that it has been written in co-operation with Dr. Walter
E. Weyl.
Statement of the Question 47
placed the native workmen or the older immigrants. On
closer scrutiny, however, this superficial conclusion may
prove wholly unwarranted. To take but one illustration,
the presence of a few thousand unemployed sailors in Buf-
falo during the winter months is no proof of an oversupply of
sailors during the navigation season or of an overstocked
labor market in general. The emigration of all Slav and
Italian surface laborers employed during the summer in the
iron mines of the Lake Superior region would not create a
single job for the unemployed sailors in the winter. On the
contrary, the reduction of the working force in the mines
during the season which is most favorable for their operation
would have the effect of reducing the volume of iron ore
carried on the lakes, in consequence of which a number of
sailors could be dispensed with in the summer. It is quite
obvious that the effects, if any, of immigration upon unem-
ployment cannot be determined by deductive reasoning.
The same is true of the standard of living, etc.
In order to bring to light all the facts respecting immigra'
tion, a commission was created in 1907 by an act of Con'
gress. The results of the Commission's investigations will
next be considered.
CHAPTER II
THE REPORT OF THE IMMIGRATION COMMISSION
THE most valuable contribution of the Immigration
Commission to the discussion of immigration is the
conclusion that it should be considered "primarily as an
economic problem. ' ' x This statement of the question takes
it out of the domain of conflicting, more or less specula-
tive, social theories and permits of its consideration on the
solid basis of measurable economic realities.
Of the forty-two volumes of the Commission's report,
thirty-one contain primary facts directly or indirectly
related to the economic aspects of immigration. 2
The Commission has unanimously recommended restric-
tion of immigration, the only dissenting opinion being con-
fined to methods of restriction. There are few people who
will go beyond the conclusions of the Commission and
undertake the task of examining the evidence, presumably
stored up in its voluminous report. The lay public will
assume that the unanimous conclusions were reached after
mature deliberation over the evidence collected by the
Commission. An illuminating sidelight upon the supposed
connection between its recommendations and its statistics
is thrown by ex-Congressman William S. Bennet's dissenting
opinion, which contains the statement that the report of the
Commission was finally adopted "within a half hour of the
1 -Reports of the Immigration Commission,_yol. I, p. 25.
8 Volumes 3, 4, 6-28, 34, 35, 37, and 40. The remaining portion of
the report deals with ethnography, education, legislation, etc., and two
of the volumes are summaries of the whole.
48
Report of the Immigration Commission 49
time" when, under the law, it had to be filed, which left "no
time for the preparation of an elaborate dissent." It is
legitimate to question under the circumstances whether the
members of the Commission had the opportunity, amidst
their manifold duties, to examine the manuscript of the
forty volumes, which did not leave the printing office until
more than a year after the Commission had ceased to exist.
Apparently, they had before them merely the summary sub-
mitted for the Commission's approval by its experts. The
unanimity of the Commission thus invests its conclusions
with no other authority than the scientific weight of the
statistical and descriptive reports of its experts. The most
important part of the reports, viz. " Immigrants in Indus-
tries" (vols. 6-25), "was prepared under the direction of
the Commission" by one expert, Prof. W. Jett Lauck (of
course, with the assistance of a staff of field agents and
clerks). The student is, therefore, free to judge the reports
of the Commission by the same canons as other official
statistical publications. The Commission finds:
That the numbers of recent immigrants "are so great and
the influx is so continuous that even with the remarkable
expansion of industry during the past few years there has
been created an oversupply of unskilled labor, and in some
of the industries this is reflected in a curtailed number of
working days and a consequent yearly income among the
unskilled workers which is very much less than is indicated
by the daily wage rates paid."
That the standard of living of "the majority of the
employees . . . is so far below that of the native American
or older immigrant workman that it is impossible for the
latter to successfully compete with them." That "they are
content to accept wages and conditions which the native
American and immigrants of the older class had come to
regard as unsatisfactory . . . and as a result that class of
employees was gradually replaced."
That the new immigrants have in some degree "lowered
the American standard of living."
50 Immigration and Labor
That a "characteristic of the new immigrants is the
impossibility of successfully organizing them into labor
unions. Several attempts at organization were made, but
the constant influx of immigrants to whom prevailing con-
ditions seemed unusually favorable contributed to the fail-
ure to organize."
That "the competition of these immigrants . . . has
kept conditions in the semi-skilled and unskilled occupations
from advancing. ' ' x
Every one of the preceding conclusions involved a com-
parison of the present conditions with the past. Still it is
only as a rare exception that fragments of statistical infor-
mation relating to the earlier period of American industrial
history can be found in the numerous volumes of the reports
of the Immigration Commission. No attempt has been
made to utilize the vast statistical material collected by the
State bureaus of labor statistics since the establishment of
the Massachusetts Bureau in 1 869. This is very much to be
regretted. There is no other nation in the world that ex-
pends so much for the collection of statistical data and so little
for their analysis as the United States. An index prepared
by the United States Bureau of Labor to the publications of
the State labor bureaus up to 1902 fills a volume. The data
contained in these publications were collected at great cost
during a period of years, but were for the most part pub-
lished in an undigested form. This defect is the result of the
prevailing policy of official statistical institutions to elimi-
nate as far as practicable all interpretations of their statis-
tics in order to escape the suspicion of partisanship. A
Congressional commission, however, is free from such limi-
tations, its very purpose being to draw conclusions and
make recommendations which are of necessity open to
controversy. A perusal of the single volume devoted to
immigration in the report of President McKinley's Indus-
trial Commission shows what a storehouse of original data
is available at small cost in the files of official publications
' x Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. I, pp. 38, 39.
Report of the Immigration Commission 51
of States and municipalities. The Immigration Com-
mission with its vastly greater resources had the oppor-
tunity to make a contribution of inestimable value to the
study of the economic and social conditions of the
American people at the period of the greatest migration in
the history of the world. Unfortunately the Commission
expended all its efforts in search for new material, with
the result, as candidly admitted by Prof. H. Parker Willis,
"the editorial adviser" in the final preparation of its re-
port, that the thirty-one volumes have added a fresh
stock of ill-digested statistics to that previously accumu-
lated. 1
Of what value are the tables showing the rate of unem-
ployment of a limited number of selected families when the
censuses of 1890 and 1900 have collected and published such
data for all bread-winners in the United States?
The fact that the wage-earners in some industries were
unemployed some part of the year covered by the Com-
mission is alone insufficient to support the conclusion that
the number of working days has been "curtailed," without
a comparison of the number of working days in the same
industries for a series of years. "Racial displacement"
prominently figures in the tables of contents of every vol-
ume and in the subheads of every chapter dealing with the
condition in the manufacturing and mining industries, but
an inspection of the statistical tables discloses no evidence
of actual ' ' displacement. ' '
One example may serve as an illustration. The changes
in the population of Birmingham, Alabama, have been the
subject of the following commentary:
1 "With so much actually collected in the way of detailed data, and
with but scant time in which to summarize these data, lacking, more-
over, a sufficient number of trained writers and statisticians to study
the information acquired and to set it down with a due proportion of
properly guarded inferences, it is a fact that much of the Commission's
information is still undigested, and is presented in a form which affords
no more than a foundation for the work of future inquirers. " H. Parker
Willis in The Survey of January 7, 1911, p. 57 1 -
52 Immigration and Labor
It is even more significant, however, that with the exception of the
Welsh and Norwegians there was a falling off in numbers from the coun-
tries of Great Britain and Northern Europe in 1900 as contrasted with
1890, the increase in the foreign-born population during the ten years
1890-1900 practically all arising from the arrival of races from Southern
and Eastern Europe. 1
The numbers which have given occasion to the preceding
remarks were as follows:
Place of birth 1890 igoo.
England. ..
258
233
Germany . .
450
446
Ireland....
245
218
Scotland. . .
53
52
Sweden. . . .
49
16
It will be observed that the total "falling off in numbers"
amounted to 33 Swedes, 27 Irish, 25 English, 4 Germans,
and I Scotch in all, 90 persons in ten years. At the same
time the native-born population increased by as many as
12,113 persons, while the total increase "from the arrival
of races from Southern and Eastern Europe " was less than
2 14 persons. Why should the loss of the 90 natives of Great
Britain and Northern Europe be interpreted as their dis-
placement by arrivals from Southern and Eastern Europe
rather than by native Americans? Moreover, the rate of
mortality among those nationalities, except the Swedes,
must have reduced their numbers by at least one sixth in ten
years, which is more than twice their actual falling-off and
suggests that there must have been some increase by immi-
gration from the same sources. So the actual falling-off
was confined to the Swedes, who if all alive were leaving
Birmingham at the rate of three individuals per year. Was
the annual loss of three Swedes "significant" enough for a
city whose population increased 50 per cent from 1890 to
1900 to be noted as evidence of "racial displacement"?
"The impossibility of successfully organizing" the new
immigrants "into labor unions" cannot be proved without
1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 9, p. 159.
Report of the Immigration Commission 53
statistics of union membership. The Commission has com-
piled no statistical table showing the growth of labor unions
in various trades during the period of recent immigration.
The data collected by the Commission as a part of its study
of households are too meager and fragmentary to be of any
value.
The following table and commentary are a fair specimen
of the Commission's trade-union. statistics: 1
TABLE 233.
AFFILIATION WITH TRADE-UNIONS OF MALES 21 YEARS OF AGE OR OVER
WHO ARE WORKING FOR WAGES, BY GENERAL NATIVITY AND RACE
OF INDIVIDUAL.
(Study of households.)
Number
Affiliated
with trade-unions
General nativity and race of individual
complete
data
Number
Per cent
Native-born of native father white
Native-born of foreign father, by
race of father:
47
I
O.O
(a*
j
(a)
Irish
I
(a)
Polish
2
(a)
Foreign-born:
Croatian
24.O
2
.8
I
1-9
Irish
II
(<0
Polish
64
.0
Slovenian
I
(a)
' Total
424
I
.7
Total native-born of foreign father
Total native-born . ......
7
54
w
.0
Total foreign-born.
170
3
.8
(a) Not computed, owing to small number involved.
The above table disposes the significant fact that an exceedingly
small proportion of employees in Kansas City of foreign birth, and
none of native birth, are affiliated with labor organizat/Vni.
Ibid., vol. 13, p. 300.
54 Immigration and Labor
The fact that the field agents of the Commission in a
study of households, not of trade-unions happened to come
across three trade-unionists in a city of the size of Kansas
City, is considered sufficient to justify the conclusion that
"an exceedingly small proportion of employees in Kansas
City . . . are affiliated with trade-unions "! Another table
brings out the "affiliation with trade-unions" of one South
Italian wage-earner among 668 householders duly "classified
by nativity and race of individual." *
When a single trade-unionist in an unorganized mill town
is enlarged into an "exhibit by general nativity and race of
individual," one cannot help wondering that the economic
data of the Commission have been compressed within the
small compass of thirty-one volumes.
Coming to the standard of living, it is clearly insufficient
to compare the sections inhabited by English-speaking
skilled mechanics and their families with the settlements of
the unskilled Slav laborers, with a view to showing that the
former present a better appearance than the latter. The
housing conditions of the new immigrants should be com-
pared with those of the Irish and German unskilled laborers
a generation ago, in order to support the conclusion that the
former have "introduced a lower standard."
The statistics of earnings classified by race and nativity
are spread over hundreds of tables, yet they are vitiated by
the absence of a classification by occupations. The only con-
clusion that can be drawn from these statistics is that the
weekly or annual earnings of the new immigrants are, as a
rule, lower than those of the native wage-earners or the older
immigrants. But when this information is collated with
the fact that the new immigrants are mostly employed in
unskilled occupations, while the native Americans and for-
eign-born employees of the older class have risen on the scale
1 Ibid., vol. 8, p. 390, Table 286. A similar table comprising two
Polish trade-unionists among 441 heads of households will be found in
the same volume on p. 765, Table 515, and another in vol. n, p. 701,
Table 38.
Report of the Immigration Commission 55
of occupations, it is readily seen that the hundreds of tables
show nothing beyond the fact that supervisory positions
and skilled trades are more remunerative than unskilled
labor. It was hardly necessary to expend much time and
labor in order to establish this fact which is a matter of
common knowledge. To justify the conclusions of the
Commission, proof was wanted that the rates of wages of
the new immigrants in specified occupations were lower
than those paid to native workmen in the same occupations
and in the same localities. No such proof was produced ; on
the contrary, the Commission found that, as a matter of fact,
the new immigrants ' ' were not, as a rule, engaged at lower
wages than had been paid to the older workmen for the same
class of labor/' * The numerous tables showing variations in
weekly earnings by race are therefore meaningless.
The popular prejudice against the new immigrant races
justified an unbiased comparative study of their social and
economic conditions in the United States 2 . Unfortunately
the experts and investigators of the Commission were them-
selves so completely under the sway of the popular senti-
ment that they perceived the effect of race differences even
in small variations of the number of mine accidents, where
the element of chance called for the exercise of extreme
caution in drawing conclusions. The following example is
typical of the generalizations which abound in the reports
of the Commission. In the year 1907 there were 75 fatal
and non-fatal accidents among the Lithuanians and 139
among the Poles employed by one anthracite coal company.
As the Lithuanians were somewhat more numerous than the
Poles, the following conclusion is drawn in the report:
The differences between the Lithuanian and Polish figures, after
1 Reports, vol. I, p. 38.
a "In studying the immigration situation in Europe the Commission
was not unmindful of the fact that the widespread apprehension in the
United States relative to immigration is chiefly due to this change in
the character of the movement of population from Europe in recent
years. " Ibid., vol. 4, P- I2 -
56 Immigration and Labor
making due allowance for error in both cases, is still so great that it
gives ground for the inference that here a real race difference is exposed.
When it is remembered in how many other instances in this report
tables have shown a superiority of the Lithuanians over the Poles, the
conclusion gathers strength that the former show greater skill and care-
fulness in their work. 1
In Lawrence, Massachusetts, however, "the Lithuanians
are said to resemble the Poles in their industrial character-
istics, but are thought to be less intelligent or at any rate more
illiterate." 2 The average percentage of illiteracy among
the Lithuanian immigrants admitted from 1899 to 1910 was
48.9 per cent and amongr the Polish immigrants admitted
during the same period 35.4 per cent. 3 These averages are
derived from the records of over a million individuals of
both nationalities, whereas "the superiority of the Lithu-
anians over the Poles'* is deduced from 214 accidents that
occurred in one year in the mines of one company.
As far as the statistics of the Commission permit to judge
jf the antecedents of the Lithuanian and Polish anthra-
ite coal workers in their native countries, it appears that
aone of them had worked in mines before coming to the
United States; 96 per cent of the Lithuanians and 86 per
lent of the Poles from whom information was received had
been peasants (farmers and farm laborers) in their home
countries, the proportion of farmers and farmers' sons
being somewhat higher among the Poles than among the
Lithuanians, viz., 70 per cent and 60 per cent, respectively,
of the total number reported for each race. 4 To judge
by the historical experiences of the two races, there is
no warrant whatsoever for rating the mass of the Poles
below the mass of the Lithuanians. For centuries they
have been close neighbors. Since the organic union of
Poland and Lithuania in 1386, Polish civilization was
dominant in Lithuania. The ruling classes, the landed
nobility and the clergy were thoroughly Polonized. Since
1 Reports, vol. 16, p. 667 'Ibid., vol. 10, p. 772.
3 Ibid., vol. I, p. 99. Table II. *Ibid., vol. 16, p. 596, Table 9.
Report of the Immigration Commission 57
the policy of Russianization was inaugurated in Poland and
Lithuania fifty years ago, the Lithuanians have been at a
disadvantage compared with the Poles; the Lithuanian
language was barred from the public schools; they were
denied the right to have a press in their own language, while
the mass of the Lithuanian people do not understand the
Russian language.
The Immigration Commission has discovered no anthro-
pological evidence that would sustain the hypothesis of the
superiority of the Lithuanian race, unless the difference of
64 accidents be accepted as such evidence. Yet it appears
from the same accident statistics that the native Americans
also contributed more than their share of accident victims,
whereas the Irish exhibited an exceptionally low accident
rate. This variation, however, must not be construed to
show a superiority of the Irish over the native Americans,
because "for the accident report the State mine inspector
generally has to get the nationality from others, usually
friends of the victim or his boss," and the informa-
tion is often erroneous. "Probably the same source of
error accounts for some of the Polish accident excess." 1
Still, if not all of the 64 accidents then some of them are
deemed sufficient to place the Poles below the Lithuanians
on the sliding scale of foreign races.
It would seem as if the investigation of the Immigration
Commission proceeded upon the supposition that immigrant
races represented separate zoological species. Thus we
find the following under the head "diseases peculiar to
immigrant races":
The testimony of the physicians and hospital authorities is to the
effect that apparently (sic/) there are no diseases peculiar to any one
single race. The chief diseases among the aliens are the following:
(a) Rheumatism; (b) heart diseases; (c) typhoid fever; (d) pneumonia
this is one of the diseases most common to the foreign population, but
they seem no more subject to it than the natives. 9
Thus it has been officially established that disease
1 Reports, vol. 1 6, p. 667. *Ibid., vol. 8, p. 433-
Immigration and Labor
" apparently " makes no distinction of race, color, or previous
condition of servitude, "the aliens" being subject, alike
with native-born and naturalized citizens, to rheumatism and
pneumonia. The habits of the new species are described in
the language of the naturalist. We learn, e. g., that among
the Bulgarians beef "is usualy cooked as a stew with veg-
etables and eaten with bread. They also consume all forms
of green vegetables in season. . . . The usual drinks are
coffee and beer. Many drink hot milk in the morning." '
The adoption of the "race" idea as a basis for classification
has inevitably led to the splitting up of all statistical data
into minute groups unfit for any generalizations. The
Commission has nevertheless systematically reduced all
such data to percentages, which are used for comparison
among races. It is an elementary rule in statistics that
averages and percentages may be used for generalizations
only when derived from large numbers, the reason being
that where the number of observed cases is small personal
characteristics or casual circumstances may affect the
results. How deceptive percentage may be when derived
from insufficient numbers, is illustrated by the following
table compiled from the Commission's statistics, showing
the "per cent of foreign-born employees (in the clothing
factories investigated) who speak English, by sex, years in
the United States, and race." 3
TABLE i.
PER CENT WHO SPEAK ENGLISH, BY YEARS, IN THE UNITED STATES
Under
5 years
5 to 9
years
10 years
or over
Total
Male
Bohemian and Moravian
Polish
22.5
24.8
18.1
19.4
45-0
62.4
sf-5
63-0
75.0
83-2
88.0
89.4
56.0
51-1
54-8
49-9
Female
Bohemian and Moravian. . . .
Polish
1 Reports, vol. 9, p. 82.
3 Ibid., vol. II, p. 363, Table 95,
Report of the Immigration Commission 59
The significance of the preceding table is in the fact that the
Bohemians and Moravians are classed by the Immigration
Restriction League among "desirable" immigrants, where-
as the Poles belong to the "undesirable aliens from Eastern
Europe." A comparison of the figures in the first three
columns shows, however, that in each group classified
according to length of residence in the United States the
Poles show a higher percentage of males, as well as females,
able to speak English, than the Bohemians. And yet when
the totals are compared for both nationalities, irrespective
of length of residence in the United States, it appears that
the Bohemians exhibit a larger percentage of persons of
either sex able to speak English, than the Poles. The
reason for this arithmetical aberration is disclosed only in
another part of the volume, where the number of persons
in each of the preceding groups is given. It appears that
about one-half of all Poles had resided in the United States
less than five years and accordingly exhibited a small per-
centage of persons able to speak English, whereas three
fourths of all males and two thirds of all females of
Bohemian nationality had resided in the United States
over five years and had had more time to learn English. 1
1 The following are the numbers relating to the two rationalities:
Male
Bohemian and
Moravian . .
Polish
Number
reporting
complete
data
Years in the United States
Under 5
5 top
I o or over
Num-
ber
Number
who speak
English
Num-
ber
Number
who speak
English
Num-
ber
Number
who speak
English
219
153
117
127
-
532
667
347
43i
129
3 02
127
216
29
75
23
42
III
181
87
73
50
"3
50
46
292
184
133
142
Female
Bohemian anc
Moravian. .
Polish
1 Reports, vol. 11, pp. 54<>. 54* Table 53<
60 Immigration and Labor
The numbers reported permit of no conclusion beyond the
bare fact that the Bohemians are an older immigrant race
than the Poles, yet the total percentages tend to create
the wholly unjustified impression that the Poles are less
capable of " assimilation " than the Bohemians. 1
The defects of the plan and statistical method of the
Commission render the bulk of its report on Immigrants in
Industries valueless or misleading.
1 The reports of the Immigration Commission abound with such
comparative percentages. A few samples only can be quoted in these
pages. To judge by percentages, the migratory spirit reaches its extreme
height 60.0 per cent among the Greeks employed in the packing
industry after they have been in the United States over ten years. On
closer examination it appears, however, that there were five Greeks all
told who had been in the United States more than ten years, and of
their number three had visited abroad. (Reports, vol. 13, p. 151,
Table 105.) In another place the following comment is made: "The
employment of the wife or keeping boarders or lodgers is less frequent
among the native-born of foreign father. " This conclusion is derived
from the reports on just four families whose heads are native-born ol
foreign father. (Ibid., voL 1 1 , p. 3 1 1 .)
CHAPTER III
OLD AND NEW IMMIGRATION
IT has come to be accepted as an unquestionable truth
so often has it been repeated that the type of the old
immigrant was superior to the recent immigrants from
Southern and Eastern Europe :
Fifty, even thirty years ago, [said Gen. F. A. Walker in 1896], there
was a rightful presumption regarding the average immigrant, that he
was among the most enterprising, thrifty, alert, adventurous, and
courageous of the community from which he came. It required no
small energy, prudence, forethought, and pains to conduct the inquiries
relating to his migration, to accumulate the necessary means, and to
find his way across the Atlantic. x
The immigrants of those happy days
did not come because they were assisted by others, they did not come
because some one paid their passage to get them out of the old coun-
try, but they came because they wanted to be free. . . . They came
not at the behest of the agents of the steamship lines or the agent
of the large American industries, sent over to buy labor as by auction,
in the market. ... No; they came at their own behest, and did not
all settle down in the centers of American life to congest it, but struck
out into the prairies and forest to build homes for themselves and
families. 8
"Those were skilled artisans or progressive farmers of the
thrifty, self-reliant type." 3
1 Francis A. Walker: Discussions in Economics and Statistics, p. 446.
3 Statement of Rev. M. D. Lichliter, chaplain of the Junior Order
American Mechanics before the House Committee on Immigration an
Naturalization, Sixty first Congress. Hearings, p. 49 *
3 Frank Tracy Carlton: The History and Problems of Organized
Labor, p. 328.
61
62 Immigration and Labor
It is the old story of the Golden Age in a modern version.
The cold facts of history, however, do not bear out this
popular myth.
The great majority of immigrants to this country were so poor that
they could not buy their passage, and in order to meet the obligations
incurred by them for passage money and other advances, they were sold,
after their arrival, into temporary servitude. . . . The prepayment of
the passage was the exception, and its subsequent discharge by compul-
sory labor the rule. 1 The ship owners and ship merchants derived
enormous profits from the sale of bodies of immigrants, as they charged
very high rates for the passage, to which they added a heavy percentage
often more than a hundred per cent for their risks. But the immi-
grants suffered bitterly from this traffic in human flesh. Old people,
widows, and cripples would not sell well, while healthy parents with
healthy children and young people of both sexes always found a ready
market. If the parents were too old to work, their children had to
serve so much longer to make up the difference. When one or both
parents died on the voyage, their children had to serve for them. The
expenses of the whole family were summed up and charged upon the
survivor or survivors. Adults had to serve from three to six years;
children from ten to fifteen years, till they became of age; smaller
children were, without charge, surrendered to masters, who had to
raise and board them. As all servants signed indentures, they were
called ' ' indentured servants. " Whenever a vessel arrived at Philadel-
phia or New York its passengers were offered at public sale. The ship
was the market-place, and the servants were struck off to the highest
bidder. The country people either came themselves or sent agents or
friends to procure what they wanted, be it a girl, or a "likely boy, or
an old housekeeper, or a whole family. . . . Parents sold their children
in order to remain free themselves. When a young man or girl had an
opportunity to get married they had to pay their master five or six
pounds for each year they had to serve. Yet a steerage passage never
cost more than ten pounds. ... If the master did not want to keep his
servant he could sell him for the unexpired time of his term of servitude. a
"The newspapers of the time regularly contain advertise-
1 Prof. Commons estimates that probably one half of all the immigrants
of the colonial period landed as indentured servants. A. M. Simons:
Social Forces in American History, p. 19.
a From a paper read before the American Social Science Association
in New York City, in 1869, by State Commissioner of Immigration,
Friedrich Kapp. X VI. Annual Report of the New York Bureau of Labor
Statistics, pp. 964-965.
Old and New Immigration 63
ments of the arrival of ships with 'indentured servants'
to be sold. In case no buyers came to the ship the pas-
sengers were sold to agents, who chained them together
and peddled them through the towns and villages." 1
* So great then was the poverty of the early immigrants
that for the sum of ten pounds they were willing to sell
themselves into peonage. The last sales of immigrants
are reported in 1819 in Philadelphia. 2
Nearly a century ago, the managers of the Society for
the Prevention of Pauperism in the City of New York
spoke of the immigrants "in the language of astonishment
and apprehension":
Through this inlet pauperism threatens us with the most overwhelm-
ing consequences. . . . The present state of Europe contributes in a
thousand ways to foster unceasing immigration to the United States.
. . An almost innumerable population beyond the ocean is out of
employment. . . . This country is the resort of vast numbers of these
needy and wretched beings. . . . They are frequently found destitute
in our streets, they seek employment at our doors; they are found in
our almshouses and in our hospitals; they are found at the bar of our
criminal tribunals, in our bridewell, our penitentiary, and our State
prison, and we lament to say that they are too often led by want, by
vice, and by habit to form a phalanx of plunder and depredations,
rendering our city more liable to increase of crimes and our houses of
correction more crowded with convicts and felons. 3
Eighteen years later the Mayor of New York City in a
communication to the City Council complained that the
streets were "filled with wandering crowds" of immigrants
"clustering in our city, unacquainted with our climate,
without employment, without friends, not speaking our
language, and without any dependence for food, or raiment,
or fireside, certain of nothing but hardship and a grave." 4
1 Simons, loc. cit., p. 19. a Kapp, loc. cit., p. 965.
3 Second Annual Report of the Managers of the Society for the Pre-
vention of Pauperism in the City of New York, 1819. Quoted from
the Reports of the Industrial Commission, vol. xv., p. 449-
4 H. R., 61 st Congress. Hearings before Committee on Immigration,
P- 369.
64 Immigration and Labor
This was the period when, according to Gen. F. A.
Walker, the average immigrant was "enterprising, thrifty,
,'tlert, adventurous, and courageous." A contemporary
writer anticipated General Walker's parallel between the
old and the new immigration in almost identical language.' 1
A generation later it is again reported that "the poor and
She productive classes of Europe, by hundreds of thousands,
have been, and are now coming to our shores, with fixed
habits and modes of life. These now constitute, mainly,
the army of our unskilled laborers, are ignorant and de-
graded, pitifully so." 2
Regarding the standard of living of the Irish peasantry
at the beginning of the Irish exodus to America, when,
according to General Walker's "rightful presumption,"
the average immigrant was thrifty and had accumulated
the necessary means to pay his way, we have the following
description from the same authority:
The conditions under which they had been born and brought up
were generally of the most squalid and degrading character. Their
wretched hovels, thatched with rotting straw, scantily furnished with
light, hardly ventilated at all, frequently with no floor but the clay
on which they were built, were crowded beyond the bounds of comfort,
health, or, as it would seem to us, of simple social decency; their beds
were heaps of straw or rags; their food consisted mainly of buttermilk
and potatoes, often of the worst, and commonly inadequate in amount ;
their clothing was scanty and shabby. *
1 " Then our accessions of immigration were real accessions of strength
from the ranks of the learned and the good, from enlightened mechanic
and artisan and intelligent husbandman. Now, immigration is the
accession of weakness, from the ignorant and vicious, or the priest-
ridden slaves of Ireland and Germany, or the outcast tenants of the
poorhouses and prisons of Europe." From a paper entitled "Imminent
Dangers to the Institutions of the United States through Foreign
Immigration," etc., by S. F. B. Morse, 1835. H. R. Sixty-first Con-
gress. Hearings before the Committee on Immigration, p. 327.
2 Report of the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor, 1869-1870,
p. 88.
y Walker, loc. cit., p. 451. The following is quoted elsewhere by the
game author from the report of Earl Devon's Commission on Irish
Poverty in the 40*3: " In many districts, their daily food is the potato;
Old and New Immigration 65
Congestion was a common evil in those days, as it is
to-day, and the reason for it was sought in the fact that the
Irish immigrant, born in a cabin or a garret, had been used
to crowding at home. 1 The New York Weekly Tribune
of May 2, 1846, discussing a strike of Irish laborers in
Brooklyn, said that their earnings were hardly sufficient
to pay the rent of a decent tenement, so "they were allowed
to build miserable shanties on ground allotted them by
the contractors on the plot occupied by them in performing
the work." 2 A quarter of a century later the dwellings
of the Irish immigrants in Boston were officially charac-
terized as "sickening kennels. " 3 Says Dr. Kate H. Claghorn,
comparing the old immigration with the new: "No account
of filth in daily surroundings among 4Htai and
can outmatch the pictures drawn by observers of the habits
of immigrant Irish and even Germans." 4
The living conditions in an Irish district in 1864 were
thus described by a city inspector:
The tenants seem to wholly disregard personal cleanliness, if not the
very first principles of decency, their general appearance and actions
corresponding with their wretched abodes. This indifference to per-
sonal and domiciliary cleanliness is doubtless acquired from a long
their only beverage water; their cabins are seldom a protection against
the weather; a bed or a blanket is a rare luxury; and, in nearly all, their
pig and manure heap constitute their only property./" Francis A. Walker: t
Political Economy, pp. 313-314. "In the 40*8, at the time of the potato
famine in Ireland, many of the thousands who came to this country
were in serious danger of absolute starvation if they remained at home.
Practically none of our immigrants of the present day are in such a con-
dition." Jenks and Lauck: The Immigration Problem, p. 12.
1 A contemporary writer had "seen in Ireland a horse, two cows, two
goats, grandmother, father and mother, brother and sisters, an infant
in a cradle, all in one apartment. "Report of the Industrial Commission,
vol. xv., p. 459.
2 Documentary History of American Industrial Society, vol. viii., pp.
225-226.
3 Report of the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor, 1869-70,
p. 88.
Report of the Industrial Commission, vol. xv., p. 491.
66 Immigration and Labor
familiarity with the loathsome surroundings, wholly at variance with
all moral or social improvements. 1
A gloomy picture of the moral effects of bad housing
conditions in the foreign sections of New York City in 1878,
when the immigrants were only Irish and Germans, was
drawn in a report of the Association for the Improvement
of the Condition of the Poor:
In many quarters of the city family life and the feeling of home are
almost unknown; people live in great caravansaries, which are hot and
stifling in summer, disagreeable in winter, and where children associate
together in the worst way. In many rooms privacy and purity are
unattainable, and young girls grow up accustomed to immodesty from
^flipAM^ y ea] )M4MN herd together in gangs, and learn the
practices of crime and vice' before they are out of childhood. Even
the laborers' families who occupy separate rooms in these buildings
have no sense of home. 3
Dr. Griscom, as early as 1842, had called attention to the "depraved
effects which such modes of life exert upon the moral feelings and
habits"; and the city inspector in 1851 remarks that " these over-
populated houses are generally, if not always, seminaries of filthiness,
indecency, and lawlessness."*
Dr. Claghorn concludes her review of the housing con-
ditions of the former generations of immigrants with the
following remarks: '
The newer immigrants arrive here at no lower social level, to say the
least, than did their predecessors. Their habits of life, their general
morality and intelligence can not be called decidedly inferior. . . . The
Italian ragpicker was astonishingly like his German predecessor, and
the Italian laborer is of quite as high a type as the Irish laborer of a
generation ago. In some cases the newer immigrants have brought
about positive improvements in the quarters they have entered. Whole
blocks have been transferred from nests of pauperism and vice into
quiet industrial neighborhoods by the incoming of Italians and Hebrews.
Throughout the nineteenth century relief against city
Report of the Industrial Commission, p. 456. a Ibid., p. 459.
* Loc. cit.. p. 458. * Loc. cit. t p. 491.
Old and New Immigration
67
poverty was sought in directing the current of immigration to
the farm. As early as 1 8 1 7, ' * the same anxiety was felt that
is felt to-day to get the immigrant out of the 'crowded'
cities into the country beyond." 1 In 1819, the managers
of the Society for the Prevention of Pauperism of the City
of New York favored the plan of establishing "communica-
tion . . . with our great farmers and landholders in the in-
terior" with a view to provide "ways and means ... for
the transportation of able-bodied foreigners into the in-
terior," where labor could be provided for them "upon the
soiL" 2 Forty years later the Association for the Improve-
ment of the Condition of the Poor complained of the Irish
immigrants that "they had an utter distaste for felling
forests and turning up the prairies fgf ' Lhemselv^^'JMifey
preferred to stay where another race would furnish them
with food, clothing, and labor, and hence were mostly found
loitering on the lines of the public works, in villages, and in
the worst portions of the large cities where they competed
^vith negroes ... for the most degrading employments."^
* The old immigrants, like those of the present generation,
were mostly unskilled laborers and farm hands, as will
appear from an analysis of Table 2 next following. 4
TABLE 2.
PER CENT DISTRIBUTION OF IMMIGRANTS BY OCCUPATIONS:
I86I-I9IO.
Occupation
1861-
1870
1871-
1880
1881-
1890
1891-
1900
1901-
1910
Professional.
0.8
1.4
I.I
0.9
1-5
Skilled.
24.0
23.1
20.4
20.1
20.2
17.6
18.2
14.0
II- 4
24-3
Unskilled laborers . . .
4.2.4
41.9
50.2
47.0
34-8
Servants
7.2
7-7
9-4
i5-i
14.1
All other occupations
8.0
7-7
9-4
5-5
5-i
Total
IOO.O
IOO.O
IOO.O
IOO.O
IOO.O
1 Report of the Industrial Commission, p. 449 3 Loc - cit "> P* 4 62 -
tReportofthe A. I. C. P., 1860, p. 50- Quoted from Report of the
Industrial Commission, vol. xv., p. 462.
<For annual averages and sources of information see Appendix,
Table I.
68 Immigration and Labor
The sharp fluctuations of the percentages of agricultural
workers and common laborers indicate that the distinction
between farm laborers and other laborers was probably not
very accurately drawn in our immigration statistics. For
the period 1901-1910 it is possible to subdivide all persons
engaged in agricultural pursuits into farmers and farm
laborers, the former constituting i .6 per cent and the latter
23.0 per cent of all immigrant breadwinners.
Allowing the same percentage for the decade next preced-
ing, with a rising tide of immigration from Eastern and
Southern Europe, and estimating the maximum proportion
of farmers in the "old immigration" at one half of all in-
coming agricultural workers, 1 we arrive at the following
comparative ratios for unskilled laborers and farm help
combined.
TABLE 3
RATIO OF LABORERS TO IMMIGRANT BREADWINNERS.
Period Per cent .
1861-1870 51.2
I87I-I880 51.0
1881-1890 57.2
1891-1900 57.0
1901-1910 57.9
The ratio of unskilled laborers and farm hands to the
total number of breadwinners exhibits but little change
during the whole fifty-year period. For the half-century
beginning in 1820, the proportion of unskilled laborers,
exclusive of those classified under agricultural pursuits,
has been computed as 46.6 per cent, 2 i. e., about the same as
for the later period.
1 This is vastly more than is claimed for the "old immigration" by
Professors Jenks and Lauck in their unofficial summary of the reports
of the Immigration Commission, wherein they say that "the percentage
of farmers as distinguished from farm laborers has always been very
small, so small as not to be an appreciable factor in determining our
civilization." Jenks and Lauck, loc. cit. t p. 31.
Political Science Quarterly, March, 1904; Roland P. Falkner: Some
Aspects of the Immigration Problem, p. 49.
Old and New Immigration 69
The percentage of skilled mechanics has varied but little
for the last fifty years, and has at no time reached one
quarter of all immigrant breadwinners. If this percentage
is added to the estimated maximum ratio of farmers, it
will be found that the aggregate of "skilled artisans and
progressive farmers of the thrifty, self-reliant type" could
in the good old days not have been as high as one third of
the total immigration.
Still it is broadly asserted that the "new immigration"
is drawn from the "poorest and least desirable" elements of
the population of Italy, Austria, and Russia. "Measured
either by intellectual, social, economic or material standards,
the average immigrant of any particular class from these
countries is far below the best of his countrymen who*remain
behind, and probably also below the average." 1
No comparative study of the immigrants and their coun-
trymen who remain at home is cited in support of this
view. It still rests on the purely deductive argument, first
advanced by Mayo-Smith twenty-four years ago, that, as
the result of the increase of transportation facilities and the
reduction of the cost of passage, "it is more and more the
lower classes that are coming." In corroboration of this
argument he cited the fact that the Irish and German immi-
grants of his day were coming from the poorer sections of
their countries. 2 It is obvious, however, that the inhabi-
tants of those sections were not all on the same economic
level. Lack of opportunities in a poor country will drive
people of some means to seek better luck abroad, while
lack of funds will keep the poorest at home. Be that as
it may, since the time of Mayo-Smith the steerage rates
have been doubled. The increase in the cost of transpor-
1 William Williams: New Immigration, p. 286. Report of the
Conference of Charities and Corrections, 1906. See also Prescott F. Hall :
Selection of Immigration, Annals of American Academy of Political and
Social Science, July, 1904, p. 174; Robert Hunter: Poverty, p. 270.
2 Richmond Mayo-Smith : " Control of Immigration," Political Science
Quarterly, 1888, pp. 62, 69, 70, and 71.
70 Immigration and Labor
tation has been tantamount to a head tax of from $18 to
$27* and should have raised the standard of the "new im-
migration," as compared with the immigrants of the 70*5
and the early 8o's. j
Leaving aside, however, all speculative considerations,
we have a purely objective standard of comparison, viz.,
the ratio of literacy. It is generally recognized that "prob-
ably the most apparent cause of illiteracy in Europe, as
elsewhere, is poverty. The economic status of a people has
a very decided effect upon the literacy rate. . . . Another
phase of the economic factor is the need of children's
service at home." 2
While the statistics of illiteracy among immigrants to the
United States are not compiled on a uniform basis with
foreign statistics of illiteracy, still for a few countries and
nationalities the data are fairly comparable. An exami-
nation of the figures presented in Table 4 shows that as a
rule the mtio of illiteracy among the immigrants is con-
siderably lower than among their countrymen at home. 3
Thesj statistics prove that measured by intellectual standards
the average immigrant is above the average of his countrymen
who remain behind. Illiteracy being the effect of poverty
(by hypothesis), one cannot escape the conclusion that,
measured by economic standards, the immigrant is likewise
above the average of his native country. "
1 " During the later seventies and early eighties the steerage passenger
rate fluctuated from as low as $12 up as high as $25, but averaged about
$i7or$i8. . . . In the later eighties and early nineties . . . most of
the foreign steamship companies there were no native companies
gradually increased the steerage rates to about $38 or $39. . . . (The
rates charged now) vary from about $36 to $38 and $39, depending
upon the port, vessel, and so forth. Thirty-seven dollars and fifty
cents is commonly quoted as the average." Hearings before Committee
on Immigration and Naturalization, H. R-. 6ist Congress: Statement of
James H. Patten, pp. 31-32.
2 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 4, pp. 34-35.
* See Note on the Statistics of Italian Illiteracy, at end of chapter.
Old and New Immigration 71
TABLE 4.
PER CENT OF ILLITERACY AMONG THE POPULATION OF RUSSIA, BULGARIA,
SERVIA AND GREECE, AND AMONG THE IMMIGRANTS FROM
THE SAME COUNTRIES. 1
Nationality,
Population
Immigrants 14 years of age and
over, year ended June 30
year of enumeration,
and age group
1908
1890-1910
Male
Female
Male
Female
Both sexes.
Russia, 1897:
Russians:
10 to 19 years
20 years and
over
51.3
62.6
8 3 .6 f
89.7 )
4O.I
50.8
38.4
Hebrews
i o to 19 years
20 years and
41-3
58.0 )
21.9
40.4
26.0 8
over
32.6
66.2 )
Bulgaria, ipoo:
14 years and
over
57-3
89.4^
Servia, IQOO:
1
ii to 1 5 years
55-7
89.6 [
35-0
50.2
41.7
1 6 to 20 years
58.8
90.9
21 years and
over
70.2
94.4 J
Greece, 1907:
1 4 years and
42.6
82.2
26.9
57-5
over
1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. i , p. 99. Report of the
Commission of Immigration of the State of New York, ipop, pp. 170 and
171. Premier Re"censement Ge"ne"ral de la Population de I'Empire de
Russie, 1897. Releve" G<ne"ral, Part 2, pp. 97 and 134. Bulgarie, Re"-
censement de la population, 1900, vol. i., p. 125. Annuaire Statistique
du Royaume de Serbie pour 1900, vol. v., pp. 75-80. Grece, Re"cense-
ment de la population, 1907, vol. i, pp. 156-157.
2 This percentage represents the ratio of illiteracy among the Hebrews
of all countries, but the bulk of Hebrew immigration comes from Russia.
The population statistics of Austria classify Hebrews as Poles, Germans,
etc., according to mother tongue. The ratio of illiteracy among the
72 Immigration and Labor
The Immigration Commission on its trip to Europe
sought the opinions of experts respecting the character of
emigration to the United States. The conclusions reached
by the Commission have none of the pessimistic sound
typical of restrictionist literature. Says the Commission:
The present movement is not recruited in the main from the lowest
economic and social strata of the population. . . . Neither do the
average or typical emigrants of to-day represent the lowest in the eco-
nomic and social scale even among the classes from which they come, a
circumstance attributable to both natural and artificial causes. In the
first place, emigrating to a strange and distant country, although less of
an undertaking than formerly, is still a serious and relatively difficult
matter, requiring a degree of courage and resourcefulness not possessed
by weaklings of any class. This natural law in the main regulated the
earlier European emigration to the United States, and under its in-
fluence the present emigration, whether or not desirable as a whole,
nevertheless represents the stronger and better element of the particular
class from which it is drawn. x
Roumanian Hebrews 15 years of age and over, according to the census
of 1889, was 55.6 per cent. ("Sans protection," meaning mostly
Hebrews.) Rsultats de*finitifs du de*nombrement de la population de
Roumanie, 1899, p. Ixii.
1 Reports, vol. 4 (in press). From the opinions of Americans who
had long resided in Italy and of leading Italians, which are quoted in the
Commission's report, a few are selected here by way of illustration.
Rev. N. W. Clark, an American, in charge of the educational work
of the Methodist Church of Italy, said: "The class of emigrants who go
to the United States are unquestionably the more enterprising, the better
element; only those would be able to go who have the money to get
tickets; many are too poor to go. "
In a report to the Department of State, the American Consul at
Palermo quotes the country correspondents of a Sicilian news-
paper, concerning the local estimate of the character of emigration
from that island. "As these accounts says he were in no way
prepared for the foreign eye, or for any official or political purpose,
but only by way of a routine chronicle of the happenings of life in the
minor communities, they are spontaneous and unbiased and have an
authority that can hardly be impeached:*' One of the correspondents
says of the emigrants that they are not "driven out by dire want and
necessity; they are lured rather by the desire to better themselves in
the world and make a possible fortune. . . . Many are of a class
Old and New Immigration 73
The social prejudice against the immigrant which it is
sought to justify by his alleged inferiority, antedates the
influx of the " undesirable aliens from Eastern and Southern
Europe." Suffice it to recall the agitation of the Know-
Nothing days, with its rioting and outbreaks of mob vio-
lence against the Irish, the desecration of their churches,
the petty persecution of Irish children in the public schools,
the denunciation of the Germans,. the mobbing of German
newspapers and Turner halls. *
Probably the most important element in this antipathy was the pure
contempt which men usually feel for those whose standards of life seem
inferior. This feeling was felt towards all immigrants of the poorer
class, irrespective of their race. To the mind of the average American
the typical immigrant was a being uncleanly in habits, uncouth in
speech, lax in the moralities, ignorant in mind, and unskilled in labor.
. . . The immigrant bore a stamp of social inequality. 3
The manifestations of this social prejudice in the indus-
trial field seventy years ago were much the same as to-day.
About the year 1836 to 1840, very material changes took place among
. . . the general laboring help in all departments of industry. The
profuse immigrations from Ireland. . . crowded into all the fields of
labqr, and crowded out the former occupants. Under the prejudice of
nationality . . . the American element, the daughters of independent
farmers, educated in our common schools . . . retired from mill and
factory, and all the older establishments, and can no longer be found
therein. Their places were taken up in the old, and all the new were
filled by the new immigrants, s
possessing some little property. " Another correspondent speaks of the
emigrants as "the enterprising and robust youth . . . confiding in their
strength." According to him, "this emigration . . . comprises even
people of fairly easy circumstances. "
1 H. J. Desmond: The Know-Nothing Party, pp. 7-105. ^^ Dow
Scisco: Political Nativism in New York State, pp. 19, 248-249. Herr-
mann Von Hoist: Constitutional History of the United States, vol. v., pp.
188-190. James Schouler: History of the United States, vol. v., pp.
305-306.
a Scisco, loc. cit., p. 19.
3 First Report of the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor, 1870,
p. 91.
\
74 Immigration and Labor
By a strange inconsistency those who object to the coming
of the immigrant as strongly object to his going. Why the
* ' bird^ of passage * * should have been the subject of popular
censure is from an economic point of view inconceivable.
So long as there are variations in business activity from year
to year and from season to season, which result in unem-
ployment, the American wage-earners should be the last to
object if a class of wage-earners choose to leave the country
temporarily while there is no demand for their services,
thereby relieving competition for jobs in its acutest shape.
From the point of view of the present immigration policy
as well, the departure of the "bird of passage" ought to be
approved as the best assurance that he would not "become
a public charge. " Still if an immigrant who comes to this
country when there is work to be done and leaves when he
is not wanted is to be regarded as an "undesirable alien,"
it is of interest to know how the "new immigration" com-
pares in this respect with the "old immigration." "The
one conclusion to be drawn from the record of departuf es
from the United States," says the Immigration Commis-
sion, "is that as a whole the races or peoples composing
the old immigration are essentially permanent settlers, and
that a large proportion of the newer immigrants are simply
transients." 1
"The one conclusion" is, however, not the only one, for
in another volume the Commission takes a more hopeful
view, to wit:
It is inaccurate to speak of the immigrant population as being only
temporarily in this country. It is true, no doubt, that most of the
recent immigrants hope at first to return some day to their native land,
but the whole history of immigration goes to show that with the pass-
ing years and the growth of the inevitable ties, whether domestic,
financial, or political, binding the immigrant to his new abode, these
hopes decline and finally disappear. a
Inasmuch as the conclusions of the Commission contradict
1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 4, p. 40.
2 Ibid., vol. 8, p. 657.
Old and New Immigration
75
each other, we must go back to the facts from which they
are drawn. The Immigration Commission in its investi-
gation paid considerable attention to this question. The
foreign-born workmen in iron and steel mills are classed by
popular belief among the most "undesirable" elements of
the "new immigration." The comparative frequency
among them of the objectionable character addicted to the
habit of visiting his old home and parents, may accordingly
be accepted as typical of the races of the "new immigra-
tion." The Commission's data, presented in Table 5, show
that the English-speaking races harbor among them a higher
proportion of these offenders than all Eastern and Southern
European races, except the North Italians and the Slovaks.
The former, however, do not differ in this respect from the
Scotch, while the Slovaks exceed the Swedes by a fraction of
i per cent.
TABLE 5.
VISITS ABROAD MADE BY FOREIGN-BORN EMPLOYEES IN IRON AND STEEL
MILLS, BY RACES. 1
Northern and Western European Races.
Southern and Eastern European Races.
Nationality.
Per cent.
Nationality.
Per cent.
Canadian 46.1
Scotch 27.6
Welsh. 24.7
English 24.0
Swedish 21.0
Italian, North 27.6
Slovak 21.4
Italian, South 20.7
Magyar 20.3
Roumanian I5- 1
Croatian 14.3
Slovenian 13-9
Servian 12.2
Russian 10.2
Greek 8.8
Bohemian and Moravian 8.5
Poli^ &&.
Lithuanian 6.2
Even the vexed problem of "assimilation" appears to be
as old as immigration itself. Benjamin Franklin, in a
1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 8, p. 152, Table no.
76 Immigration and Labor
personal letter dated Philadelphia, May 9, 1753, charac-
terized the Germans of Pennsylvania in the following terms :
Those who come hither are generally the most stupid of their own
nation, and as ignorance is often attended with great credulity, when
knavery would mislead it ... it is almost impossible to remove any
prejudice they may entertain. . . . Not being used to liberty they
know not how to make modest use of it. ... I remember when they
modestly declined intermeddling with our elections; but now they come
in droves and carry all before them, except in one or two counties.
Few of their children know English. They import only books from
Germany, and of the six printing houses in the Province, two are entirely
German, two half German, half English, and but two are entirely Eng-
lish. They have one German newspaper and one half German. Ad-
vertisements intended to be general are now printed in Dutch and
English. The signs in our streets (Philadelphia) have inscriptions in
both languages, and some places only in German. They begin, of late,
to make all their bonds and other legal instruments in their own language,
which (though I think it ought not to be) are allowed in our courts,
where the German business so increases, that there is continued need of
interpreters, and I suppose in a few years they will also be necessary
in the Assembly, to tell one half of our legislators what the other half
says. In short, unless the stream of importation could be turned from
this to other colonies, as you very judiciously propose, they will soon
outnumber us, that all the advantages we will have will in my opinion,
be not able to preserve our language, and even our government will
become precarious. 1
Franklin's apprehensions concerning the Legislature of
Pennsylvania were all but justified at the convention of the
State of Pennsylvania held at Philadelphia from July 15 to
September 28, 1776, whose minutes were ordered published
weekly in English and German. 2 This practice was still
continued as late as I79O. 3
The conditions in Pennsylvania were by no means ex-
ceptional. Says Prof. McMaster of the same period:
1 Frank Ried Diffenderffer: The German Immigration into Pennsyl-
vania, 1700 to 1775, Part II, pp. 110-113^
a Pennsylvania House Journal, vol. i, p. 57, Friday, July 26, 1776,
P.M.
* Journal of the Senate of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, vol
i, 1790-1791, p. 22, Thursday, December 16, 1790.
Old and New Immigration 77
Diverse as the inhabitants of the States . . . were in occupations
they were not less diverse in opinions, in customs, and habits. . . !
Differences of race, differences of nationality, of religious opinions, of
manners, of tastes, even of speech, were still distinctly marked.
In New York the Dutch element prevailed and the language of Holland
was very generally spoken. 1
With the great influx of Irish and German immigrants
in the middle of the nineteenth century, distinct colonies of
those nationalities grew up in the larger cities.
So large are the aggregations of different foreign nationalities [says
a report of that day] that they no longer conform to our habits, opinions,
and manners, but, on the contrary, create for themselves distinct com-
munities, almost as impervious to American sentiments and influences
as are the inhabitants of Dublin or Hamburg. . . . They have their
own theaters, recreations, amusements, military and national organiza-
tions; to a great extent their own schools, churches, and trade unions;
their own newspapers and periodical literature. 8
The Irish were accused of " clannishness," 3 like the "immi-
grants from Eastern and Southern Europe" in our day,
although "to a large extent this going apart of the Irish was
but natural in view of the contemptuous manner in which
the 'nativist* Americans treated them." 4 It took three
generations to raise "the Celts and the Teutons" to a place
among the "more desirable immigrants from Northern
and Western Europe."
Have the new immigrants given evidence of an assimi-
lability inferior to that exhibited by the Germans? Some
evidence on this subject, collected by the Immigration
Commission, is given in Table 6 next below, relating to the
families of employees in the slaughtering and packing houses
of Kansas City:
' John Bach McMaster: History of the People of the United States,
vol. i., pp. lo-n. s
3 Report of the Industrial Commission, vol. xv., p. 455.
3 Scisco, loc. cit., p. 19. -. ' '* Desmond, loc. cit. t p. 9.
78 Immigration and Labor
TABLE 6.
PER CENT OF POLISH AND GERMAN EMPLOYEES OF PACKING HOUSES IN
KANSAS CITY AND THEIR FOREIGN-BORN CHILDREN SIX YEARS
OF AGE OR OVER WHO SPEAK ENGLISH, BY YEARS IN
THE UNITED STATES. 1
Years in the United States Polish German
Under 5 26.1 20.0
5 to 9 73.2 70.0 ' .
10 or over 100.0 95-8 .
It can be seen from this table that the Polish workmen
and their children born abroad number among them a
larger percentage of English-speaking persons than the
Germans who have lived in the United States the same
length of time. This example need not be the general
rule, but it shows that the general classification of the
Germans as "English-speaking" and of the Poles as non-
English-speaking is purely a matter of prejudice.
* It is obviously not the character of the new immigration
that is the real cause of the popular feeling. The opposition
of organized labor, the main social force behind the present
agitation for restriction, originated at a time when the
numbers of immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe
were too small to attract attention. Resolutions in opposi-
tion to immigration were adopted by the National Labor
Union as early as i868. 2 The report of the president to
the convention of the Cigarmakers' Union held in 1879
discussed immigration among "the evils which affect the
trade. 7 ' 3
The report of the New York Bureau of Labor Statistics
for 1885, in a summary of the testimony taken on the sub-
1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 13, Table 256, p. 329.
a Documentary History of American Industrial Society, vol. ix., pp. 221-
222.
s Cigarmakers' Official Journal, vol. v., No. I, September 15, 1879,
p. 2. Editorial articles against immigration appeared in the official
organ of the Cigarmakers' Union before that, in the issues of June 10,
1878, and January 10, 1879.
Old and New Immigration 79
ject of immigration, records a growing feeling of opposition
to foreign labor. Every reason which is urged to-day
against the admission of immigrants from Southern and
Eastern Europe is recited in that testimony, although
five sixths of the immigration in the fiscal year 1885, and
still more during the prior years, came from Canada and
Northern and Western Europe. 1 Thirteen years later an
inquiry addressed by the New York Bureau of Labor to
officers of labor organizations elicited the following reply
from the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners No. 382,
of New York: "Immigrants from Northern Europe
Danes and Swedes interfere very much with the keeping
up of the wages in the trade. That is the principal thing
we find fault with." 3
The only apparent difference between the old immigra-
tion and the new is that of numbers. The reason why the
"old immigration ' ' is to-day viewed with greater favor than
the new is that there is much less of it. It is so stated in
the testimony of the representative of the railway brother-
hoods before the House Committee on Immigration and
Naturalization:
A good many people are apt to consider themselves better than some
other nationality. It is a matter of opinion, and, for my part, I am
not discussing this subject with any such narrow view of the situation.
I am not prepared to say that the Italian or the Slav or the Hungarian
or the Mexican has not the natural attributes that go to make up good
citizenship. ... It is not a question of whether or not they possess
those qualities. . . . The question is whether or not ... a foreigner
brought into this country is replacing or ruinously competing with some
one who is already here. 3
This is the question to which the attention of the unpreju-
* Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. I, pp. 63 and 87.
XVI Annual Report of New York Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1898,
p. 1047.
3 Hearings before Committee on Immigration and Naturalization,
H. R. 6ist Congress, pp. 251-252.
8o -" Immigration and Labor
diced student of the immigration problem should address
itself.
NOTE: THE STATISTICS OF ITALIAN ILLITERACY
The Immigration Commission concedes that "it is impossible," from
a comparison of Italian statistics of illiteracy with our own statistics of
illiteracy among Italian immigrants, "to determine whether the pro-
portion of illiterates among Italian immigrants to the United States
is greater or less than among corresponding classes in Italy." 1 It
immediately seeks to weaken this conclusion by selecting for comparison
the statistics of illiteracy among persons contracting marriage, on the
assumption that "in the matter of age the marriage group would prob-
ably correspond rather closely to the immigrant group." As a result
of this selection it appears "that in 1905 36.9 per cent of the total
population contracting marriage and 48.8 per cent of the immigrants
were illiterate. " A comparison of the tables in question (28 and 32)
shows that the ratio of illiteracy among persons contracting marriage
in 1901 was 32.7 per cent for males and 46.1 per cent for females,
whereas among the population at large 21 years of age and over the
ratio of illiteracy was 43.9 per cent and 60.4 per cent respectively.
This difference is readily accounted for by the fact that the marriage
group is younger than the adult population as a whole, and the younger
generations have had the benefit of the progress of education in Italy;
the ratio of illiteracy among the adult population of both sexes in 1901
was 52.3 per cent, as compared with 63.4 per cent in 1882.'
On the other hand, while the immigrants contain a large percentage
of young men of marriageable age, yet there are among them quite a
number of men who have been married several years. Moreover,
"the marriage group ... is drawn from all sections of the country
and from all classes of the population, while immigrants are largely
from the peasant class of the more southern compartimenti. " It is
evident that a comparison of the marriage group with the immigrant
group must be unfavorable to the latter. If the immigrants are com-
pared with the total population 21 years of age and over, the results are
quite different. The percentage of illiteracy in Northern Italy, accord-
ing to the census of 1901, fluctuated between 16.8 and 46.8 per cent
for males and between 28.8 and 59.6 per cent for females 21 years of
age and over, whereas among North Italian immigrants of both sexes
14 years of age and over, for the fiscal year 1901, the ratio of illiteracy
was only 15.3 per cent. 3 In Southern Italy the percentage of illiteracy
among adults widely differs from one district to another; in some the
1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 4, p. 192.
Ibid. t Table 27. Ibid., Tables 28 and 33.
Old and New Immigration 81
ratio of illiteracy is lower, in some higher than among South Italian
immigrants.
Even if the marriage group furnished a proper standard for comparison
the variations of the illiteracy rate by administrative divisions would
make the results uncertain. In two districts the ratio of illiteracy
would be below and in two others above the percentage of illiteracy
among the North Italian immigrants. In Southern Italy two districts
show a higher percentage of illiteracy among males than the average
among South Italian immigrants of both sexes, and the percentage of
illiterates among women is in all but three districts higher than among
the immigrants of both sexes. The Commission would have been on
safer ground, had it adhered to its original conclusion, instead of specu-
lating on the basis of such incommensurable figures.
CHAPTER IV
IMMIGRATION AND THE LABOR MARKET
THE main question in all present discussion of immigra-
tion is:*NDoes immigration injure the economic
interests of the American wage-earner? The demand for
restriction of immigration proceeds from the assumption
that immigration overcrowds the American labor market,
hordes of willing workers being driven by fear of starvation
to compete for one job. To remedy this evil foreign immi-
gration must be restricted: keep the "undesirable" immi-
grants out, and the American workingmen will be kept
busy. The more consistent advocates of this view, as
previously stated, regard all immigrants as undesirable.
It is an echo of the Malthusian theory, that population
increases faster than the means of subsistence, with this
modification, however, that the cause of the disproportion
is found, not in the natural propagation of the human species,
but in immigration, which is believed to outrun the oppor-
tunities of employment. In order to test the accuracy of
this assumption, let us first take an inventory of the indus-
trial progress of the United States compared with the growth
of population for the last twenty years.
The population of the continental United States increased
between 1890 and 1910 from 63,000,000 to 92,000,000,
*. e. t 46 percent. During the same period, the production
of coal in the United States more than trebled, the in-
crease being from 140,000,000 to 448,000,000, long tons. 1
As the exports of coal from the United States are insig-
1 Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1911, Table 335.
82
Immigration and the Labor Market 83
nificant, x these- figures indicate that to-day three times as
much coal is consumed in this country as twenty years ago.
is thejoundation of modern industry. The increased
consumption ofcoal indicates that the 'consumption of
steam has increased threefold, i. e., that the whole American
industry has grown in proportion. The production of
steel, another basic article of modern industry, increased
during the twenty-year period 1889-1909 seven-fold, from
3,400,000 to 24,000,000 long tons. The production of
copper more than quadrupled, viz., from 101,000 to 488,000
tons. The number of ton-miles of freight carried over
American railways nearly trebled from 1890 to 1909, the
increase being from seventy-seven billions to two hundred
and nineteen billions. The total amount of bank clearings
in the United States likewise nearly trebled in the twenty-
year period between 1890 and 1910, having grown from
$58,000,000,000 to $169,000,000,000. 2 The increase in the
amount of bank clearings may be accepted as a fair index
of the aggregate industrial expansion. 3 Thus, while the
economic activities of the people of the United States have
trebled during the last twenty years, population has in-
creased by less than one half.
' The introduction of labor-saving machinery has lessened
the potential demand for new laborers, yet the pace of
industrial development has been faster than the progress
of invention. The growing demand for bituminous coal
necessitated an increase of the working force from 192,000
in 1890 to 556,000 in 1910. 4 The number of railway em-
ployees increased from 749,301 in 1890 to 1,502,823 in 1909,
1 The exports of bituminous coal from the United States in 1891-1910
fluctuated between 1.5 and 3.1 per cent of the annual production.
Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1910, p. 541.
8 Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1910, Table No. 335.
3 Professor Irving Fisher estimates that the total trade of the United
States increased from $191,000,000,000 to $387,000,000,000 in the
thirteen years 1896-1909. The Purchasing Power of Money, p. 304.
4 Mineral Revmrces of the United States, 1908, pp. 25, 41. United
States Geological Survey. The Production of Coal in 191 o, p. 41.
84 Immigration and Labor
t. e. t exactly 100 per cent. 1 The average number of wage-
earners employed in manufactures increased between 1889
and 1909 from 4,200,000 to 6,600,000, 2 i. e., 57 per cent.
^The unbiased testimony of figures shows that the demand
for labor within the last twenty years has outrun the growth
of population, both through natural increase and through
immigration. The investigators of the Immigration Com-
mission sought to ascertain from employers of labor the
C" reason for employing immigrants/' and were told that
i"they found it necessary either to employ immigrant labor
or delay industrial advancement." 3 A number of specific
instances are quoted in the Commission's reports. In the
Birmingham iron and steel district, Alabama, where the
number of immigrants is insignificant, "the largest employ-
ers of labor . . . state that under normal conditions, at
the present stage of the industrial development of the
district, the ordinary labor supply which may be relied upon
continuously affords about 50 per cent of the total necessary
to operate all plants and mines at their full capacity." 4
In the centers of immigration, on the other hand, the
clothing manufacturers likewise claim "that the industry
has developed faster than the number of clothing workers
has increased." With the revival of business after the
depression of 1908 they found it "almost impossible to
keep their pay-rolls full." 5
According to an investigation made by the United States
Bureau of Labor,
the demand for laborers of all kinds in all lines of industry greatly ex-
ceeded the supply during the year 1906. One of the great lines of
railroad reported an increase in its construction and track gangs of
41 per cent in 1906 over 1905. . . . The men employed were all
1 Interstate Commerce Commission, Twelfth Annual Report on the
Statistics of Railways, p. 40, and Twenty-second Annual Report, p. 34.
9 Bureau of the Census, Manufactures, 1905, Part I., p. xxxvi. Census
Bureau's Preliminary Summary for 1909. "Advance Statement to the
Press of October 1 8, 1911. 3 Jenks and Lauck, loc. cit., p. 140.
* Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 9, p. 151.
*Ibid. t vol. II, p. 411.
Immigration and the Labor Market 85
Italian immigrants. . . . Another large railway system reported an
fccrease of 44 per cent in this class of workers in 1906 over 1905. The
increase of one company was 24 per cent in this class of common labor.
An iron and steel company with a total of 147,343 employees in 1904
mcreased it to 180,158 employees in 1905 and to 217,109 in 1906.
Conditions are perhaps best summed up in this extract
from a letter received from the President of one of the
largest railroads:
Our work was delayed in both yearsigos and 1906 by the in-
ability to get workmen. This is true not only of railroads but of the
industries along our lines. Our patrons were constantly giving as the
excuse for not promptly unloading cars that they are unable to get
the laborers to do the work. There was not only a scarcity of common
laborers in the country, but we found it impossible, under existing con-
ditions, to get an adequate number of workmen for our shops. 1
Statements of employers of labor, however, are discounted ;
what is meant by "a scant labor supply" is simply, it is
thought, "the inability of the manufacturers and mine
operators to secure labor at the same wages in the face of
the growing labor needs of the country. " a Aside from the
admission implied in this interpretation, that the demand
for labor is growing faster than the supply, there is unin>
peachable evidence to the same effect in the report of the
Bureau of Labor, to which reference has been made above.
The Bureau's investigator examined the books of a number
of employment agencies for 1906 and found that they had
been unable to supply more than a fraction of their orders
for help. 3
1 Frank J. Sheridan: " Italian, Slavic, and Hungarian Unskilled Im-
migrant Laborers in the United States." Bulletin of the Bureau of Labor,
No. 72, pp. 424-425-
a Jenks and Lauck, loc. cit. t pp. 17, 140.
a "A personal examination of the books of record of another agency,
covering a period of eight months, from April I to November 30, 1906,
showed that 165 employers in the States of New York, New Jersey,
Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and Virginia made application for 8668
Italian laborers from this one agency. The agency supplied fewer than
f 500. Another agency, where no fees were charged, had applications
Immigration and Labor
Doubtless, demand and supply in the labor market are
fluctuating. During the twenty-year period under con-
sideration, this country has gone through two industrial
crises, when great numbers of wage-earners were suddenly
thrown out of employment. The question is, what, if
any, is the interdependence between the vicissitudes of
the labor market and immigration?
The Industrial Commission, in 1901, from a comparative
study of the number of immigrants and price index numbers
.for a period of sixty years, arrived at the conclusion that
''"immigration follows business conditions in obedience to
the opportunities for employment : In times of business ex-
pansion, when capital is seeking investment and the re-
sources of the country are being eagerly developed . . .
immigrants enter in increasing numbers to take a share of
the increasing wages and employment, but in times of
business depression their numbers decline. " x
The report of the Industrial Commission appeared after
a decade of declining immigration. Has the unprecedented
immigration of recent years changed its relation to business
conditions in this country?
A comparative view of the fluctuations of business and
immigration for the past thirty years, since the tide has
set in from Eastern and Southern Europe, can be gained
from a glance at Diagram I. 2 It will be observed that the
curves representing the production of coal, the volume of
railway freight, bank clearings, and immigration run in
in seven months for 37,058, and could supply but 3705 newly arrived
Italian immigrants. One effect of the scarcity is reported by an Italian
agency as follows:
" ' Since about July, 1906, on account of the great scarcity, employers
pay from $3.00 to $5.00 per man for common laborers. Not for twenty-
two years have there been such high fees offered. Since the demand set
in the laborer pays no fees.' " (Bulletin of the Bureau of Labor, No. 72,
pp. 424-425-)
1 Reports of the Industrial Commission, vol. xv., pp. 308, 309. See
also chart opposite p. 305.
3 Based uoon the figures of the Statistical Abstract of the United States.
DIAGRAM I.
IMMIORANT5 ARRIVED. TENS OF THOUSANDS
PRODUCTION OF COAL, luwr - Z.000.000 LONG TONS
LWAY FREIGHT. BILLIONS OF (SHORT) TON HUES
.US BANK CLEARINGS: BILLIONS OF DOLLARS
COMMERCIAL FAILURES. IU
500,000
"\
/
*>/
r
1
Ly
I
I. Immigration and business conditions, 1880-1910.
Immigration and Labor
harmony. On the other hand, the decrease of immigration
from 1880 to 1899 runs almost parallel with the increase of
commercial failures, and vice versa. During the following
years of prosperity the amount of commercial failures
showed little variation, and the curve of immigration was
following the lines of industrial expansion. The years since
the last panic again show a parallelism between the decline
of immigration and the increase of failures, on the one hand,
ajid industrial activity, on the other.
It must be borne in mind that the immigration figures
represent gross additions to the population of the United
States. Attention has frequently been called, however,
to the vast disparity between the increase of the foreign-
born population from one census to another and the total
immigration for the intervening period. The latest figures
on the subject are given in Table 7.
TABLE 7.
IMMIGRATION COMPARED WITH INCREASE OF FOREIGN-BORN POPULA-
TION. 1
Decade
Immigration
(Thousands)
Increase in foreign-born population
Number
(Thousands)
Per cent ratio
to immigration
1850-1860
2,598
2,315
2,812
5,247
3,688
8,795
5,565
1,928
1,428
I,H3
2,570
1,092
3,175
358
74
62
40
50
29
36
6
1860-1870
1870-1880
1880-1890
1890-1900
19001910
1910-1920 2
1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. I., pp. 64, 135. XIII. Census. Popu-
lation, vol. i., p. 781.
J The comparative figures for the last decade do not include Orientals, the preliminary
returns of the XIV. Census made public by the Bureau of the Census being confined to
foreign-born white. The total number of white immigrants for the period from July
i, 1910, to June 30, 1920, has been computed from the Report of the Commissioner -
General of Immigration for 1920, Table XV., pp. 181-182.
The difference between gross immigration and the net
increase of the foreign-born population is the combined
result of mortality and emigration. As the foreign-born
population increases, an ever larger number of new arrivals
DIAGRAM II.
II. Movement of third-class passengers between the United
States and European pofts, 1899-1909 (Tens of Thousands)
89
Immigration and Labor
merely fill up the places of their predecessors claimed by
death. The foreign-born white population of the United
States in 1920 was twice as great as in iSSo 1 ; accordingly
twice as many immigrants were required in 1920 as forty
years before only to keep the numbers of foreign-born sta-
tionary. The statistics of the inward and outward trans-
atlantic passenger traffic are generally taken to represent
the immigration and emigration movement. 2 The respec-
tive figures for 1899-1909 are reproduced in Table 8 from the
Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 4, Table 26, and
plotted in Diagram II. on p. 89.
TABLE 8.
MOVEMENT OF THIRD CLASS PASSENGERS BETWEEN THE UNITED STATES
AND EUROPEAN PORTS DURING THE CALENDAR YEARS
1899 TO 1909. (THOUSANDS.)
Year
West-bound
passengers
East-bound
passengers
Net immigration ( +)
or emigration (. )
1899
381
118
+263
1900
503
156
+347
1901
545
141
+404
1902
753
177
+576
1903
887
252
+635
1904
762
371
+391
1905
1004
244
+760
1906
1223
338
+885
1907
1378
555
+823
1908
420
657
-237
1909
750
287
+463
1 The foreign-born white population increased from 6,559,679 in
1880 to 13,703,987 in 1920.
2 Richmond-Mayo-Smith: " Immigration and the Foreign-Born Pop-
ulation." Publications of the American Statistical Association, vol.
iii., pp. 305-306. Roland P. Falkner: "Some Aspects of the Immigra-
tion Problem." Political Science Quarterly, March, 1904, p. 38.
Our statistics of emigration do not go back of the fiscal year ended
June 30, 1908. Nor can they be accepted as quite reliable, being of
necessity based upon the declarations of the aliens at the time of their
departure. The total number of departing aliens for the period from
July i, 1907, to June 30, 1920, exceeded the number of avowed "emi-
grants" by 2,513,000, whereas the total number of admitted aliens ex-
ceeded the number of immigrants only by 1,867,000, which shows that
IS
\/
III. Monthly immigration and emigration, from July, 1907, to
May, 1909 (thousands).
646,000 persons classified as "non-emigrant aliens," i, e. t 26 per cent,
of that class, did not return to the United States. See Appendix, Table
XXX.
91
Immigration and Labor
It will be observed that the tide of immigration was rising
until 1907, with a slight set-back during the Presidential
year 1904. During the industrial crisis of 1908 immigration
dropped at once nearly a million, compared with the high-
water mark of the previous year, while emigration from the
United States was about twice the number of 1906. The
result was a net loss of nearly a quarter of a million through
emigration. In 1909, with returning business confidence
immigration increased and emigration receded to its nor-
mal level of the years 1903- 1906.* The same tendencies
appear still more clearly if the returns are compared by
months, as in Table 9, and Diagram III. on p. 91.*
TABLE 9.
AVERAGE MONTHLY IMMIGRATION AND EMIGRATION. (THOUSANDS),
1907-1909.
Net immigration( -f )
Period
Admitted
Departed
or emigration ( )
July i-October 31 , 1907
November, 1907
116
132
47
94
+ 69
+ 38
Dec. i, 1907-Aug. 31, 1908
45
59
~ 14
Sept. i, I9o8-Feb. 28, 1909
6l
33
. + 28
March- April, 1909
137
24
+ 113
1 An examination of the Italian statistics of emigration to the United
States and the return movement from the United States leads the Immi-
gration Commission to the conclusion "that as a rule the causes which
retard emigration also accelerate the exodus from the United States. . . .
The effect of financial and industrial depressions in the United States
is clearly apparent. . . . The most conspicuous instance . . .
occurred in the year 1894, following the industrial depression of that
period. In that year the outward movement from Italy decreased and
the inward movement increased to such an extent that the number re-
turning was 848 to every I ooo emigrating. The same tendency was shown
again in 1904, immediately following the financial depression of the pre-
ceding year. " Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 4, p. 229.
2 Annual Reports of the Commissioner-General of Immigration, 1908,
p. 228, and 1910, p. 14. The monthly figures are for immigrant and
emigrant aliens, as defined in the statistics of the Bureau of Immigration.
These two classes are not identical with third-class passengers arriving
Immigration and the Labor Market
Prom July I, to October 31, 1907, immigration and emi-
gration went on normally. The latter part of October
witnessed the outbreak of the crisis, and the next month
emigration doubled. Immigration still remained normal,
inasmuch as those who arrived here in November had left
their homes before the crisis. But from December immigra-
tion dropped to one third of the number of arrivals in No-
vember. During the next nine months emigration exceeded
immigration by 14,000 persons monthly. From September
I, 1908, the situation began to improve, and the number of
immigrants went up again, while departures went down.
In the spring of the next year immigration and emigration
resumed their normal relation. It is evident that the
immigration movement promptly responds to the business
situation in the UnitedyStates.
The question arises: How does immigration adjust itself
to business conditions in America? The method by which
this adjustment is effected is thus described by the Immi-
gration Commission:
It is entirely safe to assert that letters from persons who have emi-
grated to friends at home have betp the immediate cause of by far the
greater part of the remarkable movement from Southern and Eastern
Europe to the United States during the past twenty-five years. There
is hardly a village or community in Southern Italy and Sicily that has
not contributed a portion of its population to swell the tide of emigration
to the United States, and the same is true of large areas of Austria,
Hungary, Greece, Turkey, and the Balkan States. ... It was fre-
quently stated to members of the Commission that letters from persons
who had emigrated to America were passed from hand to hand until
most of the emigrants' friends and neighbors were acquainted with the
contents. In periods of industrial activity, as a rule, the letters so
circulated contain optimistic references to wages and opportunities for
employment in the United States. ... The reverse is true during
seasons of industrial depression in the United States. At such times
intending emigrants are quickly informed by their friends in the United
and departing. Those aliens who go to Europe with the expectation
of returning may never come again, yet they are not included among
" emigrant aliens. " As a result, the net emigration is lower in this 1
in the preceding table.
94
Immigration and Labor
States relative to conditions of employment, and a great falling off in
the tide of emigration is the immediate result. . . . Emigrants as a
rule are practically assured that employment awaits them in America
before they leave their homes for ports of embarkation. ... Ir, fact
it may be said that immigrants, or at least newly -arrived immigrants,
are substantially the agencies which keep the American labor market
supplied with unskilled laborers from Europe. ... As a rule, each
immigrant simply informs his nearest friends that employment can be
had and advises them to come. It is these personal appeals which,
more than all other agencies, promote and regulate the tide of European
emigration to America. 1
These conclusions of the Immigration Commission are
corroborated by Table 10.
TABLE TO.
IMMIGRANTS' CONNECTIONS IN THE UNITED STATES.*
Immigrant aliens
admitted
Numbers
(Thousands)
Percentages
1908
1909
1910
1908
1909
1910
Total
783
752
1042
100
IOO
IOO
82
13
5
Going to join:
Relative .
596
128
59
t
583
122
47
857
133
52
76
16
8
77
17
6
Friend
Neither
4 It appears that most of the immigrants come to join
relatives, and that only a small proportion of those who
land here have neither relatives nor friends to meet them
on arrival. This percentage is much smaller for the new
immigration than for the old, viz., 3 per cent for the former
as against 10.6 per cent for the latter. 3
There is a remarkable coincidence of the percentage
ratios for the fiscal years ending June 30, 1908 and 1909.
1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. I, pp. 187-189.
a Annual Reports of the Commissioner-General of Immigration, 1908,
p. 15; 1909, p. 23; 1910, p. 21.
* Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 4, Table 38. The figures
are for 1908 and 1909.
Immigration and the Labor Market 95
Both were partly affected by the crisis. On the other hand,
the year 1910 shows an addition of 274,000, i. e. 47 per cent,
to the number of immigrants coming to join their relatives,
while the number of persons who came in 1908-1910 to
join friends, and the number of those who seemingly had
neither relatives nor friends in the United States, exhibit
only slight fluctuations from year to year. This means
that, as soon as conditions improved, the first thought of
the older immigrants was of their kin whom they had left
behind; friends came next.
The correctness of this interpretation is supported by
Table n, which shows the fluctuations in the number of
immigrants whose passage was paid by their American
relatives, compared with the number of dependents ad-
mitted in official terminology, "no occupation (including
women and children) " and also the fluctuations in the
number of persons whose passage was paid by persons
"other than self or relative," i. e. by friends. 1 The fiscal
year ending June 30, 1908, included four prosperous months
from July to October, 1907. Moreover, many of those
who reached the United States later in the year had been
provided with steamship tickets before the crisis. Their
American relatives and friends must have been saving
the money with which their passage was paid, for some
months previous to their landing. Steamship tickets are
quite commonly sold on small weekly payments. The full
effect of the crisis therefore manifested itself during the
next fiscal year (beginning July I, 1908), when the number
of immigrants who arrived on tickets prepaid by their
American relatives dropped twenty per cent. In 1910
their number again came up to the level of 1908. In 1908
the number of such immigrants exceeded by 32,000 the
number of dependents coming to join their relatives who
had preceded them. Evidently some of the resident aliens
had raised the means to send for their brothers, sisters, and
' Report of the Commissioner-General of Immigration, 1908, pp. 15,
35; 1999, w- 23. 4*; ifit, 2I - *
9 6
Immigration and Labor
J
other self-supporting relatives, in addition to the members
of their immediate households. In 1909 the number of
immigrants assisted by their American relatives was barely
equal to the total number of dependents who came to join
their husbands and fathers. Apparently while employ-
ment was scarce the foreign-born workman could spare no
money to send for his more distant relatives. In 1910 im-
proved business conditions again brought to this country
quite a number of breadwinners (14,000) whose passage
was paid by their American relatives. The number of
immigrants assisted by their American friends showed
similar fluctuations.
TABLE it.
ASSISTED IMMIGRATION
Year' Ending June 30
1908
1909
1910
Assisted immigrants (thousands) :
Passage paid, by relative . .
275
22O
27J.
Dependents
24. -I
221
*/4
2OO
Difference
+32
I
+ 14
IO
8
12
* Another potent agency which regulates immigration is
the great number of returning immigrants. As a rule,
says the Immigration Commission, they are those who
have succeeded. "The money they can show makes a
vivid impression. They are dispensers of information and
inspiration, and are often willing to follow up the inspira-
tion by loans to prospective emigrants." 1 During the
ten -year period 1900-1909, three million people returned to
Europe from the United States. (See Table 8 above.)
Compared with this army of promoters of immigration,
1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vqj. 4, p. 58.
Immigration and the Labor Market 97
the much blamed steamship agent fades into insignificance.
A simple calculation will show that the number of steamship
agents is grossly exaggerated by popular imagination. In
order to make something by "stimulating immigration,"
an agent must sell at least one ticket a week; his commission
on $37, which is the average cost of passage from Europe,
could not be too great at that. A good many tickets are
prepaid on this side; yet if every steamship ticket were
sold through an agent, the annual emigration of a million
persons could barely support twenty thousand agents.
This scarcely equals one per cent of the volunteer force of
immigration promoters who have returned from America
within the past ten years, with every allowance made for
duplications. It is clearly against all sense of proportion to
magnify the "propaganda" of a few thousand ticket agents
into a contributing cause of this modern Volkerwanderung. *
The facts brought to light by the investigation of the Immi-
gration Commission in Europe will tend to dissipate this
popular delusion. The Commission found that in Greece,
which "according to its population furnishes more immi-
grants to the United States than any other country . . .
solicitation by steamship companies probably plays rela-
tively a small part even as a contributory cause of the
movement." In Austria "government officials and others
interested in the emigration situation expressed the belief
that the solicitations of agents had little effect on the
emigration movement, which was influenced almost entirely
by economic conditions." Unquestionably, steamship
agents in all parts of Europe solicit business in competition
with one another, but they do it, as Mr. T. V. Powderly
has found, "much as insurance agents do. ... One
method adopted is to translate editorials and articles from
American newspapers relative to the prosperity of the
United States, which articles are distributed among pros-
1 There are some people who similarly believe that the trade-union
movement of our days is "stimulated" by the "labor agitators,"
walking delegates, and business agents of the unions.
98 Immigration and Labor
pective emigrants. " The Immigration Commission learned
in Hungary that steamship agents addressed "personal
letters to prospective emigrants advising how to leave
Hungary without the consent of the government. Letters
of this nature were presented to the Commission. Some
of them are accompanied by crudely drawn maps indicating
the location of all the Hungarian control stations on the
Austrian border, and the routes of travel by which such
stations can be avoided." 1 It is clear that such letters
can appeal only to those who have already made up their
minds to emigrate. The immigrant is not as simple-mindea
and credulous as he is popularly represented to be. ' ' Several
American States have attempted to attract immigrants by
the distribution in Europe of literature advertising the
attractions of such States. A few States ha. ... .om-
missioners to various countries for the purpose of inducing
immigration, but although some measure of success has
attended such efforts, the propaganda has had little effect
on the immigration movement as a whole. ' ' 2 There appears
to be no sound reason Why the "editorials and articles
from American newspapers relative to the prosperity of
the United States, " circulated by a steamship agent, should
have a greater effect with the European peasant than the
literature distributed by an official representative of an
American State. The conclusion reached by the Immigra-
tion Commission is that "immigration from Europe pro-
ceeds according to well-defined individual plans rather than
in a haphazard way. " 3 The Commission qualifies this con-
clusion by the statement that since "selling steerage tickets
to America is the sole or chief occupation of large numbers
of persons in Southern and Eastern Europe," and since
"these local agents, as a rule, solicit business," they "con-
sequently encourage emigration." 4 This argument might
be made broader by substituting the principal for the agent :
it is the steamship companies that encourage emigration by
1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 4, p. 63.
2 Ibid., vol. i, p. 192. 3 Ibid., p. 188. 4 Ibid., vol. 4, p. 62.
Immigration and the Labor Market 99
making-it their business to sell steerage tickets to America,
for it is a self-evident truth that should the steamship
companies discontinue the sale of steerage tickets, emigra-
tion would be discouraged. Inasmuch, however, as the
Immigration Commission recognizes the difficulty for the
ordinary laborer in Southern and Eastern Europe to raise
the price of a steerage ticket, "no matter how strong the
desire to emigrate may be, " the question is, by what means
the local agents encourage the emigration of impecunious
laborers who have no relatives or friends in America willing
to advance them the price of a ticket. The popular answer,
is that the "new immigration" is largely "stimulated" byl
employers of labor masquerading as "friends" of the immi-
grant It is believed that "the ends of the earth have
been ranra 'died in the search for the low standards of living
combined with patient industriousness. " *
Representatives of labor speak indiscriminately of all
Slav and Italian immigration as "imported," in other
words as contract labor. The truth is that the frequency
of the practice in recent times has been greatly exaggerated
by popular imagination. The investigations of the Im-
migration Commission, both in the United States and in
Europe, failed to disclose any evidence of systematic im-
portation of contract laborers. 2 In the Connellsville coke
region of Pennsylvania, old inhabitants remember that as
far back as 1882 "some companies had agents in -Europe
soliciting and encouraging the immigration of Slovaks,
Poles, and Bohemians . . . and some immigrants may have
been imported as contract laborers. 1 ' 3 Of what little conse-
quence these importations could have been, is clear from the
fact that eight years later, at the census of 1890, there were
1 John R. Commons: Races and Immigrants in America, p. 152.
a The inquiries made by the Commission in Europe "did not disclose
that actual contracts involving promises of employment between
employers in the United States and laborers in Europe were responsible
for any considerable part of the present emigration movement." Reports,
vol. 4 p. 60. No figures or specific cases are cited. See also, further,
Chapter XIX. 3 /&*, vol. 6, p. 257.
ioo Immigration and Labor
enumerated in Fayette and Westmoreland counties (the
Connellsviile region) 4788 natives of Hungary, Bohemia,
and Poland, of both sexes, all ages, and all occupations. 1
It is quite conceivable that in the case of a strike a great
corporation might have resorted to the importation of a
force of strikebreakers regardless of cost. There is a
"legend" in the Pennsylvania anthracite field that during
a strike in 1870 a breaker belonging to Eckley B. Coxe was
burned down, whereupon he secured through his superin^
tendent "two shiploads of his Hungarian countrymen to
man the new structure. There is no evidence of any further
importations of immigrants by the mine owners, since there han
been no necessity for such an effort. 112 With immigration
running into hundreds of thousands annually, there i7
no economic advantage in importing a few thousand a
year, as they could have no effect upon labor conditions in
general. 3 On the other hand, their importation would in>
volve an outlay of money for their passage without any
guarantee of repayment, as the contract of employment
could not be enforced in law in case the laborer chose to
break it. It is not usual for an employer of labor in this
country to advance a sum equal to a month's wages without
any security to a laborer in his employ. That the personal
credit of the laborer should be enhanced by his absence
from the United States hardly accords with common ex-
perience. Apart from economic considerations, the Immi-
gration Commission finds that "owing to the rigidity of the
law and the fact that special provision is made for its en-
forcement there are probably at the present time relatively
few actual contract laborers admitted." 4 This conclusion
1 Population of the United States, XI. Census, vol. i., p. 654 (com-
puted).
3 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 16, p. 661.
* A sound view of the question is taken by Prof. Adams and Dr.
Sumner in their book on I&bor Problems, wHere they say that under the
influence of the increase of immigration it is no longer profitable to
"induce** immigration (pp. 90-91).
Reports, vol. i,p. 29.
Immigration and the Labor Market 101
ought to be accepted as final. It would be impossible for
any corporation or labor agent to operate on a large scale
in violation of the law without being detected. Human
experience has no record of a secret guarded by a multitude.
The few violations of the contract labor law that elude the
vigilance of the immigration officials cannot affect the labor
market.
'The supply of immigrant labor is regulated by free com-
petition, like that of any other commodity. It may some-
times exceed the demand and at other times fall short of
it ; in the long run, however, supply adjusts itself to demand.
If we compare the totals for industrial cycles, including
years of panic, of depression, and of prosperity, we find a
remarkable regularity in the ratio of immigration to popula-
tion. In Table 12 the addition to population through
immigration during the twenty-year period 1891-1910 is
collated with the corresponding figures for the preceding
two periods of equal length.
TABLE 12.
POPULATION AND IMMIGRATION
Census Population
Immigration for twenty years following
Year
Thousands
Thousands
Percentage ratio to
population at
preceding census
Period
1850
23,192
38,558
62,622
5,019
8,059
12,483
21.2
20.9
19.9
1851-1870
1871-1890
I89I-I910
l8?O. . .
5* 1800. .
f>
\ \->
These figures show that during the past sixty years, not-
Jlvithstanding the fluctuations from year to year, in the
long run the ratio of immigration to population has been
well-nigh constant, with a slightly declining tendency
as population has grown. Although the total number of
immigrants for the period 1891-1910 was 50 per cent in
/
^
Immigration and Labor
tiie total for the preceding period, yet the addition
to population was relatively smaller during the later period.
It has also been shown (see Table 2) that the per cent
distribution of immigrants by occupations has undergone
little change during the past half-century, notwithstanding
the rise and fall in numbers from decade to decade. The
ratio of skilled mechanics has during the last thirty years
remained at 20 per cent, while unskilled laborers have made
up 57 per cent of all immigrants. This regularity indicates
that the demand for labor determines the character, as
as the volume of immigration.
CHAPTER V .
THE DEMAND FOR LABOR IN AGRICULTURE
THE preference of the "new" immigrants for city employ-
ments over agricultural pursuits is viewed with appre-
hension by philanthropists and sociologists. It is evident,
however, that even the "desirable" immigrant from North-
ern and Western Europe who brings with him on an average
$55* lacks the necessary means to rent a farm, let alone to
buy one. 2 At best he can only obtain employment as a
farm hand, which depends primarily upon the demand for
farm labor. And here he is confronted with the fact that
the American farmer cannot keep his own sons on the farm.
The industrial development of the United States has
manifested itself in a relative decrease, and in some sections
in a numerical decrease of the rural population. In New
England and New York an actual depopulation of the rural
districts was recorded by the census of 1890. The next
census showed a loss of rural population in New Jersey,
Delaware, Ohio, and Kansas. Maryland and Illinois sus-
tained similar losses from 1880 to 1890, but recovered them
within the next ten years. 3 The published bulletins of the
last census show a numerical decrease of the rural population
in the following States of the Central West:
1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 4 (in press).
3 The average value per farm, exclusive of real estate, in 1900,
amounted to $1173. H. W. Quaintance: The Influence of Farm
Machinery en Production and Labor, p. 58.
* Supplementary Analysis, XII. Census, p. 78, Table XXXIX
103
104 Immigration and Labor
TABLE 13.
DECREASE OF THE POPULATION OF RURAL TERRITORY, I90O-I9IO
State . Number Per cent
Illinois 111,963 7.0
Indiana 132,266 9.5
Iowa 152,673 12. i
Kansas 4,919 0.5
Michigan 9,946 0.8
Missouri 133.489 8.0
Ohio 93,055 5.3
Wisconsin 8,201 0.7
Even where the total rural population of a State has
increased since 1900, the maps given in the census bul-
letins show a few agricultural counties with a declining
population.
This depopulation of rural territory is due to emigration
of native Americans of native stock. The figures for 1910
are as yet not available; the census of 1900 recorded in Kan-
sas a loss of 2.8 per cent of the native population of native
parentage in settlements of less than 2500 inhabitants, and
in Nebraska a loss of i .3 per cent of the same element. In
New England, New York, and New Jersey the loss was still
greater; the maximum was reached in Connecticut, viz.,
16.7 per cent. 1
The popular way to account for a social phenomenon is
to seek an explanation in the personal tastes and dislikes of
individuals or racial groups. "Much has been said of a
mad rush to cities," said Prof. Charles H. Cooley before
the Michigan Political Science Association, in July, 1902,
"and the movement has often been spoken of as if it were
altogether a kind of dissipation, like going to the saloon.
But if there were no solider ground for the migration than
this we should find the migrants plunged into pauperism
and vice after they get to the cities, instead of pursuing
useful remunerative labor as is ordinarily the case. The
real causes of the decrease of rural population are chiefly
economic. " These causes affect the native and the foreign
1 Supplementary Analysis, XII. Census, pp. 620-627, Tables 10 and 1 1.
fei
m
DIAGRAM IV.
I 1
fifctin
'IC(JU
OtKt
I I m
IV. Relative per-capita production of coal, agricultural staples
and live stock.
105
io6 Immigration and Labor
current to the cities alike. Since the early days of Irish
and German immigration the growing industries of the
cities have offered a better market for labor than agri-
culture. A comparative view of the demand for laboi
in agriculture and in industry since 1870 is furnished in
Diagram IV, where the per capita production of the principal
agricultural staples and live stock is compared with the
per capita production of coal, the latter being chosen as
the measure of industrial expansion. 1 Whereas the pro-
duction of coal has quadrupled, the increase of the output
of cotton is only about 90 per cent, the increase of other
farm products less than 50 per cent, and stock breeding
has not kept pace with the increase of population. It is
patent that the demand for farm hands must have lagged
far behind the demand for labor in manufacturing, mining
and transportation.
The relative number of persons engaged in agriculture
fell from 21.79 per cent of the total population in 1840 to
X 543 P er cen t in 1870. This decrease was not confined
to any one State or section, but was universal, with the
exception of Florida. In New York and all New England
States there was during the same period an absolute de-
crease of the agricultural population from 869,000 to 697,000,
i. ., 20 per cent. 2 The revolution wrought in American
farming by the industrial development of the past seventy
years has tended to reduce the demand for labor on the
farm.
The American farm of the first half of the nineteenth cen-
tury was the seat of a highly diversified business, comprising
not only the raising of food and of material for clothing,
x The figures for Diagram IV are taken from an article by Prof.
Homer C. Price on "The Reorganization of American Farming" in
Popular Science Monthly , May, 1910, p. 464; the Census Report on Mines
and Quarries, 1902, p. 669, Table 6; and Statistical Abstract, 1911,
Table No. 335. The figures for agricultural products are averages for
each decade beginning 1866-1875 and for the quadrennial period 1905-
1908. Coal production per capita is for each census year since 1870.
3 Bulletin of the Department of Labor, No. 1 1 , pp. 400, 402.
The Demand for Labor in Agriculture 107
but also the preparation and manufacture of these pro-
ducts. 1 Wakefield, in 1833, gave the following description
of the American farmer:
Free Americans, who cultivate the soil, follow many other occupations.
Some portion of the furniture and tools which they use is commonly
made by themselves. They frequently build their own houses, and
carry to market, at whatever distance, the produce of their own industry.
They are spinners and weavers, they make soap and candles, as well as,
in many cases, shoes and clothes for their own use. 2
With such a variety of occupations there was work for a
hired man at all seasons of the year. But the development
of manufactures has differentiated from the farming business
one industry after another and removed them from the
farm. 3 The time during which a hired man can be kept
employed on the farm has been reduced in consequence to a
few months in the year.
Still until the middle of the nineteenth century the mills
were quite commonly run by water power, the supply of
which determined their location. The small country towns
were alive with little industries, which offered to the farm
laborer a prospect of employment during the winter when
work was scarce on the farm. 4 But the general substitution
cf steam for water power and the consequent concentration
of industry removed the factories from the small towns to
1 L. H. Bailey: The State and the Farmer, pp. 6, 7.
3 E. G. Wakefield: England and America, vol. i., pp. 21,22.
a "At the present time, throughout probably the greater part of the
country . . . butter-making is ordinarily done away from the farm, "
but in 1870, "butter was made ... on the farms and as part of farm
work. The development of the agricultural implement industry is
another instance. The manufacture of the implements and machines
from being a feature of farm work has become a distinct branch of
manufactures, employing, according to the returns of the XII census,
during the census year reported on, an 'average number' of 46,582
persons besides 10,046 salaried officials, clerks, etc." M. W. Quaintance ,
loc. cit., pp. 44-45, 74.
* Report of the Industrial Commission, vol. x., pp. cl. and 889. Report
o*,,Cdnditi<w of Woman and Child Wage-Earners in the United States,
vM.ix.,p.48.
io8 Immigration and Labor
the great manufacturing cities. The opportunity to earn
a full year's wages in a rural community was gone, and the
farm laborer followed the factory to the city. x
Along with the progress of division of labor between
farm and factory, the invention of labor-saving machinery
tended to displace the wage-earner from agriculture. Down
to the middle of the nineteenth century the agricultural
methods of the American farmer were as primitive as those
of the Russian peasant of the present. The first patent for
a cast-iron plow was granted as early as 1797, but it took
many years before it had overcome the prejudice of the
farmers who believed that the use of cast-iron "poisoned the
land." About 1850, cast-iron plows had come into
general use, but grass was still mowed with the scythe,
grain was cut with the sickle and threshed with the flail.
Flailing and winnowing grain was the chief farm work of
the winter. As late as the year 1870, the editor of the
New American Farm Book questioned the advisability of
using the large threshing machines and advised for the
"moderate farmer" the use of a hand thresher as the more
economical, permitting the work to be done "in winter,
when there is more leisure to do it." Corn was planted
by hand, cultivated with the hoe, and shelled by scraping
the ears against the handle of a frying pan or the blade of a
shovel. The cultivation of a farm in this crude way re-
quired a great deal of labor and sustained a steady demand
for farm help in all seasons. To-day "there is hardly a
phase of farm work that has not been essentially changed
by the introduction of some new implement or machine. "
For planting corn
the farmer now uses a check-row planter drawn by horses and deposit-
ing the seed at regular intervals so that the rows may be cultivated
with equal facility either in the direction of the planting or across. As a
means of cultivating the corn . . . the Jarmer quite commonly uses a
riding plow. Steam power corn-huskers and corn-shellers are found.
Instead of the old hand-method of shelling corn ... by which . . .
1 Report oj the Industrial Commission, vol. x., p. cxlix.
The Demand for Labor in Agriculture 109
hardly six bushels could be shelled in a day, the farmer may now have
his corn shelled at the rate of a bushel a minute and the machine which
does the work will also "carry off the cobs to a pile or into a wagon,
and deliver the corn into sacks." Mowing machines, horse hay-rakes,
tedders, and stackers have revolutionized the work of making hay. It
formerly required eleven hours of man-labor to cut and cure a ton of
hay. Now the same work may be done in one hour and thirty
minutes.
''The increased effectiveness of man-labor power when
aided by the use of machinery . . . varies from 150 per
cent in the case of rye to 2244 per cent in the case of bar-
ley." On the whole, the quantity of labor now requisite
for the production of the principal crop averages "a little
over one fifth of the quantity which would be requisite
under the former hand methods of cultivation. " Confining
the comparison to the period of the "new immigration,"
"we shall find that the effectiveness of the average (agri-
cultural) worker in the United States was greater, by nearly
60 per cent, in 1900 than in 1880."
The quantity of labor saved by machinery in producing
the average crop of the last decade of the past century, as
compared with hand methods in use in the middle of the
century, is estimated by Professor Quaintance at 450,000,000
days. * The saving represents the labor of one and a half mil-
lion men working three hundred days in the year. This figure
suggests the reason why the new immigration does not go to
the farming sections of the United States. As the per capita
production of agricultural staples did not increase as fast
as the efficiency of agricultural implements and machinery,
there was an actual as well as a relative displacement of
labor. The same writer estimates the average quantity of
labor spent in producing the annual crops of the principal
cereals during the period from 1840 to 1870, at 173,000,000
work days, and the average number of work days used for
producing the annual crops of the period 1893-1896, at
120,000,000. There was accordingly an actual displace-
1 Quaintance, loc. cit., pp. 7. 8, 10, 18, 23, 30, 73.
no Immigration and Labor
ment of 42 per cent of farm labor. x Since the number of
farmers had meantime increased, there must have been
an actual decrease in the number of hired farm hands. In
North Dakota a farmer who owns two quarter-sections of
land generally takes care of the farm himself, with his
family, until spring, and employs very little help during
his busy season. 2 As a rule, agricultural laborers are in
demand only during the harvesting season.
In consequence of limited demand, "agricultural labor is
. . . the least paid of all the great groups of occupations, even
allowing for the laborer's garden and other privileges." 3
Aside from the consensus of expert opinion, this fact is es-
tablished by statistical evidence for Kansas and California.
The former is predominantly agricultural, the latter indus-
trial, but the XIII. Census shows an increase of 71.2 per cent
in the value of implements and machinery since 1900, an
increase of 89.2 per cent in the value of live stock, and an in-
crease of 34.5 per cent in the rural population of California.
Judged by the increase in the value of buildings and ma-
chinery since 1900 both States are representative of the
average for the United States. 4 Their wage statistics may
therefore be accepted as typical (see Tables 14 and 15).
The hours of labor on the farms are longer than even in
the steel mills of Pennsylvania. In the Northwest and in
the South the general custom is to work from sunrise until
sunset; in Maryland the hours of labor in the dairying
business are generally from 4 or 5 o'clock in the morning to
7 or 8 o'clock at night, and about the same in other agri-
cultural pursuits. 5 It is true that the hours are so long
I Quaintance, loc. cit., pp. 32-33.
3 Report of the Industrial Commission, vol. x., p. 846. More than one
half of the farms of North Dakota at the XII. Census were of a smaller
size. XII. Census, Agriculture, Part I., Table 4, pp. 30 et seq.
a Report of the Industrial Commission , vol . x . , pp . xx. See also Bulletin
of the Bureau of Labor, No. 72 (September, 1907), p. 406.
4 XIII. Census, vol. i, Population, p. 62, Table 39; vol. v., Agri-
culture, p. 79, Table 29.
6 Report of the Industrial Commission, vol. x., pp. xx., cxix., cxx., cxxi.
The witness from Maryland testified that he "once heard a public
The Demand for Labor in Agriculture in
TABLE 14.
AVERAGE ANNUAL EARNINGS OF FARM LABORERS IN KANSAS, COMPARED
WITH EARNINGS IN SIMILAR NON-AGRICULTURAL OCCUPATIONS IN
THE SAME STATE,
Number
Average
annual
Average
number of
Average
number of
Occupation
reported
earnings
days
hours per
unemployed
day
Laborers:
On farms
35
$2Q6 a
ci
II. 6
In building trades.
19
323
93
9-3
On railroads
637
335
Coal miners
24
357
IIS
8-4
TABLE 15.
DISTRIBUTION OF WHITE MALE LABORERS, EMPLOYED IN AGRICULTURE
AND OTHER PURSUITS IN CALIFORNIA, BY RATES OF WAGES
PER WEEK (WITHOUT BOARD), 1906.3
Number reported
Per cent
Character of employment
$12.00
or
less
Over
$12.00
Total
$12.00
or
less
0-er
$12.00
Total
Agriculture
689
15
704
97-9
2.1
IOO
Stores and factories
2156
1964
4I2O
52.3
47-7
100
Lumber woods and saw mills
1610
3492
5102
3L6
68.4
IOO
Railway construction in and
around San Francisco . . .
556
1746
2302
24.2
75-8
IOO
speaker say that the farmers settled the eight-hour question by having
eight hours before dinner and eight after."
1 X VI. Annual Report of the Kansas Bureau of Labor, pp. 1 28-13 1 , 153,
2 Including the cost of board for ten months estimated at 90, given
in Table 2, p. 122.
3 Compiled from XII. Biennial Report of the Bureau of Labor Statistics
of the State of California (1905-1906), pp. 7^-77. 80-161, 165.
H2 Immigration and Labor
only in harvest and threshing time. After the rush i*
over the working day averages about ten hours. But at
that time very few laborers are retained on the farms.
Long hours, small pay, and irregular employment are what
the immigrant can expeet on a farm. His preference for
other employment seems to call for no explanation by
special racial characteristics; it is merely another illustra-
tion of the rule that immigration follows the demand for
labor. " In the settlement of agricultural districts a point
is reached beyond which any considerable growth of agri-
cultural population is possible only if there is a change to
more intensive forms of agriculture. ... If there is no
such change, the further growth of population must con-
sist in the development of urban or non-agricultural
communities." 1
This point has been reached in the United States. The
public domain has practically all passed into private occu-
pation. Land values during the last decade have climbed
to unheard-of heights. 2 At the same time Western Canada
offers to settlers vast areas of public land practically free.
1 XII. Census, Supplementary Analysis, p. 303.
* The highest average value per acre in 1900 was found for Illinois,
viz., $46. At the XIII. Census the following States exceeded that
maximum:
State Value per acre
California $47.00
New Jersey 48.00
Ohio 53.00
Indiana 62.00
Iowa 82.00
Illinois 95-00
The lowest average value in 1900 was in Wyoming, viz., $2.88; in 1910
the average value in that State reached $10.00 per acre. The lowest
average in 1910 was $8.77, computed for New Mexico. The average
value per acre for the United States doubled from 1900 to 1910, but
the maximum increase was as high as 475 per cent, viz., from $6.00
to $34.00 in Arizona. XIII. Census, vol. v., Agriculture, p. 80, Table
30.
The Demand for Labor in Agriculture 113
It seems that for some time to come the Canadian North-
west will furnish the same opportunities for extensive agri-
culture as the Western States did a generation ago. Western
farmers find it profitable to dispose of their land in the
United States and to take up public land- in Western
Canada. x The emigration of American farmers to Canada
has reached considerable proportions. 2 In the United
States a market for agricultural labor may grow up in the
future with the eventual spread of intensive agriculture.
But this is a problem for the American farmer to solve.
The immigrant should not be burdened with the mission
to reform the methods of American agriculture.
1 The average value of land and buildings per farm in Iowa increased
from the XII. to the XIII. Census by more than $8000. Practically all
of this represented increased land value. "Canadian officials estimate
that in the fiscal year 1909 the United States emigrants brought to
Canada, in stock, cash, and effects, upwards of $60,000,000." (Reports
of the Immigration Commission, vol. 2, p. 616.) This is equivalent to
an average of $1000 per individual immigrant, or to $4000 per family.
* In 1910 the number of emigrants from the United States to Canada
reached 103,984. Ibid.
CHAPTER VI
UNEMPLOYMENT
A. The Causes of Unemployment
AS far back as 1901 Prof. John R. Commons, in his
report on immigration prepared for the Industrial
Commission, reached the conclusion that immigrants come
to this country "in obedience to the opportunities for
employment. ' ' z Still the force of statistics must apparently
yield to the living proof, furnished by the ever-present
"army of the unemployed/' that there are already more
men than jobs in the United States. There seems to be no
escape from the conclusion that every new immigrant, in
order to live, must take away the job from some one else
who has been here before. 2 A study of the sources of un-
employment shows the fallacy of the premises upon which
the popular argument is based.
Unemployment in its present form is a problem peculiar
to our industrial system, but alternations of work and in-
voluntary idleness were incidents of the life on the old New
England farm as well. The disappearance of slavery in
New England was in no small degree due to the long winters
during which the time of the negro slave could not be fully
1 Report of the Industrial Commission, vol. xv., p. 309.
3 "The popular conception is of industry as rigidly limited a sphere
of cast iron in which men struggle for living room; in which the greater
the room taken by any one man the less must there be for others; in
which the greater the number of men the worst must be the case of
all." W. H. Beveridge: Unemployment, a Problem of Industry, p. n.
114
Unemployment 115
employed. The introduction of the factory system in New
England at the close of the eighteenth century was ad-
vocated on the ground that it would "give employment to a
great number of persons, especially females who now eat
the bread of idleness." 1
On the old farm, however, work and leisure were shared
by all members of the household and all were supported
by the work of the busy months. The differentiation of
lumbering, dairying, slaughtering, tool making, canning,
spinning, weaving, dressmaking, etc., from farming has
destroyed the former co-ordination of those occupations.
Nowadays, whenever work in any of them grows scarce,
some of the workers are cut off from the pay-roll and become
"unemployed."
The most generally recognized cause of unemployment is
seasonal variation of business activity. According to the
census of 1900, among masons and plasterers more than
one half were out of work a portion of the year. Next
follow brick- and tile-makers, of whom nearly one half
were at times unemployed. Among paper-hangers, the pro-
portion was 44 per cent; among carpenters and painters,
over 40 per cent; among fishermen, about one half; among
sailors, one third. All these occupations are dependent
upon the weather. Other trades are dependent upon and
decline with these. Then there are trades dependent
partly upon the weather and partly upon social customs;
more than one fourth (27 per cent) of all tailors were out
of work at some period during the year 1900. 2 In the
busiest season the supply of labor in such trades may often-
times be short of the demand, necessitating overtime work;
1 Helen L. Sumner: "History of Women in Industry in the United
States," Report on Condition of Woman and Child Wage-Earners in
United States, vol. ix., p. 43. See also pp. 38, 39. In the early years of
the nineteenth century the mills employed many farm girls who
were "not constantly at work, but as they had leisure from other house-
hold employment." Ibid., p. 47. See also Simons: Social Forces in
American History, p. 172 et seq.
* Occupations at the XII. Census, Tables LXXXVIL, and XC.
n6 Immigration and Labor
yet even this shortage of labor will not save a portion of the
force engaged in such trades from idleness at other times
of the year. A reduction of the number of competitors for
positions in such trades would obviously not relieve the
situation. Masonry may serve as an example. Out of
every 1000 masons 555 were unemployed some time during
the census year 1900 and there was steady work all year
around for only 445. x Could the number of masons in the
United States have been reduced to the 445 who had steady
work in 1900, unemployment would thereby not have been
eliminated. On the contrary, many of the 445 who were
employed all year around when there were 555 more masons
in busy times would have lost part of their working time
with the exclusion of their competitors. The explanation
of this apparent paradox is that there is steady work on a
building for about one half of the total number employed
at the busiest time probably inside work which does not
depend upon the weather. But a building cannot be con-
structed all inside. If the number of masons were reduced
from looo to 500, the building operations at the busiest
season would necessarily have to be reduced one half, with
the result that during the slack season there would be only
enough inside work for 250 and the other 195 of the 445
who had steady work in 1900 would now go idle. The
same condition exists to a greater or lesser degree in many
other industries.
In order to eliminate unemployment it would be necessary
to dovetail the busy and the slack seasons in the various
industries upon such a plan as would produce an even dis-
tribution of the work of the nation over all seasons of the
year. This might be possible if all mines, mills, and trans-
portation lines were operated by one nation-wide combine,
ouch an adjustment of half a million independent business
establishments, however, is not feasible for more than one
ceason. In the first place, the periods of the highest and
lowest demand for labor are largly contemporaneous, in
1 Occupations at the XII. Census, p. ccxxxii., Table CX.
Unemployment 117
all industries (see Diagram V). 1 The highest number
employed in manufactures, in the United States as a whole
as well as in every one of the principal States, is found in the
spring and in the fall, the lowest in winter. The workman
who is laid off in January has, as a rule, no opportunity
to secure other work.
In the second place, even when the slack period in one
industry coincides with the busiest period in another, the
mobility of labor is quite limited. The skilled trades admit
of no shifting from one occupation to another. May was
the busiest month of the year 1899 (see Diagram V).
In 51 industries an additional force of 400,000 men was
at work in excess of the permanent force employed at all
times of the year, including the slack season. On the other
hand, there were four industries for which May was the
dullest month, but the aggregate number laid off in those
industries was less than 7000. And yet with all that
demand for labor some of them must have remained out of
work. There were, e.g., 1924 idle jewelry workers. Help
was wanted in brick yards, 74,000 men; carpenter shops,
71,000; custom tailoring shops, 16,000; carriage and wagon
shops, 14,000; planing mills, 13,000; cigar factories, 6000.'
cheese factories, 5000, etc. There was not a single industry,
however, among the 51, which could furnish employment
to the 1924 idle jewelry workers. 2 Had every one of the
extra 400,000 men been deported to Europe, the 1924 idle
jewelers would nevertheless have remained unemployed.
Even if all the laborers in the brickyards were of un-
adulterated Puritan stock, a jewelry worker would consider
it beneath his social status to do rough work in a brickyard
while waiting for the resumption of work at Tiffany's.
The natural tendency is for the fact of seasonal fluctuation
to be recognized as a normal incident of the industry and
to be allowed for in the standard of wages.
The only class of labor whicfc is capable of shifting from
1 Based upon figures of XII. Census Report on Manufactures, vol. i,
Table 3, p. 62. * See Appendix, Table II.
DIAGRAM V.
Scale for States: i unit = 10,000. For the United States: I unit = 100,000.
60
60
40
40
30
10
V. Average number of male wage-earners employed in manufactures
in the United States and the principal States, by months, 1899.
118
Unemployment 119
one industry to another is unskilled labor. Yet the localiza-
tion of industries sets also a limit to the mobility of unskilled
labor. By way of illustration let us compare the iron and
steel and the lumber industry. Both employ large numbers
of unskilled laborers. The variation between the greatest
and the least number of men employed is over 200,000 in the
latter and only 80,000 in the former. Assuming that busy
and dull times dovetail in the -two industries, we shall
nevertheless find interchange of unskilled labor between
them restricted by geographical location. Nearly one half
of the iron and steel workers are employed in Pennsylvania;
there were 38,000 of them unemployed at one time or
another in 1899, whereas the highest number of extra men
hired during the same year in the lumber industry of the
same State was about 9000 ; more than three fourths of the
idle iron and steel workers of Pennsylvania could find no
employment in the lumber industry within their own
State. The same was true of Ohio, where there were at
one time or another 13,000 unemployed iron and steel
workers, while only 6300 temporary men found employ-
ment in the lumber industry within the same State. Men
were wanted in the lumber camps of Michigan, Wisconsin,
and Minnesota, 1 but the laborer who is employed on and
off in a steel mill around Pittsburgh will not take the risk
in the intervals to hunt for a temporary job in the lumber
camps of Minnesota.
The local and seasonal divergencies between the supply
of and the demand for labor have called into existence the
labor agent or the "padrone," whose business is that of a
broker in the labor market. To declaim against him is as
futile as to condemn the broker in the Produce Exchange.
The casual or " discontinuous" laborer in New York^City
has no means to learn that men are wanted by a railway
company in the West or South. The labor agent, who is in
communication with railway companies, building contrac-
tors, and other great employers of labor, renders a service
*XII. Census, Manufactures, Part I, Table 4, PP- 254-255. 286-291.
120 Immigration and Labor
both to the employer and to the laborer. Being in business
for profit, he charges a commission for his services. That a
broker of this class is apt to take advantage of his client
does not mark him as an exception to the general run of
mankind in kindred occupations. It is a common error to
think that the labor agent is the specific product of Italian
or Greek immigration. We learn from the recent report
of Dr. Helen L. Sumner on the History of Women in Industry
in the United States that during the early years of the factory
system, before the era of immigration, the New England
factories "put forth systematic efforts to attract the farm-
ers' daughters of the surrounding country." A common
method of securing girls for the factories was to send out agents to the
country districts who were paid a stipulated sum per head for hiring
girls. As early as 1831 the Dedham (Mass.) Patriot announced that
" a valuable cargo, consisting of 50 females, was recently imported into
this State from ' Down East* by one of the Boston packets. . . ." The
Cabotville Chronicle spoke in 1864 of a " long, low, black, wagon" which
makes regular trips to the North of the State, cruising around in Ver-
mont and New Hampshire with a "commander" whose heart must be
as black as his craft, who is paid a dollar a head for all he brings to the
market, and more in proportion to the distance, if they bring them
from such a distance that they cannot easily get back. This is done
by "hoisting false colors," and representing to the girls that they can
tend more machinery than is possible and that the work is so very
neat, and the wages such that they can dress in silks and spend half
their time in reading. l
The abuses of unscrupulous labor agents must not blind
us, however, to the fact that they perform a necessary
social function, viz., that of distributing the labor supply
where it is wanted. The main shortcoming of this system
of distribution of labor is its inadequacy. The total number
of laborers shipped by all employment agencies out of New
York City to twenty-six States in more than two years
(May i, 1904, to July 31, 1906) was x>nly 40,737, a i.e., about
1 Report on Condition of Woman and Child Wage-Earners in the
United States, vol. ix., pp. 80-81
a Frank J. Sheridan: "Italian, Slavic, and Hungarian Unskilled Im-
Unemployment 121
17,000 a year. The total number of laborers who were
unemployed at any time during the census year 1900 (the
latest for which data are available) was 40,108' and the
rate of unemployment in 1904-1906, as far as can be judged,
was about the same as in 1900.* It is safe to say that the
labor agencies were able to place outside of New York
City less than one half of all unemployed laborers. The
majority stayed in New York waiting for work "to pick up."
We come next to the cyclical fluctuations of business
which result in variations of the number employed from
year to year. A temporary decline in business means
unemployment for a number of wage-earners who were
employed the year before. Such fluctuations of business
occur in countries with a net emigration, like Great Britain,
or in France whose population is practically stationary, as
well as in the United States. The effect of these fluctua-
tions of business activity "is the requirement in each trade
of reserves of labor to meet the fluctuations of work inci-
dental to years of prosperity." 3 An illustration of the
range of these cyclical fluctuations is given in Diagram
VI. on p. 1 25.*
The most important cause of unemployment in point of
numbers affected, however, is to be found in the fact that
"the actual demand is that of each of many separate
employers in many different places." 5 The effect of this
"dissipation of the demand for labor in each trade" 6 upon
migrant Laborers in United States," Bulletin of the Bureau of Labor,
No. 72, p. 417.
1 Occupations at the XII. Census, Table XLIII., p. 634.
a According to the statistics of the New York Bureau of Labor, the
ratio of unemployed in 1900 was 21.0 per cent; in 1904, 30.5 per cent;
in 1905, 14.6 per cent and in 1906, 8.6 per cent, averaging for 1904-
1906, 17.9 per cent. (Report of the New York Bureau of Labor Statistics,
1908, p. xviii., Table 10.) While these figures relate to members of labor
unions only, they may serve as a standard of comparison of general
business conditions in various years. * Beveridge, loc. cit., p. 13-
Based on Report of the New York Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1910,
p. viii, s Beveridge, loc. cit., p. 10. 6 IM*., p. 13-
122
Immigration and Labor
the mass of wage-earners can be measured by the difference
between the aggregate number of hands required by all
establishments at their busiest seasons and the aggregate
minimum number employed when business is at its lowest
ebb. To be sure, this difference does not represent the
amount of unemployment at any given date, since the
seasonal variations are not simultaneous in all industries
and a considerable portion of the unskilled laborers readily
shift from one industry to another. But every change of
position involves some period of unemployment, as it re-
quires some time to find a new job. This is clearly demon-
strated by the census statistics of manufactures. The
difference between the greatest and the least average
number employed during any month in the year is far short
of the difference between the aggregate greatest and the
aggregate least number employed in all establishments
during the same year, as shown in Table 16 next below:
TABLE 16.
RANGE OF FLUCTUATIONS OF EMPLOYMENT, 1899 AND 1904'
185
9
19
34
Number employed
(thousands)
Simultane-
ously, monthly
average
Aggregate in all
establishments
at any time
during the year
Simultane-
ously, monthly
average
Aggregate in all
establishments
at any time
during the year
67
7O6Q
5677
7OI7
Minimum . .
4.Q-J8
4.527
5262
4.CQQ
Difference
629
2545
415
2418
Percentage to
minimum. .
H
56
9
53
1 Compiled from XII. Census Report on Manufactures, Part I, p. 59,
Table 3; Genius Report on Manufactures, 1905, Part I, p. Ixxix., Table
XXVII.
Unemployment 123
In order to ascertain the total number of wage-earners
who had steady employment during the year, the number
employed by each individual manufacturer on the slackest
day in his own business must be added to similar numbers
for all others, though the days may not have coincided. It
appears that this number was less than the lowest monthly
average, which means that even in the worst month of the
year more people are wanted on .an average than can be
given permanent employment. On the other hand, while
during the best month of the year 1899 only fourteen ad-
ditional wage-earners were needed over and above every
one hundred who had permanent employment, actually
four times as many persons were hired for temporary jobs
during the same year. In 1904, the proportion was still
more striking, the number of persons hired temporarily
was nearly six times greater than the actual temporary
force needed at the busiest time during the year. In either
year there were over one half as many temporary jobs as
permanent "positions. Of course, these figures comprise
many duplications ; there may have been few wage-earners
over the greatest number that could actually have been
employed at the same time; in that case each of the tem-
porary employees had about four different jobs during the
year 1899 and six during the year 1904. The unemploy-
ment intervening between one temporary job and another
clearly did not depend upon the number of applicants for
jobs, but was determined by the vicissitudes of business.
The whole problem of unemployment is admirably eluci-
dated in Mr. Beveridge's exhaustive treatise on the subject,
from which the following is condensed :
A general and normal excess of the supply of labor over the demand
appears to be explicable only by an excessively rapid increase of popula-
tion. But sucb an explanatior does not square with the facts showing
irreducible minimum of unemployment precisely in those industries
which have grown with exceptional rapidity in recent years.
The general formula for the supply of labor in an industry appears to
be this: for work requiring, if concentrated at one spot, at most ninety-
124 Immigration and Labor
eight men, there will actually be eighty in regular employment; there
will be a hundred in all, so that at all times two at least are out of work.
The twenty, however, are as much part of the industrial system as are
the eighty ; the reserve is as indispensable as the regulars. The idleness,
now of some, now of others, of the reserve is mainly responsible for the
irreducible minimum of unemployment. The figures here given have
only an illustrative value; the proportion of regular and reserve and
irreducible minimum vary from trade to trade. The principle is of the
greatest generality. The rule for each trade is to have more men than
are called for together even at the busiest moment.
The normal state of every industry is to be overcrowded with labor,
in the sense of having drawn into it more men than can ever find em-
ployment in it at any one time. This is the direct consequence of the
work of each industry being distributed between many separate em-
ployees each subject to fluctuations of fortune. // depends upon the
nature of the demand for labor, not upon the volume of the whole supply.
To speak of the reserve of labor in a trade may become, in fact, only
another way of speaking of the whole volume of unemployment in it.
The change, however, is not one of words alone. It implies a revolu-
tion of mental attitude. It involves perception of unemployment, not
as a thing standing by itself an inexplicable excrescence on the indus-
trial system but as a thing directly related to that system and as
necessary to it as are capital and labor themselves.
Unemployment is not to bz identified as a problem of general over-popula-
tion. Unemployment arises because, while the supply of labor grows
steadily, the demand for labor, in growing, varies incessantly in volume,
distribution, and character. This variation in several of its forms at
least flows directly from the control of production by many competing
employers. It is obvious that, so long as the industrial world is split up
into separate groups of producers each group with a life of its own, and
growing or decaying in ceaseless attrition upon its neighbors there
must be insecurity of employment. Unemployment, in other words,
is to some extent at least part of the price of industrial competition
part of the waste without which there could be no competition at all.
B. Unemployment and Immigration
It has been shown that unemployment does not depend
upon the volume of the supply of labor, but is determined
by the nature of the demand for labor, which produces a
"relative surplus-population." Is itrnot possible, however
1 Beveridge, loc. cit. t pp. 70, 76, 99, 100, 103, 235. "A surplus labor-
ing population is ... a condition of existence of the capitalist mode of
DIAGRAM VI.
Per cent, of employed and unemployed members of trade unions in the
State of New York, by months, 1902-1909.
production. . . . With accumulation, and the development of produc-
tiveness of labor that accompanies it, the power of sudden expansion
of capital grows also. . . . There must be the possibility of throwing
great masses of men suddenly on the decisive points without injury to
the scale of production in other spheres. . . . The whole form of the
movement of modern industry depends, therefore, upon the constant
transformation of a part of the laboring population into unemployed or
half-employed hands. . . . Taking them as a whole, the general move-
ments of wages are exclusively regulated by the expansion and con-
traction of the industrial reserve army. . . . They are, therefore, not
determined by the variations of the absolute number of the working
population, but by the varying proportions in which the working class
is divided into active and reserve army, by the increase or diminutirti
in the relative amount of the surplus population." Karl Marx, Capital,
part i., ch. xxv., sec. 3.
126 Immigration and Labor
that the effects of ' 'the normal glutting of the labor market" x
may be aggravated by immigration?
It is asserted, indeed, on the strength of the investigation
of the Immigration Commission "that the point of complete
saturation has already been reached in the employment
of recent immigrants in mining and manufacturing estab-
lishments." 2 The Commission holds "that even with the
remarkable expansion of industry during the past few years
there has been created an oversupply of unskilled labor,
which "is reflected in a curtailed number of working
days." 3
It is further argued that the oversupply of unskilled labor
indirectly affects the skilled trades; more workers who
might otherwise find employment as unskilled laborers are
pushed up the scale to compete for skilled positions. This
is especially felt in slack seasons when skilled mechanics
would welcome any kind of work, even unskilled, which
would tide them over the hard times. But the oversupply
of unskilled labor restricts their opportunities in this field
and intensifies competition in the skilled trades. When two
competitors apply for one job in an overstocked labor
market, the cheaper man will outbid the other. It is
accordingly inevitable that the immigrant with a lower
standard of living must displace the American workman.
If this theory is correct, we must find a higher percentage
of unemployment among the native than among the foreign-
born breadwinners. In fact, however, we find the following
percentages of unemployment ascertained by the census for
> x Beveridge, loc. cit., p. 13.
* Jenks and Lauck, loc. cit., p. 197.
3 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. I , p. 39. The Com-
mission does not consistently adhere to this view. Elsewhere, in dis-
cussing the causes of the outward movement of immigrants leaving the
United States permanently, the Commission says: ''That it is not due
to lack of opportunity for employment, except in a period of depression,
is evident from the fact that there is a steady influx of European laborers
who have little or no difficulty in finding employment here." Ibid.,
vol. 4 (in press).
Unemployment 127
1 900: native white males, 21.2 per cent; foreign white males
21.0 per cent. 1
^The difference between the two classes is negligible.
The figures do not sustain the theory that the immigrants
have an advantage over the native American workmen in
the matter of securing employment. Has the "cheap"
immigrant a better chance to hold his job, once secured,
than the native American workman? An answer to this
question is found in the following table reproduced from the
Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 8, p. 87.
TABLE 17.
PER CENT, DISTRIBUTION OF NATIVE AND FOREIGN-BORN MALE IRON AND
STEEL WORKERS 1 6 YEARS OF AGE AND OVER BY NUMBER
OF MONTHS OF EMPLOYMENT
Number of months
employed
Native born
Foreign
born
Of native father
Of foreign father
9 and over
6O.2
234
13-5
2.9
50.2
28.3
I7.I
4.4
41.4
32.3
2O. I
6.2
6 and under 9 . .
and under 6
ess than 3
Total
IOO.O
IOO.O
IOO.O
1 Occupations at the XII. Census, p. ccxxvi. The census averages for
unemployment among female breadwinners are not reliable. The
highest ratios of unemployment were found among school teachers, 61.2
per cent, and in agricultural pursuits, 44.3 per cent, (p. ccxxxi), where-
as the ratio for manufactures was 22.4 per cent, for domestic and per-
sonal service, 17.1 per cent, and for trade and transportation, n.i per
cent (p. ccxxviii). The teachers' vacation was included by the compilers
of the census data under unemployment. Similarly, we find that in
most of the census talles on occupations female members of farmers'
families who were helping on the farm were lumped together with
hired help under the common designation of "agricultural laborers."
These "farm laborers (members of family) " numbered two thirds of all
"agricultural laborers" (ibid., p. 7). The part of the year when there
was no work for them on the farm was also counted as "unemployment."
128
Immigration and Labor
The statistics of the Immigration Commission do not
show that the immigrant holds his position longer than the
American-born workman. On the contrary, in the iron
and steel industry, which is among those most affected by
immigration, the native workman is given more steady
employment than the immigrant.
If there exists a causal connection between immigration
and unemployment, we must expect to find more unemploy-
ment in those sections of the United States where the
immigrants are mostly concentrated. This assumption is
disproved by Table 18 next following:
TABLE 1 8.
COMPARATIVE PERCENTAGES OF UNEMPLOYED AND OF FOREIGN-BORN
BREADWINNERS BY GEOGRAPHICAL DIVISIONS,
^Geographical divisions
Ratio of for-
eign white
to total num-
ber of bread-
winners
Ratio of breadwinners unemployed dur-
ing a portion of the year to total number
in each class and division
Manufacturing and
mechanical pursuits
Domestic and
personal service
(including la-
borers)
Continental United
States
19-7
2.9
37
23.5
277
31-5
27.2
25.2
28.6
29-5
28.1
25-7
28.1
28.1
31.0
30.7
28.6
24-3
South Atlantic. . . .
South Central
North Central
Western
North Atlantic . . .
As a result of this method of classification, the number of "unemployed "
female agricultural laborers (293,707) exceeded y nearly one third the
total number of hired female farm help (222,597). These two classes
of occupations furnished two fifths of all unemployed females (494,202
out of a total of 1,241,492), while the ratio of foreign-born was only
5.3 per cent for teachers and 0.8 per cent for agricultural laborers
(ibid., pp. 10-11, Table 2). In consequence the average percentage of
" unemployment " for native white women in all occupations appears to
be higher than for foreign -born. It is evident that the census data on
unemploy ent among women are misleading, which is conceded in the
census report.
1 Occupations at the XII. Census, Table XCIIL, pp. Ixxxi., ccxxxv.,
and ccxxxvi., Tables XVII. and XCIII.
Unemployment 129
A glance at the table shows that the percentage of un-
employment is not affected by the percentage of foreign-
born engaged in the main classes of occupations. The
variation of the ratio of unemployment from section to
section is confined within narrow limits. The ratio of un-
employment in manufactures is the same for the South
Atlantic and the North Atlantic States, though there are
very few foreign-born in the South Atlantic States, while
in the North Atlantic States they constitute nearly one
third of all operatives. In all other sections of the country
the ratio of unemployment is slightly higher than in the
North Atlantic States, while the percentage of foreign-born
breadwinners engaged in manufactures is less, and in the
South Central States much less than in the North Atlan-
tic States. The same is true of the miscellaneous collection
of occupations lumped together in census statistics under
the head of "domestic and personal service," which in-
cludes unskilled laborers. We find the lowest ratio of un-
employment in the North Atlantic States, with 31.5 per
cent of foreign-born breadwinners and the highest in the
South Central States, with but 3.7 per cent of foreign-born
breadwinners.
Comparative statistics showing the ratio of unemploy-
ment and the percentage of foreign-born breadwinners by
sex and by States are available for the manufacturing
industries at the XII. Census. The measure of unemploy-
ment, for the purposes of this comparison, is the difference
between the total greatest and the total least monthly
average number employed, expressed as a percentage of
the greatest monthly average. The data for manufactures
relate to the calendar year 1899 and the distribution of
breadwinners by nativity is for the summer of 1900. The
dates are sufficiently close to make the figures comparable. 1
There is considerable variation of the ratio of unemploy-
ment, as well as of that of foreign-born, by States. There
are some States with a high percentage of foreign-born and
1 See Appendix, Table III.
130
Immigration and Labor
low ratio of unemployment and vice versa; there are others
with high percentages both of foreign-born and of un-
employment and vice versa. The ratio of unemployment
seems sometimes to rise and sometimes to fall with the
percentages of foreign-born. But a significant correla-
tion between the two ratios is disclosed if all States
are combined into two areas according to the ratio of
foreign-born engaged in manufactures and mechanical
pursuits :
I. Those States where the ratio of foreign-born in
manufactures is below the average for the United States;
II. Those States where that ratio is above the average
for the United States.
The statistics relating to each area are summarized
separately for male and female wage-earners in Tables 19
and 20.
TABLE 19. '
GREATEST AND LEAST NUMBER OF MALE WAGE-EARNERS EMPLOYED IN
MANUFACTURES DURING ANY ONE MONTH OF THE YEAR 1899,
GREATEST NUMBER OF UNEMPLOYED, AND PERCENTAGE OF FOREIGN-
BORN MALES ENGAGED IN MANUFACTURES AND MECHANICAL
PURSUITS IN 1900, BY GROUPS OF STATES.
States with percentage
of foreign-born in
manufactures and
mechanical pursuits
Employed in
manufactures
(thousands)
Unemployed
sometime
Per cent ratio of foreign-
born to all males in
manufactures and me-
chanical pursuits.
Least
number
Great-
est
number
Thou-
sands
Percent of
greatest
number
employed
Least
Greatest
Below the average. .
Above the average. .
1224
2524
1501
2907
277
383
18.5
13-2
I.O
33-2
31-9
53-8
Total
3748
4408
660
^5-o
Average
32.7
Unemployment
TABLE 20.
GREATEST AND LEAST NUMBER OF FEMALE WAGE-EARNERS EMPLOYED IN
MANUFACTURES DURING ANY ONE MONTH OF THE YEAR 1899, GREAT-
EST NUMBER OF UNEMPLOYED, AND PERCENTAGE OF FOREIGN-BORN
FEMALES ENGAGED IN MANUFACTURES AND MECHANICAL PURSUITS,
IN IQOO, BY GROUPS OF STATES.
Employed in
manufactures
Unemployed
Per cent ratio of foreign-
born to all females in
States with percentage
of foreign-born in
(thousands)
sometime
manufactures and me-
chanical pursuits
manufactures and
mechanical pursuits
Least
number
Great-
est
number
Thou-
sands
Per cent of
greatest
number
Least
Greatest
employed
Below the average. .
352
442
90
20.4
0.2
20.3
Above the average. .
573
668
95
14.2
22.7
46.2
Average
Total
925
IIIO
185
I6. 4
21.4
Combining all the States where the immigrants furnish
from one third to more than one half of all males engaged in
manufactures and mechanical pursuits, we find that the
ratio of unemployment in that area as a whole is lower than
in the other area, where the immigrants are few in numbers,
rising in no State to one third of all males employed in
manufacturing industries and falling as low as i per cent.
The same rule holds true with regard to female wage-earners
employed in manufactures. On the whole, unemployment is
in inverse ratio to the relative number of foreign-born.
The underlying cause of this relation will be apparent,
if we remember that the number of foreign-born wage-
earners is regulated by immigration and emigration and
that both movements promptly respond to changes in the
business situation. (See Chapter IV.)
Still the variation of the ratio of unemployment by States
may be affected by the localization of industries; certain
industries concentrated in a State with a small foreign-born
population may through climatic or other causes be more
subject to ebb and flow than other industries located in a
132 Immigration and Labor
State with a large immigrant population. The ratio of
unemployment must therefore be compared for different
occupations with a varying percentage of foreign-born
breadwinners.
Diagram VII furnishes the data for a comparative study
of fifty leading occupations which gave employment, in
1900, to seven and a half million male breadwinners. 1
If it be true that unemployment is intensified by immi-
gration, the aggregations of solid black bars representing
unemployment and striped bars representing the percentage
of foreign-born male breadwinners in each occupation
should be expected to display some similarity in outline.
No such tendency is suggested by the diagram ; the variation
of the ratio of unemployment for different occupations
shows no effects of immigration.
Although the number of occupations selected for compari-
son, as well as the number of persons engaged in them, is
very large and well distributed over all sections of the
country, yet, in order to eliminate the possible effect of
localization of industries, we shall next compare the varia-
tions of the ratios of unemployment and of the percentage of
foreign-born within the same occupations by States. Space
forbids an exhaustive treatment of all the leading occupa-
tions shown in Diagram VII. Our study will be confined to
three occupation groups: bituminous coal-miners, common
laborers, and cotton-mill operatives. The first two have
been selected in view of the popular belief, accepted by the
Immigration Commission, that they are suffering from an
oversupply of unskilled immigrant labor. The cotton-mill
operatives, on the other hand, afford the opportunity to
contrast the New England mills, where the majority of the
workers are of foreign birth, with the Southern mills
dependent almost exclusively upon native labor.
Diagram VIII presents in graphic form the ratio of un-
1 The comparative figures for these occupations, as well as for the
leading occupations of female breadwinners are given in the Appendix,
Table IV.
DIAGRAM VII
D"~ H
J EinfUTttO AU. re/W BY. FoRiton WHrtt
VII. Per cent unemployed at any time during the year and per
cent of foreign-bora in fifty leading occupations, 1900.
T33
134
Immigration and Labor
employment in bituminous coal-mining collated with the
percentage of foreign-born miners. The former ratio has
DIAGRAM VIII
Percentage Foreign -bom
Ratio of Unemployment
VH1. Ratio of unemployment in bituminous
coal mines, 1902, and percentage of
foreign-born miners, 1900.
been computed by the method applied above to manu-
factures. The greatest and the least number of wage-
earners are taken from the census report on Mines and
Unemployment 135
Quarries for 1902, while the percentage of foreign-born is
that for 1900, but the dates are sufficiently near for compara-
tive purposes. 1 As the statistics of occupations by States
do not distinguish coal miners from other miners and
quarrymen, the comparison is confined to those States where
coal mining was practically the only mining industry. 2
The diagram includes, however, all principal coal-mining
States in 1902 which produced 83 per cent of the total
coal output of the United States. 3 No connection between
unemployment and immigration is disclosed by the diagram.
Pennsylvania, which holds the third highest place according
to the percentage of foreign-born miners, stands next to the
State with the lowest ratio of unemployment. The highest
ratio of unemployment is found in West Virginia, where
the percentage of foreign-born miners is next to the lowest
Similar variations by States appear in the statistics
relating to the other two occupations selected for compari-
son. To further trace the interdependence, if any,
between immigration and unemployment in these occupa-
tions, we shall again combine all States into two areas,
first, according to the percentage of foreign-born ; and next,
in the same manner, according to the ratio of unemploy-
ment. The results of these combinations are summarized in
Tables 21 and 22. 4
An examination of Table 21 shows that the percentage
of unemployment is slightly less in the area where the
immigrants furnish 44 per cent of all common labor, than
in the rest of the United States where the foreign-born
laborers constitute one tenth of the total number. The
1 See Appendix, Table V.
3 In Pennsylvania a large number of coal miners were employed in the
anthracite mines; the latter, however, were affected by the strike of 1902
and could for this reason not be included in a comparison between the
greatest and the least number employed. But the employment of
immigrants is general in both classes of mines.
* Mines and Quarries, p. 680.
< Detailed statistical data for each State will be found in the Appendix
Tables VI. and VII.
136
Immigration and Labor
TABLE 21.
LABORERS (MALE), FOREIGN-BORN AND UNEMPLOYED, IQOO.
Areas
Total
Foreign-born
Unemployed
Number
Per
cent
Number
Per
cent
With percentage of
foreign-born:
Above the average . . .
Below the average . . .
1,317,218
1,188,029
580,682
122,853
44.1
10.3
570,401
539,324
43-3
454
With percentage of
unemployed:
Above the average . . .
Below the average . . .
1,031,548
1,473.699
252,453
451 ,082
24.4
30.6
498,881
610,844
484
41.5
Total
2,505,247
703,535
28.1
1,109,725
44-3
TABLE 22.
COTTON-MILL OPERATIVES (MALE), FOREIGN-BORN AND UNEMPLOYED,
1900.
Areas
Total
Foreign-born
Unemployed
Number
Per
cent
Number
Per
cent
With percentage of
foreign-born:
Above the average . . .
Below the average . . .
65,984
59,031
46,009
1,982
69.7
34
7,725
8,551
11.7
14-5
Total
125,015
47.991
384
16,276
13-0
With percentage of
unemployed: 1
Above the average . . .
Below the average . . .
52,882
7L7I9
10,479
37499
19.8
52-3
8,380
7,842
15.6
9-1
Total
124,601
47,978
38-5
16,222
13-0
1 Exclusive of Kentucky where the percentage of unemployed is
equal to the average.
Unemployment 137
difference is negligible. Evidently conditions of employ-
ment of unskilled laborers are everywhere such that well-
nigh one half of them, whether native or foreign-born, have
no steady work and lose a part of their time during the year
in changing from one situation to another. If the arrange-
ment of the States is reversed and they are grouped into
two areas according to whether the percentage of unemploy-
ment is above or below the average for the United States
as a whole, it appears that in the area with the higher ratio
of unemployment the percentage of foreign-born laborers
is lower.
The same relation is disclosed by Table 22 with regard to
male cotton-mill operatives. In the area with 70 per cent
of foreign-born operatives the percentage of unemployed
is slightly less than in the area where 96 per cent of all
operatives are of native birth. Reversing the arrangement
we find again that in the area with the higher ratio of
unemployment only one fifth of all operative are foreign-
born, whereas, in the area with the lower ratio of unemploy-
ment over one half of the operative force are immigrants.
In other words, immigrants, as a rule, are not attracted to
the cotton mills of those States where opportunities for
steady employment are less favorable.
The preceding analysis justifies the conclusion that there
is no causal connection between unemployment and immi-
gration, the ratio of unemployment within the same occupa-
tion being substantially the same in areas with a large
immigrant population and with practically none at all.
The preceding conclusions have been derived from an
inquiry into the conditions of employment for one census
year. We shall next examine whether there is any connec-
tion between immigration and unemployment compared
for a series of years. The Massachusetts Bureau of Labor
Statistics has collected annual statistics of the greatest and
the least number of wage-earners employed in factories
since the middle of the 8o's. Table 23 shows the variation
of the ratio of unemployment for twenty years from 1888
138
Immigration and Labor
to 1908. The standard of comparison is the same as before,
viz., the difference between the greatest and the least
number employed. 1
TABLE 23.
RATIO OF UNEMPLOYMENT IN MASSACHUSETTS, 1888-1908*
Year
Percent
Year
Per cent
Year
Per cent
1888
23
1895
26
1902
23
1889
23
I8 9 6
33
1903
25
1890
22
1897
28
1904
26
1891
22
1898
30
1905
23
1892
23
1899
26
1906
29
1893
36
I90O
27
1907
25
1894
33
1901
25
1908
33
The years 1893, 1894, an d I 9 8 show the effects of indus-
trial crises, and the year 1896 those of the unsettled business
situation produced by the free silver agitation. With
those exceptions the variation of the ratio of unemployment
from year to year is small. The ratio is lower for the seven
years of the present century characterized by heavy immi-
gration than for the preceding decade when immigration
was small. The relation between unemployment and
immigration is shown graphically in Diagram IX. 3 It is
clearly seen that with increasing immigration unemploy-
1 The returns are not complete, especially for the earlier years; a
comparison of the numbers employed would therefore be misleading.
Nevertheless, the numbers reported are so large that the percentage of
unemployment could not be materially varied by the addition of the
missing figures. The inquiries of the Bureau call for the number em-
ployed during the current and the preceding year. As a result the
figures for the previous year published in every annual report are more
complete than those published the year before. A comparison of the
percentage of unemployment for each year computed from the numbers
published in two consecutive reports shows that the variations do not
exceed a fraction of I per cent. In Table 23 fractions of i per cent
have been omitted. a See Appendix, Table VIII.
3 See Appendix, Table IX.
Unemployment
139
ment decreases, and with declining-immigration unemploy-
ment increases. The tendency disclosed by this diagram
DIAGRAM IX
00
<r
IX. Ratio of unemployment of factory workers in Massachusetts
and number of immigrant breadwinners destined for
Massachusetts, 1897-1908.
is but a corroboration of the rule that immigration follows
the demand for labor. The condition in Massachusetts,
140
Immigration and Labor
which is a manufacturing State with a large immigrant
population, may be accepted as typical.
Heretofore we have dealt with unemployment as ex-
pressed in the relative number of wage-earners unem-
ployed during any portion of the year, regardless of the
duration of employment. It is maintained, however, by
the Immigration Commission, that the effects of immi-
gration are reflected in a " curtailed number of working
days" per wage-earner. The report of the Commission
contains no statistical data in support of this assertion.
There are, however, official figures on this subject for tho
two principal States affected by immigration, New York
and Pennsylvania. Table 24 shows the number of days
worked in the bituminous coal mines of Pennsylvania dur-
ing the calendar years 1901-1909, the average tonnage
mined per day per man, along with the number of immigrant
miners and laborers bound for Pennsylvania during the
fiscal years 1901-1909. In Diagram X the same data are
represented graphically.
TABLE 24.
AVERAGE NUMBER OF DAYS WORKED IN BITUMINOUS COAL MINES OF
PENNSYLVANIA, AVERAGE PRODUCTION PER EMPLOYEE PER DAl
WORKED, AND NUMBER OF IMMIGRANT MINERS AND LABORERS
(INCLUDING FARM LABORERS) DESTINED FOR PENNSYLVANIA,
1901-1 909. *
Year
Immigrants
(fiscal years)
Days
(calendar years)
Tons per day
(calendar yean)
1901
63,713
216
3-5
1902
95.967
221
3-6
1903
1904
II4,Ol8
78,625
216
190
It
1905
127,417
216
3-6
1906
116,923
239
3-4
1907
141,830
238
1908
54.813
I8 4
3-6
1909
69,291
2IO
3-7
1 Reports of the Commissioner of Immigration, 1901, Table VII. ; 1902-
CALENDAR YEARS
DIAGRAM X.
340
330
220
2ZO
20O
190
1 80
ISO
NUMBE K OF
100
IMMIGRANT MINERS AND LA&OR&&
mr/tfYlVWM
i ! ] I ri i
5C/M. YEARS
Average number of days worked in the bituminous coal mines
of Pennsylvania and number of immigrant miners and
laborers destined for Pennsylvania, 1901-1909
Scale for immigrants: i unit = 1000
142 Immigration and Labor
The average number of days the mines were worked might
not be identical with the average number of days of em-
ployment for each mine worker. But the average tonnage
mined per day worked serves as a measure of the amount of
work furnished every miner per day. The average for the
nine- year period is a little over three and a half tons per
employee per day, the fluctuations from year to year are
insignificant. The number of days in operation accordingly
represents the number of days of employment. It can be
seen from Diagram X. that the curves representing immigra-
tion and days of employment run almost parallel. The
deviations from that course are slight, and one of them can
be accounted for by temporary conditions unrelated to
immigration. The increase of the average number of days
worked in 1902 was due to the anthracite coal strike, which
increased the demand for bituminous coal. In 1903, after
the settlement of the strike, the number of days worked
again dropped to the level of 1901. Of course, no mathe-
matical accuracy must be expected from these curves.
On the one hand, the number of immigrant laborers com-
prises a great many who found employment in other indus-
tries than bituminous coal mines; on the other, the number
of days is not a weighted average and has only the value of
an approximation. On the whole, however, the tendency
of the two curves is unmistakable; the number of days
of employment rises and falls as immigration rises and
falls.
The statistics of the New York Labor Bureau are col-
lected annually through correspondence with officers of labor
unions and show the number of days of employment in
organized trades. While these statistics relate primarily
to the skilled crafts only, yet indirectly they reflect the
conditions in the industrial field as a whole. Nowadays
there are few skilled crafts that^o not enter as a part into
a larger industrial system. Unemployment of the engineer
1908, Table IX; 1909, p. 57. Reports of the Department of Mines of
Pennsylvania, Part II., for the years 1901 to 1909.
Unemployment 143
or fireman means unemployment for a number of factory
hands.
In Diagram XI. days of employment are plotted along
with the number of immigrants, exclusive of dependents, 1
who gave New York as their destination on landing. 2
The two upper curves represent the average number of
days of employment during the first and the third quarter
of every year from 1897 to 1909,* the lowest heavy line
represents immigration of breadwinners. Contrary to the
general assumption, the rise of the immigration curve is not
followed by a decline of the curves representing duration of
employment. On the whole, the three curves move in a
uniform direction ; the number of days of work increases as
immigration increases, and declines as immigration declines.
In the fall of 1900 (a presidential year), there was less work
on an average than in the fall of 1899, but the middle curve
shows that conditions improved in the spring of 1901.
These fluctuations were reflected in the total immigration
for the fiscal year ended June 30, 1901, which remained
almost stationary. A divergence between the employment
and immigration curves strikes the eye in 1907. The
spring of that year was marked by a decline of employment
compared with the preceding year, and the opportunities
in the fall showed no progress compared with the previous
fall, whereas the immigration curve was still rising. The
effects of the curtailment of the days of employment were
reflected in the immigration curve next year. On the other
hand immigration continued to decline when the condition
of the labor market began to improve. The conclusion
that can be drawn from this divergence is that it takes some
time before the conditions of the labor market are reflected
in the immigration movement. As stated in a preceding
*"No occupation (mostly women and children)," in Immigration
Bureau terminology.
3 For detailed figures see Appendix, Table XXIII.
3 Annual Report of the New York Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1909,
vol. ii, p. xvii., Table 5.
Days
2 g
cn <o
\
%\
\
2
\
i
\
\
in
to
trv
*o.
144
Unemployment 145
chapter, the arrivals of immigrants in the United States
at any given time are the result of preparations made some
months before their embarkation on the other side. Viewed
as a whole, however, the diagram strongly contradicts the
assumption that immigration results in the curtailment of
the days of employment. During the ten normal years
1897-1906, which preceded the crisis of 1907, the number of
working days increased with the increase of immigration.
It could not have been a fortuitous coincidence. No one
claims that the arrival of the immigrants was the cause of
the increase of the per capita share of work. By the method
of exclusion there is room for no other inference than that
immigration has merely responded to the increased demand
for labor.
The preceding analysis may be summed up in the follow-
ing proposition:
Unemployment and immigration are the effects of
economic forces working in opposite directions; that which
produces business expansion reduces unemployment and
attracts immigration; that which produces business de-
pression increases unemployment and reduces immigration.
Yet it may be said that while immigration is not a con-
tributory cause of unemployment, restriction of immigra-
tion would nevertheless reduce unemployment. An answer
to this argument is furnished by the example of Australia,
where immigration does not keep up with emigration, and
yet unemployment is an ever-present problem, precisely as
in the United States. Australia is a new country with
abundant natural resources. Its area is as great as that
of the continental United States (exclusive of Alaska),
while its population at the census of 1906 was a million
short of the United States figure for 1800. The Austral-
ian statistics of unemployment essentially differ from ours.
The XII. Census counted all breadwinners who were idle at
any time during the twelve months preceding the date of
enumeration. The statistics of the New York Bureau of La-
bor comprise all wage-earners who were unemployed during
146 Immigration and Labor
the first or the third quarter of the year. The Australian
statistics, on the other hand, give the number unemployed
on the date of enumeration. A comparison of the Austra-
lian ratio of unemployment with the New York ratio must
therefore be favorable to Australia and unfavorable to New
York. Still the comparison is highly instructive. The
Australian ratio in 1901 varied from 3.96 per cent for
South Australia to 6.73 per cent for New South Wales. 1
In the State of New York the total amount of unemploy-
ment for the three summer months, July, August, and Sep-
tember, fluctuated during the years 1897-1907 between
1.9 per cent and 6.5 per cent. 2 It thus appears that
Australia with an excess of emigration over immigration is
suffering from unemployment at least as much as the State
of New York, which is teeming with immigrants. It is
evident that unemployment is created by the modern
organization of industry even in the absence of all
immigration.
Unemployment not being the result of overpopulation, it
necessarily follows that limitation of the number of wage-
earners can promise no relief against unemployment. To
be effective, any proposed remedy must attack the problem
of unemployment, not collaterally, through restriction of
immigration, but directly.
A radical remedy for the evils of unemployment is offered
by the Code of Labor Laws of the Russian Soviet Govern-
ment. The law assures to every able-bodied citizen ' ' the right
to employment*' at his trade or vocation at the standard
wage fixed for such class of work. The Government, through
its employment service, undertakes to find a job for every
unemployed worker. Every person who is out of work may
register at the local office of the Division of Distribution of
Labor Power. All establishments in need of workers may
Victor S. Clark: "Labor Conditions in Australia," Bulletin of the
Bureau of Labor, No. 56 p. 180.
* Annual Report of the New York Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1909, vol.
ii., p. xvii., Table 5.
Unemployment 147
likewise register with the local government employment office
their demand for labor, stating the qualifications of workers
and the kind of work required, as well as the terms of em-
ployment. The local office assigns the applicants in the
order of their registration. In case the local supply of work-
ers is insufficient to meet the demand for a certain class of
workers, the local employment office communicates with
other offices within the same region. If the supply of labor
of a certain class is in excess of the demand, the applicant
for work may be temporarily offered a job outside of his
trade. An applicant for whom no employment can be found
is entitled to draw a benefit, equal to his standard wages,
out of an unemployment insurance fund levied on all em-
ployers of labor, including government institutions. When-
ever a worker is directed to a position below his grade of
work, he is entitled to draw upon the unemployment insur-
ance fund for the difference between his standard rate of
wages and that actually offered to him. 1
1 Code of Labor Laws. Compilation of the Statutes and Orders of the
Labor and Farmer Government, December 10, 1918, Sections 10, 20-23,
26, 28-30, and Supp. to Sec. 79, 6, 7, 14, 15. A summary of that
Code appears in the Monthly Labor Review of the U. S. Dept. of Labor,
April, 1920, pp. 210-214.
CHAPTER VII
RACIAL STRATIFICATION
I NDUSTRIAL evolution has broken down the stable or-
1 ganization of ancient and mediaeval societies, in which
every individual had a fixed place and the son followed
the occupation of the father. Modern industrial society
tends to revert to the nomadic type. People come and go,
and others settle in their places. There were, in 1900,
thirteen and a half million persons born in the United States
who were living outside of their native States. There is
no record of migration within State limits. Assuming that
the number of native citizens migrating within their State
of birth is equal to the number migrating to contiguous
States, six millions more may be added to the migratory
population, making in all about 30 per cent of the total
native population. 1 Yet when it is learned that of the
2,653,000 native Missourians who were living in the United
States, 618,000 resided outside of their native State, while
855,000 natives of other States settled in Missouri, 2 no one
takes it that the Missourians were "displaced" by the
"invasion" of a host nearly a million strong from Southern
and Eastern States. It is only when the new-comers are
of foreign birth that the impression of "racial displace-
ment" is created.
There was one great racial displacement in America : the
Indian was displaced from his land by the European in.
vasion. The invasion and the displacement in that instance
*XII. Census, Supplementary Analysis, p. 281.
*Ibid., Table 61, pp. 850 et seq.
148
Racial Stratification 149
were physical acts, not metaphors. When the term "racial
displacement" is applied to immigration, it suggests the
idea of a virtual crowding out of the native American by the
alien invader. 1 No doubt, in the shifting of population
from East to West, from country to city, the racial composi-
tion of many settlements has changed. Within the memory
of the present generation the Irish and German colonies of
New York City gradually moved out of the sections they
had occupied in the 8o's and early 90*3 of the past century
and in their places Jewish and Italian colonies grew up.
Still the old Irish or German settler of ten or twenty years
ago can be located in another section of the great city, and
the public is conscious of the fact that he has simply moved
from one neighborhood to another which seemed to him
more attractive. The population of New York City,
however, is large enough to fill several States. Were the
same population spread over a hundred cities of about
forty thousand inhabitants each and had the German resi-
dents of one city gradually moved out of it to others within
a radius of twenty-five miles, their places being filled by a
new race, the change would be keenly felt by many. The
grocer, the butcher, the hotelkeeper, the physician, the
lawyer, would be losing patronage. In their minds the
change would be reflected as the "displacement" of the old
'The definition of the word "displacement" given by the Oxford
English Dictionary is as follows:
Displacement: The act of displacing or fact of being displaced. Re-
moval of a thing by substitution of something else in its place. 1880,
Library Universal Knowledge: "The displacement of human labor
through machinery."
Hydrostatics: The displacing of a liquid by a body immersed in or
floating on it.
Displace:
1 . To remove or shift from its place; to put out of the usual place.
2. To remove from a position, dignity, or office.
3. To oust (something) from its place and occupy it instead. . . .
(fc) to take the place of, supplant, replace. A. R. Wallace,
"Darwinism"; "This weed . . . absolutely displaced every
other plant on the ground."
150 Immigration and Labor
settlers by the new-comers. And yet the element of crowd-
ing out, even in a metaphorical sense, might be wholly
absent. The abandonment of the New England farms may
serve as an illustration. No one "displaced" the New
England farmer ; the population of many a town fell off, but
few new settlers, native or foreign-born, came to take the
places of those who had gone. The old homesteads were
left to decay and their proprietors went West, where they
found better opportunities. And now we witness the same
movement in Iowa, whose population has decreased since
1900, the farmers being attracted by cheaper lands in
Western Canada.
Is it not possible that a similar process has been going on
in manufacturing, in mining, in railroading? Where there
was a wilderness thirty years ago, several new States with a
substantial population have grown up. The railroads of
the West needed employees, who had to come from the East.
From 1879 to 1909, the manufactures of New England and
the Middle Atlantic States added one and a half million
wage-earners to their personnel, whereas the industrial
development of the rest of the country created opportunities
for two and one third million new hands, as shown in Table
25 next below. The manufactures in the West and South
grew much faster than in the East and drew some of the
native workers and earlier immigrants from the older manu-
facturing States. Still the demand for labor in those
States also grew. The places left vacant by the old
employees who had gone westward had to be filled by
new immigrants. The term "displacement" would be
misapplied to such a migration of wage-earners, as
much as in the case of the migration of the New England
farmer.
Let us see what light can be thrown upon this question
by the statistics of occupations. According to the figures
of the XII. Census, covering the~whole area of the United
States, the economic stratification within the principal
Racial Stratification
elements of the white population in 1900 exhibited very
characteristic differences, as appears from Table 26.
TABLE 25.
AVERAGE NUMBER OF WAGE-EARNERS EMPLOYED IN MANUFACTURES
(THOUSANDS), 1879-1909.1
]
ncrease
Geographic divisions
1879
1909
Number
Per cent
New England and Middle Atlan-
tic States
1700
-I-7QQ
TCTQ
8*
All other States
QAO
11O6
2-766
o
OC2
OO*-"- 1
o-*
Total, United States. ...
2710
6615
188 <;
Id.2
TABLE 26.
PER CENT DISTRIBUTION OF MALE BREADWINNERS 21 YEARS OF
AGE AND OVER, BY NATIVITY AND CLASS OF OCCUPATIONS,
Nativ<
; white
T
Native
parents
Foreign
parents
white
Industrial wage-earners
27.6
4O.8
52.8
Business 3 and professional pursuits, com-
mercial and clerical employment
57 7
4.-I.Q
^5.5
All others
14. 7
1C. 7
II. 7
The majority of Americans of native parentage, in 1900,
were engaged in farming, in business, in the professions,
and in all sorts of commercial and clerical pursuits. The
majority of the immigrants, on the other hand, were indus-
trial wage-earners. 4
The question is, was t-his adjustment of native and
foreign elements on the scale of occupations attended by
actual " racial displacement"? Comparing the numbers
1 XII. Census, vol. vii., pp, clxxii-clxxiii. XIII. Census, Manu-
factures, vol. viii., p. 542.
3 Isaac A. Hourwich, "The Social-Economic Classes of the Population
of the United States." The Journal of Political Economy, April, 191 1 , p.
227. 3 Including farming.
4 Speaking of the immigrants in a "representative" coal-mining
community (Shenandoah, Pa.), the Immigration Commission states
152 Immigration and Labor
of persons engaged in each occupation at the censuses of
1900 and 1890, we find a decrease of native breadwinners
in the following occupations :
TABLE 27.
OCCUPATIONS IN WHICH THE NUMBER OF NATIVE-BORN DECREASED,
1 890- 1 900. l
Native-born of native parentage. Decrease
Male: (Thousands)
Carpenters and Joiners 25
Boot- and shoe-makers and repairers 12
Woodworkers, including cabinet makers and coopers . . 7
Masons 6
Boatmen, canalmen, pilots, and sailors 3
Dairymen 2
Brick and tile makers I
Tailors I
All others 19
Total 76
Female:
Seamstresses 9
Tailoresses I
Textile mill operatives 2
Dairywomen I
Total 13
Both sexes 89
Native-born of foreign parentage.
Male:
Brick and tile makers I
Dairymen I
All others I.
Total 3
Female:
Cotton mill operatives I
Tailoresses i_
Total 2_
Both sexes 5^
GRAND TOTAL 94
that they "have done practically nothing in the way of initiating new
industries. ... A few small candy and cigar factories and blacksmith
shops have been established by foreigners, but these are insignificant in
number and size." (Reports, vol. 16, p-655.) All schools of political
economy agree that "initiating new industries" is the function of
capital. But the majority of the foreigners are wage-earners.
1 See Appendix, Table X.
Racial Stratification
153
In all, from 1890 to 1900, 94,000 native breadwinners
dropped out of the occupations enumerated in the preceding
table. If we were to assume that this figure represents
actual displacement (which it does not, as will presently be
shown), it would amount to only 2.5 per cent of the total
immigration for the decade 1890-1900. At the same time
the increase of native white of native parentage in all occu-
pations, exclusive of farming, exceeded two and a half
millions. It means that there were twenty-five other
opportunities for every position given up by the native
breadwinners of the above enumerated classes.
The figure 94,000 must not be mistaken, however, for
the number of individuals discharged from their former
positions. In the first place, an allowance must be made for
decrease by death. Taking those occupations which are
specified in the statistics of mortality at the XII. Census, we
obtain the following comparative ratios:
TABLE 28.
DECREASE FROM ALL CAUSES, COMPARED WITH LOSS BY DEATH AMONG
NATIVE WHITE MALES OF NATIVE PARENTAGE, IN SELECTED
OCCUPATIONS, I890-I900. x
Occupations
Number
engaged
(Thousands)
Per cent of total for each occupation
1890
1900
Decrease
Loss
by
death
Net accessions ( +)
or
defections(-)
Masons
65
37
354
15
71
59
34
329
14
59
- 9-2
- 8.1
- 7-1
- 6.7
16.9
-19.9
-18.8
-17-2
-II. 8
- 9-4
+ 10.7
+ 10.7
4-10. 1
+ 5-1
- 7-5
Boatmen, canalmen,
pilots, and sailors.
Carpenters and
joiners .
Tailors
Boot- and shoe-
makers and re-
pairers
1 XII. Census, Vital Statistics, vol. i., p. ccix. Occupations at the
XII. Census, Table 2. Compendium of the XI. Census, Part III: Popu-
lation, Table 78.
154 Immigration and Labor
The decrease of the number of native white males of
native parentage in all but the last occupation included in
the preceding table is accordingly accounted for by the
fact that the new accessions from that class were insufficient
to fill the places of those who died.
On the other hand, an actual decrease of the number of
American workmen of native stock was found among shoe-
makers and repairers. On closer scrutiny, however, it
appears that this decrease was merely a part of a general
decline of the trade, which manifested itself in a decrease of
the number of foreign-born shoemakers as well. Among
other occupations of the same class were brick and tile
makers, whose total number was reduced by 10,000, and
dairymen whose number was reduced by 8000; more than
one half of those reductions affected foreign-born workers
(7000 in the former and 4000 in the latter occupation).
The same is true of the other occupations specified in Table
27. As far as can be judged from census figures, there was
consequently no "displacement" of native by foreign
workmen.
Coming to female wage-earners, we find that while there
was a decrease of 13,000 American women of native stock
and of 2000 native of immigrant parentage employed as
seamstresses, tailoresses, textile mill operatives, and dairy-
women, the number of servants and waitresses showed a
decrease of 41,000 foreign-born, contemporaneous with an
increase of 16,000 white American girls of native stock
and 47,000 native daughters of immigrants. It may be in-
ferred from these figures that the women of the "new im-
migration " showed a tendency to prefer factory work to
domestic service, while the tendency among native American
girls was in the opposite direction. x
1 Most of the female factory workers_being young, the decrease by
mortality may be disregarded. On the other hand, however, "women
enter industry only temporarily. The census shows that the great
majority of them who are at work are between 16 and 30 years of age
that is, they are in industry until they get married. " (Nearing : Wages
Racial Stratification 155
On the whole, the number of native women of native
parentage in gainful occupations increased by more than
half a million, as against a possible displacement of 13,000;
in other words, for every native woman of native paren-
tage who left the mill or clothing factory there were forty
women of the same nativity who found new openings.
The increase of the number of professional women of
that class was 63,000, i. e., nearly five times as great as
the decrease of the number of native American factory
girls. The loss of the 2000 positions by native women of
foreign parentage was compensated by an increase, of
348,000 in the number of the same nativity employed in all
J orfsro fenoifiboB
occupations. .p ;
It is evident from these figures that the "displacement,"
if there was any, was negligible, and. moreover that it did
not manifest itself in those occupations which are believed
to be affected by immigration. The three occupations
mostly spoken of in connectioii witn / ^racial dfeplace-
, , , . , , . Sum 2l9"iodl fUoq-fmi'/ioT io
ment viz., laborers, miners, and iron and steel work-
1 t_ 't ' i; ' J .'. ' '' i r '2-
ers, show increasing numbefs^pja^e ^or^en of nafovj
paren age. iO^oab Ijrm;tri oifl io'l cm OvLwn
Unskilled laborers appear in census statistics under, TWO
designations : ' ' agricultural ^laborers, "^nd" laborers , not
specified." At the census of .1890, many farm laborers in
agricultural districts were reported sirnplv^a^^^lgQqr^ijs^^
while at the census of 1900 tjbje djs^c|ip r n^between these two
classes was more strictly drawn. In consequence, the in-
crease of the number of non-agricultural laborers, appearing
from the census returns for f i^p^ J; is below ^e.aptfjai^figui^.
The increase of the number .of non-agricultural laborers iden-
tified as such and d^^f^y&f^ ^4l!o^
Table 29 next below :
.qq ,s olduT ,iuim
-- .8? jIJoT iKC -'-I .aft oUflT . JI
*. the United States,
number of women of every nativity engaged in a given occupation would
accordingly be greatly reduced by marriage, unless there were Others of
the same class to fill their'places. " ^ < y or? . qq ^, , .^r
156 Immigration and Labor
TABLE 29.
INCREASE OF THE NUMBER OF LABORERS IN THE UNITED STATES,
CLASSIFIED BY RACE AND NATIVITY, 1890-1900. *
. Race and Nativity (Thousands).
Native white 458
Native father 333
Foreign father 125
Foreign-born 41
Colored 158
Total... 657
It appears from Table 29 that only 6 per cent of the
additional demand for unskilled labor was supplied by
immigrants. Since the percentage of foreign-born among
agricultural laborers is much smaller than among other
unskilled laborers, 2 the underestimate of the numerical
increase of the foreign-born in the latter class is smaller
than for the occupation in general ; the percentage of increase
of foreign-born laborers must accordingly be rather over-
estimated than underestimated. In other words, immigra-
tion during the decade 1890-1900 was barely sufficient to
make up for the natural decrease of unskilled laborers by
death.
Yet the totals for the country at large might conceal
local displacements of considerable magnitude. Turning
to the State figures for 1890 and 1900 we find a decrease of
the number of native white laborers of native parentage
in the following States: Colorado, 1000 men; Delaware,
100 men; Utah, 100 men; and Rhode Island, 300 men. 3
But in the first three States the number of foreign-born
laborers likewise decreased. The total "displacement" of
native white laborers of native parentage by immigrants
1 Occupations at the XII. Census, Table 2, pp. 10 and 1 1. XI. Census,
Population, Part II., Table 82, p. 354; Table 78, p. 304.
a The ratio of foreign-born in 1900 was_5.8 per cent among agricul-
tural laborers and 27.1 per cent among "laborers not specified."
Occupations at the XII. Census, Table 2, pp. 10 and II.
* Ibid., Table 41, pp. 220-423. XI. Census, Population, Part II.,
Table 116, pp. 530-627.
Racial Stratification 157
was thus represented by a decrease of 300 men in the Sta,te
of Rhode Island, or by thirty men annually. It is within
the range of possibility that those thirty men may have
crossed the State line to Massachusetts or Connecticut,
the first of which, shows an increase of 2100 and the second
an increase of 1400 native white laborers of native parent-
age. No decrease of the number of common laborers
among the native white of native parentage appears in any
of the great States which serve as centres of attraction for
immigration. The native white of foreign parentage show
an increase during the same period in every State and
territory.
What has been said of laborers is equally applic-
able to miners, as can be seen from Table 30, two
thirds of the increased demand for miners having been
supplied by native-born workmen and only one third by
immigrants.
^TABLE 30.
INCREASE OF TEE NUMBER OF MINERS IN THE UNITED STATES,
CLASSIFIED BY NATIVITY (THOUSANDS), 1890-1900. x
Native white 108
Native parents 73
Foreign parents 35
Colored 13
Foreign-born 61
Total 182
Comparing the number of miners by States in 1890 and
1900, we find a decrease in the employment of native white
miners only in the following States 2 :
XL Census, Population, Part II., p. 304. Table 78, and pp. 354 and
355, Table 82. Occupations at the XII. Census, Table 2, pp. 12 and 13.
XI. Census, Population, Part II., Table 116, pp. 540, 564. 5^2, 54.
594, 608, and 616. Occupations at the XII. Census, Table 41, pp. 242,
294, 332, 334. 358. 386 and 400.
158 Immigration and Labor
TABLE 31.
DECREASE OF THE NUMBER OF NATIVE WHITE MINERS,
BY STATES.
Maine 200
New Hampshire 100
Vermont 200
Connecticut 200
North and South Dakota. 100
Nevada 500
Total 1300
The total loss of 1300 positions by native miners would
have been amply compensated by the employment of 70,000
American miners of native stock in excess of the number
employed at the preceding census. In fact, however, not
all of this decrease represents "racial displacement." In
Connecticut, Maine, and Nevada, it was due to a general
decline of the mining and quarrying industry, which affected
all employees, native as well as foreign-born. The actual
"displacement" was confined to 400 men in New Hampshire,
Vermont, and the Dakotas, without any allowance for
decrease by death. Non^oJ^tl^se States was affected oy
the ' ' new immigration, ' ' Such States as Pennsylvania and
Illinois, on the other hand, showed large increases in the
number of native miners, both of foreign arid bt native
parentage. ^noi^q ovituVl
The Statistics of iron and steel workers ci^ssMe^y race
and nativity appear in Table 32. The fundamMtal fact
brought out by the table is the differerice K iri ri tfie ) 'rate of
industrial expansion between the two last decades of the
past century; while in 1880-1890 the increase in the number
oljsm&fo^
period 1890-1900 the demand for labor doubled. The
effect of this difference' is s'deri iri'ffie'faH'tha't dnriiig'the
first period, when tfte. jnumber of immigrants from Southern
DIIS -wLf. .ny T>n.LL,8T oicffiT ,|.Of .q-JI.-tV' * .woiUuM^oH..^^!** 1 ^. AY i
and Eastern Europe was negligible^ only 12,000 additional
American workmen found employment in thearon and steel
industry, or one man to every six who had been employed
in 1880; during the period 1890-1900, on -the: other hand,
Racial Stratification 159
when immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe began
to come in, the number of native employees of every nativity
more than doubled. For every one additional American
workman engaged in 1880-1890, eight new American work-
men were added to the labor forces in 1890-1900, and there
was still room for immigrants.
TABLE 32.
NUMBER OF IRON AND STEEL WORKERS IN THE UNITED STATES, BY
RACE AND NATIVITY (THOUSANDS), l88o, 1890, AND
lucres
se
Race and Natirity
1880
1890
1900
1880-1890
1890-1900
Native-born, total
7-7
8^
184
12
White, total
n
70
172
yy
Q1
Native parents . . .
(*>
4.C
Q4,
12
yo
AQ
W
-14.
78
Vy
AA.
Colored
(*)
6
12
6
Foreign-born, total
4.2
c8
lO'l
1*6
AC
Eastern and Southern
Europe .
24.
21
All other countries
42
55
79
13
24
Grand total
lie
14.1
287
28
Id.4.
(*) Not reported.
As stated above, an increase of the total number of native
workmen in the United States does not preclude the possi-
bility of local displacements of native workmen by immi-
grants. As an actual fact, however, no evidence of such
displacements can be discovered by a comparison of the
distribution of iron and steel workers by States in 1890 and
1900. In two States only the census returns for 1900
showed a decrease of native white iron and steel workers
since 1890, viz., in Montana 100 men, and Nebraska 300
men; total, 400 men. Neither of these States holds an
important place in the iron and steel industry. Both
1 Compiled from the Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 8,
pp. 21-22, Tables 14 and 15, and vol. I, pp. 784, 785, Table 4.
i6o
Immigration and Labor
States show a general decline of the number of iron and
steel workers from 1890 to 1900, viz., Montana from 600 to
300 and Nebraska from 1000 to 500. This decline affected
foreign-born as well as native workers. Alabama alone
shows a displacement of the majority of colored iron and
steel workers (1300 out of a total of 1700) by immigrants.
But while the aggregate decrease of the number of native
white and colored workers through racial displacement and
other causes did not exceed 1700 men in three States, the
total increase of the number of native-born iron and steel
workers in the United States was as high as 99,000, dis-
tributed over all important iron- and steel-producing
States. 1
We may go one step further, following the lead of the
Immigration Commission into four of the principal centers
of the iron and steel industry, but we shall look in vain for
evidence of "racial displacement." The results of the
comparison are presented in Table 33.
TABLE 33.
INCREASE OF THE NUMBER OF IRON AND STEEL WORKERS IN THE PRIN-
CIPAL CITIES OF THE MIDDLE WEST BY RACE AND NATIVITY,
City
Native-born
Foreign
white
Grand
total
White
Colored
Total
Native
parents
Foreign
parents
Chicago, Illinois. . .
Milwaukee, Wis-
404
110
222
83
1522
1002
1031
152
3707
21
I
39
I
1947
III3
1292
236
1166
1324
2377
249
6113
2437
3669
485
Cleveland,Ohio...
Toledo, Ohio
Total for the 4
cities
SlQ
62
4588
8116
12,704
1 XII. Census, Occupations, Table 41, pp. 220-423; XI. Census,
Population, Part II., pp. 530-627.
a Computed from Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 9,
p. 9, Tables 559 and 560.
Racial Stratification 161
In every one of the four cities chosen for comparison by
the Commission we find an actual increase in the number of
native workers of native and foreign parentage, white and
colored. Of course, this fact does not mean that every
individual worker of old American stock who had been
employed in the iron and steel mills of Chicago or Cleveland
in 1 890 was holding his old place in 1900. Some surely have
left the mills and gone to other occupations, while their
particular places may have been filled by immigrants,
which gives occasion to old-timers to speak in a reminiscent
mood of "racial displacement." But the scientific inves-
tigator must look beyond individual life stories to the
movements of population as reflected in great numbers.
The effect of immigration upon the distribution of the
native- and foreign-born labor forces is shown in Table 34
next following, compiled from material collected by the
Immigration Commission.
" In this table skilled laborers are arbitrarily considered
to be those who are receiving more than $1.45 per day
(i4j/ cents per hour), and unskilled laborers those receiv-
ing $1.45 or less per day. The classification is made upon
the basis of the wage-scale of the steel company, which
provides for a maximum payment of $1.45 for a day of ten
hours to unskilled or common laborers."
The effect of immigration upon the distribution of the
labor forces in the iron and steel industry is apparent from
the following table; all but one tenth of the native and
Northern and Western European workmen have been
shifted to skilled occupations, while nine tenths of all
unskilled positions have been filled by new immigrants
from Southern and Eastern Europe. "The change is
sometimes described as a forcing out of the American and
Americanized foreign employees. That is hardly accurate,
however," says the Immigration Commission, "for the
162
Immigration and Labor
TABLE 34.
NUMBER AND PER CENT OF SKILLED AND UNSKILLED LABORERS IN ONE
IRON AND STEEL CONCERN, 1907. r
Nationality
Number
Per cent of total for
each national group
Total
Skilled
Unskilled
Skilled
Unskilled
Native white:
Foreign- born:
From Northern
and Western
Europe
5257
27
31
4
$
841
38
731
2434
1371
1391
964
3471
6929
4678
27
30
55
1530
395
346
743
9 l
280
126
84
5
3126
598
579
i
4
157
45
63 3 5
2154
1245
1307
959
345
6331
89.0
1 00.0
96.8
93-2
90.7
89.8
89.6
88.3
18.4
i3-i
II-5
9.2
6.0
5
90.1
8.6
II.O
o.o
i:I
9-3
IO.2
IO.4
II.7
81.6
86.9
88.5
90.8
94.0
95-5
9-9
91.4
Scotch. . .
Swedish
Welsh
English
Irish
From Southern
and Eastern
Europe:
Bohemian. . . .
Magyar
Slovak
Polish
Croatian
Italian.
Recapitulation:
From Northern
and Western
Europe
From Southern
and Eastern
Europe
Total white...
15,657
8402
7253
53-8
46.2
1 Compiled from the Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 8,
p. 350, Table 252.
Racial Stratification 163
immigrant does not appear to underbid the American, or at
the present time to be even competing with him in any
serious way for the better-paid positions. " x In reality, the
"racial displacement" has manifested itself in that
a part of the earlier employees who remained in the industries in which
they were employed before the advent of the Southern and Eastern
European, have been able, because of the demand growing out of the
general industrial expansion, to rise to more skilled and responsible
executive and technical positions which required employees of training
and experience . . .
The same tendency asserts itself in the distribution of employees
according to race in bituminous coal mines, where all occupations of a
higher grade are filled by native Americans or older immigrants and
their children, while the Southern and Eastern Europeans are confined
to pick mining and unskilled and common labor. The same situation
exists in other branches of manufacturing enterprise. 3
This racial distribution of the operating forces has
developed a deep social tendency which constitutes the
main distinction between American and European labor
conditions. It is pretty generally accepted by European
economists, nowadays, that concentration of industry has
reduced the ratio of proprietors to wage-earners and thereby
diminished the probability of a wage-earner working his
way up to the status of a proprietor; at the same time the
introduction of machinery has reduced the relative number
of skilled mechanics to a minority of the operating force,
leaving to the mass of unskilled laborers few opportunities
for advancement on the scale of occupations. As a result,
the average European laborer has come to regard his place
in the industrial system as fixed. Such has not been the
attitude of the American wage-earner. Though the intro-
duction of machinery has had the tendency in the United
States, as in Europe, to reduce the relative number of
skilled mechanics, yet the rapid pace of industrial expansion
has increased the number of skilled and supervisory positions
r Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 8, p. 583.
3 Jenks and Lauck, loc. cit., pp. 195, 196.
164 Immigration and Labor
so fast that all but "the thriftless, unprogressive elements
of the original operating forces " * have had the opportunity
to advance on the scale of occupations. The few examples
of "captains of industry" who have risen from the ranks of
labor will inspire only the most optimistic. But the
presence of great numbers of commonplace American work-
men who started at the bottom and have advanced to better
paid positions in the mills has kept up in the average
American wage-earner the ambition to rise individually.
A good illustration of these tendencies is furnished by the
statistics of the iron and steel industry. Of the 15,657 white
iron and steel workers employed in all plants of Industrial
Concern No. I in 1907, about one half were American and
Americanized skilled men. (See Table 34 above.) Looking
back to the time before the advent of the immigrants from
Southern and Eastern Europe, we shall find that the oppor-
tunity for all of the original operating forces to advance to
skilled positions was conditioned upon the concern doubling
its force within the period of working efficiency of one
generation. It has been shown that the total number
employed in the iron and steel industry of the United States
doubled from 1890 to 1900. It is easy to calculate what
the opportunities of the "English-speaking" 2 wage-earners
1 Jenks and Lauck, loc. tit., p. 194.
3 The Immigration Commission has adopted the race classification
popularly used in mill towns and mining camps. This classification is
thus explained by Mr. Fitch: "By the Eastern European immigration
the labor force has been cleft horizontally into two great divisions.
The upper stratum includes what is known in mill parlance as the
'English-speaking men'; the lower contains the 'Hunkies' or 'Ginnies.'
Or, if you prefer, the former are the 'white men,' the latter the 'for-
eigners.' An 'English-speaking' man may be neither native Ameri-
can, nor English, nor Irish. He may be one of these, or he may be
German, Scandinavian, or Dutch. It is sufficient if the land of his
birth be somewhere west of the Russian^ Empire or north of Austria-
Hungary. A 'Hunky' is not necessarily a Hungarian. He may
belong to any of the Slavic races. 'Ginny' seems to include all the
' Hunkies ' with the Italians thrown in." The Pittsburgh Survey: The
Steel Workers, pp. 147-148.
Racial Stratification 165
would have been, had the rate of expansion during that
decade been as slow as in 1880-1890. Of the total number
employed by Concern No. I, 8728 were Americans or older
immigrants; the others belonged to the new immigrant
races. Had the concern progressed at the 1880-1890 rate,
the force would have been increased by one fourth, approxi-
mately to 11,000. Only one half of this number, i. e.,
5500, could have been given skilled employment, while the
other 2304 of the 7804 English-speaking workmen who
were so employed in 1907 would have had to content
themselves with unskilled work. In other words, a slower
expansion of the industry recommended by the Immigration
Commission 1 would have deprived more than thirty per
cent of the "English-speaking" workmen of opportunities
for advancement. Their standard of living would neces-
sarily have remained that of unskilled laborers. It is only
because the new immigration has furnished the class of
unskilled laborers that the native workmen and older
immigrants have been raised to the plane of an aristocracy
of labor. This evolution must not be lost sight of in the
discussion of "racial displacement."
That the statistics of iron and steel workers show an
increase of 49,000 native-born of native parentage from
1890 to 1900, does not mean that the same individuals were
employed in 1900 as ten years before. Some surely have
advanced on the scale of occupations and others succeeded
them in the mills, still the figures do not disclose the change
of individuals. But when English-speaking workers of
foreign birth are classified separately, the shifting of a
number of Englishmen, Welshmen, and Irishmen to other,
more remunerative pursuits, will manifest itself in a corre-
sponding reduction of their numbers employed in the iron
and steel industry, unless there have been new immigrants
of the same nationalities to take their places. This may be
observed in many industries. It has been shown that
actual displacement of native- by foreign-born wage-earners
1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. I, p. 45.
166
Immigration and Labor
is exceptional and negligible. But there has been a decrea &
of the number of English, Welsh, and Irish workers in certain
occupations, simultaneously with an increase of the number
of recent immigrants and native American workers in the
same occupations. Upon a superficial glance this coinci-
dence might be interpreted as the forcing out of Amer
icanized workers by immigrants from Southern and
Eastern Europe with a lower standard of living. Such
an interpretation would not harmonize with the fact
that new native workers of native parentage, presum-
ably with as high a standard of living as the Irish, have
entered the industry in large numbers. A comparative
study of the distribution of the foreign-born workers by
country of birth and occupation will bring out the real
tendencies of the industrial readjustment produced by
immigration.
We find in the first place, that the total number of
English, Welsh, Irish, and German male breadwinners
in the United States decreased from 1890 to 1900 as
follows:
TABLE 35.
NUMBER OF ENGLISH, WELSH, IRISH, AND GERMAN MALE BREADWINNERS
(THOUSANDS), 1890 and 1900. x
Nationality
Number
Decrease 1890-1900
1890
1900
Number
Per cent
English and Welsh. . .
Irish
487
80 5
1338
439
7M
1276
48
91
62
9-9
II-3
4.6
It must be borne in mind that the number of foreign-born
can increase only by immigration, since their children born
in this country are classified as native. Had there been no
immigration, the four nationalities named should have lost
1 See Appendix, Table XI.
Racial Stratification 167
by death from 1890 to 1900 about 20 per cent of their
numbers. 1 The actual per cent of decrease indicates
that the net immigration of the English and Welsh,
Irish, and Germans must have been equal respectively
to about 10 per cent, 9 per cent, and 15 per cent of
their numbers in 1890. In other words, there was no
" displacement" of those nationalities by the races of
the new immigration.
In the next place, the reduction in numbers affected only
certain occupations, while others showed an increase.
Among the English and Welsh, the latter class comprised
the following occupations: manufacturers, with an increase
of 5000; agents and salesmen, with an increase of 3900;
and professional men, with an increase of 2500. All other
occupations showed a decrease; the greatest numerical
decrease was found among the farmers, viz. 14,500 men,
or 20 per cent, which was somewhat in excess of the
death roll for the ten-year period. 2 Apparently, no
new farmers came from England and Wales to fill the
places of their countrymen who were carried off by death.
This fact, obviously, had nothing to do with the "new
immigration," since the "undesirable aliens from South-
ern and Eastern Europe" kept away from the farming
sections and left the field open for English and Welsh
immigrants.
The tendency characterizing the readjustment which
took place in the occupational field is brought out in the
following comparative statement of selected occupations
which exhibited a marked divergence, one way or the other,
between the percentage of decrease of the number employed
and the occupational death-rate :
1 The annual death-rate among the foreign-born, according to the
census of 1900, varied from 19 to 20.6 per 1000. XII. Census, Vital
Statistics, Part I., p. xc.
a The annual death-rate for farmers and farm laborers according to
the XII. Census was 17.6 per 1000. XII. Census, Vital Statistics, Part
I., p. 209.
168
Immigration and Labor
TABLE 36.
SHIFTING OF ENGLISH AND WELSH MALE BREADWINNERS IN SELECTED
OCCUPATIONS, 1 890-1900.
Selected occupations.
Per cent ratio to total engaged in each
occupation.
Aggregate
decrease
Loss by
death
Net accretion (+)
ordefection( )
Bookkeepers, accountants, and
-0.6
-8.3
-2.8
-17.6
20.8
-39.5
-13.6
16.4
io.5 a
-8.8
-9.6
-H.8
+ 13.0
+8.1
+77
-8.8
II.2
-277
Retail merchants
Machinists and blacksmiths
Textile mill operatives
Miners and quarrymen
Tailors
The preceding table indicates that while the English
and Welsh were leaving the mines, the textile mills,
and the tailor shops, their numbers were increasing in
some of the better paid skilled trades and in mercantile
pursuits.
The tendency among the Irish was substantially the same
as among the English and Welsh. There were 5000 more
manufacturers in 1900 than in 1890; 4700 more agents and
salesmen, and 500 more professional men. All other speci-
fied occupations showed a decrease. The greatest decrease,
both numerical and relative, appeared among farmers, viz.,
26,000, or 28 per cent, which was much in excess of the
loss by death. It is evident not only that the soil had no
attraction for the recent Irish immigrants, but that it could
not hold the older Irish farmers who must have given up
farming for other pursuits. The direction in which the
Irish shifted within non-agricultural pursuits is indicated
in Table 37 next below:
1 See Appendix, Table XI.
'The death-rate for 1900 among machinists was 10.5 and among
blacksmiths 18.3 per 1000. (Vital Statistics, loc. tit.) In order to
make the estimates in this table more conservative, the lower rate has
been selected.
Racial Stratification
169
TABLE 37.
SHIFTING OF IRISH MALE BREADWINNERS IN SELBCTBD~OCCUPATIONS,
1890-1900.*
Selected occupations
Per cent ratio to total engaged in each
occupation
Aggregate
decrease
Loss by
death
Net accretion ( -f )
or defection( )
Bookkeepers, accountants, and
clerks
0.0
-2.3
-10.3
-I4-5
18.0
-25.5
-34-5
-13.6
-lo.s 1
17.0'
10.8
-9.6
-8.8
-II.8
+ I3-6
+8.2
4-6.7
= 3 4
-157
-22.7
Machinists and blacksmiths . .
Building trades
Steam railroad employees
Miners and quanymen
Textile mill operatives
Tailors
Simultaneously with the movement of the Irish from the
mines, the textile mills, the tailor shops and, presumably,
from the lower grades of the railroad service, their number
increased in the skilled trades and in clerical pursuits.
The occupational changes among the Germans display
the same tendencies as have been traced among the English-
speaking races, with some variation of detail. The census
returns for 1900 record an increase since 1890 in the follow-
ing occupations : manufacturers, 7000 ; agents and salesmen,
1 1 ,000; professional men, 2000 ; machinists and blacksmiths,
3000. City laborers, farm laborers, and all other specified
occupations show a numerical decrease. In some of the
latter, however, the loss by death was partly offset by
accretions from the same nationality, while in others actual
defections added to the natural decrease by death. The
comparative statistics for both classes of occupations are
presented in the following table:
1 See footnotes to Table 36.
2 The death-rate for masons in 1900 was 19.9 per 1000; for carpenters
and joiners 17.2; for plasterers and whitewashes 17.0. (Vital Statis-
tics, loc. cit.)
170
Immigration and Labor
TABLE 38.
SHIFTING OF GERMAN MALE BREADWINNERS IN SELECTED OCCUPATIONS
1 890-1 900. x
Selected occupations
Per cent ratio to total engaged in each
occupation
Aggregate
decrease
Loss by
death
Net accretion(+)
or defection ( - )
Farmers
-6.7
~4-5
-12.5
i.o
22.O
-22.6
-17.6
16.4
-17.0
-9.6
n.o
- 8.8
+ 10.9
+ II.9
+4-5
+8.6
IO.2
-13.8
Building trades
Miners and quarrymen
Tailors
Textile mill operatives
Unlike the English, Welsh, and Irish, the Germans, during
the last decade of the nineteenth century, show accretions
among the farmers, on the one hand, and among the miners
and quarrymen, on the other. Defections from textile mills
and tailor shops are paralleled by increases among retail
merchants and in the building trades.
The ultimate effect of immigration from Southern and
Eastern Europe upon the readjustment of the various races
of foreign-born breadwinners on the scale of occupations
appears from the table on page 171.
The earlier immigrants have worked their way upward,
leaving the coarse grades of labor to later immigrants from
Southern and Eastern Europe. It will be observed that
the natives of Austria-Hungary furnish a strikingly high
proportion of mine, mill, and factory workers compared with
the Germans and Irish. The Poles and Italians furnish a
proportion of common laborers higher than the Irish and
much higher than the Germans and the British. On the
other hand, one fifth of the Germans and Swedes are farmers,
whereas the percentage of farmers among the natives of
Poland and Austria is very small, and among the Hun-
garians and Italians it is negligible. The races of the "old
1 See footnotes to Table 36.
Racial Stratification
171
immigration " likewise show higher percentages of skilled
mechanics and of persons engaged in business and the
professions.
TABLE 39.
PRINCIPAL NATIONALITIES OF MALE BREADWINNERS CLASSIFIED BY
OCCUPATION GROUPS (PER CENT ), 1900. l
Nationality
Farmers,
planters, and
overseers
Business, pro-
fessional and
clerical pur-
suits*
Skilled
trades*
Mine, mill,
and factory
workers*
Laborers
(not on farms)
a
1
o
3
1
Scotch. .
12 7
18 7
16 5
English and
Welsh...
Irish . . .
I3.I
Q d.
M.O./
177
12 I
i*Vd
13-2
Q 1
J 3-4
18.0
Q 7
7
6. 4
33-
31-6
7 Q ~
IOO
Germans
2O 7
re -i
y-o
iii
8.7
ft Q
22.3
TO 2
30.2
.je a
Swedes
2O.Q
7.7
I -I C
u.y
IO Q
12 8
35-
*d 2
IOO
Poles .
c 7
8 7
5T
21 2
2Q I
28 2
IOO
Italians . .
1.6
10 2
*
4<7
,}.<:
I/I ^
^y.i
3-7 2
<je a
IOO
Austrians ....
Hungarians. .
?:1
10.8
8.4
z
4.6
3-0
1 '+-0
31-7
40.7
&s
22.3
OO'
28.9
24.0
IOO
IOO
To throw the social gradation among the various nation-
alities more into relief, all specified occupations of the
preceding table are combined in Table 40 under two heads:
(i) higher grade, comprising skilled mechanics, business and
professional men and farmers, and (2) lower grade, compris-
ing mine, mill, and factory workers and unskilled laborers
in general. Nearly one half of all the British, German, and
Swedish immigrants are farmers, skilled mechanics, pro-
fessional and business men ; less than one fourth are em-
ployed in the coarser grades of labor. Among the races
of the old immigration the proportion is reversed.
1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. I, Table A, pp. 821-829.
'Include: Saloonkeepers and bartenders; agents; bookkeepers and
accountants; clerks and copyists; merchants and dealers (not wholesale);
salesmen; manufacturers and officials, etc.; and professional service.
3 Include: Building trades; blacksmiths; machinists; printers, litho-
-.Jraphers, and pressmen, and tobacco and cigar factory operatives.
* Include: Iron and steel workers; miners and quarrymen; saw- and
planing-mill employees; tailors; and textile mill operatives..
172
Immigration and Labor
TABLE 40.
PER CENT DISTRIBUTION OF FOREIGN-BORN MALE BREAD-WINNERS
ACCORDING TO NATIONALITY AND GRADE OF OCCUPATION, IQOO
Nationality (as determined by country of birth)
Higher-grade
Lower-grade
Scotch
47 O
TQ T
German
A"J I
17 I
English and Welsh
A A O
24. 4.
Swedes
42 I
2\ 7
Irish
IQ 8
71 T
Austrian
O w -
20. 6
CQ ^
Polish
IQ. c
C2 -I
Italian
16.5
47 7
Hungarian
I^.O
t/ /
62.1
A comparison of the Scotch with other English-speaking
immigrants throws a new light upon the subject of ''racial
displacement." Judged by occupational standards, the
Scotch stand higher than other immigrants from the British
Isles. And yet, while the English, Welsh, and Irish in the
United States decreased in number from 1890 to 1900, the
Scotch showed an increase of 10 per cent, which was
equivalent to a net immigration of about 30 per cent. In-
creased numbers in the principal occupations are the rule
among the Scotch during that decade, decreases the excep-
tion. Even common laborers show an increase. 1 But
Sec Appendix, Table XI.
In the census returns for 1890 the distinction between agricultural
laborers and other laborers in agricultural districts was not strictly
drawn. For this reason comparisons for each class taken separately
are not reliable when the differences are close. The combined number
of city laborers and farm laborers among the Scotch was 14,300 in 1890
and 14,500 in 1900. The only two occupations which show a numerical
decrease in excess of the probable loss by death are miners and textile
mill operatives. The miners showed an aggregate decrease of 2100
men, which was equivalent to 17.8 per cent, as against a death-rate of
9.6 per cent; among the textile mill operatives the corresponding per-
centages were respectively 23.4 per cent and 8.8 per cent. The number
of tailors decreased from noo to 1000, which approximately corre-
sponds to the death-rate among tailors.
Racial Stratification 173
these decreases were amply compensated by increases in
other occupations. These facts command attention. The
Scotchman's "progress toward assimilation" is not ques-
tioned. It is not claimed that his standard of living is
lower than the Irish, or the English; nor has "ready ac-
ceptance of a low wage," or "willingness to accept
indefinitely without protest certain conditions of em-
ployment," been discovered among his "general char-
acteristics." 1 The increase of the Scotch in this country,
contemporaneous with a decrease of the English and Irish,
warrants the supposition that the decline of emigration from
England and Ireland may be the effect of changed conditions
in those countries rather than in the United States. This
subject will be more fully treated in a subsequent chapter.
As the latest available figures for the whole country date
back to 1900, the question arises whether the relations
disclosed by them have not been materially modified by the
heavy immigration of the first decade of the present century.
A partial view of its effects, restricted to the first half of
that period and to one industrial State with a large foreign-
born population, can be gained from a comparison of the
results of the Massachusetts census of 1905 with those of the
United States census of 1900. According to the changes
which took place in the interval, all classes of manual labor
and clerical occupations fall into five groups:
I. Occupations in which the increased demand for labor
manifested itself in a general increase of native, as well
as foreign-born breadwinners.
II. Specified occupations in which the demand for labor
decreased, reducing both the native and the foreign-born
force.
III. Laborers, not specified.
IV. Occupations in which native workers were displaced
by immigrants.
V. Occupations in which foreign-bora workers were
displaced by native-born.
1 Jenks and Lauck, loc. cit. t pp. 195-196.
174
Immigration and Labor
Laborers have been segregated into a separate group for
the reason that an increase or decrease among them is
likely to be affected by a difference in the method of classi-
fication as much as by real economic changes. The com-
parative importance of these five groups appears from Table
41. The Massachusetts census draws no distinction
between native-born of native and of foreign parentage.
On the whole, native breadwinners show a greater increase
than foreign-born.
TABLE 41.
INCREASE (+) AND DECREASE ( ) OF THE NUMBER OF BREADWINNERS
IN MASSACHUSETTS CLASSIFIED BY SEX, NATIVITY, AND OCCUPATION
GROUPS (THOUSANDS), 1 900-1905. x
Nativity and Sex
Occupati
:>n groups
I
II
III
IV
V
Total
Both Sexes:
Native
Foreign-born
+79-9
+57-3
-I7-3
-5-8
-7.7
II. I
-2.8
+3-9
+ 1.0
-0.4
+53-1
+43-9
Total
Male:
Native
Foreign-born
+ 137-2
+48.9
+4I-5
-23.1
-12.8
-3-1
-18.8
-7.7
II. I
+ 1.1
-2.7
+3-8
+0.6
+0.5
-0.4
+97.0
+26.2
+30-7
Total
Female:
Native
+90.4
-{-31.0
-15-9
4.5
-18.8
+ 1.1
O.I
+0.1
+0.5
+56.9
+26.9
Foreign-born
+ 15-8
-2.7
+0.1
o.o
+ 13-2
Total
+46.8
7.2
+O.O
+0.5
+40.1
The increase of the native-born is greatest where the
increase of the foreign-born is greatest. On the contrary
a substantial decrease of native-born breadwinners is found
in the second group of occupations where the number of
1 Occupations at the XII. Census, Table 34, pp. 154 /., and Table 41,
pp. 300-305. Census of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 1905,
vol. ii., Occupations, Table I., pp. 9-117.
Racial Stratification
foreign-born likewise shows a large decrease. The gains of
the foreign-born at the expense of the native and vice-versa
are insignificant. The decrease of native breadwinners in
all occupations aggregated 27,800 persons, but it was offset
by a net increase of 80,900 in all other classes of manual
labor and clerical occupations, that is to say the loss of one
position was compensated by the gain of three. No account
is taken here of the increase of native-born breadwinners in
business and professional service.
As stated above, it is uncertain whether the decrease of
the number of laborers was due to industrial changes or to
the whims of statistical classification. The details for all
other occupations showing a decrease of the number of
native breadwinners are given in Table 42.
TABLE 42.
SPECIFIED OCCUPATIONS IN MASSACHUSETTS WITH A DECREASING NUM-
BER OF NATIVE BREADWINNERS, CLASSIFIED BY SEX AND NATIVITY,
1 900-1 905. *
Occupations
Decrease
(Thousands)
Occupations
Decrease
(Thou-
sands)
GROUP II
Native
Foreign-
born
GROUP IV
NATIVE
Males:
Agricultural laborers. . .
Butchers
2.5
li
2.2
I.O
3.0
12.8
1.8
I.S
1.2
4-5
.3
.1
4
I.O
.2
I.I
3-1
1.5
.9
.2
2.6
Males.
Hucksters and peddlers
Boatmen and sailors . . .
Engineers and firemen . .
Porters and helpers
Tin plate ana tinware
.6
4
3
3
.2
.2
'.6
2.7
I
2.8
Carpenters and joiners.
Gold and silver workers
Packers and shippers . .
All others 2
Barbers and hairdressers
Miners and quarrymen.
All other" 3
Total
Females:
Housekeepers and
stewardesses
Total
Females:
Agricultural laborers,
hucksters.and peddlers
Servants and waitresses
Total
Both sexes
17-3
5.7
Both sexes
1 See footnote to Table 41.
* Includes bakers, blacksmiths, brick and "tile makers, confectioners,
coopers, gunsmiths, locksmiths and bell hangers, harness and saddle
176 Immigration and Labor
As appears from the preceding table, the only possible
4 'displacement" of native- by foreign-born did not exceed
2800 breadwinners in five years, which was less than 3 per
cent of the increase of native-born in all occupations
exclusive of business and professional service. The total
number of immigrant breadwinners who gave Massachusetts
as their destination in 1901-1905 reached 220,000 persons
of both sexes. x Assuming that 2800 native hucksters and
peddlers, boatmen, and sailors, etc., were virtually dis-
placed by the immigrants, we find that the measure of
"displacement" was equal to one native for every seventy-
eight immigrants.
These results disclose no material change in the racial
make-up of the industrial forces during the first five years
of the present century; what was true in 1900 remained so as
late as 1905. The immigrants did not "crowd" the native
wage-earners, but were absorbed in those occupations where
native workers found employment in increasing numbers.
Actual "displacement" was a negligible quantity.
makers and repairers, hostlers, marble and stone cutters, masons (brick
and stone), meat and fruit canners, packers, etc., millers, shirt, collar
and cuff makers, stewards, and wheelwrights.
3 Includes brassworkers, cabinet makers, candle, soap, and tallow
makers, copper workers, engravers, paper hangers, rope and cordage
factory operatives, sail, awning, and tent makers, tobacco and cigar
operatives, and upholsterers.
1 Annual Reports of the Commissioner-General of Immigration: 1901,
p. 17, Table VIII.; 1902, p. 29, Table IX.; 1903, p. 32, Table IX.; 1904,
p. 30, Table IX.; 1905, p. 34, Table IX.
CHAPTER VIII
EMIGRATION FROM NORTHERN AND WESTERN EUROPE
A. Introductory
HTHE great influx of Italian, Slav, and Jewish immigrants
1 since 1890 coincides with a decrease of immigration
from Northern and Western Europe. This coincidence has
been generally accepted as proof that immigration from
Southern and Eastern Europe has checked the current of
"more desirable*' immigration from Northern and Western
Europe. This assertion has been clothed in the scientific
garb of "the Gresham law of immigration"; bad immigra-
tion, it is said, tends to drive out good immigration. The
cum hoc, ergo propter hoc method of reasoning has scarcely
ever appeared so undisguised as in this newly discovered
"law." No attempt has been made to inquire into the
conditions of the countries from which the "old immigra-
tion" was drawn, with a view to ascertaining, if possible,
whether there were any causes tending to check emigration
from those countries.
It has been shown in Chapter TV. that in the long run
immigration bears an almost constant relation to the popu-
lation of the United States. Inasmuch, however, as the
latter increases faster than the population of Europe,
especially that of the emigration countries, the rate of
emigration from those countries must increase much faster
than their population in order to supply the industries of
the United States with the number of immigrants they can
employ. Yet the sources of emigration are not unlimited.
178 Immigration and Labor
We may speak, metaphorically, of a Slav "invasion," but
such figures of speech merely obscure the real nature of
present-day phenomena. The Norman invaders of a thou-
sand years ago financed their expeditions by robbing the
peaceable population on their way. All they needed was
the spirit of adventure. To-day that spirit alone will not
carry their descendants across the ocean. The funds for
emigration must be raised by the emigrants themselves, or
by their relatives and friends. The volume of emigration
from a given country can, therefore, not increase beyond
a certain limit set by the size of its population. When
that point is reached, further industrial expansion in the
United States must draw upon the labor supply of other
countries.
During the ten-year period 1881-1890 the countries of
Northern and Western Europe furnished 72 per cent of
the total immigration to the United States. x This period
included the years of the maximum immigration from
Germany and the Scandinavian countries and of the great-
est immigration from the United Kingdom since the Irish
famine of the '40*8 of the past century. To maintain the
same ratio to the total immigration of the past decade,
1901-1910, the countries of Northern and Western Europe
should have furnished six and one third million immigrants,
i. e., two thirds more than in 1881-1890. In order to
replace the immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe
that were absorbed by the industrial expansion of the past
decade, immigration from Northern and Western Europe
should have risen 117 per cent above the highest water-mark
reached in 1881-1890.
During the same period the population of Ireland de-
creased 14 per cent, and the population of the other coun-
tries of Northern and Western Europe increased from
12.5 to 25.2 per cent. 2 Unless-we allow ourselves to be
1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. I, Table 6, pp. 61-63.
*The rates of increase for each of the principal countries were as
follows:
From Northern and Western Europe 179
carried away by imagination, does past experience warrant
the assumption that the volume of immigration from those
countries could have so far outrun the increase of their
population?
The total immigration from Ireland to the United States
for 1891-1900 was equal to 655,000 persons. 1 An increase
of 117 per cent would have brought up this figure to 1,400,-
ooo (in round numbers), i. e., to 31 per cent of the popula-
tion of Ireland at the census of 1901.* Such a rate of
depopulation was not reached even in the years of the Irish
famine. 3
It is needless to repeat this calculation for Great Britain
and the Scandinavian countries. It could be shown by a
simple computation that, in order to replace the "new
immigration" emigration from those countries should have
risen to the Irish level. Their recent economic develop-
ment, on the contrary, as will next be shown, has had a
decided tendency to check emigration.
Per cent
England and Wales 1881-1901 25.2
Scotland 1881-1901 19.7
Germany 1880-1900 24.6
Denmark 1881-1900 244
Norway 1875-1900 23.1
Sweden 1880-1900 12.5
(Computed from Statesman's Year Book, 1910, pp. 13, 17; and British
Statistical Abstract of the Principal and Other Foreign Countries, No. 16,
p. 8; No. 35, pp. 8, 10.)
1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. I, Table 9, pp. 89-92.
2 Statistical Abstract for the United Kingdom, Table 114, p. 361.
3 The lowest numerical and relative decrease was in 1871-1881, viz.,
237,541 persons, equivalent to 4.4 per cent. The total emigration
during the same period was 618,650. The natural increase of popula-
tion through the excess of births over deaths was accordingly 381,109
persons, i. e., 7 per cent of the population at the census of 1878.
Allowing the same rate for the natural increase of the population of
Ireland in 1901-1910, we obtain 24 per cent as the rate of decrease in
our hypothetical case, as against 19.8 per cent for the decade 1841-1851
comprising the years of the great Irish famine. (The figures are taken
from the Statistical Abstract for the United Kingdom, No. 56, p. 361,
Table 114.)
i8o
Immigration and Labor
B. Germany
In the closing years of the nineteenth century Germany
ceased to be a country of emigration, and became a country
of immigration. This transformation is seen from the fol-
lowing table:
TABLE 43.
FOREIGN-BORN POPULATION OF GERMANY, NET EMIGRATION AND NET
IMMIGRATION (THOUSANDS). 1
Foreign-born population
Year
Increase
Net emigration ( )
or
Number
net immigration ( +)
Total
Annual
average
1880
419
1885
433
H
3
980
1890
513
80
16
-331
1895
...
-449
I9OO
830
317
32
+ 94
1905
+ 52
The increase of the foreign-born population of Germany
during the years 1 900-1 907 averaged 79,000 annually. a The
annual increase of the foreign-born population of the United
States in 1870-1880 averaged 107,000, and in 1890-1900,
109,000. It can be readily seen by comparison that immi-
gration to Germany is growing to respectable proportions.
Two thirds of the foreign-born male breadwinners are
engaged in industrial pursuits. This fact alone would
furnish a sufficient explanation of the decline of German
immigration to the United States; when there is a call for
large masses of immigrant labor, native wage-earners will
find a good market at home. 3
It is worthy of note, on the other hand, that Germany
1 Die Statisiik in Deutschland nach ihrem heutigen Stand, I Band
(1911), Dr. Herrmann Losch, " Wanderungsstatistik," p. 485. Dr.
Friedrich Zahn, " Deutschlands wirtschaftliche Entwickelung," Annalen
des Deutschen Reichs, 1910, p. 405.
Ibid. See Appendix, Table XII.
From Northern and Western Europe 181
draws her immigrant supply from the same sources as the
United States. During the twenty years from 1880 to
1900, three fourths of all immigrants to Germany came from
Austria-Hungary, Russia, and Italy. 1 Moreover, the Polish
or Italian immigrant to the United States comes from a
higher social layer than his countryman who goes to Ger-
many, the cost of passage from any of these countries to
Germany being purely nominal in comparison with the cost
of a transatlantic trip. It is evident that the German
wage-earner cannot avoid coming in contact with the immi-
grant from Southern and Eastern Europe by staying away
from the United States.
In addition to her permanent foreign-born population
Germany has a large floating immigrant labor supply, the
so-called "birds of passage," mostly Poles and other
Slavs from Russia and Galicia. The latest official data
relating to migration from Galicia to Germany place the
total number at 26,283 for the year 1899. The movement
has considerably grown since that time. Austrian statis-
ticians variously estimate the number for the year 1905 at
from 60,000 to 100,000. 3
The migration of working men and women from Russian
Poland to Germany for temporary employment has grown
in the following proportion:
TABLE 44*
MIGRATION OF WORKERS FROM RUSSIAN POLAND TO GERMANY FOR
TEMPORARY EMPLOYMENT, 1890-1904.*
Year Thousands
1890 17
1900 119
1901 140
1902 136
1903 142
1904 138
1 See Appendix, Table XIII.
* Munchener Volkswirtschaftliche Studicn, J. von Trzcinski, "Russisch-
Polnische und galizische Wanderarbeiter im Grossherzogtum Posen,"
p. 44.
a Reports of the Warsaw Statistical Committee. Bulletin XXII. t p. 2,
1 82 Immigration and Labor
About 95 per cent of the temporary immigrants from
Russian Poland find employment as agricultural laborers. 1
But the demand for them is the direct result of the move-
ment of Polish peasants from the rural districts of Prussian
Poland to the great industrial cities of Germany and
particularly to the coal mining districts.
In 1898 there were 57,000 foreign-speaking mine workers
in Western Germany out of a total of 198,000, i. e., 28.7
per cent, nearly all of whom were Poles from Prussian
Poland. 2 According to the latest statistics for the Ruhr
district, which produces one half of Germany's coal output,
the number of Polish miners has grown to 100,000 out of a
total of 350,000. 3 Evidently, there must have been some
other cause than reluctance to compete with Polish immi-
grants that has " operated to prevent the further coming"
of German miners to the bituminous regions of Pennsyl-
vania, 4 since they have no alternative but to work with
Polish immigrants on either side of the Atlantic.
The transformation of Germany from an emigrant-
furnishing nation to a country of immigration is the direct
result of her recent industrial expansion. Its extent can be
gauged by the comparative growth of production of coal
and pig iron in Germany and the two other leading indus-
trial countries, the United States and Great Britain, as
represented graphically in Diagrams XII s and XIII. 6 In
coal mining Germany has, in recent years, outrun Great
Warsaw, 1906. (In Russian.) General Analysis .of the Statistics of
Migration of Workers for Temporary Employment, etc. By K. G.
Vobly. * Ibid., p. 21.
3 J. Karski, Die Polnischen Wanderarbeiter, "Die Neue Zeit," 1900-
1901, pp. 722, 723.
3V. Maisky: "The Tragedy of the German Coal Miners," (in
Russian) Russkoye Bogatstvo, April, 1912, pp. 35, 47.
* Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 6, p. 427.
s Based upon the Report of the United States Geological Survey,
Production of Coal in 1909, p. 60.
6 Figures are taken from The Mineral Industry, 1893, P- 35 1; 1896,
p. 334; 1900, p. 395; 1910, p. 381.
DIAGRAM xn.
Per cent of
increase of
(lie production
of coal in
the
United States,
Germany,
and
Great Britain,
1890-1909.
5s* ^
DIAGRAM XIII.
Production of pig iron in Germany, the United States, and the
United Kingdom, 1880-1910.
183
184 Immigration and Labor
Britain. The production of pig iron in Germany increased,
within the past twenty years, much faster than in Great
Britain; the German rate of growth was not far behind the
American.
Another index of German industrial progress is furnished
by the development of her railway system and freight
traffic since 1890. Comparative statistics for Germany
and the United States are given in Table 45.
TABLE 45.
COMPARATIVE GROWTH OF RAILROAD MILEAGE AND FREIGHT TRAFFIC
IN GERMANY AND THE UNITED STATES, 1 890-1900. x
Country
Per cent IB
crease
Mileage in operation
Ton -miles of freight
41.3
n 1 ?.?
United States
46.7
18-1.4
The full import of the preceding figures can only be
realized if one bears in mind the much smaller area and the
greater density of population of Germany, compared with
the United States, both factors reducing the distance from
mine to mill and from mill to market.
The use of mechanical power in the industrial establish-
ments of Germany more than doubled within the short
space of twelve years, viz., from 3,400,000 in 1895 to
8,800,000 in 1907."
1 Computed from the following sources: Dr. Friedrich Zahn, "Deutsch-
lands wirtschaftliche Entwickelung," Annalen des Deutschen Reichs,
1911, No. 3-4, p. 189; Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1910,
P- 715.
a Zahn, he. cit. t p. 175.
, From Northern and Western Europe 185
The effect of the industrial progress of Germany upon
the labor market is shown in the comparative increase
of the number of breadwinners engaged in trade and
manufactures and of the population at large, as shown
in Table 46 next following:
TABLE 46.
PER CENT INCREASE OF THE POPULATION OF GERMANY AND OF THE
NUMBER OF BREADWINNERS IN TRADE AND MANUFACTURES,
1882-1907.'
Period
Population
Breadwinners
1882-1895
H-5
39-9
1895-1907
19.2
397
The increased demand for labor in the industrial estab-
lishments of Germany resulted in a substantial increase
of the rate of wages.
" The rate of wages has risen during the recent past . . .
more than the price of the necessities of life, showing that
the German workingman has shared in the prosperity of
the country. " a It is admitted by the German trade-unions
that the condition of labor has materially improved. 8
1 Zahn, loc. cit., p. 164.
3 Earl Dean Howard: The Cause and Extent of the Recent Industrial
Progress of Germany, p. 118.
3 Zahn, loc. cit., p. 227. If an opinion coming from official sources
is preferred, the following quotation from a recent speech by Mr. von
Berlepsch, former Prussian Minister of Commerce, will be of interest:
"Slowly and by little steps rises the well-being of the general body of the
people; and no small number of those classes of the population which
thirty years ago obtained a bare subsistence have now made their way
into a middle class and enjoy a fairly adequate income. " Howard,
loc. cit., p, 181.
1 86
Immigration and Labor
The average annual earnings upon which membership dues
to the trade-union insurance fund were figured increased
from 638 marks in 1890 to 953 marks in 1909, i. e., 50 per
cent. The upward tendency of wages is not confined to the
skilled trades, but has affected all classes of labor. Un-
biased evidence of this fact is furnished by the statistics
compiled by local authorities under the provisions of the
sick-insurance law, and showing the prevailing rates of
wages of day laborers in the large cities. x
The rate of increase of the average annual earnings of
coal miners appears from the following table:
TABLE 47.
AVERAGE ANNUAL EARNINGS IN PRUSSIAN COAL MINES,
District
Number of
wage-earners
(thousands)
1910
Annual earnings, marks
1890
1910
Per cent
of increase
Upper Silesia
116
28
335
22
40
6 7 I
735
1,067
878
730
964
974
1,382
1,375
1,089
43-6
32-5
24.8
56.6
49.1
Lower Silesia
Dortmund
Aix-la-Chapelle
Halle
At the same time there has been a marked reduction in the
number of hours of work per day. 3 Furthermore "there is
also less changing of employment and less non-employment
in Germany," than in the United States, since, "in most
cases the law requires at least a two weeks' notice before the
employee can be discharged." 4
All these improvements are in no small degree due to the
progress of organization among German wage-earners,
which became possible only after the repeal of the anti-
Socialist law on October i, 1890.^ Under the operation of
1 Howard, loc. cit., pp. 114-115. Statistical tables on the subject of
wages are given on pp. 112-113. _ a Zahn, loc. cit., p. 228.
3 Howard, loc. eit., p. 117. v. / ^f * Ibid., pp. 126-127.
From Northern and Western Europe 187
that law, only local trade-unions, without national affilia-
tions, had been tolerated, and those, only so long as they
confined themselves to mutual benefit and educational
objects; by executive order of April n, 1886, strikes of any
character were declared to be "revolutionary manifesta-
tions." The first national labor convention was held in
1892. It was not until January i, 1900, however, that all
laws restricting the right of federating independent local
unions were unequivocally repealed. 1 Since that time
the membership of labor organizations has progressed by
leaps and bounds, leaving behind the older British and
American trade-unions, as appears from the following table :
TABLE 48.
MEMBERSHIP OF TRADE-UNIONS IN GERMANY, 1 890-1900.*
Year (Thousands)
1890 . 301
National unions:
1900 932
1901 935
1902 1017
1903 1191
1904 W
1905 1727
1906 2129
1907 2330
1908 2203
1909 2212
1910 2435
Total, including unaffiliated local
unions, 1910:
Germany 2688
United States and Canada (estimated) 262 5
Great Britain and Ireland 2427
The ratio of organized workers to the total number of
wage-earners enumerated in 1907 was estimated at 28 per
cent. 3
1 Handwdrterbuch der Staatswissenschaften, vol. iv., pp. 1147-1149.
a Statistische Beilage des Correspondenz-Blatt der General-Commission
der Gewerkschaften Deutschlands , 1911, No. 6, pp. 161-163; New York
Labor Bulletin, No. 48 (September, 1911), P- 4*8. The membership
for the United States and Canada seems overestimated.
a Handwdrterbuch der Staatswissenschaften, vol. iv., p. 1175.
188
Immigration and Labor
A noteworthy development of the German labor move-
ment is the progress of organization among female wage-
earners, who are, as a rule, unorganized in this country.
The efforts of German unions among the women were
stimulated, above all altruistic considerations, by recogni-
tion of the depressing effect of the competition of unorgan-
ized female labor upon the wages of men. The extent to
which the women have responded to the efforts of the
unions can be measured by the following figures:
TABLE 49. ]
PROGRESS OF ORGANIZATION AMONG FEMALE WAGE- EARNERS, IN
GERMANY, 1895-1910.*
Year
Number of organized women
(thousands)
Per cent of total union
membership
1895
7
2.7
1000
23
3-3
1905
74
5-7
1906
119
7-1
1007
137
7.3
1908
138
7.6
1009
134
7-3
1910
162
8.0
The assistance rendered by German unions to their
members can be measured by the expenditures of the Social-
democratic Gewerkschaften, i. e., the national unions affili-
ated with the largest and most influential of the German
federations of labor. The figures are given in Table 50.
The progress of the labor movement in Germany has
directly and indirectly stimulated labor legislation, which
has resulted in a material improvement of the condition
of labor:
As a rule [says Dr. Howard], the factories are kept in a much better
condition, and have more arrangements for the comfort of the men,
1 Statistische Beilage des Correspondenz-Blatt der General-Commission
der Gewerkschaften Deutschlands, 1911, No. 6, pp. 163, 168.'
From Northern and Western Europe 189
than in the United States. This is the general opinion of writers who
compare the conditions prevailing in the two countries, and it seems
to be confirmed by direct observation. The factories usually have
good light and air, are clean and orderly. The sanitary arrangements
and the facilities for washing and changing clothes are splendid. Most
of the factories are provided with lockers for the men, so that they
need not leave the place in their working clothes. 1
i TABLE 50.
COMPARATIVE SUMMARY OF THE PRINCIPAL EXPENSES OF THE NATIONAL
ORGANIZATIONS AFFILIATED WITH THE " GENERAL COMMISSION
OF THE TRADE-UNIONS OF GERMANY," 1895-1910. a
Object
Millions of marks
1895
I90O
1910
Strikes ...
0-3
O.2
0-5
2.7
0.5
I.O
20.4
6.1
11.2
Sick and death benefits and sundry
benevolent expenses
Germany was the first nation to introduce a system of
workingmen's insurance under the control of the govern-
ment. "The introduction of insurance laws protecting the
workingman against sickness and accidents, and promising
him a pension in his old age, has had a tendency to decrease
the chances of misfortune in life. " 3
In 1909 there were insured under the provisions of that
law over 13,000,000 persons against sickness, over 15,000,000
against old age and invalidity, and nearly 24,000,000
persons against accident, in a total population of 64,000,000
of whom there were less than 19,000,000 wage-earners. 4
The expansion of industry and the resulting improvement
of the condition of industrial wage-earners have drawn to
the cities and mining sections the whole natural increase
of the rural population. 5
1 Howard, loc. cit., pp. 127-128.
3 Ibid., p. 189. 3 Ibid., pp. 124, 131.
<Zahn, loc. cit., Annalen des Deutschen Reichs, 1911, p. 232.
s At the foundation of the German Empire in 1871, its rural popula-
190
Immigration and Labor
At the same time, German agriculture, stimulated by
the increase of the country's population and fostered by
a protective tariff, also showed substantial progress, as
can be seen from Table 51 below. As a result, there is a
scarcity of agricultural laborers during the busy season,
which is only partially relieved by the immigration of
Polish and Russian temporary laborers. Although organi-
zation among agricultural laborers is seriously restricted
by law, yet, as an effect of economic causes alone, the wages
of agricultural laborers have continually advanced. x
TABLE 51.
AGRICULTURAL PROGRESS IN GERMANY, 1895-1909. a
Crop
Total yield
Millions of tons
Yield per hectar
tons
1895
1909
I89S
1909
Rye
7-7
I:
3 L 8
11.4
3-8
2' 5
46.7
9.1
1-3
1.6
i-7
12.4
1.6
1.9
2.1
2.1
I4.I
2.1
Wheat. . .
Spring barley
Potatoes
Oats
The combined effect of all these causes was reflected in
the rate of emigration from rural districts. Towards the
middle of the past century the growth of land values had
made the primitive methods of farming unprofitable, and
necessitated the introduction of more intensive systems of
cultivation. In Prussian Poland the change was somewhat
retarded by its general economic backwardness, but in the
'70*8 and in the early '8o's it drove large numbers of Polish
peasants to the United States. These Poles constituted a
large element of the German immigration to the United
States and were counted in our immigration statistics as
tion constituted 64 per cent in a total of 41,000,000; at the census of
1900 the total population numbered 56,000,000, but the proportion of
rural population had declined to 46 per cent. Howard, loc. cit., p. 31.
1 Howard, loc. cit., p. 68.
* Zahn, loc. cit., Annalen des Deutschen Reichs, 1910, p. 578.
From Northern and Western Europe 191
''Germans." 1 But the rapid development of German
industry within the last twenty-five years opened for these
peasants new opportunities at home. This fact, coupled
with the disappearance of cheap lands in the United States,
has resulted in a falling off in the emigration of farmers and
farm laborers to the United States.
As a general rule, industrial progress in modern times has
tended to eliminate the independent artisan, the small
trader, and the small-scale fanner and to push them into
the ranks of wage-earners. In Germany, however, this pro-
cess has been checked by the development of co-operation. 2
Its recent progress can be seen from the following table:
TABLE 52.
CO-OPERATIVE ASSOCIATIONS IN GERMANY, 1903-1908.3
Year
Number of
Associations
(thousands)
Membership
(millions)
Per cent ratio to
population
1903
21
3-1
54
1904
22
34
5-8
1905
24
3-6
6.2
1906
25
3-8
6-3
1907
26
4.0
6.7
1908
27
4-3
7.2
The general improvement of the living conditions of the
broad masses, which characterizes the recent economic de-
velopment of Germany, must necessarily have affected the
rate of emigration during the past twenty years. On the
other hand, the tide of German emigration in the early
'8o's was swelled by political oppression. Under the ' ' minor
state of siege, " proclaimed by virtue of the anti-Socialist
law of 1878, all labor unions were "put under the ban alike
with the political organizations of the Social- Democracy.
Of the 25 existing unions 1 6 were dissolved by the govern-
1 Trzcinski, loc. cit. t pp. 3 and 128.
3 Zahn: Annalen des Deutschen Reichs, 191 1, No. 3-4, p. 226.
3 Ibid., p. 227.
192
Immigration and Labor
ment, the others disbanded voluntarily." 1 The member-
ship of the organizations directly affected was estimated at
50,000. The widespread discontent created by these re-
pressive measures led many workingmen to seek liberty
in the United States. The repeal of the ' ' exceptional laws "
in 1890 removed the political stimulus to emigration.
The cumulative effect of all these causes upon emigration
from Germany can be learned from the following table.
TABLE 53.
ANNUAL AVERAGE IMMIGRATION FROM GERMANY (THOUSANDS),
1875-1910.'
Occupation
1875-1878
1879 -1890
1891-1898
1899-1910
Skilled mechanics
4.8
1C. I
6.3
II. 5
Farmers and farm
laborers . ...
5.7
12.2
A A
8.O*
Laborers
-1.4.
2O.I
8.1
7.e
.6
2.6
2.0
7.-1
All other miscellaneous .
3-3
4-3
2.2
3-9
Total
15.8
C4..-J
2-i.q
38.2
In 1879-1890, contemporaneously with the operation of
the exceptional laws of 1878, the average annual immigra-
tion from Germany to the United States rose 244 per cent
above the average level of the preceding four-year period.
On the other hand, the average for the twelve-year period
1899-1910 dropped only one third below the level of the
preceding period of equal length, 1879-1890. The immi-
gration of skilled mechanics decreased by 3600 annually,
1 Handw orterbuch der Staatswissenschaften, vol. iv., p. 1146.
9 Monthly Summary of Commerce and Finance, June, 1903, pp.
4408-4411. Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. i, p. 100.
Annual Reports of the Commissioner-General of Immigration: 1890-1900,
Table VII.; 1901-1904, Table IX.; 1905-1908, Table VIII.; 1900-1910,
Table X.
a Of this number 1 1 10 were farmers and the rest farm laborers.
From Northern and Western Europe 193
i. e. t by about one fourth. The immigration of fanners and
farm laborers dropped 4200 annually, *. e., more than one
third, from the high level reached in 1879-1890. The
decrease of the immigration of agricultural workers doubt-
less bears some relation to the decline in the demand for
agricultural labor and the increase of land values in the
United States.
In order to determine the effect, if any, of immigration
from Southern and Eastern Europe upon immigration from
Germany, the annual average immigration of unskilled
laborers must be considered. The line of demarkation
between farm laborers and "laborers not specified" was
not clearly drawn in our earlier immigration statistics.
Moreover, many agricultural laborers come to the United
States to seek industrial employment. If both classes of
laborers are merged into one, and an allowance is made
for the number of farmers combined with farm laborers
prior to 1899,* the immigration of unskilled laborers may
be estimated for 1891-1898 at 11,400 persons annually.
In 1899-1910 this average rose to 14,400. At the same
time the rate of immigration from Southern and Eastern
Europe rose from 48 per cent of the total immigration for
the first period, to 72 per cent for the last. 2 It is evident
that the competition of the Italian and Slav unskilled la-
borer did not deter the German unskilled laborer from com-
ing to the United States. On the whole, the average annual
immigration from Germany during the period 1899-1910
increased by 14,300, i. e., 60 per cent over the average for
1891-1898.
1 The average number of farmers for the period 1891-1898 was es-
timated at 1 100 annually, the same as recorded by immigration statis-
tics for 1899-1910, although the combined number of farmers and farm
laborers during the former period was only about one half of the total
for the latter. In this manner every precaution was taken against
overrating the increase of immigration of unskilled laborers during the
last period.
2 Computed from Reports of the Immigration Commission , vol. I,
Table 6, pp. 61-64.
194 Immigration and Labor
The United States has always been the chief destination
of the bulk of German emigrants. Complete data regarding
the destination of German emigrants are available only
since 1890. The figures will be found in Table 54 next
following, with the rate of immigration from Southern and
Eastern Europe to the United States in a parallel column.
The results are presented graphically in Diagram XIV.
TABLE 54.
EMIGRATION FROM GERMANY TO ALL COUNTRIES OUTSIDE TEE UNITED
STATES, 1890-1904. x
Year
Number of emigrants from
Germany to countries
outside of United
States
Immigration from Southern
and Eastern Europe to the
United States, per
cent of total
1890
7338
35-3
1891
7043
41.2
1892
1893
4533
9428
46.6
44-3
1894
5062
44.9
1895
4995
42.1
1896
4817
57-0
1897
56.8
1898
3658
62.4
1899
4518
68.0
1900
1901
2161
72.4
73-6
1902
2887
75-1
1903
2661
72.1
1904
1899
68.4
The preceding table and Diagram XIV clearly show the
absence of any connection between emigration from Ger-
many and immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe
to the United States. Emigration from Germany to other
countries was highest in 1890, 1891, and 1893, when immi-
gration from Southern and Eastern Europe to the United
States varied from 35.3 to 44.3 per cent of the total immi-
gration to the United States. Since 1893 emigration from
1 Vierteljahrshefte zur Statistik des Deutschen Reichs, 1905. Die
iiberseeische Auswanderung im Jahre 1904, Part I., p. 120, Table I.
Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. i, Table 6, p. 61.
DIAGRAM XIV.
S
XT7. Emigration from Germany to all countries outside of the United States
and per cent of Southern and Eastern European immigration to the total
immigration to the United States, 1890-1904.
19$
196
Immigration and Labor
Germany to other countries than the United States steadily
declined, while immigration from Southern and Eastern
Europe to the United States advanced from 44.3 to 75.1
per cent of the total.
It is, evidently, not because living conditions in the
United States have grown worse, but because living con-
ditions in Germany have grown better, that emigration
from Germany to all countries has fallen off.
C. The Scandinavians
Scandinavian immigration to the United States reached
its maximum during the decade 1881-1890, when it exceeded
by about two thirds the total for the preceding sixty years. x
Yet while the total number of immigrants of both sexes and
all ages in 1901-1910 fell short of the maximum reached in
1881-1890, the number of breadwinners showed a very
substantial increase, as appears from the following table:
TABLE 55.
SCANDINAVIAN IMMIGRATION TO THE UNITED STATES,
Breadwinners
Period
Total
(thousands)
Number
Per cent ratio
to total
(thousands)
Scandinavian immigration
1881-1890
1891-1900
656
372
356
2 4 I
it
I90I-I9IO
530
429
81
1 The total number admitted up to 1880 was 397,011, the total for
1881-1890 was 656,494. Computed from Reports of the Immigration
Commission, vol. I, Table 9, pp. 66-96.
a Monthly Summary of Commerce and Finance, June, 1903, pp.
4408-441 1 ; Report of the Immigration Commission, vol. I , Tables 12-13.
Annual Reports of the Commissioner-General of Immigration: 1899-1900,
Table VIII.; 1901-1904, Table IX.; I9o5"-i9o8, Table VIII. ; 1909-1910,
Table X.
All immigrants exclusive of dependents, described in immigration
statistics as "without occupation (mostly women and children)."
From Northern and Western Europe 197
As shown by the figures, the number of Scandinavians
coming to compete in the American labor market actually
increased: the total for 1901-1910 exceeded by 20 per cent
that for 1881-1890. The population of the Scandinavian
countries increased at the same time approximately 22
per cent. T Emigration kept pace with population.
The only observable change is that, whereas the earlier
Scandinavian immigration was mostly of a family type,
among the recent Scandinavian immigrants single persons
vastly predominate; in 1881-1890 there were 46 dependents
to every 54 immigrant breadwinners, in 1901-1910 only
19 to 81. In this respect the Scandinavian immigrants of
the present day are very much like the immigrants from
Southern and Eastern Europe. The cause of this change
in the matter of the family relations of the Scandinavian
immigrants is evidently not racial, but economic. The old
Scandinavian immigration came largely to settle on farms,*
where a family was a help, while the new Scandinavian
immigration, like the new immigration from Southern
and Eastern Europe, comes chiefly to seek industrial em-
ployment. A single person, without family responsibilities,
can more easily hazard the uncertainties of emigration
to a strange land; a married wage-earner will as a rule leave
his family behind, until he feels certain of his ability to
provide for them in the new country.
That Scandinavian immigration to the United States
was in no way affected by immigration from Southern and
Eastern Europe is evidenced by the change in the direction
1 Computed from Statistical Abstract of the Principal and other Foreign
Countries (British}, No. XVI., p. 8; No. XXXV., pp. 8, 10.
a At the census of 1900, 49.8 per cent of all Norwegians, 42.3 per
cent of all Danes, and 30.2 per cent of all Swedes in the United States
were reported as engaged in agricultural pursuits. It is probable that
some of those who were described by the enumerators in agricultural
districts as laborers were agricultural laborers. Both groups com
bined numbered 59.3 per cent of all Norwegians, 52.3 per cent of all
Danes, and 43 percent of all Swedes. Reports of the Immigration Com-
mission, vol. 28, Table IA, pp. 216 et seq.
198
Immigration and Labor
of the former; whereas prior to 1890 the greater part of
Scandinavian immigration was directed to the agricultural
States of the Central West and the Northwest, since 1890
the majority of the Scandinavian immigrants follow the
current of immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe.
The figures are presented in Table 56. The increase of the
number of foreign-born from Scandinavian countries and
from Southern and Eastern Europe in 1880-1910 represents
the net results of immigration from those countries, as
reduced by emigration and death. In Diagram XV a
graphic representation of the same figures is furnished,
each number being expressed in the area of the correspond-
ing semicircle or quadrant. The black quadrants rep-
resent Scandinavians, the shaded semicircles and quadrants
natives of Southern and Eastern Europe. The left side
represents the eleven Western States indicated on the map,
the right side, all other States and Territories.
TABLE 56.
INCREASE OF FOREIGN-BORN FROM THE SCANDINAVIAN COUNTRIES AND
FROM EASTERN AND SOUTHERN EUROPE, 1880-1910, BY
GEOGRAPHIC DIVISIONS (THOUSANDS). 1
Period
Scandinavians
Natives of Southern and
Eastern Europe
Eleven
Western
States
All other
States and
Territories
Eleven
Y/estern
States
All other
States and
Territories
1880-1890
251
3 ^
242
9 2
99
45
39
189
474
976
2850
1890-1900
19001910 .
If it were true that the Scandinavians stayed away from
the United States because they were reluctant to compete
with immigrants from Southern ^and Eastern Europe, we
should expect to find that the recent Scandinavian immi-
grants, like their predecessors, were headed for the West
1 See Appendix, Table XIV.
199
200 Immigration and Labor
where the field was comparatively clear, and avoided those
States which attracted the bulk of immigration from
Southern and Eastern Europe. Table 56 and Diagram XV
furnish clear proof to the contrary. From 1880 to 1890 the
net accessions to the Scandinavian population were about
evenly divided between the western agricultural States,
where immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe
was insignificant, and the rest of the United States, where
the Scandinavians were outnumbered by the races of South-
ern and Eastern Europe. (See the circle on the left ; com-
pare the two black quadrants with each other and with
the shaded quadrant and semicircle on each side.) At the
end of the next ten years, the Western States, where the
accretions from Southern and Eastern Europe had declined,
held only one third of the net gains of the Scandinavian
population, while two thirds were distributed over other
States, where they had to face ten times as many new
competitors from Southern and Eastern Europe. (See
the circle in the middle; repeat the same comparisons, as
above.) Again during the past decade most of the new
Scandinavian population sought employment in these
States, where they were overwhelmed by the enormous
tide of immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe,
and only a minority settled in the West, where there were
comparatively few newcomers from Southern and Eastern
Europe. (See the circle on the right; repeat the same
comparisons as above.)
It is evident that the Scandinavian immigrant did not
seek to avoid the competition of the Italian and the Slav.
Nor did the average Scandinavian immigrant at any time
display such superior skill as would place him above the
competition of the immigrant from Southern and Eastern
Europe. Most of the Scandinavian immigrants, like the
Slavs and the Italians, come from rural districts. 1 The
1 According to Swedish official statistics, the ratio of emigrants from
rural districts to the total emigration was 76 per cent in 1891-1900
and 77 per cent in 1901-1908. (Computed from Gustav Sundbarg's
From Northern and Western Europe 201
distribution of Scandinavian immigrants by occupation has
undergone no material change since 1881, as witnessed by
the following table:
TABLE 57.
DISTRIBUTION OF SCANDINAVIAN IMMIGRANT BREADWINNERS BY MAIN
CLASSES OF OCCUPATIONS (THOUSANDS),
Occupations
1881-1890
1891-1900
I9OI-I9ZO
46
je
OI
Agricultural workers, laborers,
70S
2O2
y*
72^
All others
c
T-i
Total
156
24.1
A2Q
While there were twice as many skilled mechanics among
the Scandinavian immigrants in 1901-1910 as in 1881-1890,
yet the bulk of them have always been laborers or farm
workers without special mechanical skill. The number of
unskilled laborers in 1901-1910 was greater than in 1881-
1890, and it was these . unskilled Scandinavian laborers
that sought employment in competition with unskilled
Slav and Italian laborers. If the increase of immigration
from the Scandinavian countries was not fast enough to
satisfy the preference of certain social theorists for the races
of Northern Europe, the explanation of this comparatively
slow growth must be sought in the economic conditions of
those countries, not in the immigration from Southern and
Eastern Europe to the United States.
Ekonomisk-Statistisk Beskrifning ofver Sveriges Olika Landsdelar, p. 20,
Table 22.) See footnotes to Table 55.
2 From a comparison of the distribution of the Scandinavian immi-
grants by occupation in our immigration statistics with the Swedish
statistics of occupations of emigrants, it appears that the distinction
between agricultural workers, laborers, and servants in our official
statistics is not reliable. (Compare American sources cited in footnote
to Table 55 and " Gustav Sundbarg, op. cit., p. 20, Table 22.)
202 Immigration and Labor
D. Norway
The merging of all Scandinavians into one racial group in
United States statistics has obscured the fact that while
the total immigration from Sweden and Denmark (includ-
ing dependents) has declined since 1881-1890, immigra-
tion from Norway reached its maximum during the decade
1901-1910, as shown in the table next below:
TABLE 58.
IMMIGRATION FROM NORWAY TO THE UNITED STATES.*
Period Number
Up to 1880 148,341
1881-1890 176,586
1891-1900 95,014
I90I-I9IO 190,505
Total 610,446
The number of Norwegian immigrants of both sexes
and all ages in 1901-1910 was double the total for the pre-
ceding ten-year period and 8 per cent above the high water-
mark reached in 1881-1890. All that can be said is that
the rate of increase of the population of Norway from 1875
to 1900 was 23.1 per cent, i. e., approximately 18 per cent
in twenty years, so that, taking the emigration of 1881-
1890 as a standard, it will be found that emigration from
Norway has not increased as fast as her population.
It will be remembered that the majority of the Scandina-
vian emigrants came from agricultural districts. One half
of the Norwegians who came to the United States before
1900 were engaged in agricultural pursuits. Since the
opportunity eventually to secure a homestead in the United
States is gone, the Norwegian agricultural laborer who is
dissatisfied with his condition must seek employment in
industry. And here the development of the Norwegian
industry offers him many an opportunity at home. The
recent industrial progress of Norway can be gauged by the
1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. I, Table 9, pp. 66-96.
From Northern and Western Europe 203
fact that from 1897 to 1908 the quantity of horsepower used
increased 146.5 per cent. The average number of wage-
earners reduced to the basis of 300 working days per year,
increased during the same period 45 per cent, while the
total population increased during the same period only 9
per cent. 1 The rapid development of home industry ab-
sorbed a portion of the agricultural surplus population
which under former conditions might have found an outlet
in emigration.
E. Denmark
The total immigration from Denmark to the United
States up to and including 1910 numbered only a quarter
of a million, distributed as follows :
TABLE 59.
IMMIGRATION FROM DENMARK TO THE UNITED STATES, l82O-I9IO. a
Period Number
Up to 1880 53,774
1881-1890 88,132
1891-1900 50,231
1901-1910 65,285
Total 257,422
While immigration was greater during the last ten-year
period than during the preceding, yet it did not reach the
high level of 1881-1890. Since nearly one half of all Danes
in the United States in 1900 were engaged in agricultural
pursuits, the decrease of Danish immigration to the United
States might have some relation to the decline in the demand
for farm help in the United States.
On the other hand, the last fifteen years of the nineteenth
century "witnessed a great improvement in the condition
of life all round of the Danish peasant farmer." 3 Among
1 Statistigue Industrielle pour Vannee ipo8, editee par V office des Assu-
rances de I'Etat, pp. 18*, 230*, Kristiania, 1911.
'Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. I, pp. 66-96, 176-204.
3 Erik Givskov, "Peasant Farming in Denmark," The Economic
Journal, vol. viii (1903), p. 646.
204 Immigration and Labor
the causes of that improvement, the most important one
is the rapid spread of co-operation in all branches of farming.
The first co-operative creamery was established in 1882.
According to a special census taken in 1906, there were
1068 such creameries whose membership embraced 82.3
per cent of all dairy farms. The co-operative creameries
controlled 93 per cent of the total milk production of the
country. The first co-operative association of exporters
of eggs was established in 1890. In 1906 there were 790
such associations with a membership of over 50,000 farmers,
who owned in the aggregate over 1,900,000 hens. There
were in 1905, thirty-two co-operative slaughter houses with
a membership of 63,000 farmers who owned one half of all
the swine of the country. x As a result, the export of agri-
cultural products from Denmark increased sixfold in twenty
years, viz., from an annual average of 49,000,000 crowns 3
in 1881-1885 to 313,000,000 crowns in 1901-1905. 3
The progress of agriculture has turned Denmark into a
country of immigration. Considerable numbers of Polish
peasants come during every agricultural season to work on
the farms in Denmark; in 1907, their number was 625 1, 4
which was equal to three fourths of the average annual
emigration of the period 1881-1890.
The manufacturing industries of the country have also
made progress. The total horsepower used in manufactures
increased 156 per cent from 1897 to 1906. The number of
wage-earners increased 15.4 per cent, while the population
increased only 3.5 per cent from 1901 to 1906, i. e., about n
per cent in nine years. 5 The industrial progress of Den-
* Danmarks Statistik. Landbrugets Andelsvirk somhed. Udgivet at
Statens Statistiske Bureau, 1906, pp. 8, 20, 24, 41, 43, 51, 67, 69.
3 1 crown = 26.8 cents.
Danemark, Precis de Statistique, 1907, pp. 14-15.
* Statistique de Danemark, Annuaire Statistique, 1908, p. 129, Table
98.
* Danemark, Precis de Statistique, 1907, p. 13. British Statistical
Abstract for the Principal and other Foreign Countries, No. XXXV., pp.
8. 10.
From Northern and Western Europe 205
mark encouraged organization among wage-earners. In
1908, 60 per cent of all industrial workers in Denmark
were organized. 1
The improvement of the condition of the Danish people
within the last twenty-five years is sufficient to account for
the decrease of emigration from that country, irrespective
of the immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe to
the United States.
F. Sweden
The emigration movement from Sweden for the past
half -century is classified by country of destination in the
following table :
TABLE 60.
ANNUAL AVERAGE EMIGRATION FROM SWEDEN BY DESTINATION,
(THOUSANDS), 1861-1908.'
Period
To non-European
countries
To European
countries
1861-1870
8. 9
34
1871-1880
IO.I
4.9
1881-1890
324
5-2
1891-1900
20.4
4.2
1901-1908
22.6
3-4
Emigration from Sweden, after reaching its highest point
in 1881-1890, began to decline. The fact to be noted is
that this declining tendency affected alike emigration
over-sea as well as to European countries. The probable
causes of the decline of each movement must be examined
separately.
A study of the sources of Swedish emigration shows that
the greater part of it came from rural districts, but the
1 Handworterbuch der Staatswissenschaften, vol. iv., p. 1210.
a Compiled from Gustav Sundbdrg's Ekonomisk-Statistisk Beskrifning
tifver Sveriges Olika Landsdelar, 1910, p. 95, Table 45.
206
Immigration and Labor
general decline of the movement did not affect the urban
and the rural districts in the same degree. The difference
appears from the following figures :
TABLE 61.
AVERAGE ANNUAL EMIGRATION FROM CITIES AND RURAL DISTRICTS OF
SWEDEN (THOUSANDS), 1 88 1-1907.*
Period
Prom rural
districts
From cities
Total
1881-1890
1891-1900
1901-1907
304
I8. 7
21.3
7.2
6.0
6.4
37-6
24.7
27.7
We find that the decline of the total emigration is due to
the decline of emigration from the rural districts. A
comparison of the last two tables further shows that the
decrease of the average rural emigration from 1881-1890
to 1901-1907 is approximately equal to the decrease of the
average emigration to non-European countries during the
same period. If it is remembered that 30.2 per cent of
the Swedes who had settled in the United States in the past
century were engaged in agriculture and that during the
last twenty years the direction of Scandinavian immigration
to the United States turned from the West to the East, the
reason of the decline of emigration from the rural districts
of Sweden will be apparent: the United States no longer
holds out to the Swedish peasant the hope of becoming a
farmer. The Swedish peasant who is dissatisfied with his
surroundings must look for industrial employment. And
he finds that there are ample opportunities in Sweden
which attract immigrants from foreign countries.
A comparison of the emigration from Sweden to other
European countries with the immigration to Sweden from
those countries brings out the jact that during the past
decade the balance for the first time turned in favor of
Sweden:
* Sundbarg, loc. tit., p. 13, Table 17 (computed).
From Northern and Western Europe 207
TABLE 62.
ANNUAL AVERAGE EMIGRATION FROM SWEDEN TO OTHER EUROPEAN
COUNTRIES AND IMMIGRATION TO SWEDEN FROM OTHER EUROPEAN
COUNTRIES (THOUSANDS), 1 881-1908. x
Annual average
Emigration
Immigration
Net immigration ( +)
or emigration ( )
1881-1890
1891-1900
1901-1908
5-2
4.2
34
2.9
3-1
4.1
-2.3
I.I
+ -7
It appears from Table 62 that while emigration from
Sweden to other European countries has been decreasing
from decade to decade, immigration to Sweden from those
countries has been on the increase. The net result of these
movements during the last period was a slight surplus of
immigration over emigration. Evidently economic opportu-
nities in Sweden must have sufficiently improved to attract
more foreigners while fewer Swedish people left the country.
The industrial progress of Sweden is contemporaneous
with the recent development of hydraulic and hydro-electric
engineering, which has harnessed the water power furnished
in abundance by her mountains. More than one half of
her motive power used in 1907 was derived from water
power, either directly or in the form of electric current
generated by water power. The increase in the use of
water power since 1896 amounted to 134 per cent. 2 As an
index of Sweden's industrial advance since the time when
her emigration was at its highest level, may be used the
production of iron ore, which increased from an annual
average of 900,000 tons in 1881-1890 to an average of more
than 3,500,000 in 1901-1905, i. e., nearly fourfold. 3
1 Sundbarg, loc. cit. t pp. 95-96, Tables 45-46.
a Out of a total of 607,000 horse-power used for driving machinery or
generating electric power, 330,000 was water power. Sveriges Officiella
Statistik. Fabriker och Handtverk, 1907, pp. xxix. and 118.
*Eli F. Heckscher, Till Belysning af Jdrnvdgarnas Betydelse for
Sveriges Ekonomiska Utveckling, p. 91.
208 Immigration and Labor
The number of wage-earners in Swedish factories in-
creased from 202,000 in 1896 to 303,000 in 1907, i. e., at the
rate of 50 per cent in eleven years. l The growth of Swedish
industries far outran the increase of her population. The
factories offered employment to an average of 9000 new
hands annually, which was approximately equal to the
decrease in the annual average emigration from 1881-1890
to 1901-1908.
To what extent the wage-earners of Sweden have im-
proved the opportunities of the industrial situation, is
shown by the rapid progress of organization of labor and
the spread of collective bargaining. The total membership
of labor organizations increased from 50,000 in 1900 to
260,000 in 1908. The proportion of organized workers to
the total number of industrial wage-earners was estimated
at 45 per cent. 2 A highly instructive account of the
progress of collective bargaining is given in a Swedish
government report, from which the following is condensed. 3
About one half of the total number of wage-earners were
employed in establishments which had adopted the system
of collective bargaining. In the coal mines, sugar factories,
and potteries collective bargaining was practically the
general rule. In trade and transportation nearly all the
employees of private telephone companies, about 90 per
cent of all employees of electric street railways, and 66 per
cent of the employees on private steam railways were
working under collective trade agreements. In the build-
ing trades about three fourths of the total number and in
the factories and hand trades about one half were employed
under the same system. The principal industries where
collective bargaining has been adopted and the percentage
of the total number of wage-earners affected in each of
them are given in the following table :
1 Sveriges Officiella Statistik. Fabriker och Handtoerk, 1907, p. xxviii.
There are no comparable figures prior to 1896.
2 Handworterbuch der Staatswissenschaften, vol. iv, p. 1211.
3 Kollektivaftal A ngaenda Arbets-och Loneforhdllenden i Sverige (Stock,
holm, 1910), pp. 246-249.
From Northern and Western Europe 209
TABLE 63.
PER CENT OF WAGE-EARNERS EMPLOYED UNDER THE SYSTEM OF COL.
LECTIVE BARGAINING IN THE PRINCIPAL INDUSTRIES OF SWEDEN.
Printing 93
Fertilizers 82
Rubber 82
Matches 79
Tobacco manufactures 75
Collieries 71
Machinery .' 68
Jewelry 63
Cabinet making 47
Glass 47
Iron and steel 44
Leather 42
Textiles 35
In all of these industries [says the official report] it is chiefly the
large-scale establishments that have adopted collective bargaining,
whereas those establishments, where it is absent, generally belong to the
small-scale industry. Whenever a trust or a combine is organized in an
industry, collective labor agreements generally comprise a greater
number of factories within, than without the combination.
A noteworthy feature of these trade agreements is the
provision for compensation in cases of work accidents which
are not within the law of 1901 . Provisions of this character
are found in 1313 agreements affecting 67 per cent of the
total number of wage-earners coming under the operation
of this system.
It will not be disputed that the Slav and Italian immi-
grants to the United States are not responsible for the utili-
zation of the water power supply of the Scandinavian
mountain range, with the resulting industrial upheaval
which created a lively demand for labor in Sweden. That
nevertheless the immigration of unskilled laborers from
Sweden to the United States continues and grows, is the
best evidence that many of them consider the opportunities
in the United States superior to those which are open to
them at home.
G. The United Kingdom
Emigrants from the British Isles enjoy a great advantage
210 Immigration and Labor
over those of all other nations in that the main fields of
modern immigration are controlled by English-speaking
peoples. An Englishman or an Irishman is equally at
home in the United States, in Canada, Australia, New
Zealand, and South Africa. The recent development of
those countries has naturally attracted a part of the emigra-
tion from Great Britain and Ireland. Furthermore, the
policy of restriction adopted in Australia, New Zealand,
and South Africa has conferred a special privilege upon
immigrants of British nationality.
On the other hand, the governments of Canada and
Australia are making systematic efforts to induce immigra-
tion from the mother country. x Contract laborers may be
freely imported into Canada, as well as into Australia.
Salaried agents of the Dominion government are stationed
in the large cities of Great Britain to promote emigration
to Canada. A bonus of i is paid to the booking agent on
each ticket to Canada sold to a British subject who is
engaged in the occupation of farmer, farm laborer, gar-
dener, stableman, carter, railway surface man, navvy, or
miner, and who signifies his intention to follow farming or
railway construction work in Canada. 2 Not content with
the work of regular immigration agents, Canada has been
sending agricultural delegates to Great Britain. The
Salvation Army is also utilized as an agency to promote
emigration to Canada, and grants of money are made to the
Army for that purpose. Canada annually receives a consid-
erable number of English immigrants, who have been sent by
private or state aid from the mother country. 3 Canada also
encourages the immigration of poor and homeless British
children to her borders. This immigration is chiefly recruit-
ed from the orphan or industrial homes of the British Isles. 4
1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 2, pp. 607-631.
Ibid., pp. 607-608.
* In 1907, 12,336 persons were sent to Canada by London charitable
societies alone.
It is officially estimated that during the last 50 years nearly 60,000
From Northern and Western Europe 211
The Australian government furnishes land to settlers at
a nominal price payable in small installments. Moreover,
in all the states except Tasmania, allowances are made to
settlers for improving their holdings. By way of further
inducements, the states pay the passage, wholly or in part,
of immigrants from the United Kingdom whose purpose it
is to settle on the land or to engage in farming or other work
of a similar nature. Assistance is also offered to domestic
servants and other persons who can satisfy the Australian
agent in London that they would make desirable settlers in
Australia. The policy of assisting immigration has been
pursued by the several states of Australia for a greater
part of the time since their settlement. According to
official information 653,698 state-aided immigrants have
been admitted to the Australian states. x
That all these efforts should have diverted from the
United States a part of the British emigration was inevi-
table, irrespective of any causes originating in the United
States. As shown in a preceding chapter, the rise of land
values in the United States and the agricultural opportuni-
ties of the Canadian Northwest have, during the past
decade, resulted in an emigration of American farmers to
Canada. Withal, it is a noteworthy fact that the move-
ment to the United States has been affected less than is
generally imagined.
Compared with the annual average for the period 1880-
1889, emigration from Great Britain and Ireland to the
United States has considerably declined. But as appears
from Table 64 the decade 1880-1889 cannot be taken as a
standard for comparison. The only period approaching it
was the decade 1850-1859, when over a million people
emigrated from Ireland. 2 Eliminating the two exceptional
juvenile immigrants have been transported from the British Isles to
Canada. From 1901 to 1909, inclusive, 19,034 of this class were sent
to Canada.
*Ibid., pp. 631-635.
a Census of Ireland, igoi, p. 168, Table 41.
212
Immigration and Labor
decades, we find that during the twenty-year period 1890-
1909, 2,425,000 immigrants came from Great Britain and
Ireland to the United States as against 2,254,000 in 1860-
1879. <
TABLE 64.
NUMBER OF EMIGRANTS FROM THE UNITED KINGDOM, BY DESTINATION
(THOUSANDS), 1840-1909.
Destination
Period
United States
North
American
Colonies
Australia,
New Zealand,
and
South Africa
Other
countries
Total
1840-1849
912
4 28
127
27
1495
1850-1859
631
259
499
52
2440
1860-1869
179
145
286
60
I 670
1870-1879
074
184.
296
IOO
1554
1880-1889
7 28
300
376
164
2568
1890-1899
196
191
234
171
1792
1900-1909
230
7 06
477
300
2612
The number of English and Irish immigrants since 1890
who found the conditions in the United States attractive
was 8500 in excess of the annual average for the period
1860-1879 preceding the "new immigration."
To be sure, the figures of gross immigration alone are not
conclusive, as they conceal many unsuccessful ventures
ending in a return movement to the home country. In
Table 65 are therefore presented the figures of net emigra-
tion from the British Isles by countries of destination since
1895, when immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe
to the United States for the first time outran the "old
immigration."
1 The Civil War reduced emigration from the United Kingdom to the
United States only in 1861 and 1862. During the next three years the
number of emigrants bound for the United States rose to a higher level
than that of 1855-1860 or 1874-1879. See Appendix, Table XV.
See Appendix, Table XV.
From Northern and Western Europe 213
TAB^E 65.
NET EMIGRATION OF BRITISH SUBJECTS FROM THE UNITED KINGDOM
BY COUNTRIES OF DESTINATION (THOUSANDS), 1895-1909.
Destination
British Possessions
Foreign Countries
Year
a
ended
3
"2*3
O^
j3
f'" >:
g
March 31
Is
Sg
oz
5
.?
H
II
H
Australia
New Zeal
Cape of C
Hope and .
Si
V BJ
i
i
1
i
i!
la
H
1
1895
6
I
12
I
20
56
56
76
1896
6
I
IO
2
19
40
i
41
60
1897
6
4
6
3
19
31
i
32
51
1898
8
4
6
2
2O
29
29
49
1899
I9OO
8
8
8
-6
7
I
2
7
23
39
48
39
48
46
71
1901
7
6
9
3
25
46
i
47
72
1902
1903
15
46
4
4
28
28
3
3
I?
11
i
1 02
147
1904
51
5
i
4
59
67
i
68
127
1905
63
7
3
4
77
6l
i
62
139
1906
10
-3
7
105
86
4
90
195
1907
117
14
~5
5
131
IOO
4
104
235
1908
42
21
-5
i
59
3*
i
32
1909
52
25
3
2
82
56
2
58
140
As appears from Diagram XVI, where the same figures
are shown graphically, the curves representing net emigra-
tion to the United States and to British possessions exhibit
a tendency to rise and fall together. From 1898 to 1907
the net immigration to the United States was steadily rising
with slight deviations in the years ended March 31, 1901,
and 1905, i. e., in the two presidential years. Since the
latter year, the immigration countries of the British Empire
have drawn and held more immigrants than the United
1 Computed from Statistical Abstract of the United Kingdom, No.
57, PP. 363-364. Tables 117, 118, 119.
"Includes 22,719 passengers from 1895 to 1907 whose nationality is
not specified.
214
Immigration and Labor
States, but the net immigration to the United States also
increased. The drop in 1908 affected the net immigration
to Canada as much as that to the United States. In 1909
the net immigration to the United States exhibited a greater
increase, both absolute and relative, than the net immigra-
DlAGRAM XVI.
XVI. Net emigration from the United Kingdom by destination, 1895-1909.
tion to all British possessions. Obviously, conditions in
the United States, notwithstanding immigration from
Southern and Eastern Europe, compared favorably with
those in other immigration countries.
Another factor determining the volume of emigration,
that must not be lost sight of, is the improvement of living
conditions in Great Britain. In the first place, there has
From Northern and Western Europe 215
been a decrease in the cost of living. Measuring the cost
of living by wholesale prices and taking the Board of Trade
index number for 1900 as 100, official estimates put the cost
of living in 1878-1887 at 119.5 and in 1898-1907 at 97.8.
At the same time the rates of wages have increased. 1 An
estimate of the course of average real wages in the second
half of the nineteenth century is reproduced in the fol-
lowing table:
TABLE 66.
AVERAGE REAL WAGES IN GREAT BRITAIN, 1850-1900.
Year Per Cent
1850 50
i860 55
1870 60
1880 70
1890 84
1895 93
1900 100
During the decade 1850-1859, when immigration from
the British Isles to the United States reached its maximum,
relative to population, and the decade 1880-1889, when it
reached its numerical maximum, the real wages averaged
from 50 to 55 per cent and from 70 to 84 per cent, respec-
tively, of the wages of 1900. The improvement is sufficient
to account for the reduction in the rate of emigration from
the United Kingdom.
H. Ireland
Emigration from Ireland to all countries reached its
maximum during the decade ended March 31, 1861, and
has since declined. The tide rose again during the '8o's,
in the turbulent years of the Irish Land League agitation,
and once more during the past decade, but not as high
as the water-mark reached in 1852-1861. The figures are
given in Table 67 below.
1 Beveridge, loc. cit., p. 9.
a Ibid., quoting: A. L. Bowley, National Progress in Wealth and
Trade, p. 33.
2i6 Immigration and Labor
TABLE 67.
ANNUAL AVERAGE EMIGRATION FROM IRELAND, MAY I, 1 85 1,
TO MARCH 31, IQOS. s
Years ended March 3 x (Thousand*)
1852-1861 115
1862-1871 77
1872-1881 62
1882-1891 77
1892-1901 43
1902-1908 50
There are no accurate statistics showing the distribution
of Irish emigrants by destination previous to 1876. The
subsequent years 1876-1908 for which such statistics are
available may be divided with respect to the racial composi-
tion of the immigration to the United States into two
periods of nearly equal length; previous to 1891 the races
of Northern and Western Europe furnished the bulk of the
immigrants, whereas during the more recent period the
races of Southern and Eastern Europe became the pre-
dominant element among them. The figures are presented
in Table 67 on page 216.
Two facts are worthy of note in the following compara-
tive table: first, that the decline of emigration from Ireland
has affected the movement to other countries, as well as to
the United States, and second, that the proportion of Irish
emigrants destined to the United States during the period
of the great influx of immigrants from Southern and Eastern
Europe was higher than in 1876-1890, when immigration
from Southern and Eastern Europe was negligible.
That the "new immigration" to the United States was
not the cause of the decline of Irish emigration is clear from
the fact that the decline had set in as early as 1861-1870,
at least twenty years before the immigrants from Southern
and Eastern Europe became sufficiently numerous to attract
1 The enumeration of emigrants fronTlrish ports did not commence
until May I, 1851.
Census of Ireland, 1901, Part II., p. 168, Table 41. Statistical
Abstract of the United Kingdom, No. 56, p. 365.
From Northern and Western Europe 217
notice. The conclusion suggested by the statistics of Irish
emigration is that there must have been forces at work to
reduce the number of Irish seeking a better home than their
native country.
TABLE 68.
ANNUAL AVERAGE EMIGRATION FROM IRELAND, BY DESTINATION,
I876-I908. 1
To the United States
Period
To other countries
(thousands)
Total
(thousands)
(Thousands)
Per cent of total
1876-1890'
69
50
72
19
1891-19083
46
38
83
8
The change in the economic condition of the Irish people
since the '8o's may be summed up in the following words of
Mr. Dillon:
The wretched land system was responsible for most of the misery
which the poor suffered. Successive land purchases are gradually
restoring the worse than homeless tenants to the land, and each family
so restored becomes decently prosperous, because for the first time there
is offered a chance to make a living. . . . The helpless, hopeless
tenants and the evicted families are being made independent. . .
The thousands who have been put in the way of making decent farms
and homes have become hopeful and self-reliant instead of despairing.
. . . Those families who were struggling against starvation on the
rocky hillsides are now cultivating fertile fields. 4
That this is not mere rhetoric a few figures will show.
1 Computed from the following sources: Census of Ireland, i88I,
Part II., p. 74; 1891, Part II., p. 74; 1901, Part II., p. 74; 1901, Part II.,
Table 41, p. 168; Statistical Abstract of the United Kingdom, No. 48, p.
255; No. 56, p. 365; Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. I, Table
9, pp. 76-92.
3 Calendar years.
3 Total emigration from Ireland for 17^ years, from January i, 1891,
to March 31, 1908; immigration to the United States for 17 years from
January I, 1891, to December 31, 1908.
^ Hugh Sutherland: Ireland Yesterday and To-day (1909), p. 108.
218 Immigration and Labor
Under the operation of the several purchase acts passed
since 1885, more than 214,000 tenants have been enabled
to buy their land with the assistance of the government. 1
This number is equal to one third of all families enumerated
in rural areas at the census of 1901 . 3 Under the provisions
of the Wyndham Act of 1903, the government is authorized
to expend $800,000,000 in loans to tenants at 3% per cent
for the purchase of land, which is to be paid for in 68 J^
years. 3 Furthermore, the rent of the tenants has been
substantially reduced by law, to which must be added the
creation of a legal interest of a marketable character,
together with a chance of further abatements in the future. 4
Other legislation has been enacted for the benefit of
agricultural laborers. "County authorities are able to
borrow government funds for the erection of decent sani-
tary dwellings, which rent for I shilling a week. Nearly
50,000 of these neat cottages have been erected." 5
Another factor which has materially contributed to the
improvement of the condition of the Irish farmers has been
the co-operative movement which dates from 1889. In
1903 there were more than 800 co-operative societies with
an aggregate membership of 80,000 farmers. 6 Perhaps, the
most important among these societies are the co-operative
agricultural banks, which in the language of Sir Horace
Plunkett "perform the apparent miracle of giving sol-
vency to a community composed almost entirely of in-
solvent individuals." 7 There are more than 200 of these
banks which lend money to farmers at 5 or 6 per cent per
annum for agricultural improvements. 8
The improvement of the condition of the tenants has
* Ibid., p. 114.
3 The Census of Ireland, General Report, Table 49, p. 173.
* Sutherland, loc. cit., p. 114.
C. F. Bastable: "Some Features of the Economic Movement in
Ireland, 1880-1900," Economic Journal, 4901, No. xi., pp. 33, 39.
s Sutherland, loc. cit., p. 183.
6 Horace Plunkett : Ireland in the New Century, p. 192.
7 Ibid., p. 195. 8 Ibid., pp. 192, 197*
From Northern and Western Europe 219
affected the labor market; there has been a substantial
gain in the real wages of farm laborers. 1
The improvement of the living conditions of the Irish
people is reflected in the statistics of housing accom-
modations. The census of Ireland divides all houses into
four classes: "In the lowest of the four classes are com-
prised houses built of mud or perishable material, having
only one room and window; in the third a better descrip-
tion of house, varying from one to four rooms and windows;
in the second what might be considered a good farmhouse,
having from five to nine rooms and windows; and in the
first class all houses of a better description than the
preceding." 2
TABLE 69.
FAMILIES OCCUPYING EACH CLASS OF INHABITED HOUSES IN RURAL
AREAS OF IRELAND, l86l~I9OI.3
Number (thousands)
Per cent
Census
period
I
II
III
IV
I
II
III
IV
Total
class
class
class
class
class
class
class
class
1861
29
291
471
90
3-3
33-0
53-5
IO.2
IOO
1881
36
309
356
39
4.9
41.7
48.1
54
IOO
1891
4
332
288
20
48.9
42.4
2.9
IOO
1901
41
353
230
9
6.4
55-8
36.4
1.4
IOO
While housing conditions in Ireland to-day are still
far from ideal, yet they show evidence of very real improve-
ment, compared with the days when emigration from
Ireland was at its maximum. The number of one-room
huts with one window, built of mud or other material of
the same class, decreased since 1861 from 90,000 to 9,000.
In 1 86 1, there were but one in three houses that might be
considered good farm houses; forty years later about the
same proportion fell below that definition.
1 Bastable, loc. tit., p. 38.
J Census of Ireland, General Report for 1901, p. II.
Computed from the Census of Ireland .General Report, Table 49,
220 Immigration and Labor
The results of the census of 1911 have as yet not been
published. In Mr. Dillon's opinion, "Ireland has made
more progress in the last ten years than during the previous
two hundred years. " * Is it reasonable to assume that the
same rate of emigration from Ireland could be maintained
to-day as half a century ago?
/. Conclusion
To sum up the preceding review of economic conditions
in the countries of Northern and Western Europe, it is
not because the "new immigration" has had an unfavorable
effect upon labor conditions in the United States, but
because those countries have become better homes for their
citizens, that fewer of them are nowadays coming to the
United States. If this country is to have immigration,
it will have to come from other sources. To be sure, it
may be argued that this country has no further need of
immigration in general and can therefore dispense with
immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe. Be it as
it may, it is a fallacy to assume that they could be replaced
by potential immigration from Northern and Western
Europe.
1 Sutherland, loc. cit. t p. 108.
CHAPTER IX
RACE SUICIDE
IT cannot be seriously disputed that the great immigration
of recent years has come in response to a demand for
labor in the United States. Industrial progress and im-
provement of the condition of the wage-earners and farmers
in the countries of Northern and Western Europe rendered
the supply of immigrant labor from those sources inadequate.
Without the immigrants from Southern and Eastern
Europe, the rapid industrial expansion of the past decade
would have been impossible. But it seems to the Immigra-
tion Commission, that "there is ground for argument or
speculation" that "less immigration of a character tending
to keep down wages and working conditions might have
been attended by a larger natural increase among the native-
born portion of the population." 1
This theory, originated by Gen. Francis A. Walker, until
lately held unchallenged the field of economic and sociologi-
cal discussion. General Walker believed that immigration
had caused a decline in the birth-rate of the native American
population :
The American shrank from the industrial competition thus thrust
upon him. He was unwilling himself to engage in the lowest kind of
day-labor with these new elements of the population; he was even more
unwilling to bring sons and daughters into the world to enter into that
competition. Foreign immigration into this country has . . . amounted
not to a re-enforcement of our population, but to a replacement of
native by foreign stock. ... If the foreigners had not come, the native
element would long have filled the places the foreigners usurped. 3
1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. i, p. 494.
'Francis A. Walker: Discussions in Economics and Statistics, pp.
432-425.
Ml
222
Immigration and Labor
In proof of his theory, General Walker maintained that
the decline of the birth-rate
among Americans began at the very time when foreign immigration
first assumed considerable proportions; it showed itself first and in
the highest degree in those regions, in those States, and in the very
counties into which the foreigners most largely entered. It proceeded
for a long time in such a way as absolutely to offset the foreign arrivals,
so that in 1850, in spite of the incoming of two and a half millions of
foreigners during thirty years, our population differed by less than ten
thousand from the population which would have existed, according to
the previous rate of increase, without re-enforcement from abroad.
These three facts . . . constitute a statistical demonstration such as
is rarely attained in regard to the operation of any social or economic
force. 1
General Walker's statistical demonstration consisted in a
comparison of the census figures from 1820 to 1890 with a
calculation made by Elkanah Watson in 1815 on the basis
of the increase of population from 1790 to 1810. The
census figures for 1820-1850 closely coincided with Watson's
estimates. 2 Yet, whereas prior to 1820 immigration was
insignificant, from 1820 to 1850, 2,500,000 foreigners were
added to the population of the United States without in-
creasing it to any appreciable degree. The inference seemed
to be incontrovertible that the development of the natural
resources of the United States made provision for a fixed
population at every census, so that the two-and-a-half
million foreigners merely usurped the places of as many
unborn Americans. At every subsequent census Watson's
calculations proved to be overestimated, viz.: in 1860 by
over 300,000, in 1870 by 3,770,000, in 1880 by more than
1 Walker, loc. cit., p. 441.
* Ibid., pp. 120-122:
Year
Watson's estimates
The census
Difference
1820
1830
1840
1850
9.625,734
12,833,645
17,116,526
23,185,368
9,633,822
I2,866,O2O
17.069,453
23,191,876
-f 8,088
+32.375
-47.073
+ 6,508
Race Suicide 223
six millions, and in 1890 by over fourteen millions. Chief
among the social and economic causes of this shortage
compared with Watson's calculation was, according to
General Walker, "the access of vast hordes of foreign
immigrants bringing with them a standard of living at
which our own people revolted. " x The revolt assumed the
form of a strike of American parents against child-bearing.
This conclusion illustrates in a striking manner the effect
of a preconceived idea upon the reasoning ability of a
scientific writer. Twenty years before promulgating his
theory, General Walker had made light of Watson's pre-
dictions. Writing in 1873 on the results of the IX. Census
(1870), he dwelt upon the social change which
began when the people of the United States began to leave agricul-
tural for manufacturing pursuits; to turn from the country to the town;
to live in up-and-down houses. ... A close observer must discern causes
now working within the nation, which render it little less than absurd
longer to apply the former rates of growth to the computation of our
population at 1880, 1890, or 1900. ... It would be merely an attempt
at imposture to assume that numerical data exist for determining,
within eight or ten or twelve millions, the population of the country
thirty years from the date of the last census. As long as one simple
force was operating expansively upon a homogeneous people, within a
territory affording fertile lands beyond the ability of the existing popula-
tion to occupy, so long it was no miracle to predict with accuracy the
results of the census. But in the eddy and swirl of social and industrial
currents through which the nation is now passing, it is wholly impossible
to estimate the rate of its progress. 3
Still General Walker's later theory stands and falls with
Watson's predictions.
A reaction against that theory was led by Prof. Wal-
ter F. Willcox, in the Supplementary Analysis of the Results
of the XII. Census. Later, in a paper read at the an-
nual meeting of the American Statistical Association in
St. Louis in ipio, 3 Prof essor Willcox proved by an analysis
1 Walker, loc. tit., p. 426. 2 Ibid., p. 43.
* "The Change in the Proportion of Children in the United States"
etc., by W. F. Willcox : Quarterly Publications of the A merican Statistical
Association, March, 1911.
224 Immigration and Labor
of population statistics "that the decrease in the proportion
of children began in the United States as early as i8io." x
The number of children under five years of age to one
hundred women of the child-bearing age decreased in 1810-
1830 by 9.9, and in 1880-1900 by 9.4. Thus the twenty-
year period of the recent immigration did not substantially
differ in this respect from the time when, according to Gen-
eral Walker himself, immigration had not affected the birth-
rate among native Americans.
Moreover, the declining birth-rate is a world-wide social
phenomenon of the present day. In the Australian Com-
monwealth, with her vast continent as yet unsettled and
practically no immigration, as well as in New Zealand,
"the decline of the birth-rate has probably been as rapid, "
says Professor Willcox, "as among native American stock." 2
The greater decline of the native birth-rate in those
sections and counties into which the foreigners most largely
enter, goes together with the growth of the urban popu-
lation. The percentage ratio of native white children of
native parentage under five years of age, to native women of
child-bearing age averaged in 1900 for cities with 25,000
inhabitants or over 29.6, and for smaller cities and rural
territory 52.2. The latter ratio, of course, is subject
to great variation, the limits being 76.7 in Louisiana and
29 . i in Massachusetts. 3 As indicated by these two extremes
1 Walker, loc. cit,, pp. 495-496.
' Supplementary Analysis. XII. Census, p. 410. Carlton, loc. eii.,
P- 347-
" So alarming has this phenomenon of the falling birth-rate become
in the Australian colonies, that in New South Wales a special govern-
mental commission has voluminously reported upon the subject. It is
estimated that there has been a decline of about one third in the fruit-
fulness of the people in fifteen years. New Zealand even complains of
the lack of children to fill her schools."-^- 4 'Race Progress and Immigra-
tion," by William Z. Ripley, Annals of the American Academy m of Politi-
cal and Social Science, vol. xxxiv., pp. 132-133.
Supplementary Analysis, XII. Census, Table XXII., p. 434.
Per cent ratio of native white children under 5 years of age, born of
native mothers, to native white females 15 to 44 years of age in
cities of less than 25,000 inhabitants and rural territory, 1900.
UNDER
50 TO 60 ft
60% ScOVf.fi
Race Suicide
225
the variation of the statistical average is to a great extent
purely arithmetical, being due to the heterogeneous charac-
ter of the settlements combined in this class; on the one
hand, there are the manufacturing towns of Massachusetts,
on the other, the purely agricultural settlements of Loui-
siana. The connection between the agricultural character
of the population of this class of settlements and the ratio
of native-born children to native women of child-bearing
age can be seen from Table 70 in which all States are
divided into four areas, according to the ratio of native-
born children under five, and the percentage of "farmers,
planters, and overseers" to the total number of bread-
winners for each group is given in a parallel column.
TABLE 70.
PER CENT RATIO OF NATIVE WHITE CHILDREN UNDER 5 TEARS OF AGE,
BORN OF NATIVE MOTHERS, TO NATIVE WHITE FEMALES, 15 TO 44
YEARS OF AGE, IN CITIES OF LESS THAN 25.OOO INHABITANTS AND
RURAL TERRITORY, AND PER CENT RATIO OF NATIVE WHITE MALE
FARMERS, PLANTERS, AND OVERSEERS TO THE TOT^L NUMBER OF
WHITE MALE BREADWINNERS, IQOO, BY AREAS COMPRISING STATES
AND TERRITORIES GROUPED ACCORDING TO RATIO OF CHILDREN,
1900. (THE STATES ARE SHOWN ON THE MAP FACING THE TABLE.)
Areas
Children 1
Farmers, etc.*
I
II
III
IV
Over 60 per cent
50 to 60 per cent
40 to 50 per cent
Under 40 per cent
6 7 .2
54-2
47-5
35-3
38.4
26.4
21.6
13.3
Continental United States
52.2
24.7
The preceding table clearly shows that the native birth-
rate declines with the percentage of farmers among the
* Supplementary Analysis, XII. Census, Table XXII, p. 434-
a Occupations at the XII. Census, Table 41, pp. 220 et seq. (computed).
226 Immigration and Labor
native population. The rearing of children on a farm
requires less^ of the mother's time and attention than in the
city. Moreover, the child on a farm begins to work at an
earlier age than in the city. A numerous family on a farm
has the advantages of a co-operative group, whereas every
addition to the family of the wage-earner, or of the salaried
employee with a fixed income, tends to lower the family's
standard of living.
On the other hand, the decline of the birth-rate is uni-
versal among those classes which are scarcely, if at all,
affected by immigrant competition. This observation,
advanced by students in America and in England, 1 was
substantiated by the Report of the National Birth Rate
Commission on the declining birth-rate in the United
Kingdom. The results of its studies are summarized in
the following proposition:
Such statistical evidence as is available for establishing a comparison
of the birth-rate among the different social and pecuniary grades of
our population indicates that the better-to-do classes restrict more
closely the size of their families, and that even among certain of the
wage-earning classes the birth-rate varies inversely with the income. 1
Analyzing the interrelation between the declining birth-
rate and "the condition of the working-class," the Com-
mission concludes:
1 A. Lapthorn Smith: "Higher Education of Women and Race
Suicide," Popular Science Monthly, March, 1905, pp. .468, 470. Arthur
Newsholme: The Declining Birth-Rate , pp. 32, 33, 42-43.
2 The Declining Birth-Rate, Its Causes and Effects, p. 44. By way
of illustration, the statistics of births in 191 1, provided by the Registrar-
General for England and Wales are quoted in the table next following
(Ibid., p. 9). The returns were classified according to the occupation
of the father and summarized "in descending order of social grade."
The figures represent the ratio of births per 1 ,000 married males under
the age of 55.
Social Class Births per 7,000
1. Upper and middle class 1 19
2. Intermediate TV. 132
3. Skilled workmen 153
4. Intermediate class 158
5. Unskilled workmen 213
Race Suicide 227
that every rise in the condition of the artisan tends at present to lower
the birth-rate in his class. Wherever political and social conditions
bring a man or a class into a position in which he hopes to rise or fears
to fall, the family will be restricted. That class of motives, which we
may blame as love of comfort, snobbishness, vulgar ambition, timorous-
ness, or praise as proper pride, desire for self-improvement, and
prudence, is the most potent cause of family restriction. 1
In relation to the United States, similar views were ex-
pressed by the late Dr. Billings as far back as 1893. It is
the desire of "the lower middle classes" to maintain "social
position," along with "the great increase in the use of
things which were formerly considered as luxuries, but
which now have become almost necessities" that accounts
in part for "the deliberate and voluntary avoidance or
prevention of child-bearing." 2 Still "the lower middle
classes" are scarcely affected by immigration. Their
standard of living is, as a rule, higher than that of the
wage-earner. Yet it is precisely this higher standard that
is productive of a "desire to have fewer children." All
speculation to the effect that an increase in the rate of
wages "might have been attended" in the past, or is likely
to be attended in the future, "by a larger natural increase
among the native-born portion of the population," has
accordingly no foundation of fact.
1 Ibid., pp. 41-42.
8 Supplementary Analysis, XII. Census, p. 410.
CHAPTER X
. THE STANDARD OF LIVING.
A. Introductory
IN so far as immigration is an economic movement, it is
obvious that the immigrant's standard of living in his
home country must have been below the American standard.
This is as true of the old as of the new immigration. Those
immigrants only are an exception to this rule who seek to
escape from political or religious oppression. Its victims
are not confined to the poorer classes, but include people of
means and of standing in the community, whose standard
of living is often superior to that of the native American
mechanic. Since 1890, however, of all the races which have
come to this country, the Jews, the Poles, the Lithuanians,
the Russians, the Finns, and the Armenians, have
furnished the only immigrants of this class. As to all
others, it was just the higher standard of living F of the
American wage-earner that induced them, like most races
that preceded them, to emigrate to the United States. If
the lower standard of living to which the immigrant has
been accustomed at home tends to reduce the American
standard of living, then these effects of immigration must
have manifested themselves in the days of the Irish and
German immigration as much as to-day. At most there
may be only a difference of degree. That the standard of
living of the recent immigrant employed as an unskilled
laborer is lower than that of the native American mechanic
or of the older immigrant engaged in skilled work, is no new
228
The Standard of Living 229
discovery. To prove, however, that the new immigrants
have introduced a lower standard of living, it is necessary
to show that the standard of living of the recent immigrants
employed as unskilled laborers is lower than that of the
Irish and German immigrants of past generations who were
doing the same grade of work, or of the native American
unskilled workers of the time before the Irish and German
immigration. The experts of the Immigration Commission,
however, have simply taken for granted that the standard
of living of the present-day American or Americanized
skilled mechanic is identical with that of the unskilled
laborer of the same racial stocks in the days before the new
immigration. This assumption is not borne out by Ameri-
can economic history.
The housing conditions of the foreign-born population
have been most dwelt upon in the discussion of the standard
of living of the immigrant, because they strike the eye of
the outsider. On this subject there are ample comparative
data. New York has always had more than its propor-
tionate share of newly arrived immigrants; its housing
problem, as affected by immigration, therefore, calls for
separate treatment.
B. Congestion in New York City
Overcrowding was recognized as a serious evil in New
York City as far back as 1834. A city inspector for that
year attributed the high rate of mortality to "the crowded
and filthy state" in which the population of New York
lived. 1 As the city was growing, the well-to-do residents
were moving northward and their old dwellings were let
to the poor. The traditional American one-family house
was adapted to the requirements of a population of inde-
pendent artisans and small shopkeepers, many of whom
were home-owners. With the growth of great cities and
the rise of land values, and with the development of a
1 Report of the Industrial Commission, vol. xv., p. 452.
230 Immigration and Labor
wage-earning class, the one-family house became the cause
of congestion in its worst form. The rental of such a house
was beyond the reach of the wage-earner. Each room was
let out to a separate family. Naturally, such improvised
dwellings lacked the most necessary accommodations. The
basement of the one-family house of the old type, formerly
used as a dining-room and kitchen, developed into a separate
cellar apartment.
Towards the middle of the '40*8 there had grown up in
New York a great "cellar population." A pen picture of
the condition of the cellars is given in a report on the Sani-
tary Condition of the Laboring Population^ which was
published in 1845:
The most offensive of all places of residence are the cellars. It is
almost impossible, when contemplating the circumstances and condi-
tions of the poor beings who inhabit these holes, to maintain the proper
degree of calmness requisite for a thorough inspection of their miseries
and sound judgment respecting them. You must descend to them;
you must feel the blast of foul air, as it meets your face on opening the
door; you must grope in the dark or hesitate until your eye becomes
accustomed to the gloomy place, to enable you to find your way through
the entry over the broken floor, the boards of which are protected from
your tread by a half inch of hard dirt; you must inhale the suffocating
vapor of the heated rooms; and in the dark, dim recesses endeavor to
find the inmates by the sound of their voices, or chance to see their
figures moving between you and the flickering light of a window, coated
with dirt and festooned with cobwebs or, if in search of an invalid,
take care that you do not fall full length upon the bed with her, by
stumbling against the rags and straw dignified by that name, lying
upon the floor, under the window, if window there is. 1
The occupants of these tenements were "principally
Irish and German " whose habits were described in 1837 as
"more or less filthy." An account of one of these houses,
in the rear of No. 49 Elizabeth Street, is given in an official
report of a city physician :
The front building, a small two-story frame house, was partly occu-
1 Report of the Industrial Commission, vol. xv., p. 453.
The Standard of Living 231
pied by the proprietor or lessee of the building as a liquor store and
partly sublet to several Irish families. A covered alleyway led to the
rear of the building. This was a double frame house of three stories
in height. It stood in the center of the yard, ranged next the fence,
where a number of pigsties and stables had surrounded the yard on three
sides. From the quantity of filth, liquid and otherwise, thus caused,
the ground, I suppose, had been rendered almost impassable, and to
remedy this, the yard had been completely boarded over so that the
earth could nowhere be seen. These boards were partially decayed, and
by a little pressure, even in dry weather, a thick, greenish, fluid could
be forced up through the crevices. 1
These evils were not confined, however, to the foreign-
bom population. The living conditions of the sewing
women, a large majority of whom were American-born,
were thus described by the New York Tribune, in the same
year 1 845:
These women generally "keep house" that is, they rent a single
room, or perhaps two small rooms, in the upper story of some poor,
ill-constructed, unventilated house in a filthy street, constantly kept so
by the absence of back yards and the neglect of the street inspector
where a sickening and deadly miasma pervades the atmosphere and
in summer renders it totally unfit to be inhaled by human lungs de-
positing the seeds of debility and disease with every inspiration In
these rooms all the processes of cooking, eating, sleeping, washing,
working, and living are indiscriminately performed. 2
Bad as these conditions were, they were not the worst.
The wages of Irish laborers in Brooklyn were so low that
they could not afford to pay any rent at all, so "they were
allowed to build miserable shanties on ground allotted them
by the contractors on the plot occupied by them in perform-
ing the work.'* 3
In the '6o's there was a "shanty population "of about
20,000 on the upper west side of Manhattan Island. It
was composed of Germans and Irish. They were largely
1 Report of the Industrial Commission, vol. xv., pp. 45 2 ~453-
a Helen L. Sumner: Report of Woman and Child Wage-Earners in
the United States, vol. ix., p. 135.
3 Documentary History of American Industrial Society, vol. viii., pp. 225-
226; quoting from New York Weekly Tribune, May 2, 1846, p. 3, col. 3.
232 Immigration and Labor
day laborers, employed by contractors in grading, paving,
and sewering the streets, and in the removal of rock, or in
excavating for public purposes. In a typical shanty,
according to an inspector of the council of hygiene, "domi-
ciliary and personal cleanliness is almost impossible. In
one room are found the family, chairs, usually dirty and
broken, cooking utensils, stove, often a bed, a dog or cat,
and sometimes more or less poultry. On the outside, by
the door in many cases, are pigs and goats and additional
poultry. There is no sink or drainage, and the slops are
thrown upon the ground." 1
Gloomy pictures of the housing conditions which pre-
vailed in the '6o's are drawn in contemporary reports of
medical inspectors. They speak in general terms of "the
contracted alleys; the underground, murky, and pestilential
cellars ; the tenement house, with its hundreds of occupants
where each cooks, eats, and sleeps in a single room without
light or ventilation, surrounded with filth, in an atmosphere
foul, fetid, and deadly." 3
The Thirteenth Ward was densely crowded with working classes,
the majority of whom were Irish; Germans ranked next, and Am-
ericans last. . . . The ward showed a high rate of sickness and
mortality, owing to the over-crowded and ill-ventilated dwellings and
to the ignorant and careless habits of the people themselves. . . .
From Fortieth to Fiftieth Street the foreign population was mainly
Irish or of Irish descent, packed in filthy tenements and of the most
unclean and degraded personal habits. . . . The tenement houses in
which most of the foreign population found their homes were certainly
little calculated to develop high social and moral types, and indeed
brought to bear influences working directly the other way. 3
The following description of the tenements in Sheriff
Street, which was then settled by Germans, is quoted from
contemporary sources:
The attic rooms are used to deposit the filthy rags and bones as they
are taken from the gutters and slaughterhouses. The yards are filled
with dirty rags hung up to dry, sending forth their stench to all the
1 Report of the Industrial Commission, vol. xv., p. 457.
Ibid., p. 454. a Ibid., p. 458.
The Standard of Living 233
neighborhood. . . . The tenants are all Germans. . . . They are
exceedingly filthy in person and their bedclothes are as dirty as the floors
they walk on. Their food is of the poorest quality, and their feet and
hands, doubtless their whole bodies are suffering from what they call
rheumatism, but which in reality is a prostrate nervous system, the
result of foul air and inadequate supply of nutritious food. . . . The
yards are all small and the sinks running over with filth. . . . Not one
decent sleeping apartment can be found on the entire premises and not
one stove properly arranged. The carbonic-acid gas, in conjunction
with the other emanations from bones, rags, and human filth, defies
description. The rooms are 6 by 10 feet; bedrooms 5 by 6 feet. The
inhabitants lead a miserable existence, and their children wilt and die
in their infancy. 1
When at length the tenement dwellers crowded the old
one-family residences to the utmost limit of their capacity,
the further growth of population led to the utilization
of the back yards, for building purposes. A special type
of rear tenement came into existence. The terrible con-
ditions that arose from lack of ventilation and sanitary
conveniences are vividly depicted in a report of a city
inspector concerning a square of front and rear tenements
which were occupied mostly by Irish:
In a majority of rear tenements . . . the apartments are dirty, dark,
and often reeking with filth, the walls wholly innocent of whitewash, and
the atmosphere impregnated with the disagreeable odor so peculiar to
tenant houses. In some the sun never shines, and the apartments are
so dark that unless seated near the window it is impossible to read
ordinary type; and yet the inspector often hears the hackneyed expres-
sion, "We have no sickness, thank God, " uttered by those whose sunken
eyes, pale cheeks, and colorless lips speak more eloquently than words of
the anaemic condition inevitably resulting from the absence of pure, fresh
air, and the general light of the sun. . . . The tenants seem to wholly
disregard personal cleanliness, if not the very first principles of decency,
their general appearance and actions corresponding with their wretched
abodes. This indifference to personal and domiciliary cleanliness is
doubtless acquired from a long familiarity with the loathsome surround-
ings, wholly at variance with all moral or social improvements, as well
as the first principles of hygienic science.*
The fundamental cause of congestion with all its attend-
1 Report of the Industrial Commission, vol. xv., p. 461. *Ibid., p. 456.
234 Immigration and Labor
ant evils is the fact that wage- workers must live within an
accessible distance from their places of work. This neces-
sity puts the owners of real estate in the factory district
in a position of advantage over the tenants.
The landlord took the utmost advantage of the situation by charging
the highest possible prices for the poorest possible accommodations,
and disregarding every law of health and decency in erecting big bar-
racks meant for occupation by the poor.
An inspector for the council of hygiene in 1864
thus reports the landlords' methods with regard to repairs:
Every expenditure of money which the law does not enforce to make
is refused; and blinds half swung and ready to fall and crash with the
first strong wind; doors long off their hinges, which open and shut by
being taken up bodily and put out of or in the way; chimneys as apt to
conduct the smoke into the room as out of it; stagnant, seething, over-
flowing privies, left uncleansed through the hot months of summer,
though pestilence itself should breed from them; hydrants out of repair
and flooding sink and entry; stairs which shake and quiver with every
step as you ascend them; and all this day after day, month after month,
year in and year out. 1
Such were the housing conditions to which the "old
immigrants" of Teuton and Celtic stock submitted for
more than a quarter of a century, at a time when the
population of New York was but a fraction of its present
size, and there was still an abundance of unimproved land
in the upper part of Manhattan Island. These conditions
are a thing of the past. The typical tenement house in the
Jewish and Italian sections of New York to-day is a decided
improvement upon the dwellings of the Irish and the Ger-
mans in the same sections a generation or two ago. "The
visitor of 1900 could go about dry-shod, at least, in tene-
ment yards and courts where thirty-five years before the
accumulation of what should have gone off in sewers and
drains made access almost impossible." 2
The causes of the present congestion in New York City
1 Report of the Industrial Commission, vol. xv., p. 459.
a Ibid., p. 488.
The Standard of Living 235
have been the subject of an exhaustive investigation by
Professor Pratt, of the New York School of Philanthropy.
Although believing that restriction of immigration would
have "salutary results in different directions," he found
from the mass of statistical evidence collected by him, that
congestion is produced by industrial factors which are not
related to immigration and over which the immigrants
have no control. We must abstain, for want of space,
from quoting his statistics. His conclusions are reproduced
in condensed form, yet, as nearly as possible verbatim, in
the following abstract 1 :
" New York City is the great mart of, the American conti-
nent. Every company or corporation of any size or import-
ance has offices, usually its principal offices, in New York
City. The New York market, therefore, is an exceedingly
important factor in the concentration of manufacturers
in that city. The fact that New York City is large and
commercially great, makes it a desirable place in which
to locate a manufacturing enterprise. A very large and
increasing importance should be attached to this element
as a factor in the congestion of manufactures in New York
City. During the last half century New York has been
changing from a purely commercial city to a manufacturing
center as well. The value of manufactured products has
increased nearly tenfold. The great bulk of the manufac-
turing in greater New York is carried on in Manhattan
below Fourteenth Street, on that small but immensely
valuable one-hundredth of the city's total land area. Of
the whole number of workers engaged in manufactures in
Manhattan, 321,488, or 66.8 per cent, work in factories
below Fourteenth Street, while only 160,368 or 33.2 per
cent work in the much larger area above Fourteenth Street.
The problem of congestion of population, then, seems to be
closely linked with that of congestion of industries.
"Population must live within an accessible distance of its
place of work. Hence, it is scarcely necessary to point
out how important a cause of congestion of population the
concentration of industry, trade, and commerce becomes.
1 Edward Ewing Pratt: Industrial Causes of Congestion of Population
in New York City, pp. 14, 15, 17, 20, 21, 39, 42, 94, 97, 138, 145, 146, 155,
166, 167, 182, 183, 185, 186, 187, 188, 204.
236 Immigration and Labor
The conditions of labor exercise a preponderating influence
upon the lives of the workers. Long hours and low pay
have compelling force and necessitate the residence of the
overworked and underpaid in the over-crowded and con-
gested districts of New York City. Even the efficient work-
man counts the carfare to distant points a drain on his
income, and locates near the industrial districts. The
conclusion indicated is irresistible, that the factory and the
workshop are the predominant factor in the lives of these
workers, and that the factories in the crowded sections of
Manhattan are largely responsible for the problem of
congestion of population which confronts the city in these
districts. The latter being limited in size, buildings must
be erected which will house many families. Some students
of the problem have discovered the fact that in the most
congested districts there are to be found the largest pro-
portions of aliens. The conclusion is then drawn that
congestion is due to immigration. The best that can be
said of this generalization is that it is indeed a hasty one.
The tendency for people to group themselves together in a
strange land is most natural. The newly arrived immigrant
seeks his friends or relatives, if he has none, he seeks com-
panionship where he can understand and where he can be
understood. From this little nationality group, he makes
his start in the struggle of the New World. These steady
accessions of newly arrived immigrants no doubt augment
the crowded districts, but they are scarcely an important
cause. Similar tendencies of congregation among immi-
grants are found in sparsely settled Minnesota and in the
Dakotas, but we do not find congestion. The logical
explanation is, that there are other and perhaps more
fundamental causes at work.
"One of the most powerful lodestones of the city is the city
itself, and within the city, the center is the magnet. These
advantages of the city and the center of the city are not
purely pleasurable, but are social in the best sense of the
word. It is at the center of a great city like New York
that educational and cultural facilities are found most
highly developed. As a shrewd employer of men once said,
'A man can get more for nothing in New York City than
he can buy with his whole wage in a small town. ' He can
get more pleasure, more excitement, more education, than
he can anywhere else. The city contributes to every side
of a man, no matter how varied his nature. This is true,
The Standard of Living 237
in general, of the city; it is pre-eminently true of the center
of the city's population, where congestion has occurred, or
is likely to occur.
"Congestion is often attributed to the inordinate desire
of certain races or nationalities to congregate. The Jews
and the Italians have each been accused of causing conges-
tion. These recent arrivals have no doubt largely inhabited
congested districts, but it seems unjust and unscientific
to assert that congestion is caused by these groups of people.
In fact the entire reasoning underlying this theory of
congestion is based on a priori logic and is open to serious
objections. The returns of workers employed in Lower
Manhattan, in the uptown factories, in Brooklyn, near
Brooklyn Bridge, in Williamsburg, in Queens Borough, near
the 34th Street Ferry, and in suburban factories located on
the outskirts of Greater New York, display certain uni-
form tendencies which may be formulated as follows:
"A working population tends to live in the immediate
vicinity of its place of employment.
"The distribution of a working population is greatly
influenced by such industrial factors as hours of work and
wages. The degree of distribution may be termed residence-
mobility.
"The residence-mobility of a working population varies
inversely with the length of the working day or week.
The longer the working day the intenser the congestion.
"The residence-mobility of a working population varies
directly with the wages or labor. The workers earning the
lowest wages are the most congested.
"The nationality or race of the workers has no appre-
ciable effect upon the residence-mobility of a working
population.
" In the most congested districts a large proportion of the
workers find it impossible to secure adequate or comfortable
living quarters. Hence we find that the workers employed
in Lower Manhattan take, on the average, a longer time in
getting to and from work than the workers in any other
group. Nor do the workers employed near Manhattan
show any tendency whatever, that could be interpreted as
indicating a preference for the congested districts. The
workers prefer to live near their places of employment.
This is the tendency despite nationality, which may be
urging them to live among their countrymen. These
facts indicate that the recently-arrived Italian or Russian
238 Immigration and Labor
Jew does not prefer to live in the congested districts.
They are found to reside near their places of work, and
when the two alternatives are open to them, the larger
proportion embraces the opportunity to live among decent
surroundings. The most important finding in the investi-
gation of the group of workers employed in Brooklyn near
the Brooklyn Bridge is the relatively small proportion who
live in Manhattan, in spite of its accessibility. With the
crowded down-town colony of Little Italy easily accessible,
only 37.8 per cent of these Italians live in Lower Manhattan.
Of the group working in Brooklyn, there are more than
fifty per cent less Italians, and almost fifty per cent less
Russians and Jews living in Manhattan, than of the groups
that are employed in Manhattan. This fact shows the
effect of concentrating industries in Manhattan and demon-
strates what a difference exists when the factories are
located only just outside. Manufacturers in suburban
sites within accessible distance of Manhattan remove their
workmen from the congested districts. The workmen,
when given the chance, prefer to live in the less crowded
sections. This is true even of the much-maligned Italian
and Jew.
"When the influence of immigration and the distribution
of the various nationalities are carefully considered, the
tendency of our immigrant people to live in congested
districts near the work places cannot occasion very great
surprise, in view of the fact that our foreign population is
the most unskilled, and therefore, the lowest paid, and that
it is employed in industries working the longest hours.
This tendency and the fact that aliens form the largest
part of our most congested population is admitted has
been frequently seized upon as the explanation of conges-
tion, and hence these theorists ihave demanded restriction
of immigration as a remedy for congestion. However, if
congestion were due to the desire or willingness of our alien
population to live in congested districts, we should expect
those employed within a reasonable distance of Manhattan
to make every effort to live there. But this is exactly
contrary to the facts as brought out in the preceding study.
The Italians, Jews, and Slavic peoples, who have oftenest
been indicted for congestion, have proved themselves
innocent and their positive unwillingness to live in Man-
hattan, when escape is offered, is evidenced by every group
of workers in the factories outside of Lower Manhattan.
The Standard of Living 239
If, therefore, this mass of evidence has any weight, the
oftrepeated theory of congestion that it is the result of
the preference of the people, the gregarious instinct is
disproved.
"The basic cause of congestion in all great cities is to be
found in the failure on the part of the community to provide
necessary safeguards. The first of these negative causes is
the lack of proper planning of the city. Had our cities
been laid out on broad, comprehensive plans, had our
streets been laid out on wide, intelligent lines, and adequate
parks provided, had our industrial and commercial districts
been segregated, and our residence districts reserved, some
of the very tap-roots of congestion would have been re-
moved.
"The lack of adequate building laws is closely linked to
that of city planning. The limitation of the area of the
lot which can be built upon, the height of the house, the
size of the rooms, are all factors which would definitely and
certainly confine and limit congestion. But even those
laws we have, have not been adequately enforced. Had our
laws been enforced in the best possible manner, we would
have gained a little in preventing congestion. Of the
local conditions peculiar to New York, which with thought
and foresight might have been prevented, the first and
foremost is the lack of adequate rapid transit. Whenever
it has been advantageous to do business in Lower Man-
hattan, it has been convenient, because of lack of transit
facilities, both to have a permanent place of business there
and to live there. Transit not only converged on Lower
Manhattan, but what there was of it simply conveyed
people into the crowded districts and 'dumped' them.
Had transit facilities to neighboring localities been con-
venient and adequate, the population might have availed
itself of the advantages of the central city, and business
might have flourished in other than down-town Man-
hattan districts. Important factors in the campaign for
the relief of congestion of population in Manhattan are:
first, the removal of factories from Manhattan, and their
distribution according to some comprehensive plan through-
out the outlying suburbs; second, the enactment of laws
to prevent the reproduction of bad living and housing con-
ditions in the other neighborhoods. This is city planning. ' '
It is evident from Professor Pratt's analysis that conges-
240 Immigration and Labor
tion in New York City is not wrought by the habits or
standards of living of the immigrants from Eastern and
Southern Europe, but is forced upon them by conditions
not of their own making.
As regards the effects of this congestion upon the rate of
wages, on the other hand, the determining factor is not the
discomfort suffered by the immigrant, but the amount he
must expend for rent. And it is a well-known fact that
house rent in New York is higher than in the rest of the
United States. The average rent in New York City for a
normal workingman's family, according to latest pre-war
statistics, was $13.50 to $14.00 a month, whereas in the
rest of the United States, it ranged from $8.25 to $11.00
per month. 1 The Jewish ,or Italian immigrant in New
York City was compelled to expend for rent about $1.00 a
week more than the wage-earners in small towns where the
native American workmen predominate. The American
workman may be better housed, yet when the manufacturer
employing immigrant labor in New York must meet in the
nation's market his competitor employing native American
labor in a small country town, it is the native American
workman, rather than the immigrant recently arrived in
New York from Southern or Eastern Europe, that can be
induced or coerced to accept a lower wage.
C. Housing Conditions in the Country at Large
In a retrospective view of the New England textile
manufacturing towns of the period when the operatives in
Amos G. Warner; American Charities, p. 180. "Not only is the
cost of housing less in cities outside of New York, but the accommodations
enjoyed are better. Detached houses are the rule, with no question
of access to light and air. The number of rooms is 3, in only I case of
the 53 (Rochester) ; only 6 report 4 rooms, and 7 and 8 rooms are of fre-
quent occurrence. . . . For $8.00 a month in the smaller towns of the
State, and $10.00 or $n.oo in the cities like Syracuse, better accommo-
ations can be secured than for $15.00 in Manhattan." Chapin:
The Standard of Living in New York City, p. 303.
The Standard of Living 241
the mills were recruited among the farm girls of the neigh-
borhood, the Immigration Commission has discovered a
description of their living conditions "which affords a
pleasing contrast with the Lowell of the present." "The
life in the boarding houses was very agreeable. These
houses belonged to the corporation," 1 i. e. t they were
"company houses," in modern parlance. Dr. Sumner,
however, in her History of Women in Industry in the
United States, written for the U. S. Bureau of Labor, quotes
other contemporary testimony less bucolic in character.
From the same town of Lowell, complaints were made in 1845
that a dozen or more of the "daughters of New England"
were crowded into "the same hot, ill-ventilated attic."
The boarding houses of the Tremont mills in 1847 were
described in the following extract from a letter:
T is quite common for us to write on the cover of a bandbox, and
sit upon a trunk, as tables or chairs in our sleeping rooms are all out
of the question, because there is no room for such articles, as 4 to 6
occupy every room, and of course trunks and bandboxes constitute
furniture for the rooms we occupy. A thing called a light-stand, a
little more than a foot square, is our table for the use of 6. Wash-
stands are uncommon articles it has never been my lot to enjoy their
use, except at my own expense. 3
Comparative statistics of house tenancy in Boston in
1855 and 1900 show that in the middle of the nineteenth
century the tenement house population was as numerous,
in proportion, as in our day. This can be seen from Table
71 on page 242.
Overcrowded and filthy tenement houses were as preva-
lent forty years ago in Boston, as in New York. There
also the conversion of the single family house into a tene-
ment house, where a whole family was jammed in every
room, was productive "of filth and grime." An early
report of the Massachusetts Labor Bureau, describing the
1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. I, pp. 508-509.
* Helen L. Sumner: Report of Woman and Child Wage-Earners in
the United States, vol. ix., pp. 87-88.
242 . Iitomigration and Labor
$*
tenement houses of Boston and their surroundings, speaks
of "hovels rotting with damp and mould," of "puddles
reeking with stenchy garbage,*' of "putrid cesspools and
uncleansed drains, befouled with unspeakable nastiness." 1
TABLE 71.
PER CENT DISTRIBUTION OF THE FAMILIES OF BOSTON ACCORDING TO
NUMBER OF FAMILIES PER HOUSE, 1855 AND IQOO. 3
Per cent of families
Living in 1855 1900
1 family houses 31.8 32.2
2 family houses 23.5 26.5
Tenements with 3 or more families 44.7 41 .3
Total 100.0 100.0
The degree of congestion at the close of the '6o's is exem-
plified by the description of a block of tenements consisting
of fifty-six rooms which were occupied by fifty-four families,
mostly Irish. There were also a few English and colored
families among them. The stairways were rotten and
dangerous. The ventilation of the rooms was very poor.
Washing, ironing, and drying were all done in the only room
which was both a living room and a sleeping room. 3
The two-room tenements on Meander Street consisted
of a living and a sleeping room, both dark and damp and
dirty. Other tenements visited were old, rickety frame
houses with plastering broken down and full of holes through
which rain and sun freely entered. In the summer the
houses swarmed with vermin. These houses were occupied
by American and Irish tenants.
Another tenement house in Kingston Court was a wooden
building consisting of six apartments, some with three
rooms and some with only one to each. The living rooms
1 Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor, jd Annual Report
(1871-1872), pp. 437-438.
3 Census of Boston, 1855, p. n (percentages computed); XII. Census
of United States. Population, Part II., p. 186, Table XCVIII.
3 Reports of the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1870, pp.
164-180.
The Standard of Living 243
were 10 by 14; the sleeping rooms 7 by 9. The sun never
penetrated the sleeping rooms. Water was obtained from
a hydrant in the yard upon which twenty-six families
depended. Broken windows patched up with boards and
rags, rickety and broken-down stairs were not unusual.
We quote the concluding sentence of the report :
We could describe other tenement-house abominations of the same
foulness and beastly defilement, but it would be but a repetition of
nastiness and negligence, and for which neither memory or dictionary
could supply words not yet used, or language adequate to the filthy
picturing. 1
In the smaller Massachusetts towns, the working people
were as badly housed as in Boston. The following is
reproduced from contemporary testimony given by a
canvasser who went through many of the tenements of
Danvers :
Take them as a whole, they are horrid; those belonging to the factory
especially. There are tenement houses there that ought not to be
occupied. Four families have complained to me, that if they go to
bed at night and there comes a shower, they have to rise up and put
dishes in different places to catch the water, and that they can't sleep
in their beds; and to prove it I went and examined and saw it was
actually worse than they had said; one house, especially, where a person
came to me, and I saw he did n't look right, and I said, "Are you going
to work?" "No," he says, "had no sleep last night." It had been
raining and his mother had been baking and preparing things for the
house, and, in the morning almost everything had swum off and gone
away in all directions. . . . Another house, I was almost afraid to
go into. I could see right through into the cellar; the plastering was
entirely off the ceiling and they told me it leaked in just about the same
way. There is another house, where there is a yard square without a
shingle on it; and then another has an addition to it, and you can put
your whole arm right in betwixt the two. It is more like a pig-pen
than a decent house . . . when people are in the water-closet, the
people on the road can see them. There is not a good tenement in the
village. 2
1 Reports of the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1871, pp.
517-531.
* Ibid., pp. 442-443-
244 Immigration and Labor
The same conditions were reported from Salem. The
houses were seldom repaired, the plumbing was very poor,
and the pump water was often made unfit for drinking
purposes by the washings of the yard. The odor in the
houses was bad. The following description of a house at
No. 1 8 Lemon Street, is quoted as an extreme case, which
nevertheless indicates what conditions were tolerated in
those days:
In connection with the kitchen, and only separated by a door was the
pantry, quite reluctantly shown us by the mistress. She said that it
being very much out of repair, and not fit to be used as such, they con-
cluded it was best to turn it into a cowshed. Here were two cows, and
all the accompaniments usually found in a stable, in direct connection
with the kitchen, filling the house with its unmitigated stench. In this
place pigs and hens were once kept, besides the cow, the former on all
occasions making the freest use of the domestic apartments. 1
About the same time (1872) shanty dwellers were found
among the laborers of Massachusetts. The paymaster of
tunnel laborers employed at North Adams in 1872 testified
that many of them lived in shanties on the works and even
kept boarders. ''The miners, rockmen, etc., who have no
families, board at the shanties. They are filthy, dirty
places.
The congestion and squalor of the past were no better
than the worst housing conditions that were found by the
investigators of the Immigration Commission among the
immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe. Yet
the tenement-house dwellers of forty years ago were all of
Teuton and Celtic stock. As stated in a previous chapter,
contemporary observers sought to explain the bad housing
conditions of the Irish immigrants by the low standard of
living of the people of Ireland. 3 Although living conditions
1 Reports of the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1870, pp. 372
and 380.
a Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor. Third Annual Report
(1871-1872), pp. 440-441-
* Report of the Industrial Commission, vol. xv., p. 459.
The Standard of Living 245
in Ireland have greatly improved since those days, yet they
still remain far below the average of the most overcrowded
sections of the great American cities.
The investigation of the Immigration Commission was
confined to "the overcrowded, poor quarters of the city";
in the households investigated, the average number of
persons per room was I.34. 1 In the city of Dublin, accord-
ing to the census of 1901, four fifths of all tenements con-
sisted of four rooms or less with an average of 2.20 persons
per room. More than one third of all tenements had three
persons .or more per room. Three fifths of all tenements
consisted of one or two rooms only. 2 In the whole of
Ireland, one third of all families lived in two rooms or less. 3
There were 38,086 families of three or more persons living
in one room each. These extremes of congestion comprised
4.2 per cent of all Irish families. The details are given in
Table 72.
TABLE 72.
NUMBER OF TENEMENTS OF ONE ROOM OCCUPIED BY THREE OR MORB
PERSONS, I90I.4
Number of
Occupied by
3 persons
4 persons
5 persons
6 persons
7 persons
8 persons
9 persons
10 persons
1 1 persons
12 persons or more
Total 38,036
If it is maintained that the immigrant tends to transplant
to the American soil the standard of living of his native
country, it must follow from the latest statistics of housing
conditions in Ireland that even the present-day Irish immi-
1 Jenks and Lauck, loc. tit., pp. 117, 119.
3 See Appendix, Table XVI.
' Census of Ireland, 1901. General Report, p. 112, Table 9; p. 173,
Table 49. Ibid., Table 10.
246 Immigration and Labor
grants are open to the same objection as the immigrants from
Southern and Eastern Europe. The fact that the investi-
gation of the Immigration Commission discovered among
the Irish no overcrowding approaching that of their mother
country must be taken to mean one of two things : either its
investigators overlooked the recent Irish immigrants and
selected only old Irish settlers who had in the course of time
advanced on the social scale, or else the standard of living
of the recent Irish immigrants in the United States was not
determined by their living conditions in Ireland, but
depended upon their earning ability in this country. In
either case the race theory of economics fathered by the
Commission fails.
That bad housing conditions are not the exclusive char-
acteristic of the immigrant, but are found under like econ-
omic conditions among the native wage-earners as well, has
been shown by the investigation of the Immigration Commis-
sion in Alabama, where there are practically no foreigners
whose competition might be supposed to have forced down
the American standard of living. In the outlying towns,
beyond the territory immediately adjacent to Birmingham,
many of the bituminous coal mines are operated exclusively
by native labor and native white Americans are employed
as unskilled laborers. "In these environments the home
of the native white laborer is frequently devoid of the more
modern equipment and sanitation." 1 Mr. Streightoff , in
his study of the standard of living, uses stronger language.
According to him, "in the Southern mill towns conditions
are about at their worst." The number of foreign-born
wage-earners in the Southern mills is negligible and cannot
affect the housing situation. The mill workers are country
people of old American stock. And yet the company
houses in which they live "are neither sheathed, plastered,
nor papered, and the tenants suffer intensely from the
occasional cold weather." 3
1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 9, p. 229.
3 Streightoff: The Standard of Living, pp. 76-77 and 92.
The Standard of Living 247
The preceding comparison between the present and the
past, on the one hand, and between native and foreign-
born mill and mine workers, on the other, irresistibly leads
to the conclusion that the cause of bad housing conditions
is not racial, but economic. That the difference among
wage-earners in this respect "depends, of course . . .
upon the income, " is admitted, "to a considerable extent, "
by the experts of the Immigration Commission with the
qualification, however, that the difference depends "appar-
ently also upon the insistence" of the tenants themselves
upon having proper accommodations. * If the South Italian
or Irish laborers, or the Southern white mill hands, are not
so well housed as their Welsh foreman, or English engineer,
it is because, apart from their inability to raise the rent of a
substantial dwelling, they do not "insist" upon having it
for the money they are able to pay. That the English or
German laborers and factory hands of past generations
lived in filthy tenements, must have been due, by the same
method of reasoning, to lack of "insistence" on their part
upon better accommodations. This view implies a belief
that the law of supply and demand will assure to the
wage- workers such homes as they will "insist" upon. The
economic distinction between land and other forms of
property is lost sight of.
The inadequacy of the law of supply and demand in the
matter of housing was conclusively demonstrated by all
investigations of the New York housing system, which
"agreed in showing the landlord, rather than the helpless
tenant, as the primitive cause of tenement evils." 2
In the mill towns and mining camps of to-day, as in the
1 "There seems to be a decided difference . . . among the various
races the South Italians and the Syrians among the recent immigrants,
the Irish among the older immigrants, not being so well provided with
sanitary equipment as are the other races. This depends, of course, to
a considerable extent, upon the income, but apparently also upon the
insistence of the persons themselves upon having proper water supply
and toilet accommodations." Jenks and Lauck, loc. cit., p. 126.
3 Report of the Industrial Commission, vol. xv., p. 459.
248 Immigration and Labor
mill towns of Massachusetts in the days of the "old
immigration," the helplessness of the tenant is aggravated
by the combination of the landlord and mill owner in the
same individual or corporation, whose income is derived
from house rents, as well as from manufacturing or mining.
"In many industrial localities," say Professors Jenks and
Lauck, "especially in those connected with the mining
industry, the so-called 'company-house* system prevails
under which the industrial worker . . . must live in a
house owned by the operating company and rented to him." x
This system is as common in the Anglo-Saxon towns of the
South, as in the Slav settlements of Pennsylvania. 3 If the
mill or mine worker were to "insist" upon a better
dwelling, he could not hold his position.
The Immigration Commission made no systematic
inquiries to ascertain the landlords' share of responsibility
for the overcrowding and unsanitary conditions of the
houses occupied by the new immigrants in industrial
communities. The outspoken tendency of its investiga-
tion was to lay the whole blame upon the habits of the
immigrants. There are scattered in its reports, however,
occasional items of information which tell the other side
of the story. The following description of a "company
house" is illuminating:
The type of company house most frequently seen in the locality
adjacent to Birmingham is a one-story frame building containing from
two to four rooms, the four-room houses being frequently divided into
two apartments. . . . They are usually devoid of any modern con-
veniences, such as bath or flush toilet.
But these houses are "built in close proximity to the
steel, iron, or coke yard in which the laborers are em-
ployed," 3 and they have no other choice but to take such
houses as the company provides for them, or to travel a
distance to and from work.
1 Jenks and Lauck, loc. cit., p. 279
* Streightoff, loc. cit., pp. 76-77.
Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 9, p. 232.
The Standard of Living 249
From an account relating to another locality we learn
that the rent paid by the recent immigrants "is excessive,
and yields an unusually large rate of return to his landlord." *
It may be surmised from this illustration that the income
from company houses also very likely "pays more than the
ordinary return on the cost of the building."
The effect of the emphasis, however, laid by the Com-
mission upon the "tendency . . . characteristic of the
South Italian and Slav races" to "settle in that section of
the town where . . . the house rent is reduced to a mini-
mum" 2 is to divert public attention from the responsibility
of the mine and mill operators for the insanitary condition
of the tenements provided by them for their employees. 3
The police power of the State is ample to protect the health
of the community from the ill effects of insanitary housing
conditions. Considered on its own merits, as a problem
in public hygiene, the housing of the mine and mill opera-
tives, whether native or foreign-born, has therefore no
relevancy to the subject of immigration.
In reality, however, the housing problem is drawn into
1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 9, pp. 93-94.
* Ibid., p. 229.
* The following is quoted from a "description of a typical mining and
coke village" in Pennsylvania:
"The typical company village is exceedingly insanitary. . . . The
water supply of the coal and coke town is very impure and a source of
disease. The companies usually 'clean up' the towns once a year;
sometimes twice, but often not at all. There is little to stimulate
cleanliness on the part of the tenants under such circumstances. The
mine operators say that the existing conditions result from the fact that the
foreigner is too dirty for the town to be other than what it is, but whether
this is true or not, it seems that very little effort is made to improve the
living conditions." (Ibid., vol. 6, p. 323.)
The defense is very typical, indeed. Because " the foreigner is dirty, "
the mining company which owns the village provides him with impure
water which is a source of disease, and cleans up the village only twice
a year. It is evident that the tenants cannot build water-works, nor
can they install a system of sewerage. It would not avail them to
"insist" upon these improvements, as there is no place to which they
could move in case of refusal, these conditions being "typical."
250 Immigration and Labor
the discussion of immigration only collaterally, as an
argument in support of a theory. The Immigration Com-
mission has filled its volumes with statistical tables, some of
which show that the English-speaking wage-workers are
better housed than the immigrants from Southern and
Eastern Europe, and others that the earnings of the former
are higher. The impression conveyed by the race classifi-
cation 1 is that the wages of the immigrants from Southern
and Eastern Europe are low because they are willing to
live in crowded quarters, whereas the wages of the English-
speaking workmen are higher, because they "insist" upon
the American standard of living. The Immigration Com-
mission's own statistics, however, contain a refutation of
this theory.
In the first place, it appears that there is the widest
variation among wage-earners of each race with respect to
housing, which shows that there is no common standard
of living for all wage-earners of the same race, but that it
varies for the individuals of the same race. Neither do the
low rents paid by some of them force down the earnings of
others of the same race, as demonstrated by the wide varia-
tions in earnings among individuals of the same race.
In the second place, it is found that "the household of
immigrants, as compared with the native born wage-earners
pays, generally speaking, the same if not higher rent per
room." 2 In some districts the average monthly rent per
apartment is also higher for recent immigrants than for
American wage-earners of native parentage. In Ensley,
1 Some of the "race" distinctions are unique. Thus we are informed
that the Macedonians paid $5.53 per apartment, whereas the Greeks
paid $5.94 and the Bulgarians only $4.28. (Ibid., vol. 9, p. 234, Table
687.) It can be found in the Commission's own Dictionary of Races
that Macedonia is merely a political division with a mixed population
consisting chiefly of Bulgarians and Greeks. Professors Jenks and
Lauck also comment upon the per capita jnonthly rent payments of
the Bulgarians who paid only $0.97, and the Macedonians who paid
$0.78. (Jenks and Lauck, loc. cit., pp. 131-132.)
3 Jenks and Lauck, loc. cit. t p. 122.
The Standard of Living 251
Ala., e. ., the latter paid on an average $5.40 per apartment,
the Greeks, $5.94, and the Poles, $5.98. The lowest average
rent per room was paid by the native white of native
parentage, viz., $1.38; the new immigrants ranged in the
following order: Slovaks, $1.73; Bulgarians, $1.82; Poles,
$1.91; South Italians, $2.09; Greeks, $2.93. 1
It is believed, however, that the difference in rent is
reduced by overcrowding, which is "most frequently shown
by the keeping of boarders or lodgers." 2 Great stress is
laid upon the fact that the Southern and Eastern Europeans
"break the independence of family life by taking boarders
or lodgers into the home," whereas "the native American
and older immigrant employees maintain an independent
form of family life," though they send their wives and
children to the factory. 3 It is worthy of note, as a his-
torical parallel, that in 1873 General Walker spoke of "the
detestable American vice of 'boarding* . . . uprooting the
ancient and honored institutions of the family." 4 The
Commission has laboriously figured out for each race the
percentage of families taking lodgers or boarders. Aside
from the merits of this criterion which will be considered
later, it is open to question, whether the figures of the
Commission may be accepted as typical. A similar inves-
tigation recently made by the United States Bureau of
Labor led to widely divergent results. Out of 1139 Ameri-
can households studied by the Immigration Commission
only 10 per cent had boarders or lodgers; out of 15,161
American households, however, studied by the Bureau
of Labor 22.23 P er cen t kept boarders or lodgers. The
variation of the percentage by race in the statistics of the
Immigration Commission was from o to 79.3 per cent,
whereas in the statistics of the United States Bureau of
Labor the range of variation was from 16.50 to 30.77 per
1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 9., p. 234, Table 687.
2 Jenks and Lauck, loc. cit., p. 122.
a Jenks and Lauck, loc. cit., pp. 158, 161.
* Walker: Discussions in Economics and Statistics, p. 43.
252
Immigration and Labor
cent. The discrepancies between the two series of figures
relating to the old immigration are shown in Table 73.
TABLE 73.
PER CENT OF FAMILIES KEEPING BOARDERS OR LODGERS AMONG THE
RACES OF THE OLD IMMIGRATION. 1
Nativity
Source of information
Immigration
Commission
United States
Bureau of Labor
.0
2.2
4.1
6-3
6.4
7-i
9.6
20.13
26.89
23.51
26.78
30.71
25.92
2379
Welsh
Scotch . ,
Irish
English . .
That two official investigations separated by a brief
interval of six or seven years have brought such widely
divergent results, can probably be accounted for by the
fact that the investigations of the Immigration Commission
were concentrated upon selected industrial communities,
where the English-speaking immigrants were mostly high-
priced skilled mechanics, whereas the new immigrants were
nearly all unskilled laborers; it has been shown, however,
in Chapter VII. that each race is represented in every occu-
pation. The investigation of the United States Bureau of
Labor, on the other hand, was made in the leading indus-
trial centers of thirty-three States and is believed to be
"representative of the industrial portion of the country as
a whole. " a
Apart, however, from the doubtful value of the statistics
collected by the Immigration Commission on the subject
of boarders and lodgers, the fatal defect of its race per-
Jenks and Lauck, loc. tit., p. i6oT Eighteenth Annual Report
of the Commissioner of Labor, p. 261.
Eighteenth Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor, p. 39.
The Standard of Living 253
centages is that they assume by implication a communistic
system of housekeeping among the foreign-born. In
reality, however, the 52 per cent of the Croatians who keep
boarders or lodgers do not help to pay the rent of the other
48 per cent who keep none. The latter must themselves
pay the rent in full, which is at least as high as that paid by
the natives. It is evident that the wages of those who have
no lodgers must be sufficient to enable them to pay the
same rent as the native Americans, which goes to show that
those of them who do keep lodgers do not force down the
earnings of their countrymen.
That overcrowding is not a racial characteristic, but an
economic phenomenon, appears from the following table
showing the comparative frequency of the practice of
keeping boarders or lodgers in families of foreign-born
garment workers and woolen mill operatives classified by
annual earnings.
TABLE 74-
PER CENT OF FOREIGN-BORN FAMILIES IN WHICH WIFE HAS EMPLOY-
MENT OR KEEPS BOARDERS OR LODGERS, BY YEARLY EARNINGS
OF HUSBAND. x
Husband's earnings.
Per cent of wives keep
ng boarders or lodgers
Garment workers
Woolen mill operatives
Under $400 ....
28.2
61 4
$400 and under $600
10.6
AX ?
$600 and over
IO.O
7T
The nationalities comprised in the preceding table are
Scotch, Irish, Germans, Norwegians, French, Bohemians,
Hebrews, Lithuanians, Poles, South Italians, and Syrians.
As shown by the figures, the percentage of families with
boarders and lodgers 3 decreases with the increase of
earnings.
1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 10, Table 38, p. 685;
vol. ii, Table 45, p. 310.
1 The comparative value of the figures could not be affected by the
254
Immigration and Labor
The same effect is produced by differences in rent.
Among iron and steel workers "both the native and foreign
households exhibit the smallest proportion having boarders
or lodgers in the South." The reason is that rents are
considerably lower in the South than in other sections of
the country. 1 Of the South Italian iron workers in the
Pittsburgh district 70.6 per cent keep boarders and lodgers,
whereas in the Birmingham district there are only 3 per
cent with boarders and lodgers. Among the Slovaks the
percentages are respectively 43.9 and 15.0.*
The United States Bureau of Labor has made a compari-
son of the expenditures for rent per person in 3908 foreign
and 7248 native "normal" families, which have no children
of working age, nor any boarders or lodgers. The results
for the North Atlantic and North Central States compare
as follows:
TABLE 75.
AVERAGE ANNUAL RENT PER FAMILY AND PER INDIVIDUAL IN NORMAL
FAMILIES, BY NATIVITY, IN NORTHERN STATES. 3
Nativity
North Atlantic
North Central
Per family
\
Per individual
Per family
Per individual
Native
$125.54
118.21
$33-25
29.09
$97.58
91.94
$2445
22.O2
Difference ....
$7-33
$ 4-16
$5.64
$ 2.43
small proportion of married women working for wages who were found
in only 5 per cent of all foreign-born households studied by the Immigra-
tion Commission.
1 Cottages very similar to, but not so good as those for which the
southern mill operatives pay a rent of $3.00 to $3.50 per month, rent
in Southwestern Illinois at from $14.00 to $16.00 per month. (Ibid.,
vol. 9, p. 93.)
a Ibid., vol. 8, p. 105.
3 Eighteenth Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor, Table V., H.
and O., pp. 578, 589, 590. Other sections are omitted from this com-
The Standard of Living
255
The difference in the amount of rent paid by native and
foreign-born wage-earners amounts to fourteen cents a
week per family or eight cents a week per person in the North
Atlantic States and to eleven cents a week per family or
five cents a week per person in the North Central States.
This is the extent to which the scrimping on rent enables
the average immigrant to underbid the native wage-earner
in the labor market. In Table 75 all foreign-born are
combined in one group. In Table 76 the foreign-born are
distinguished by nationality for the country as a whole.
TABLE 76.
ANNUAL RENT PER FAMILY AND PER~INDIVIDUAL IN NORMAL FAMILIES,
BY NATIVITY OF HEAD OF FAMILY.*
Nativity of head of family
Per family
Per individual
Native white:
Foreign-born ...
$112
III
$29
27
Old immigration:
Canada
IOQ
27
England . .
125
JI
117
28
IIP
^O
IOQ
26
New immigration :
Austria-Hungary
QO
22
Russia
IOI
2*\
Ttalv..
Q7
2$
Another fundamental fact which has been noted by all
students of the housing problem is that the wage-earner
must expend more for rent in proportion to his income
in a large city than in a small town. "Whereas the
average outlay for rent in the income group $400-^500 in
the city is $120 or $125, that in the country as a whole is
$86.54."* The significance of this difference lies in the fact
parison because the averages for natives in the South may be reduced
by the inclusion of negroes.
1 Eighteenth Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor, Table V., J.
and P., pp. 581 and 591 respectively.
3 Streightoff: The Standard of Living, p. 12.
256 Immigration and Labor
that the recent immigrants are mostly concentrated in
great cities, where rent is high, while the native American
workmen predominate in small towns with low rents. So
when the article produced by immigrant labor in a large
city must compete in the market with the article produced
by native American labor in a small country town, it is not
the recent immigrant that is able to underbid the native
American workman, but on the contrary the latter is in a
position to accept a cheaper wage. 1
D. Food
The Immigration Commission has expressed the opinion
that "while it [the new immigration] may not have lowered
in a marked degree the American standard of living it has
introduced a lower standard which has become prevalent
in the unskilled industry at large." 2 This conclusion rests
solely on the meagre statistics which were collected by the
Commission on the subject of housing. The inconclusive-
ness of these statistics has been shown in the preceding
section. The food expenditure which absorbs about two
fifths of the workman's income, 3 was not included by the
Commission in the regular program of its statistical investi-
gation. Its reports contain but a few budgets picked up
here and there in a casual way. It notes, however, "that,
generally speaking, the expenditures for meat are consider-
ably higher in the case of the more recent immigrants than
in the case of the older immigrant races and the whites
native-born of native father." 4 By way of illustration
1 The Industrial Commission found that the average rent paid by a
family of a garment worker in the city was $8.95 per month for three
rooms, whereas the country garment workers who did not own their
houses paid on an average $4.59 for a whole house. (Report of the
Industrial Commission, vol. xv., p. 730.) The difference in rent amount-
ed to $4.37 per month, i. e., to $1.00 per week.
* Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. i, p. 39.
* Eighteenth Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor, p. 96.
* Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 6, p. 356.
The Standard of Living 257
the following items are quoted from some of the published
budgets.
The Magyar is a great consumer of meat. A butcher
states that a group of eight Magyar men on an average
eat 4 pounds of beef, 5 pounds of pork, 3 pounds of
Polish sausage, and 4 pounds of veal, and often in addi-
tion, bacon and ham and other cured meats, each day.
(Thus on an average, each man eats 2 pounds of meat
each day.)
The Bulgarians. Among them bread is the staple article
of diet. Each man will consume a three-pound loaf of
bread per day. They also use a small quantity of meat
each day, usually about a pound per man. (The experts
of the Commission consider one pound a day per man "a
small quantity." Few boarding houses patronized by
university professors serve meat in greater quantities.)
The kind of food consumed daily by a Bulgarian couple
was about as follows 1 :
Breakfast: Tea, cream, cheese, bread.
Dinner: Bread, some kind of meat or stew.
Supper: Bread, meat stew, or eggs.
Presumably these budgets were published by the Immi-
gration Commission, because they were regarded as
representative.
How do these food standards compare with the standard
of the native American workingman? We may accept as
the official definition of the American food standard the
ration fixed by act of x Congress for enlisted men on the
warships of the American navy. A specimen bill of fare
prepared in accordance with the Navy ration prescribed
by Congress, is as follows 2 :
Breakfast : Baked beans, tomato catsup, bread, butter,
coffee.
1 Reports of the Immigration Commission! vol. 9, pp. 82-96.
a Frank J. Sheridan: "Italian, Slavic, and Hungarian Unskilled Immi-
grant Laborers in the United States." Bulletin of the Bureau of Labor ,
No. 72, p. 466.
258 Immigration and Labor
Dinner: Roast beef, brown gravy, string beans, sweet
potatoes, cottage pudding, vanilla sauce, bread, coffee.
Supper : Cold boiled ham, canned peaches, bread, butter,
tea.
Judged by this official standard, the Hungarian and
Bulgarian workmen, with their daily fare of one or two
pounds of meat per man, do not appear to have "intro-
duced a lower standard."
Concerning the Italians, material for a comparison of
their food expenditure with that of native white Americans
is furnished in the Report of the Immigration Commission
on iron and steel manufacturing in the South. The Italians
whose budgets were reported were all unskilled, earning
from $7.50 to $12.50 per week, with the exception of
one foreman of unskilled laborers, who was earning $15.00
and had an 1 8-year-old boy who contributed $7.00 a week
to the family income. The Americans were all skilled
mechanics with a weekly income of from $18.00 to $25.00,
except one carpenter whose wages were $12.00 a week. In
Table 77 the food expenditures of these families have been
reduced to nutrition units per man per day according to
the scale adopted by the United States Department of
Agriculture. x
Although the budgets secured by the investigation of
TABLE 77.
AVERAGE EXPENDITURE PER MAN PER DAY OF SELECTED FAMILIES OF
SOUTH ITALIAN AND NATIVE WHITE WORKERS IN THE IRON
AND STEEL DISTRICT OF THE SOUTH. 3
South Italian Cents Native White Cents
No. 3 41 No. 13 62
No. 7 37 No. 10 36
No. 6 36 No. ii 36
No. 2 30 No. 9 32
No. 4 28 _ No. 12 29
1 For an explanation of the method used, see Robert Coit Chapin :
The Standard of Living among Workingmen's Families in New York
City, pp. 125-126. a For details see Appendix, Table XVII.
The Standard of Living 259
the Immigration Commission included none for unskilled
American workmen and only one for an Italian employed
in a supervisory capacity, all the rest relating to unskilled
Italian laborers, yet the preceding table shows that the food
expenditure of the South Italian laborer is the same as
that of the Southern white skilled mechanic. 1
A special investigation of the expenditures of single
laborers in construction camps was made by the Bureau of
Labor in 1906. Fresh and salt meats were found to be
essential parts of the bills of fare of "Hungarian" and
"Slav" 2 laborers. The same information was obtained
concerning Hungarian laborers in an iron and steel plant
in Ohio: "They used beef as a rule three times a day."
At Hansford, Pa., the bill of fare of Hungarians and Slavs
on week days was as follows :
"Breakfast: Bread and coffee. Lunch: Four or five
sandwiches (beef). Dinner in the evening: Soup, boiled
or roast beef, one half to three fourths of a pound a head.
Vegetables and coffee."
According to Dr. Roberts, who has made a study of the
conditions of labor in the anthracite coal mines, "the Slavs
have good bread made of the best wheat or rye; they con-
sume daily about a pound of beef for boiling or of fat pork
or bologna sausage, a quantity of potatoes, cabbage, milk,
coffee, and beer, butter and cheese, sugar, eggs, and fish."
An earlier investigation made by the Bureau of Labor
among the Slav and Hungarian workmen in the iron mines
of Pennsylvania showed that, in 1890, their bill of fare
included "two pounds of meat per man per day, one for
dinner and one for supper." 3
1 The one exceptionally high average, 62 cents per man per day, was
obtained from a native machinist, who was employed in the railroad
shops at $23.00 per week and had only his wife and a small child de-
pendent upon him.
a The term "Hungarian" often comprises all immigrants from
Hungary, most of whom belong to various Slav races. Bulgarians are
also " Slavs."
? Bulletin of the Bureau of Labor, No. 72, p. 475.
260 Immigration and Labor
With respect to Italians, a distinction must be drawn
between families and single men, or married men whose
families have remained in Italy. It is learned from the
investigation of the Bureau of Labor, that men who are
employed in construction camps live principally on vege-
tables and reduce their expenditures to a minimum, in an
effort to save as much as possible of their wages. Italian
families, however, do not differ in the matter of food
expenditures from families of other nationalities with the
same income. Beside the budgets of the Immigration
Commission which have been analyzed above, this fact is
brought out in Professor Chapin's monograph on the
standard of living among New York workingmen, based
upon a canvass of 391 families in the summer of 1907.
The following table, giving the classification of food
expenditures by income and nationality, is compiled from
Professor Chapin's budget statistics, the nationalities being
arranged in the descending order of their average expendi-
ture per man per day:
TABLE 78.
AVERAGE FOOD EXPENDITURES PER MAN PER DAY, BY INCOME AND
NATIONALITY 1
Income group and nationality Expenditure
Cents
$600 to $699:
Italian. 31.1
Bohemian 25.5
Teutonic 25.3
Austrian, Hungarian, and other S. E. European 24.0
Native white 23.9
Colored 23.5
Russian 23.1
Irish 20.8
$700 to $799:
Italian 31.2
Irish 30.0
Teutonic 26.4
Native white 77 26.0
Colored 25.7
Austrian, Hungarian, and other S. E. European 25. 1
Bohemian 24.3
1 Robert Chapin, loc. cit., p. 141.
The Standard of Living 261
Income group and nationality Expenditure
Cents
$800 to $899:
Italian 33.9
Native white 32.4
Bohemian 30.2
Teutonic 29.5
Irish 26.5
$900 to $999:
Native white 33.8
Teutonic 31.6
Italian 31.5
Irish 31.4
Austrian, Hungarian, and other Southeastern
European 31.1
Bohemian 28.5
$1000 to $1099:
Native white 38.1
Italian 34.3
Irish 32.0
Teutonic 31.9
The Italians in every income group expended more for
food than the Hungarians and Slavs. In every income
group below $900 per year, they expended more for food
than any other nationality, including native Americans. 1
Among the families with an income from $900 to $1000, the
Italians expended as much as the Teutons and the Irish,
and more than the Bohemians who are regarded as "desir-
able" immigrants. In the highest group the Italian ex-
pended more than the Celts and the Teutons. According
to Professor Underhill, of Yale University, who has made
a study of the nutritive value of various foods, 22 cents
per man per day must be regarded as the minimum upon
which physical existence can be maintained. 2 It appears
from the preceding table, that the Irish were the only race
which denied themselves that minimum when their earnings
were low. To sum up, Professor Chapin's analysis gives no
indication of a sliding scale of racial standards of living.
1 All the native Americans but one were sons of native fathers, or of
immigrants from Northern and Western Europe. The one exception
was the son of a Bohemian father, but Bohemians are not among the
"undesirable." Chapin, loc. cit., p. 39.
a Chapin. loc. cit., p. 126.
262
Immigration and Labor
The most extensive investigation of its kind, comprising
more than 25,000 family budgets, was made by the United
States Bureau of Labor ten years ago. Table 79, compiled
from its report, is a comparative statement of food expendi-
tures of "normal" families classified by annual income and
country of birth. A "normal " family, it will be remembered,
is one supported solely by the earnings of husband and
father. All families with abnormally low incomes (under
$400 annually) have been excluded from this comparison.
No nationality with less than ten families in each income
group is shown separately, but all foreign-born are included
in the total.
TABLE 79.
EXPENDITURES FOR FOOD IN NORMAL FAMILIES WITH AN INCOME FROM
$4OO TO $7OO, CLASSIFIED BY NATIVITY AND INCOME. r
Income
*4oo-$499
*500-JS99
*6oo-$699
Native white . .
$212
$24.5
$260
Foreign-born
22Q
255
276
Old Immigration :
Canada
228
25O
fv
267
England
21^
257
27O
Ireland
21.1
26l
278
Sweden
217
24.8
271
Germany. .
224.
254.
277
New Immigration:
Austria-Hungary
Russia
252
27.5
*O4-
267
27*1
/ /
289
2QT
Italy
214.
*/O
275
^91
26l
* u o
The lowest expenditures for food within the same income
group were found among native white workmen with
incomes under $500 and above $600; in the middle group
the lowest place was held by the Italians, the next to the
lowest by native white Americans. The highest expendi-
1 Eighteenth Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor, Table V D.
PP- 560-563.
The Standard of Living 263
tures were reported by the Russians in the two groups with
incomes of $500 and over. In the lowest income group the
highest expenditure for food was found among natives of
Austria-Hungary, while the Russians were on a par with
the English and above the Irish, the Canadians and the
Germans. In the other two groups, the natives of Austria-
Hungary expended more than the native Americans and
more than any of the "old immigrants." The Italians
expended more than the native Americans in the two
extreme groups, and only $10.00 less per year, i. e., three
cents a day less per family in the middle group.
It is possible that the higher expenditure for food among the
"undesirable" races is accounted for by the size of the
family, but the earnings of the head of the family must
cover the expense of supporting all its members. It is
therefore, the total expense rather than the average per in-
dividual that may, by supposition, affect the rate of wages.
Still, if we turn to the comparative table of the same
report in which the expenditure for food of native and
foreign families is reduced to a uniform basis of units of
consumption, 1 we observe the same tendency as shown by
the comparison of total expenditures. We learn from that
table:
(1) That among the families having no children the
natives of Russia expended $145.24 per one hundred units
of consumption, while the natives of the United States
expended only $119.85;
(2) That among the families with two children, the
Russians expended $107.35 as against $95.24 expended by
Americans ;
(3) That among families with three children, the
average expense of the Russians was $108.11, whereas
the Americans expended only $85.06;
(4) That an Italian family with one child expended
on an average $124.73, while an American family of the
1 Eighteenth Annual Report of the Commission of Labor, Table V D.,
p. 102.
264 Immigration and Labor
same size was contented with $109.94, a* 1 English family
with $107.19, and a Norwegian with $87.53;
(5) That an Austro-Hungarian family without children
or with one child expended more for food than a Scotch
family of the same size;
(6) That an Austro-Hungarian family with two children
needed $i 17.22, while a native American family of the same
size could exist on $95.24, and an English family on $105.86;
(7) That an Austro-Hungarian family with three
children, expended $98.65 per one hundred units of con-
sumption as compared with $85.00 expended by an average
American family of the same size, and with $85.20 expended
by an average English family;
(8) That an Austro-Hungarian family with four or
five children, expended more than a Scotch family;
(9) That the Scotch were in every group inferior to
the Russians;
(10) That English families with less than five children
had a lower expenditure for food than Russian families
of equal size. 1
These budgets have been quoted here as the best evidence
that has been collected on the comparative standards of
living of native and foreign-bora wage-earners. Still,
large as the number of individual families included in the
canvass of the Bureau of Labor may look at a superficial
glance, it affords too narrow a foundation for nice distinc-
tions. Food expenditures vary with the size and the
income of the family, and with geographical location
affecting the prices of food-stuffs. If the food expendi-
tures are to be compared by nationality, under uniform
conditions as to location, size of family, and income, some
of the groups must be so minute as to preclude the possibility
of any reliable generalizations. The last table commented
upon may serve as an illustration; among the foreign
nationalities, there is no group of more than seventeen
1 Eighteenth Annual Report of the Commission of Labor, p. 631, Table
VIE.
The Standard of Living 265
families, while most of the groups contain less than ten
families, and twenty-one consist of only one family. Varia-
tions in individual cases, however, are very wide. The
only conclusion that is warranted by such statistics as are
available is a negative one, viz., that the existence of a
race standard of living determining the rate of wages for
every race is not proven. 1 "The actual standard that
prevails is set primarily by the wages paid and the prices
charged." 2
E. Clothing
In no other respect is the assimilation of the immigrant
accomplished so rapidly as in the matter of dress. The
mandates of Herbert Spencer's "ceremonial government"
cannot be disobeyed. "Many of the recent immigrants,"
says the Immigration Commission, "still have some articles
of clothing which they brought with them from Europe.
Most of their clothing, however, practically all, is made in
this country and purchased by them here." 3 The prices
which the alien workman must pay in an American depart-
ment store for shoes and clothes are fixed, not by his im-
1 In a later work, published in 1917, the chief expert of the Immigra-
tion Commission seems to have come to recognize that the standard of
living of the new immigrants is not lower than, but different from, that
of the native wage-earners. Whereas the immigrant seeks primarily
physical comfort, with the sophisticated American worker the con-
ventional plays a conspicuous part in his family budget. To put it in
Professor Lauck's words:
"It is significant to note that all newer immigrants spend a greater
proportion of their total expenditures for food than do the native wage-
earners. This seems to be due to the fact that their standard of living
is less subject to demands created by desires other than for food. In a
sense, their standard is more elemental. They are more free to satisfy
their natural physical wants, and less restricted than native wage-
earners, by the pressure of other wants upon their income. In the
selection of their diet it seems to be the consensus of observations that the
newer immigrant has the advantage over the native wage-earners." W. Jett
Lauck and Edgar Sydenstricker: The Condition of Labor in American
Industries, p. 288.
* Chapin, loc. cit. t pp. 249-250.
8 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 9, p. 8l.
266 Immigration and Labor
ported individual or racial psychology, but by the Ameri-
can manufacturer, the American railway manager, and the
American department store proprietor, every one of them
eager to make an American profit, in order to maintain an
American standard of living for himself.
The Immigration Commission secured the transcripts of
store accounts, which showed that the prices paid for wear-
ing apparel by immigrants from Southern and Eastern
Europe were the same as those advertised in Washington,
D. C., by the department stores and tailor shops catering
to the trade of government clerks. 1
The United States Bureau of Labor has published com-
parative statistics showing for each nationality the average
annual expenditure for clothing. It can be seen at a glance
that the expenditure for clothing among the native, as well as
among the foreign-born, increases with the increase of their
earnings. 2 Whether, or not, the wage-earner's standard of
living determines his wages, *. e., whether, or not, he is paid
higher wages because he wears better clothes, it is self-evident
that his ability to buy clothes is limited by his earnings.
A comparison of race standards in the matter of clothing
must therefore be made for workmen of the same earning
capacity. Table 80 on page 267 follows the arrangement
of Table 79.
It can be seen from Table 80 that in each of the in-
come groups the variations of expenditure by race are
confined within very narrow limits, the margin between the
highest and lowest expenditure not exceeding $10.00 a year.
It is evident that such a margin is too small to produce an
appreciable effect upon the rate of wages. 3
1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 9, pp. 81, 84.
* Eighteenth Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor, Table V,D.
* It must be borne in mind, that the numbers of families in each group
being small, the variations may be due to differences in the size of the
families, in geographical location, etc. ~Even the earnings may vary
within each income group as much as $99.00 per year. Some allowance
must be made for the inaccuracy of the figures, inasmuch as they are all
mere estimates.
The Standard of Living
TABLE 80.
267
EXPENDITURE FOR CLOTHING IN NORMAL FAMILIES OF UNSKILLED
LABORERS, CLASSIFIED BY INCOME AND NATIVITY. x
Country of birth
Income
^400-1499
$500-*599
J6oo-|6 9 9
Native
$53
$66
$79
Foreign-born, generally . . .
Old Immigration:
53
57
63
61
78
82
England
58
67
75
ci
61
7-1
Sweden
48
64
78
Germany
52
63
80
New Immigration :
Austria-Hungary. . . .
Russia
57
C2
6l
64
82
74.
Italv . .
C2
cy
7-1
F. Savings
The expenses of a normal family for housing, food, and
clothing amount in the aggregate to about three fourths
of the total expenditure for all objects. 2 The preceding
analysis has shown that the variations of these principal
items of a workingman's budget are not affected by race.
Table 81 on page 268 points in the same direction. It can
be seen from the comparative figures that the average wage-
earner's family of every nationality lives practically up to
its income. A very small margin is left for savings. But
while the native workman may save or spend at pleasure, the
newly-arrived immigrant must save money.
" Before the immigrant can realize any return from his
labor in the form of American wages, he must incur the
following expense or indebtedness, for even if one or all
costs are prepaid for him by relative, friend, or other person,
he eventually pays them all by deductions from his wages
or otherwise:
1 Eighteenth Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor, pp. 560-563.
3 Ibid., p. 581, Table 5K.
268
Immigration and Labor
TABLE 81.
SURPLUS OF INCOME OVER EXPENDITURE OF NORMAL FAMILIES;
CLASSIFIED BY COUNTRY OF BIRTH. 1
Country of birth
Amount
Per cent of income
Native
$ 37
5.6
26
4. 1
Old immigration:
41
6 I
England
40
5.8
38
4.. 2
Germany
2^
3.6
I5
2.6
New Immigration:
Italy
2*
4.6
14.
2. 5
A
0.6
1. Cost of preparation at his home in Europe for the
journey.
2 . Cost of transportation from his home to the European
seaport.
3. Cost of emigrant head tax to his Government.
4. Cost of immigrant head tax to the United States
Government.
5. Cost of steamship transportation, European port to
the United States.
6. Cost of labor agency for securing employment at
port of entry, if used.
7. Cost of transportation, United States port of entry
to place of employment.
8. Cost of living from port of entry to place of destina-
tion." 2
The cost of items 3-5 and 7 is further on estimated at
$40.00 for a single Italian, Slav, or Hungarian immigrant.
If the immigrant has left wife and children in his native
country, he must save money to pay their passage. In
order to meet these demands the immigrant must curtail
his expenses for the necessities of life. This is accomplished
1 Eighteenth Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor, p. 581,
Tables V, J and K.
9 Bulletin of the Bureau of Labor, No. 72, pp. 411-412.
The Standard of Living 269
in various ways. Living in crowded tenements is one of
them. Co-operative boarding, which has been given the
odious name of "the boarding boss system," enables the
Slav laborer to reduce his board bill much below the price
the individualistic Anglo-Saxon has to pay in a boarding
house, though, as has been shown, the fare under the co-
operative system is at least as wholesome and abundant as
in an average boarding house.
The fact, however, that the immigrant who has no family
in the United States is at first content to deny himself many
comforts does not warrant the apprehension that he will
be satisfied with a wage just sufficient to provide the bare
necessities of life. The Italian railroad laborer who sub-
sists on vegetables does not work for the mere price of his
vegetables, but saves about 80 per cent of his wages.
"Ninety-five per cent of the Italian laborers save from
$25.00 to $30.00 of their wages per month. For eight
months' work this would amount to over $200 per man." 1
It is a matter of general knowledge that large sums of
money are annually sent home by the immigrants. A
member of the Immigration Commission who visited a
Greek mountain village from which two hundred immigrants
had gone to the United States was told that each of the
men sent back about $200 annually. 2 It was learned
from the records of a post-office in a township of Russian
Poland that thirty-seven workmen who had immigrated
from that township to the United States sent home in 1903
the sum of 47,862 roubles, i. e., an average of $665 per
emigrant. 3 That these are not isolated cases is indicated
by the number of international money orders sent from the
United States to Europe, which averaged, in 1907-1909,
about three millions a year. 4 Moreover, hundreds of
1 Bulletin of the Bureau of Labor, No. 72, pp. 469-470, 477, 481.
* Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 4 (in press).
a Reports of the Warsaw Statistical Committee, Bulletin XXII. K. B.
Vobly: General Analysis of the Statistics of Migration of Workers for
Temporary Employment and of the Statistics of Emigration, p. 29.
Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 37, p. 280.
270 Immigration and Labor
thousands of immigrants annually return home, and their
passage must be paid ,out of their savings. The total
amount sent abroad by immigrants in the year 1907 is
estimated by the Immigration Commission at $275,000,000.
This estimate "does not take into account the large sums
carried abroad by returning immigrants." 1
A better idea of the average amount an immigrant man-
ages to save from his wages can be gained from the economic
effects produced by the flow of American money into the
rural districts of Southern and Eastern Europe. In Greece
much of the money sent home by emigrants is for the payment of old
debts and cancellation of mortgages, a considerable part ... for
deposits, loans, the purchases of real estate or the improvement of
property already owned. . . . Many houses were . . . built by money
sent back by emigrants. . . . Usury is receding, fleeing from the
glitter of abundant gold which has inundated towns and villages. . . .
Nor is it surprising that the rate of interest should have fallen from
20, 15, and 10 per cent to 6 and 5 per cent.*
Li Southern Italy, those who return from America pur-
chase a house with a small estate. In Austria-Hungary,
the enormous influx of money goes partly to pay old debts
and to bring over families, but most of it to support rela-
tives at home, to invest in land, to build homes, to make
improvements, and to buy agricultural machinery. "The
desire of the returning emigrant to invest in land has led to
a considerable increase in its value, particularly in Croatia,
Galicia, and the Slovak district of Hungary. ... In
Galicia the buying of large estates by associations of
emigrants has become a common practice. Very often
from 50,000 to 90,000 acres a year are thus bought up and
subdivided among the peasant purchasers. The money is
either contributed from the savings of the associated
peasants or borrowed from friends who are still in America. ' '
Reports from all emigration countries concur in the state-
ment that the standard of living~of the peasants who have
1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 37, p. 277.
Ibid., vol. 4, p. 413.
The Standard of Living 271
returned from the United States is above that of their
neighbors. The roomy cottages built by them with money
earned in the United States are in striking contrast with the
surrounding poverty and dirt. In short, according to the
Immigration Commission, the savings of the immigrants
" are an important factor in promoting the general economic
welfare of several European countries. " It is evident that
the wages of the immigrants must needs be sufficient to
enable them to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in
the uplifting of the economic conditions of their native
countries, after paying American prices for all necessities
of life. Viewed solely with an eye to the economic interests
of the American wage-earner, the efforts of the average
immigrant from Southern and Eastern Europe "to live
upon the basis of minimum cheapness, and to save as much
as possible," at the sacrifice of comfort, 1 is a matter of no
concern to his competitors in the labor market. Whether
he spends his wages on rent, food, and clothing, or saves
his money to buy steamship tickets for his family, whether
he deposits his savings in a local bank, or sends them to
his parents for improving the home farm, his wants in one
case are as great and as imperative as in the other, and he
must demand a wage which will enable him to satisfy
them. Furthermore, contrary to learned opinion, a wage-
earner who is able to save four fifths of his earnings need
not accept "employment on the terms offered or suffer from
actual want, " for he can live four months on the savings of
one, and is therefore "in a position to take exception to
wages or working conditions" 2 a great deal more readily
than the native wage-earner who lives to the limit of his
income. This fact has been proved more than once in
recent years by the long drawn out strikes of Southern and
Eastern European mine and factory operatives.
There is a tendency to view with disapproval "the send-
ing back to the old country of the savings of the immigrant,"
upon the old Mercantilist theory that every dollar invested
1 Jenks and Lauck, loc. cit., pp. 183-184. a Ibid.
272 Immigration and Labor
by him in his home country is a loss to the United States:
"America, should have the productive influence of not only
the labor but also of the capital made from the savings." 1
The same objection certainly applies with far greater force
to the investment of American capital in foreign industrial
enterprises. One important fact is overlooked in this
objection, viz., that the money which is invested in the
home farm provides for the relatives of the immigrant who
stay in the old country. Were that money invested in the
United States they would have to be brought over to the
United States. While the capital invested in the United
States would be increased, the supply of labor would like-
wise be increased. Money being dearer in Europe than in
the United States, the savings that are ample to provide
employment for the immigrants' relatives at home, would
be insufficient, if invested in American industries, to keep
an equal number of persons employed in the United States.
Their immigration would accordingly tend to increase the
supply of labor out of proportion to the demand.
The only economic interests affected in a real, not in an
imaginary way, by the thrifty habits ("the low standard
of living") of the recent immigrant, is the mercantile
business which seeks the trade of the wage-earner as a
consumer. With many manufacturing and mining concerns
the commissary is an important part of the industry.
In fact, [says the Immigration Commission] according to the
statements of some of the small operators, commissaries as a rule return
not only a 20 per cent net profit in normal times to the company, but
the system goes so far as to largely determine the race of employees.
In certain cases it was stated that negroes were preferred because their
improvident habits prevented them from being able to live on a cash
income, paid monthly, and thus forced them to draw their wages weekly,
and even daily, in the form of commissary checks or store credits.
Currency payments were made monthly partly for this purpose. As a
result, the negroes are always a little in debt to the commissaries. . . .
Their wants are confined to the supply-x>f goods furnished by the com-
missaries, with the exception of whiskey, and they have no funds for
1 Jenks and Lauck, loc. cit. t p. 16.
The Standard of Living 273
any other purpose than that of bare subsistence .... For the same
reason these employers do not encourage immigrant laborers, and in
some cases refuse to employ them altogether. The immigrant exhibits
a strong tendency to get his wages in cash and to live on the lowest
level possible to maintain subsistence. . . . He seeks the cheapest
places. ... A careful and detailed inquiry into a comparison of
prices in the commissaries and in the city markets and groceries
revealed a slight increase in the general run of prices in the former over
the latter. 1
The Croatians are good livers in comparison with the other foreign
races, and they do not stint themselves in food or drink [say Professors
Jenks and Lauck]. Although extravagant, they do not, however,
spend as much as the negroes, who loiter about the commissaries
looking for something for which to spend their money. The Croatians
know what they want and buy it freely, but if there is a surplus of their
wages it is saved. The Italians, living as they do, very cheaply, buy
little from the commissaries. In a general way the laborers are required
to patronize the commissaries 3 . . . .
From the point of view of the proprietor of the commis-
sary store, an immigrant with a "low standard of living,"
who buys in the cheapest store, or saves his money instead
of leaving it in the commissary, is, naturally enough,
"undesirable."
1 Reports of the Immigration Commission^ vol. 9, p. 190.
* Jenks and Lauck, he. tit., p. 176.
CHAPTER XI
HOME OWNERSHIP
of homes by wage-earners has been
advocated as a proposition of practical social reform,
ever since the condition of labor has been recognized as
a distinct social problem. The Immigration Commission
has given a prominent place in its investigation to home
ownership among immigrant races on the ground that "the
proportion of the families in a given group of workmen who
live in homes owned by themselves may fairly be regarded
as an indication, at least, of the social and industrial
progress of the group." 1
The Commission fully realizes "that the wage-earner is
living and working in a large urban or industrial center
where the acquisition of real estate is beyond his resources, "
while in small mining towns "the industrial worker is
practically not permitted to buy a home, but must live in a
house owned by the operating company." 2 The mining
companies find it "a better policy to retain the houses
because of large profits arising from rent payments and for
the additional reason that mine workers may be evicted in
the event of a strike." 3 Moreover, the ownership of a
home, even when within the reach of the wage-earner,
often does not pay as an investment :
If an employee should invest in a home near his work and for any
reason he should be thrown out of work, the property would not be
valuable, because there are no other industries near in which he could
1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 7, p. 267.
* Ibid., vol. I, p. 467. a Ibid., vol. 6, p. 452.
274
Home Ownership 275
find employment. The coal mines often have periods when work is
irregular, or suspend operations for months at a time, which facts tend
to make coal-mining labor migratory. 1
These conditions are not peculiar to coal mining alone,
but exist generally. 2 Nevertheless, after all that is said,
the Commission regards "the number and percentage of
families owning their homes," as indications of "racial
inclinations toward the acquisition of property." 3 It is
noted that "the recent immigrant has no property or other
restraining interests which attach him to a community,"
and the fact is officially recorded among the "salient char-
acteristics of the recent immigrant labor supply," 4 This is
an error. As far back as 1878, a noted New York philanthro-
pist spoke in almost the same terms of the immigrants of his
day, who were mostly Irish and Germans:
They do not own the house nor any part of it, nor have any interest
in it. ... The general effect of the system is the existence of a prole-
taire class, who have no interest in the permanent well-being of the
community, who have no sense of home, and who live without any deep
root in the soil. 5
It is obvious that the subject of home ownership is viewed
in these opinions from the standpoint of a middle-class
resident of a rural community, not from that of a wage-
earner. 6 A farmer, a shopkeeper, or a professional man, is
l Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 7, p. 206.
8 An English writer who would encourage "the acquirement by work-
ingmen of their homes," recognizes that "a difficulty exists in the fact
that a large portion of the working classes are migrating, owing to the
changes and irregularities of their means of livelihood." T. L. Worth-
ington: Dwellings of the People, (26. edition, 1901), p. 60.
^Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. I , p. 467. This view is ex-
pressed with all due "qualifications," "reservations," and "limitations."
*Ibid., pp. 498, 500 "This characteristic has both a good and a bad
influence .... Probably, the bad effect of this characteristic is greater
than the good, all things considered." Jenks and Lauck, loc. cit, p. 185.
^Report of the Industrial Commission, vol. xv., p. 459.
*"The idea that the working man must buy his dwelling rests upon
the reactionary conception that the condition created by modern large
scale industry is a pathological degeneration, and that society must
be forcibly steered against the stream which has been running for over
276 Immigration and Labor
by the nature of his occupation attached to a certain com-
munity. With him the ownership of a home is a profitable
investment. Considered, however, from the point of view
of the wage-earner who lives "in a town dominated by a
single industry, home ownership would seriously hinder his
defense of his rights in a disagreement with his employers." l
In a small town, where many of the workmen own their homes
trade-unionism means but little [to them]. If, however, trade-unionism
becomes a factor and organization follows, with accompanying demands
for shorter hours and more pay, these men would think long and well of
their little homes . . . before engaging upon a strike, the outcome of
which may possibly mean the loss of many things they greatly prize.
It seems that the employers have the upper hand. 8
A wage-earner, on the contrary, who has no property
interests attaching him to a certain community, is "free
to follow the best industrial inducements." 5
Inasmuch, however, as the ownership of a home is re-
garded "as a mark of thrift" 4 it is instructive to compare
the extent of home ownership at present and in the past, be-
fore "the Slav invasion," and still earlier, before immigration
became a social factor in the United States.
As early as 1790, when Boston had a population of 18,320,
the average number of families to each house in the town
was 1.46, which means that at least one third of all Boston
families lived in rented houses, even on the assumption
that all one-family houses were occupied by their owners
and that in the two-family houses one dwelling was occupied
by the owner. Half a century later, at the city census of
1845, the proportion of home owners in Boston was found
to be only 17.5 per cent. 4 The population of Boston was
then only 114,000, and the percentage of foreign-born and
a century, into a condition . . . which is generally nothing but an ideal-
ized restoration of the moribund small handicraft." Friedrich Engels:
Zur Wohnungsfrage.
1 Streightoff, loc. cit., p. 84. Pratt, loc. tit., p. 99.
1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. I, p. 500.
4 Ibid., vol. 6, p. 451. * Census of Boston, 1845, p. 55.
Home Ownership 277
their children born in Boston was 32.61. In other words,
there were 67.39 per cent of native Americans of native
parentage, of whom at most only one fourth owned their
homes, even if there was not a single home owner among the
foreign-born. The percentage of home owners has since
slightly increased, as shown in the following table:
TABLE 82.
PER CENT OF HOME OWNERS IN THE POPULATION OF BOSTON, 1845-1900.*
Year Per cent
1845 17-5
1890 18.43
1900 18.9
The most thorough-going statistical study of home owner-
ship in the United States was made at the census of 1890.
The data for that year reflect the standard of living of
native Americans at a time when it could not have been
affected by immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe.
It will be seen from Table 83 on page 278 that of all
American householders of native stock who were living in
cities with a population of from 50,000 to 250,000 in 1890,
only a little over one fourth owned their homes; in larger
cities the percentage was still smaller. And it must be
borne in mind that these percentages relate to people in all
walks of life, not to wage-earners alone. The prevailing
"American standard" in cities is accordingly the standard
of a tenant, not that of a home owner.
1 Census of Boston, pp. 26 and 37. The percentage of persons born of
foreign parents in the United States outside of Boston could not have
affected the situation, as appears from the fact that of the native children
of foreign parents there were 10,105 under the age of 20 and only 80 over
the age of 20. Evidently, immigration was new and the native children
of foreign parents were still very young.
a Report on Farms and Homes in the United States at the XI. Census,
p. 32. XII. Census, Population, Part II., Table CVL, p. ccv.
a The population of Suffolk County representing the economic, though
not the municipal, Boston, included 19.36 per cent home-owners.
2 7 8
Immigration and Labor
TABLE 83.
PERCENTAGE OF NATIVE WHITE HOME OWNERS TO ALL OCCUPANTS,
CLASSIFIED BY PARENT NATIVITY, IN CITIES WITH A POPULATION
OF 50,000 AND OVER. 1
Population
Per cent of 1
tome owners
Native parentage
Foreign parentage
50,000 to 250,000
27.6
26.4
250,000 and over
21.5
17.7
This fact is not due, however, to a racial disinclination
of the American of native stock toward the acquisition of
property, but to the fact that the value of a house is beyond
the reach of the majority of householders. The proof will
be found in Table 84:
TABLE 84.
PERCENTAGES OF HOME OWNERS CLASSIFIED BY VALUE OF HOMES, 1890."
United
Cities classifie
d by population
Value
States
8,000 to 100,000
100,000 and over
Under $500
O.6^
O.2I
O.O4
$500 and under $1000
3.56
2.46
0.61
$1000 and under $2500
17.41
17.04.
Q.24
$2500 and under $5000
22.^5
2e Q"*
17.05
$5000 and over
"oo
S6.o^
^46
72.l6
More than one half of all homes in the United States were
valued in 1890 at $5000 and over; in cities with a population
of 100,000 and over the proportion of homes of the same
value was nearly three fourths.
The relative number of home owners decreased with
the growth of the density of population and the resulting
1 Farms and Homes, XI. Census, Table 73, p. 204.
' Ibid., Table 39, p. 87
Home Ownership
279
increase of the value of real estate, as shown in Table 85,
where all States and Territories are divided into two areas :
I. With ratio of home owners to total families above the
average for the United States;
II. With ratio of home owners to total families below
the average for the United States.
TABLE 85.
HOME OWNERSHIP AND VALUE OF REAL ESTATE IN AREAS WITH RATIO
OF HOME OWNERS TO TOTAL FAMILIES ABOVE (I) AND BELOW (II)
THE AVERAGE,
Areas
Per cent of home
owners
Population
per square mile
Average value per home
(including incumbrances)
I
II
46.34
30-53
12
53
$ 2656
3828
To be sure, some of the homes were incumbered (three
eighths of all homes in cities with a population of 100,000
and over, and less in smaller cities and towns 2 ), but the
average incumbrance in the United States covered only 37.7
per cent of the value. 3 The average equity of the owner
ranged from $3200 in cities with a population of 100,000
and over, down to $1400 in settlements of less than 8000
inhabitants. 4
Age is an important factor in home ownership ; under the
age of forty-five the majority were tenants (see Diagram
XVII) . s This was the rule in every section of the country,
in those where the percentage of foreign-born was high, as
well as in those where it was low. The percentage of home-
owners increases with advancing years, and it is only in old
age that a majority become home-owners. It takes a
lifetime of savings to acquire a home. Now it must be
remembered that most of the immigrants are under the
1 Farms and Homes, XI. Census, Table 16, p. 42.
2 Ibid., Table 14, p:34.
J Ibid., Tables 104-106, pp. 421-428. Ibid., Table 38, pp. 83-86.
s Ibid., p. 224, Diagram 32.
280
Immigration and Labor
DIAGRAM XVII. PER CENT RATIO OF HOME OWNERS AND TENANTS TO
UNDER 5 YEARS.
15, TO td
UNITED STATES.
o 10 to SO 40 So *0 la to -90
30
45
50
55
34
39
44
49
59
60 YEARS* OVER:
YSSSSSSSSS/S/SS/SA
TMC 58 CITIES or So.ooo POPULATION
UNDER 25 YEARS.
15 TO *9
E
40
Owners
Tenants
age of forty-five on arrival. It was found in 1890, when
immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe was insig-
nificant, that "by far the principal portion of the foreign-
born owners of farms and homes have been in this country
fifteen years and over." 1 Of all industrial workers from
Southern and Eastern Europe, however, who were covered
by the investigation of the Immigration Commission, only
from 0.9 per cent (Roumanians) to 18.2 per cent (Russian
Jews) had been in the United States fifteen years or over. 2
According to the standard set by the immigrants fromNorth-
and Homes, XI. Census, p. 163.
* Jenks and Lauck, loc. cit. t p. 477.
ALL HOME FAMILIES, CLASSIFIED BY AGE PERIODS AND BY GEOGRAPHI-
CAL DIVISIONS, 1890.
NORTH CENTRAL.
UNDK*5 YEARS.
15 TO 19
34
33 * 33 -
40 - 44 -
45 - 43 "
30-34
55 - 53
*0 YEARS &0VER;
30 40
*o TO. 90. ft 10*
UNDER JtS YEARS.
*3 TO 13
30 ^ 34
33 3d
WESTERN.
,0 10 to JO 40 50 *0 70
90 100
NORTH ATLANTIC.
o 10 fiO SO 40 SO 60 70 *0 90 U
Tenants
281
282
Immigration and Labor
ern and Western Europe, the overwhelming majority of the
immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe had not
been long enough in the United States to have raised suf-
ficient funds for buying real estate.
The inference drawn from the statistics of home owner-
ship in 1890 by the authors of the census report "is that
home tenancy is increasing in the whole country as the
urban population becomes numerically a more important
element of the population." 1 The old American standard
which found its expression in the one-family residence
retreats before the apartment house. This tendency
asserts itself even among the well-to-do who could afford
to buy a home for the rental they pay for a fashionable
apartment. The rate of the change can be observed in a
city like Washington, which has but a small foreign popula-
tion. 2 A count of the houses and apartments advertised
in the Washington Star on the last Saturday in July, 1900
and 1910, for rent to white tenants brought the following
results:
TABLE 86.
NUMBER OF HOUSES AND APARTMENTS ADVERTISED FOR RENT TO
WHITE TENANTS IN WASHINGTON, D. C., ON THE LAST
SATURDAY IN JULY, IQOO AND IQIO.
For rent
1900
1910
Per cent of increase
One-family houses
882
1169
j-
Apartment houses
64
580
806
The number of apartment houses which advertised apart-
ments for rent increased ninefold within ten years, while
the number of one-family houses increased only by one third.
1 Farms and Homes, XL Census, p. 54.
3 The ratio of the foreign-born and their children to the population of
Washington, D. C., was only 20.6 per cent in 1900 and 21 per cent in
1910. XIII. Census, vol. i, p. 150.
Home Ownership 283
It is clear from this example that the tendency toward the
apartment house or tenement house has no connection with
immigration. It is in line with the general tendency
toward concentration characteristic of modern times. 1
1 This has come to be recognized by industrial experts. In the
opinion of Mr. Henry Wright, an architect who during the war was
town planner of Emergency Fleet Corporation towns and has since
made a study of housing conditions for the community planning
committee of the American Institute of Architects, the time has come
for "a scientific revolution of our methods of building houses." Speak-
ing of the present housing situation to a writer for. the Globe of New
York, he was quoted (in the issue of June I, 1920) to have said:
" ' Own Your Own Home' campaigns to-day are essentially buncombe.
They cannot provide houses for the laboring classes; under present
conditions no one belonging to the laboring classes can afford to 'own
his own home.' . . . We must do away with the old sales system and its
single lot, single family house, and surplus street, and come to group
and multi-family house building with its savings of billions for the
country in street maintenance, constructional costs, and proportion
of land to houses. "
CHAPTER XII
EFFECT OF IMMIGRATION ON WAGES
THAT wages in many occupations are barely sufficient
to provide for the necessities of life, has been estab-
lished by all investigations of the cost of living. That
unskilled labor receives a lower wage than skilled labor, is
a truism. That the standard of living of unskilled laborers
must be lower than that of skilled mechanics, is the neces-
sary consequence of the difference in the rates of their
compensation. Inasmuch, however, as the skilled me-
chanics are mostly native Americans and older immigrant^,
whereas the unskilled laborers are mostly new immigrants,
the average man with a prejudice against the foreigner
overlooks the difference in the grade of the service rendered,
and jumps to the conclusion that the American mechanic
commands higher wages because he insists upon maintain-
ing an American standard of living, whereas the foreign
unskilled laborer is willing to accept lower wages, because he
is satisfied with a lower standard of living.
It has been shown, however, that the standard of living
ofjbhe^new immigrants is not lower than that of
^
decessors in the same grades of employment, or than that
of the present generation of native Americans engaged in
unskilled labor in the South, where there is practically
no competition of immigrant labor. Granting that the
standard of living determines the rate of wages, there is
no escape from the conclusion that thejyagesjof the new
immigrants can not be lower than those of the pasfgenera-
tion of immigrants wEoTm their day were engaged in un-
284
Effect of Immigration on Wages 285
skilled labor. In other words the logical deduction from
the premises is, that the new immigration could not have
depressed the rate of wages.
On the other hand, though the standard of living of the
native or Americanized foreign-born wage-earners be higher
than that of the new immigrants, this difference is not
necessarily indicative of a higher rate of wages: the higher \
standard may be maintained on the earnings of several
members of the family.
As a matter of fact, present-day industrial families in the United
States find it necessary to add to the earnings of the husband through
the employment of wives and children outside the home and the keeping
of boarders and lodgers within the home. The native American and
older immigrant employees maintain an independent form of family
life, but the earnings of the heads are supplemented by the wages of
the wives and children. On the other hand, the Southern and Eastern
European families have recourse to the keeping of boarders and lodgers
as a supplementary source of family income. . . . That contributions
of children are less general in the latter class of families is probably due
to the fact that children of these households have not in any consider-
able proportions reached working age. x
It is argued that the newly-arrived immigrant must have
work at once and is therefore eager to accept any terms:
Another salient fact in connection with the recent immigrant labor
supply has been the necessitous condition of the newcomers upon their
arrival in America's industrial communities. Immigrants from the
South and East of Europe have usually had but a few dollars in their
possession when their final destination in this country has been reached.
. . . Consequently, finding it absolutely imperative to engage in
work at once, they have not been in a position to take exception to
wages or working conditions, but must obtain employment on the terms
offered or suffer from actual want. a
Still, the investigations of the United States Bureau of
Labor have shown that only one half of the families of na-
tive American wage-earners (51.25 per cent) are able to
save, whereas one third (32.2 per cent) are barely able to
1 Jenks and Lauck, loc. cit., pp. 157-158, 161.
3 Ibid., pp. 183-184.
286 Immigration and Labor
make both ends meet, and about one in every seven (15.55
per cent) have a deficit. x Only after the annual income of
the native American wage-earner with a normal family has
reached $700 is there a surplus left over average expenses. 2
Making allowance for unemployment, an annual income of
$700 may be taken as equivalent to about $2.50 a day,
which is approximately the dividing line between skilled
and unskilled labor. It thus appears that one half of the
native American wage-earners, or roughly speaking all
unskilled laborers, have no savings and are therefore in the
same "necessitous condition" as "the newcomers upon their
arrival": they "must obtain employment on the terms
offered or suffer from actual want. " The terms of competi-
tion are therefore not changed by the arrival of the
immigrant.
It is further argued that the immigrant is at a particular
disadvantage, being a stranger in a strange land :
The immigrant unfamiliar with American conditions, often not even
understanding the language in which he must make his contract, and
ignorant of the working methods which are new to him, while naturally
preferring the best that he can get, is often willing to work under
conditions and at wages which would not appeal to American working-
men, but which to him seem ample and satisfactory, because they are
so much better than he has ever known before. Moreover, when the
wage-earner is one unfamiliar, as are most immigrants, with American
conditions, he is likely to be eager, perhaps too eager, to secure work at
almost any wage above that affording a mere subsistence. Usually he
is not in touch with the American workingman or with trade unions,
and does not know what he could do by proper effort. He is not a
member of their trade organization, and cannot bargain through officials
who know the conditions. Moreover, if he is one who is expecting as
soon as possible to return to his home country with his savings, what he
dreads most of all is lack of work, and he is willing to take low wages
and bad working conditions, rather than be idle even for a short time
and see any of his savings disappear. In the large majority of cases,
doubtless, the immediate inducement to the emigrants to leave home and
sail for America comes in the form of a personal letter from friends or
members of their own families already in t^e United States. It is thus
1 Sixteenth Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor, p. 68.
3 Ibid., p. 592.
Effect of Immigration on Wages 287
that they learn of the much higher wages and the better living condi-
tions ; and usually they are practically sure of a job almost as soon as
they arrive, at wages which seem to them more than satisfactory. 1
This statement contains its own refutation. If the
immigrants "usually are practically sure of a job almost as
soon as they arrive," then there is no occasion for them
1 'to be eager to secure work at almost any wage, etc."
Since "in the large majority of cases" the immigrants come
in response to "a personal letter from friends or members
of their own families already in the United States," it is
erroneous to say that they are "not in touch with the
American workingman, " unless the term "American"
be used in the narrow sense of native American. But the
immigrant loses nothing in a pecuniary way by not being
in touch with the native workman, since the latter usually
works at a skilled trade, whereas the former in most cases
seeks employment as a common laborer. On the other
hand, in all establishments employing immigrant labor the
new applicant, as a rule, finds some one through whom he
makes his contract in his native language. It has been
shown in the discussion of the standard of living that the
new immigrant has obligations which do not permit him
"to work at any wage above that affording a mere subsist-
ence." As for affiliation with trade unions, it must be
borne in mind that they comprise only a small minority of
all wage-earners, native as well as foreign-born, and are
mostly confined to skilled trades, whereas most of the
immigrants are unskilled. Lastly, it is recognized by
the Immigration Commission that "it is inaccurate to
speak of the immigrant population as being only tempor-
ary in this country": most of the recent immigrants come
to stay. 2 IS
The object for which the Immigration Commission was
created was to supply statistical facts which should take
1 Jenks and Lauck, loc. tit., pp. 18-19.
a See sw/>ra, p. 74. Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 8,
P- 657-
288 Immigration and Labor
the place of speculation. After a study of the racial
composition of the operating forces in the principal indus-
tries, based upon information received for more than half
a million wage-earners in mines and manufactures, the
Commission discovered no evidence "that it was usual for
employers to engage recent immigrants at wages actually
lower than those prevailing at the time of their employment
in the industry where they were employed." 1
One of the most striking facts indicated by a comparison of the
earnings of the races in the different industries [say Professors Jenks
and Lauck] is that earning ability is more the outcome of industrial
opportunity or conditions of employment than of racial efficiency and
progress. This fact becomes evident when the average weekly earnings
of the members of a race, or several races, in the cotton or woolen and
worsted goods industry, are considered in connection with the earnings
of the same race or races in other industries. The Lithuanians, for
example, earn an average of $12.24 weekly in the manufacture of
agricultural implements and vehicles, $11.60 in clothing, $13.60 in
copper mining and smelting, $9.87 in furniture, $12.89 m iron and steel,
$11.98 in iron-ore mining, $9.50 in leather, $12.85 m oil refining, $10.87
in shoes, $10.67 ' m sugar refining, but only $7.86 in cotton and $7.97 in
woolen and worsted manufacturing. The same condition of affairs
is shown by other races in different industries. a
That the economists who directed the investigations of
the Immigration Commission regard it as a "striking"
fact that earning ability is the outcome of economic con-
ditions rather than of racial characteristics, indicates that
they expected to find the opposite, viz., that earning ability
was determined by racial factors.. Yet, notwithstanding
the "evident fact" brought to light by the investigations of
the Commission, that individuals of the same race, with
presumably the same "racial standards," are paid varying
rates of wages in different industries, the Commission per-
sists in the view that the rate of wages is determined by the
standard of living of the wage-earners. The statistics of
the Commission show that the earnings of the immigrants
1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. I, pp. 494, 541.
3 Jenks and Lauck, he. cit., pp. 145-146.
Effect of Immigration on Wages 289
increase with the length of residence in the United States;
there is a ready explanation that "the immigrants of long
residence have acquired a higher standard of living and,
consequently, demand a higher wage." 1 It would seem
as though wages were regulated in accordance with the
communistic ideal, "to everybody according to his wants."
The question arises, however, why should the employer
grant the demand of the immigrant of long residence for a
higher wage when there is said to be an "oversupply" of
recent immigrants willing to accept "almost any wage
above that affording a mere subsistence"? The statistics
of the Commission give no answer to this question, because
the basis of its classification is race, not character of employ-
ment, each race being treated as a homogeneous unit. The
real explanation of the variation in wages among individuals
of the same race is that the immigrant of long residence
has advanced on the scale of occupations and is paid a
higher wage for a higher grade of labor. Since he receives
a higher wage, he has "consequently" acquired a higher
standard of living.
The primary cause which has determined the movement
of wages in the United States during the past thirty years
has been the introduction of labor-saving machinery. The
effect of the substitution of mechanical devices for human
skill is the displacement of the skilled mechanic by the
unskilled laborer. This tendency has been counteracted
in the United States by the expansion of industry : while the
ratio of skilled mechanics to the total operating force was
decreasing, the increasing scale of operations prevented
an actual reduction in numbers. The growing demand for
unskilled labor was supplied by immigration. 2 Of course,
1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 2, p. 370.
9 Prof. Commons, in the Reports of the Industrial Commission, vol. xv.,
p. 305, says: "In manufactures, mining, and transportation there
has been a rapid advance in machinery and a better organization
and division of labor, whereby the resources of the country are
made more productive. This advance in machinery and division of
labor often appears in itself to be a means of displacing labor and so of
290 Immigration and Labor
this readjustment did not proceed without friction. While,
in the long run, there may have been no displacement of
skilled mechanics by unskilled laborers in the industrial
field as a whole, at certain times and places individual skilled
mechanics were doubtless dispensed with and had to seek
new employment. As the unskilled laborers who replaced
them were naturally engaged at lower wages, and as most
of them were immigrants, the change reflected itself in the
minds of the displaced American mechanics as substitution
of cheap immigrant labor for highly paid American labor.
The English, Scotch, Welsh, and Irish miners, e. g. t for
some time successfully resisted the introduction of machin-
ery. Their resistance was overcome by the employment of
Slavs and Italians. The impression was thus created that
the introduction of machinery was the effect of Slav and
Italian immigration. According to Professors Jenks and
Lauck, "the lack of skill and industrial training of the
recent immigrants in the United States has stimulated the
invention of mechanical methods and processes which
might be conducted by unskilled industrial workers as a
substitute for the skilled operatives formerly required." 2
This idea had been anticipated by Mr. Leiserson, who
expressed the belief that one of the effects "of the influx of
Slavs is that lack of intelligence makes improved machinery
and a perfected organization of the mining processes abso-
lutely essential. There is a direct connection* between
the increasing number of unintelligent mining laborers and
the use of mining machinery during the last ten or fifteen
years." The author is ready to accept at face value the
contention of the coal operators "that the scarcity of
intelligent labor compelled them to adopt machinery
wherever possible. ' ' 3 Presumably, but for the immigration
depressing wages, and such would be the case if industry as a whole were
not continually expanding. "
1 Report of the Industrial Commission, vol. xv., pp. xxiii., xxxiv.
2 Jenks and Lauck, loc. cit., pp. 186-187.
William M. Leiserson: "Labor Conditions in the Mines of the Pitts-
Effect of Immigration on Wages 291
of the "unintelligent" Slavs, American industry might
have gone on forever without improved machinery, and in-
stead of perfecting the organization of the mining processes
the mine operators would have encouraged the "arts and
crafts" movement in bituminous coal mining.
This theory ignores the elementary proposition of po-
litical economy, that the main object of labor-saving
machinery is to dispense precisely with "intelligent," i. e.,
high-priced labor, and that, on the contrary, an abundant
supply of cheap labor would retard the introduction of
improved machinery. 1
The conditions in the coal mines of West Virginia may
serve as an example: "The low level of wages in
West Virginia may be inferred from the low rate of intro-
duction of machinery , ' ' says Prof. John R . Commons . This
fact, according to him, is of special significance because
burgh District." Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social
Science, March, 1909, pp. 318-319.
1 " If labor is cheap . . . somewhat more labor will be employed and
somewhat less machinery installed. ... If wages are high . . . more
machinery will be introduced and somewhat less labor employed."
C. J. Bullock, Assistant Professor of Political Economy in Harvard
University, The Elements of Economics, pp. 79-80. "Higher wages
for labor will induce entrepreneurs to economize in the use of
labor. . . . In the printing industry, for example, a rise in wages would
make it profitable for employing printers to use more labor-saving
machinery." Outlines of Economics, by Richard T. Ely, Professor of
Political Economy in the University of Wisconsin, revised and enlarged
by the author and Thomas S. Adams; MaxO. Lorenz, Ph.D., Assistant
Professor of Political Science in the University of Wisconsin; Allyn A.
Young, Ph.D., Professor of Economics in Leland Stanford Junior
University (New York, 1909), p. 369. "Every rise of wages will
have a tendency to determine the saved capital in a greater proportion
than before to the employment of machinery. Machinery and labor
are in constant competition, and the former can frequently not be
employed until kbor rises." David Ricardo: Principles of Political
Economy and Taxation (London, 1891), p. 386. "Where abundance of
cheap labor . . . can be obtained, . . . the development of machinery
has been generally slower. " John A. Hobson: The Evolution of Modern
Capitalism, p. 69; also p. 81. Cf. also Karl Marx: Capital, Book I.,
Chapter XV: Machinery and Modern Industry, Sec. 2.
292 Immigration and Labor
''the miners of West Virginia are mainly native Americans,
who have only recently turned from home industry to
mining." 1
It is patent that the movement of labor from agriculture
to mining and manufactures would, even in the absence of
all immigration, have overcome the resistance of the
English-speaking miners to the introduction of machinery.
The number of mines is not fixed. New mines are con-
tinually being opened. The operator of a new machine-
equipped mine need not face the resistance of old pick-
miners; he can engage an entirely new force of operatives,
free from any traditions. His competition will ultimately
force the owners of old mines to introduce machinery or
go out of business. The resistance of English-speaking
miners might have some time been strong enough to prevent
the introduction of machinery, but at no time could it
have forced a mine operator to run his mine at a loss. The
shutting down of the unprofitable mines would have put
an end to the resistance of the pick-miners. Absence of
immigration might have retarded the growth of American
industry, but it could not have checked the introduction of
machinery.
Machinery has so radically changed the technique of all
industries that a comparison between past and present
wages is beset with extreme difficulties. Many old occu-
pations are gone, and even though the name may have
remained the same, the substance has changed: a steel-
worker to-day is not the same as a steel- worker thirty years
ago. 2 A comparison of average wages or earnings for two
different periods may therefore be quite misleading. It is
possible for the average to show a decrease, though in
reality the wages may have increased. This will be clear
from the following example in which all figures are purely
1 Reports of the Industrial Commission, vol. xv., p. 410.
For a discussion of this subject see R. Mayo-Smith: Statistics and
Economics, pp. 91-102. (Publications of the American Economic As-
sociation, vol. iii., Nos. 4, 5.)
Effect of Immigration on Wages 293
arbitrary. Suppose, the working force of a mill in 1882
consisted of 1000 men, of whom 750 were skilled mechanics
whose wages averaged $3.50 a day, and 250 were unskilled
laborers hired at $1.25 a day. The average wage for all
mill workers was, accordingly, $3.00 per day. Suppose,
further, that in the thirty years that have elapsed since,
the business of the mill has grown and two new departments
have been added, with 1000 men in each. But owing to the
installation of new machinery the same 750 skilled me-
chanics have been distributed over the three plants, and the
additional force of 2000 men consists solely of unskilled labor-
ers. Suppose, the wages of the skilled mechanics have been
raised from $3.50 to an average of $5.00 per day, and the
wages of unskilled laborers from $1.25 to an average of
$2.00 per day. The average for the three plants, however,
would be $2.75 per day, i. e., twenty-five cents less than
thirty years ago, notwithstanding the substantial gain in
the wages of all employees. The same defect is inherent
in the latest refinements of the average, the "median,"
the "quartile," the "decile," etc.
Moreover, our wage statistics present a huge mass of
fragmentary and heterogeneous data, which in their present
undigested form "are well-nigh inaccessible." 1 The use
1 Hearing : Wages in the United States, p. 7. The defects of our
wage statistics are well stated by Professor Nearing in the following
paragraphs:
"At every turn the need arose for an accurate, concise statement of
the wages being paid in the various parts of the United States, yet to
date no study has been made which supplies the need. Ryan's Esti-
mate is old, and at best incomplete; Mrs. Moore's statement, like the
statement in the 1903 Report of the Commissioner of Labor, is of
standards of living primarily, and only incidentally of wages. In
neither case is the ground covered sufficiently to warrant valuable wage
deductions. The Wage Study accompanying the Census of 1900 is old,
and rather inadequate, as the compilers themselves point out. . . .
The available data on the subject of wages exist chiefly in the reports of
State bureaus of labor, and are unfortunately of such a nature as to
render comparison with data of a decade since (in the few cases where
such data exist) most unsatisfactory. . . . New York wage statistics
294 Immigration and Labor
of wage statistics, such as they are, for an analysis of the
effects of immigration on wages is restricted by lack of
comparable statistics of occupations by nativity. 1
On the other hand, a rise or a fall in money wages is no
indication of an increase or decrease of the resources of the
wage-earners, unless coupled with comparative statistics
of the cost of living. The various index numbers of prices^
however, admit of a wide margin of error. An illustration
is furnished by the curve plotted by Mr. Streightoff from
the figures of the United States Bureau of Labor on "real
wages." 2 It appears that during the period from 1890 to
1907, the purchasing power of full-time weekly wages was
at its maximum in 1896, when, according to the statistics
of the Massachusetts Bureau, the ratio of unemployment
was as high as during the crisis year I9o8; 3 the country had
relate to members of labor unions only; the average wage statistics of
Pennsylvania are incomplete even those cited are wretchedly compiled
and presented; Illinois has published no recent statement of wages
except in department stores; Missouri, Michigan, and Indiana publish
little or no wage data. The statistics for Ohio are excellent, but very
diffuse and unconcentrated. . . . Therefore, of the ten leading indus-
trial States, three present worthy wage data; the statistics of two are
far from satisfactory; while five of the ten States furnish no current wage
material of value to this study. Deplorable as is the lack of statistics
in these great industrial States, the conditions in the country at large
are infinitely worse. Of the forty-seven States of the Union, not more
than five publish up-to-date wage statistics. Of the remaining States,
a score publish statistics of average wages only, which, in some cases, are
so unrepresentative as to be valueless. ' ' (Pp. 9-15.)
"The last Bulletin of the Federal Bureau of Labor relating to wages
was published in 1908. . . . The material as a whole permits of
practically no deduction, save that wages are considerably higher in the
West than in any other section of the country, and that the wages in
some trades are very much higher than in others." (Pp. 138-139.)
* For example, though the average wages of coal miners can be com-
puted from census statistics for every State, it is impossible to ascertain
for many States the percentage of Slavs among coal miners, because
coal miners are combined in census statistics with metalliferous miners
and quarrymen.
2 Streightoff, loc. cit., Chart XI.
See Ch. VI., Table 23 and Diagram IX.
Effect of Immigration on Wages 295
not recovered from the effects of the crisis of 1893-1894, and
the industrial situation was again disturbed by the uncer-
tainty of a Presidential campaign fought on one of the most
vital economic issues, the money question. No trust can
be placed in statistics which lead to conclusions so glaringly
at variance with facts still fresh in people's memory.
Overlooking, however, the inadequacy of our wage
statistics, let us examine the material, such as it is, bearing
upon the relation between immigration and wages.
We have seen that in the 40*3 the wages of Irish street
laborers in Brooklyn were insufficient to provide for rent,
and they were compelled to live in shanties. Bad as the
housing accommodations of the Italian street laborers may
be to-day, they nevertheless earn enough to pay rent, which
is indisputable proof of an increase in "real wages."
A generation later, a statistical inquiry into the earnings
of 75,000 wage-earners in the State of Massachusetts led
the Bureau of Labor Statistics to the conclusion that "the
average earnings of a majority of the skilled laborers in this
State do not reach the average cost of the necessities of
life, " with the result that "the children of the poor are taken
away early from school, and brought into the labor market ;
the son to the factory, store, or shop, and the daughter to
the life and wages of a factory or cash girl, or of a serving
woman. ' ' a Evidently the skilled mechanics forty years ago
did not fare better than the wage-earners of our own day.
In the same report there is a comparison of earnings and
expenses in Massachusetts for 1800, 1830, and 1860. It is
estimated that in 1800 the master mason alone of all crafts-
men earned more than his expenses, whereas master carpen-
ters and master painters could not pay their expenses;
journeymen carpenters, masons, and painters were in the
same category. In 1 830 a journeyman mason earned barely
1 New York Weekly Tribune, May 2, 1846. Quoted in Documentary
History of American Industrial Society, vol. viii., pp. 225-226.
a Third Annual Report of the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of
Labor (1871-1872), pp. 531-532-
296 Immigration and Labor
enough to support a family of four, but the earnings of a
journeyman carpenter were still insufficient to provide for a
family of the same size. The wages of a laborer were esti-
mated at $226 a year, which was equivalent to a little over
one half of the estimated expenses of an average family of
four persons. In 1860 neither a master carpenter, nor a
master painter earned enough to support a family; no
journeyman in the building trades was able to support a
family solely on his own earnings. The earnings of a common
laborer remained, as thirty years before, at a little over one
half of the estimated cost of supporting a family. 1
The Bureau of Statistics of New Jersey in its early days
published a number of workmen's budgets. A compilation of
the data for 1885 will be found in the Appendix, Tables XIX.
and XX. The workmen were either native, or immigrants
from Northern and Western Europe. Immigration from
Southern and Eastern Europe was still too insignificant to
affect the labor situation. It appears that of all wage-earn-
ers in specified occupations only glass-workers and black-
smiths earned enough to support on their wages an average
family of about five persons. Other skilled mechanics, such as
machinists and carpenters, needed the assistance of mem-
bers of their households to support a family of the same
size, while workers in textile mills could not meet expenses
even with the assistance of members of their families.
Among unskilled laborers there were some whose earnings
were sufficient to support their families, but their expenses
averaged only $i a day. Those families whose expenses
averaged about $1.50 a day or more were barely able to
keep above water with the aid of the children's earnings.
None of the Irish laborers could make both ends meet,
although their expenses were somewhat below those of the
other English-speaking laborers.
There are similar budget data in the report of the Ohio
Bureau of Labor Statistics for 1885. In a few trades, the
1 Third Annual Report of the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of
Labor, (1871-1872), pp. 514-517. See Appendix, Table XVIII.
Effect of Immigration on Wages 297
average earnings were insufficient to provide for the support
of the wage-earner and his family. The average deficit per
family for each occupation is shown in Table 87 :
TABLE 87.
AVERAGE ANNUAL DEFICIT PER WORKING FAMILY IN OHIO, BY OCCU-
PATIONS, 1885.*
Occupation
Persons in family
Annual deficit
Stone-cutters
5.O
$ 2
Machinists
42
4 5
_5
Iron-workers
5.7
66
Wood -carvers
5-6
lit
Cigar-makers
4.8
114
Miners
5-8
IIQ
Among the skilled mechanics the stone-cutters and the
machinists were on the border line between surplus and de-
ficit; the cabinet-makers, wood-carvers and cigar-makers
depended upon outside sources, in addition to their wages ;
likewise the iron-workers and the miners. The proportion
of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe in those
occupations five years later varied in Ohio between 2.1 and
5.3 per cent.
One fact may be taken as firmly established by the pre-
ceding statistics, fragmentary and insufficient as they are for
other purposes, viz., that in the days of "the old immi-
gration*' the wages of unskilled laborers, and even of some
of the skilled mechanics, did not fully provide for the support
of the wage-earner and his family in accordance with their
usual standards of living. The shortage had to be made up
by the wife and children.
If the tendency of the new immigration be to lower the
rate of wages or to retard the advance of wages, it should
be expected that wages would be lower in great cities where
the recent immigrants are concentrated, than in rural dis-
tricts where the population is mostly of native birth. All
' See Appendix, Table XXI.;
2Q8
Immigration and Labor
wage statistics concur, however, in the opposite conclusion.
Though the census reports have since 1900 repeatedly
warned against the use of census returns for the computation
of average earnings, yet the defects of the census statistics
of wages do not preclude a fair comparison between the
earnings of urban and rural factory operatives. The
average number of wage-earners in either case has been
computed on a uniform basis of 300 working days per wage-
earner. While individual returns may be mere estimates of
questionable accuracy, yet these defects are insufficient to
obscure a pronounced tendency, such as shown in Table 88.
TABLE 88.
AVERAGE EARNINGS OF FACTORY WORKERS, FOR A YEAR OF 30O WORKING
DAYS, 1904.'
Location
Men
Women
ChUdren
Urban
Rural
$566
479
$307
264
$186
158
An examination of previous census reports on manufac-
tures as far back as 1870 proves that since the United States
has become a manufacturing country average earnings per
worker have been higher in the cities than in the country. 2
The effect of this difference is "that the country competi-
tion of native Americans where the cost of living is low often
acts as a depressing effect on wages in the same occupation
in cities. ' ' 3 Prof. Commons gives the following explanation
1 Computed from the Report of the Census of Manufactures, 1905,
Part I., United States by Industries, Table I., p. xxxv.
2 See XII. Census Reports. Manufactures, Part I., pp. ccxx., ccxxi.,
Tables IV.-VI. ; p. cclix., Tables XXVII. and XXVIII. This difference
might be accounted for in part by the employment of relatively greater
numbers of women and children in smaller cities and rural settlements.
The effect upon the wage situation, however, is the same, whether the
better paid workman of the city is underbid by a man, woman, or child
employed in a country town.
3 Reports of the Industrial Commission, vol. xv., p. xxiv.
Effect of Immigration on Wages 299
of "the pressure to reduce wages" which "proceeds from
the cheaper labor of country districts employed in the same
line of production'*:
Wages are necessarily higher in cities than in the country for the
corresponding standard of living. In the city there are such additional
demands as car fare, the food costs more and must be paid for in cash,
because the laborer does not have his patch of ground from which, by
the help of wife and children and by his own extra work mornings and
evenings and idle days, he can secure a large share of his necessary food
supplies. 1
In other words, the American wage-earner in a country
district gives more of his time to making a living than the
city worker.
The same difference exists within the same trades between
the large cities and the smaller cities. The Industrial
Commission, in its volume on immigration, quotes the
following from the reports of the New York Bureau of
Labor:
Wages at the present time (in 1898) are good throughout the large
cities, where it must be barne in mind the men employed in the building
trades have themselves ueen immigrants. In the smaller cities, where
the wages are much less than in the larger cities, it is the older American
labor which controls the field. 3
Another way to trace the connection, if any, between
immigration and wages, is to compare the average earnings
by States with reference to the percentage of foreign-born ;
if immigration tends to depress wages, this tendency will
manifest itself in lower average earnings for States with a
large immigrant population, and vice versa. No such tend-
ency is disclosed by wage statistics. In Tables 89 and 90
the average earnings of male and female wage- workers above
the age of sixteen in the principal manufacturing States are
collated with the percentages of all foreign-born and of
Southern and Eastern Europeans of the same sex engaged
in manufactures and mechanical pursuits. Southern States
1 Reports of the Industrial Commission, vol. xv., p. 316.
* Ibid ., p. 426.
300
Immigration and Labor
where the negroes constitute more than 10 per cent of all
persons of both sexes engaged in manufactures have been
excluded from this table, in order to eliminate the influence
of negro competition upon the average earnings. x
TABLE 89.
AVERAGE ANNUAL EARNINGS OF MALE EMPLOYEES IN MANUFACTURES,
COLLATED WITH THE PERCENTAGES OF FOREIGN-BORN, IN
THE PRINCIPAL STATES, IQOO.
Average annual
Per cent of all ma
and mechar
les in manufactures
deal pursuits
State
earnings
Foreign-born
Southern and
Eastern Europeans
Colorado
$ 630
38 "i
IO O
California
589
-14.4.
4 5
Washington
578
14. Q
3-1
New York
558
44 O
o
TC 4.
New Mexico
1
27 O
6 8
Connecticut
S^O
f 'j?
41.6
8 6
Illinois
C-IQ
4.4. 7
8 7
Massachusetts . .
527
** /
xfiA-i
4 8
New Jersey
CIQ
Hi
94.
Oregon
5l8
28.8
2 I
Pennsylvania
KH
i-i 2
T-5 4.
Nebraska. .
cio
*O 7
30
Kansas
4QC
IO 1
30
Rhode Island
4.8 5
47.
5.1
Delaware
4.71
17 7
4 A
Texas
AAX
*/ /
18 Q
2 2
No definite relation between wages and immigration can
be deduced from the preceding tables. States with widely
differing percentages of foreign-born male operatives have
the same average earnings, e. g., Illinois, Connecticut, and
New Mexico, while States with the same percentages of
foreign-born male wage-earners widely differ with respect
to rates of wages, e. g. , Colorado and New Jersey. Higher
*XII. Census. Manufactures, Part I., p. cxv., Table XXXIX.;
Population, Part I., pp. cii.-civ., Table XLVL; p. cvi., Table XLVIII.,
also p. cxiv., Table LIIL
Effect of Immigration on Wages 301
percentages of foreign-born go together with higher average
earnings, e. #., Rhode Island has more than twice as many
foreign-born in proportion as Texas, and the rate of wages
in Rhode Island is higher than in Texas. And, on the con-
TABLE 90.
AVERAGE ANNUAL EARNINGS OF FEMALE EMPLOYEES IN MANUFACTURES,
COLLATED WITH THE PERCENTAGES OF FOREIGN-BORN, IN
THE PRINCIPAL STATES, IQOO.
State
Average annual
earnings
Percentage of all foreign-born
females in manufactures and
mechanical pursuits
Colorado .
$ W
Id O
Massachusetts ....
-IIQ
do 6
Washington
o'-y
Il6
10 o
Rhode Island . .
1O4
IQ C
C onn ect ic u t
102
27 O
New York
o^-*
208
2Q 6
Illinois . ...
288
26 I
California
27Q
17 O
New Jersey
'9
276
25 1
Pennsylvania
262
11 O
Nebraska
258
15.8
New Mexico .
2^5
30
Texas
251
IO d
Oregon
24.Q
12.1
215
6.6
Delaware
211
6.7
trary, lower percentages of foreign-born go together with
higher average wages, e. g. t Kansas and Rhode Island.
Neither does immigration from Southern and Eastern
Europe appear to affect the average earnings. New York
with the highest percentage of immigrants from Southern
and Eastern Europe has a higher average than Oregon
with the lowest percentage of immigrants from Southern
and Eastern Europe. The average earnings of women
likewise bear no definite relation to the per cent of foreign-
born breadwinners. In Massachusetts, which has the
maximum per cent (40.6) of foreign-born breadwinners in
302 Immigration and Labor
manufacturing and mechanical pursuits, the average earn-
ings are $319, whereas in New Mexico, which has the mini-
mum per cent of foreign-born breadwinners (3.9), the
average earnings are $255. The lowest average earnings,
$211 annually, are found in Delaware, with 6.7 per cent of
foreign-born women employed in manufactures, while in
Massachusetts, with six times as many foreign-born, the
average annual earnings were 52 per cent above the Dela-
ware average. The preponderance of evidence, to use a
legal term, supports the conclusion that, as a rule, the
annual earnings are higher in States with a higher percentage
of foreign-born factory workers. But making allowance
for the few exceptions to this rule, the least that can be
said is that there is no proof of a tendency of immigration,
old or new, to depress the rate of wages.
The preceding conclusions based upon an examination of
census statistics of average earnings are corroborated by the
results of Prof. Nearing's study of wage statistics published
by State labor bureaus. He finds " that average wages are
rather constant for a given industry from State to State, and
from city to city within a State." 1 As the percentage of
immigrants among the wage-earners employed in each in-
dustry greatly varies from State to State and from city to
city, it is evident that immigration does not affect the rate
of wages.
"The opportunities for the new hands depend upon the
expansion of industry and the resources of the country,"
says Professor Commons. ' ' Provided this expansion occurs,
there is no overcrowding of the labor market. The new
resources and new investments demand new labor; and,
if the expansion is strong enough, the new labor as well as
the existing labor may secure advances in wages." *
It is broadly asserted by Professors Jenks and Lauck that
the large supply of Southern and^ Eastern European labor
"has seriously retarded the advance of wages in those occu-
1 Nearing, loc. ciL, pp. 145-146.
a Report of the Industrial Commission, vol. xv., p. 305.
Effect of Immigration on Wages 303
pations where such labor could be used to advantage."
The case of section hands on the railroads is cited as a spe-
cific example: their wages are said to have "varied little
during the last fifteen years, although the wages in other
lines of industry have advanced materially." 1 This con-
clusion is at variance with the statistics of the Interstate
Commerce Commission, which furnish an accurate record of
the yearly fluctuations of average daily wages for the main
classes of railway employees. 2 In order to bring out the
effect of the supply of Southern and Eastern European labor
upon the wages of section hands on the railways, the varia-
tions in their wages must be compared with the variations
in the wages of other railway employees. It should not
be lost sight of that the rates of wages are governed by de-
mand, as well as by supply, not by supply alone. That
wages in other lines of industry have advanced more rapidly,
may have been due to a greater demand for labor in those
lines. It is only when the comparison is confined to railway
employees that the changes in the rates of wages can be ob-
served under uniform conditions. The data for such a com-
parison are presented in graphic form in Diagram XVIII.
Of the eight classes shown on the diagram all but the lowest
two consist of English-speaking employees, while the two
lowest grades are filled very largely by immigrants from
Southern and Eastern Europe. The engineers, conductors,
and firemen have strong organizations, while the laborers
and trackmen are unorganized. The raises secured by the
latter have come solely through the operation of the law of
supply and demand. The wage curves for all classes but
general office clerks show a rising tendency; the variations
from year to year are almost parallel. The office clerks are
the only class whose wages have remained practically sta-
1 Jenks and Lauck, loc. cit., pp. 206-207. In a preceding paragraph
this specific example is qualified by the statement that "in certain cases
they [immigrants hired for railroad section work] have been paid even
more than the laborers previously employed, the latter being insufficient
in number to meet the increasing demand. " (p. 206).
2 Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1910, Table 169, p. 266.
Immigration and Labor
tionary; considering the increased cost of living, their real
wages have in fact declined. The clerical force is, with few
exceptions, either of native or of Northern and Western
European birth. Thus while the wages of Southern and
Eastern European section hands have been raised to meet
DIAGRAM XVIII.
*4
*Z-
a
I S I
TXACfMCM
<WUCTO*' mym ..
LA**C*9
* I
J "
XVIIL Average daily wages of railroad employees, 1891-1909.
the increased cost of living, the salary of the American office
clerk has not been advanced.
The Immigration Commission seeks to hold immigration
from Southern and Eastern Europe responsible even for the
low pay of clerical help:
"There is the general feeling that in so far as the recent
Effect of Immigration on Wages 305
immigrants are entering occupations in which Americans are
engaged, they are rendering those occupations undesirable.
The American laborer does not care in many cases to work
with the 'Hunkie/ and he resents the latter's presence and
in many cases transfers his own labor to an occupation such
as a clerkship at lower wages. " z
Thus because the American street laborer deems it
beneath his station in life to work side by side with a
"Hunkie," he is said to be willing to accept at a sacri-
fice a more respectable position at a desk in a railway
or mining office. The Commission has produced no
statistics to show the percentage of clerical employees
with a previous experience as section hands and mine
laborers. On the other hand, preference for clerical work
among the children of American mechanics antedates
the advent of the "Hunkie." A discussion of the subject
is found in a report of the Illinois Bureau of Labor as far
back as 1 886. First among the reasons ' ' why the American-
bred youth seek clerkships" is noted "the distaste of the
American youth for the trades. " 3 Obviously, the Slav and
Italian laborers ought not to be burdened with responsi-
bility for the oversupply of native American labor in clerical
pursuits.
No evidence of the alleged tendency of Southern and
Eastern European labor to retard the advance of wages can
be found in the two basic industries which are generally
regarded as representative of the conditions produced by
recent immigration the coal and the iron and steel in-
dustry. In the latter, the Immigration Commission finds,
"the extensive employment of recent immigrants has been
attended by an increase in rates of wages due to the general
scarcity of labor in the face of the remarkable industrial
expansion of recent years." 3 This statement should be
1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 9, p. 583.
3 Fourth Annual Report of the Bureau of Statistics of Labor of the
State of Illinois, p. 227.
* Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 9, p. 440.
3o6 Immigration and Labor
supplemented by the fact, brought to light by the Pitts-
burgh Survey, that while the wages of the Southern and
Eastern European laborers in the steel mills have increased,
the wages of the semi-skilled and skilled men mostly
Americans or old immigrants of the English-speaking races
have remained stationary, which is in effect equivalent to
a lowering of the standard of wages ; and the money wages of
the labor aristocracy, none of whom are Southern and East-
ern Europeans, have been actually reduced. 1 The same
tendency is observed in the unionized coal mines of the
Pittsburgh district: the wages of the unskilled men are
much higher than those paid for the same grade of labor in
the steel mills, whereas the wages of the skilled men are the
same in the mills and mines for work of the same class. In
the coal mines, as in the steel mills, unskilled work is done
almost exclusively by Southern and Eastern Europeans,
while the skilled men are mostly of the "English-speaking"
races. 3
To be sure, there is a continuous readjustment of wages
to prices. The employer of labor seeks to recoup the ad-
vance in wages, by advancing the price of his product to the
consumer. When the advance in the price of manufactured
products becomes general, the wage-earner, as a consumer,
is forced in effect to give up a part or all of his gain in the
money rate of wages. The increased cost of living then
stimulates further demands for advances in wages. Since
combinations of capital in all fields of industry have reduced
competition among employers of labor to a minimum, the
wage-earners have been at a disadvantage in this con-
tinuous bargaining. The Immigration Commission holds
that the bargaining power of labor has been impaired by
''the availability of the large supply of recent immigrant
labor," which "has undoubtedly had the effect of prevent-
ing an increase of wages to the extent which would have
1 This subject is specially treated further, in Chapter XX., on the
Steel-Workers.
1 See Chapter XXL, on the Coal Miners.
Effect of Immigration on Wages 307
been necessary had the expansion in the local industries oc-
curred without the availability of the Southern and Eastern
Europeans." 1
Instead of conjecturing what "would have resulted . . .
from the increased demand for labor," 2 under imaginary
conditions, it is safer to inquire what were the actual effects
of business prosperity on wages in past American history
''without the availability of the Southern and Eastern
Europeans." A fair basis for comparison is offered by the
Civil War period. "With the exception of the first year,
the Civil War period was one of prosperity in manufactures,
transportation, mining, and agriculture. Profits were large
. . . New woolen factories were opened; many were
operated day and night. Dividends of ten to twenty
per cent were common; and larger returns were not un-
known." 3 On the other hand, the cost of living rose
as rapidly as in recent years; though the causes were
different, the effect upon the wage-earner's budget was the
same. The wage-earners were apparently in a favorable
situation: "The war caused an unprecedented drain of
workers from the productive industries into the army," 4
whereas immigration dropped during the first two years. s
The effect of that situation on wages is shown graphically
in Diagram XIX., reproduced in part from Chart XII. of
1 Reports, vol. 8, p. 440. The sentence is self -contradictory in form,
presuming to state "the effect" which a hypothetical condition
"has undoubtedly had", although, as a matter of fact, the combina-
tion of causes which "would have" made the effect "necessary" never
occurred. This idea is not original with the Immigration Commis-
sion. It is referred to in the following terms by Prof. Commons in
his report on immigration: "It is possible, of course, that the presence
of immigrants in large numbers may prevent wages from reaching as
high a level in time of prosperity as they otherwise would reach, but
this cannot, in the nature of the case, be demonstrated." Reports of the
Industrial Commission, vol. xv., p. 309.
3 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. I, pp. 540-541.
* Frank Tracy Carlton: The History and Problems of Organized
Labor, pp. 52-53. . Ibid., p. 51.
5 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. I , pp. 79-80.
308
Immigration and Labor
DIAGRAM XIX.
To
60
1861
63
'64-
XIX. Medians of relative cost
of living and average of
biennial medians of
relative wages,
1861-1865.
Prof. Wesley C. Mitchell's
painstaking study of "Gold,
Prices, and Wages under the
Greenback Standard." The
cost of living rose more rap-
idly than money wages. In
other words, "without the
availability of Southern and
Eastern Europeans," real
wages decreased. 1
It must be noted that "af-
ter 1862 labor agitation be-
came considerable. . . . Until
near the end of the war
strikes were usually successful ;
but they were not sufficiently
successful to cause theincrease
in wages to keep pace with
rising prices. " 2 This compar-
ison shows that the hypoth-
esis of the Immigration Com-
mission concerning the extent
of the increase of wages
"which would have been nec-
essary had the expansion of
American industries occurred
without the availability of the
1 The decrease in real wages dur-
ing the period of the Civil War,
according to the Aldrich Report,
was as follows (Carlton, loc t cit., p.
55):
Year Per cent
1861
1862
"- I86 3
I86 4
1865
a Ibid., pp. 57-58.
100
87
74
66
66
Effect of Immigration on Wages - 309
Southern and Eastern Europeans," does not fit the facts of
American economic history.
The facts brought to light by the investigations of the
Immigration Commission furnish ground for the assump-
tion paradoxical as it may seem at a superficial glance
that the availability of the large supply of recent immigrant
labor has prevented a reduction of the wages of the older
employees.
The prime force which has made industrial expansion so
rapid in recent times has been the general introduction of
labor-saving machinery. The immediate effect of the intro-
duction of every new machine has been the displacement of
the trained mechanic by the unskilled laborer. To be sure,
the cheapness of machine-made products stimulates con-
sumption of manufactured goods and creates an increased
demand for labor, which in the long run offsets the loss of
employment caused by the introduction of machinery.
But this is true only on the assumption of a considerable
industrial expansion. To use bituminous coal mining
as an example: in the mines of West Virginia a team of
two skilled pick-miners can produce 10 tons of coal a day;
but, where machine mining has been introduced, one ma-
chine runner with one helper and eight loaders can turn out
50 tons a day. * Accordingly, if a force of 100 skilled pick-
miners produced 500 tons of coal per day, the same output
would be produced with the aid of machinery by a force of
20 skilled machine men and 80 laborers. It may be assumed
that the requisite number of common laborers would be
found in the home market. In order to provide skilled work
for the 80 pick-miners displaced by the machine, the daily
output of coal must be increased to 2500 tons, which would
require an additional supply of 320 unskilled laborers.
Suppose, through restriction of immigration, the additional
supply of unskilled labor were cut down one half. The total
available supply of labor would then consist of the 20 pick-
1 Annual Report of the Department of Mines, West Virginia (1909),
PP- xi., 73, 152. 153-
310 Immigration and Labor
miners who might find employment as machine runners and
helpers, the 80 laborers who would displace an equal num-
ber of pick-miners, the 80 pick-miners displaced by the
machine, and an additional supply of 160 unskilled immi-
grant laborers, in all 340 men. The force of operatives could
then be increased only to 34 teams, consisting of 68 skilled
miners and 272 laborers; there would be only 48 vacancies
of a higher grade for the 80 skilled miners displaced by
machinery; and the remaining 32 would have to accept
employment at loading coal of course at the usual wages
paid for common labor. The fact noted by the Immigration
Commission, that only "a small part " of the old employees,
consisting of the inefficient element, are in competition with
the recent immigrants, is of course the "result of the ex-
pansion of the industry," which has opened to "the larger
proportion" opportunities for "advancement to the more
skilled and responsible positions." 1 These opportunities,
however, were conditional upon the availability of a pro-
portionate supply of immigrant labor for unskilled and
subordinate positions.
1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, voL I, p. 236.
CHAPTER XIII
HOURS OF LABOR
EVERY reduction of the hours of labor, even when not
accompanied by an increase of the daily or weekly
wage, is equivalent to an increase of the hourly wage. More-
over, a reduction in the day's work, all other things being
equal, provides more days of work for every employee,
which brings a direct increase of earnings. The length of
the working day accordingly offers a fair measure of the
effects of immigration on labor conditions. It is not com-
plicated by the variations of the purchasing power of
money, nor is it affected by the uncertainties of the index
numbers. A reduction of hours is an unerring arithmetical
fact. And, fortunately, the publications of the Federal
and State labor bureaus furnish ample material for a com-
parative study of the hours of labor from the beginnings of
the factory system in the United States.
There is unconscious humor in the first report of the
Massachusetts Bureau of Labor Statistics on early factory
conditions:
The earliest operatives in our mills were of the home population an
active, intelligent, industrious, thrifty, well-educated, orderly, and
cleanly body of young men and women, . . . daughters of independent
farmers, educated in our common schools, (for years they supplied a
periodical with articles written wholly by themselves,) who could think
and act for themselves, who knew right from wrong, fair treatment
from oppression, and who would be grateful for the one, and would
not submit to the other. 1
1 Report of the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor, 1869-1870,
pp. 91-92.
3"
312 Immigration and Labor
Interpolated amid this eulogy of "the American element*
is the following matter-of-fact statement: "The system ot
long hours was first adopted. . . . The general length
of time per day was 14 or 15 hours." Further on it is
related that "the customary time" was "from sunrise to
sunset, which, in one half of the year, would give from six-
teen to twelve hours, and in the other half, from nine hours
to twelve."
The subject is treated more thoroughly in the recent
report of the United States Bureau of Labor on "Woman
and Child Wage-Earners."
The hours of labor in textile factories in the early part of the nine-
teenth century were much longer than within recent years. In
Massachusetts in 1825 the " time of employment " in incorporated manu-
facturing companies was "generally 12 or 13 hours each day, excepting
the Sabbath. " Of the places which reported the number of hours in
that year, at only two, Ludlow and Newbury, were the hours as low as
1 1 a day. ... At Duxboro the hours were from sunrise to sunset, and
at Troy (Fall River) and Wellington the employees worked "all day."
In 1826, 15 or 1 6 hours constituted . . . the working day at Ware,
Mass. . . .
By the thirties the hours appear to have been, if anything, longer.
At Fall River, about 1830, the hours were from 5 a.m., or as soon as light,
to 7:30 p. m., or till dark in summer, with one half hour for breakfast
and the same time for dinner at noon, making a day of 13^ hours.
In general the hours of labor in textile factories in New Hampshire,
Rhode Island, and Massachusetts in 1832 were said to be 13 a day. But
at the Eagle Mill, Griswold, Conn., it was said that 15 hours and 10
minutes actual labor in the mill were required.
At Paterson, N. J., in 1835, the women and children were obliged to be
at work at 4:30 in the morning. They were allowed half an hour for
breakfast and three-quarters of an hour for dinner, and then worked as
long as they could see. ... At Manayunk, Philadelphia, in 1833, the
hours of work were said to be 13 a day. And a little later the hours at
the Schuylkill factory, Philadelphia, were " from sunrise to sunset, from
the 2 1st of March to the 2Oth September, inclusively, and from sunrise
until 8 o'clock p. m. during the remainder of the year. " One hour was
allowed for dinner and half an hour for breakfast during the first-men-
tioned six months, and one hour for dinner during the other half year.
On Saturdays the mill was stopped "one hour before sunset for the pur-
pose of cleaning the machinery. "
Hours of Labor
Overtime, too, was frequent. Many of the corporations at Lowell . . .
ran "a certain quantity of their machinery, certain portions of the year,
until 9, and half past 9 o'clock at night, with the same set of hands. ". . .
Even the operatives were often against a reduction of hours, believing
that it would result in a reduction of wages. Harriet Farley, editor of
the Lowell Offering . . . thought it would work hardship to widows who
were toiling for their children, to children who were toiling for their
parents, and to many others. 1
Toward the close of the '30*5 Irish immigration began to
pour into the mills of Massachusetts. " Under the preju-
dice of nationality . . . the American element . . . retired
from mill and factory. ' ' a The retirement of the ' ' daughters
of independent farmers " and their replacement by Irish im-
migrants was followed by a reduction of the hours of labor
in the textile mills. In 1872 the working day averaged n
hours. 3 A generation before, in 1 835 , it was only after a strike
that the native American mill hands at Paterson, N. J., won
a reduction of the working day to an average of 1 1 J^ hours. 4
Later immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe
brought new racial elements to the mills and factories of
Massachusetts. The effect of the "new immigration"
upon hours of labor is shown in Table 91 .
TABLE 91.
WEEKLY HOURS OF LABOR IN MASSACHUSETTS, 1872 AND 1903.*
Industry
1872
1903
Reduction
Boots and shoes
n
e-i
6
Cotton goods
66
o>
n
8
Woolen goods
66
58
8
* Report of Woman and Child Wage-Earners in United Stofe$,vol.ix..
pp. 62-63, 66.
Report of the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor ; 1869-1870,
pp. 9 1-92. J See Table 9 1 .
Report of Woman and Child Wage-Earners, vol. ix., p. 63.
5 Figures computed from Report of the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor
Statistics, 1872, pp. 119-217; Nineteenth Annual Report of the Com-
missioner of Labor, Table V.
314 Immigration and Labor
The factory workers of Massachusetts gained during the
period of the new immigration an average reduction of 7.3
hours a week, or about an hour and a quarter per day. In
the woolen mills the gain in time was even slightly above the
average, although forty years ago the mill operatives were
mostly Irish immigrants, whereas lately the mills have been
run with a polyglot help made up of all the races of Southern
and Eastern Europe and Asiatic Turkey (as has been
brought to public attention by the recent strike at Law-
rence) . The conditions in the textile mills of Massachusetts
are certainly far from ideal; nevertheless fifty-eight hours
a week are a great stride in advance since the period when
the customary time was from sunrise to sunset, "as long as
they could see. " And it cannot be "said that all improve-
ments in conditions" of the textile workers "have been
secured in spite of the presence of the recent immigrant," 1
because there was no one else to secure those improvements
for them.
Taking the United States as a whole, we find that since
the beginning of the "new immigration" the hours of labor
have been gradually reduced; "the decrease in the hours of
labor in 1907, as compared with 1890, was 5.7 per cent." 2
This fact shows at least that the recent immigrant has not
hindered the movement toward better conditions of employ-
ment. It would require some proof to sustain the contention
of the Immigration Commission that "his availability and
his general characteristics and attitude have constituted a
passive opposition which has been most effective." 3
The Commission has made no investigation on the sub-
ject of hours of labor, except in a casual way. There is a
table giving the hours of work in one unnamed steel concern.
It appears that in the blast furnace department all hands,
skilled and unskilled alike, work twelve hours. In all other
departments the unskilled laborers work ten hours, whereas
1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. I , p. 541
2 Bulletin of the Bureau of Labor, No. 77, p. 4.
Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. i, p. 541.
Hours of Labor 315
the hours of the skilled and semi-skilled employees vary as
follows: in 7 occupations, 8 hours; in 143 occupations, 10
hours; in 269 occupations, 12 hours. In the coal mines
operated by the same concern, the laborers work 10 hours,
whereas the skilled and semi-skilled employees in 34 out of
42 occupations work 12 hours, and only in 8 occupations
10 hours. 1 The unskilled laborers in the mines and mills
are mostly recent immigrants from Southern and Eastern
Europe, whereas the skilled and semi-skilled positions are
filled almost exclusively by native Americans and old Eng-
lish-speaking immigrants. The Immigration Commission
itself says that "the immigrant does not appear . . . at the
present time to be even competing with him [the American]
in any serious way for the better-paid positions." 2 It is
evident that the longer hours of the English-speaking em-
ployees are not the result of recent immigration, since the
recent immigrants themselves work shorter hours.
The report on the cotton industry shows that in 1845
the working day in the cotton mills averaged 12 hours
and 10 minutes; the shortest days were in December and
January, averaging 1 1 hours and 24 minutes, and the long-
est in April were as high as 13 hours and 31 minutes. At
the time the report was written, the working hours were 56
per week, i. e., 10 hours per day with a half holiday on Satur-
day. 3 Thus sixty years of immigration have been attended
by a reduction of 2 hours and 50 minutes in the length of the
working day in the cotton mills.
The most complete statistics of hours of labor are con-
tained in the reports of the factory inspectors of the State
of New York, covering an average of nearly a million factory
employees annually , f or 1 90 1 - 1 9 1 o . New York is affected
by immigration more than any other State in the Union.
The period under consideration has witnessed the greatest
volume of immigration known in the history of the United
1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 8, Table 281, pp. 377-
381. a Ibid., vol. 8, p. 583.
J Ibid., vol. n, pp. 273 and 290.
3i6 Immigration and Labor
>
States, and the bulk of that immigration has been from the
countries of Southern and Eastern Europe. The reports on
factory inspection in the State of New York, therefore, offer
the results of observation, under conditions best calculated
to bring out the effects of immigration. Moreover, the
figures for the city of New York can be compared with those
for the rest of the State. In the city of New York the
foreign-born population furnished in 1900, 50.7 per cent of
all persons engaged in manufactures and mechanical pur-
suits, while in the State outside of New York the ratio was
only 22.9 per cent. The natives of Southern and Eastern
Europe constituted in the same year 16.1 per cent of the
total population of New York City, and 2.1 per cent of the
total population of the State outside of New York City. By
1910 their proportion in New York City increased to
24.1 per cent and in the remainder of the State to 6.6 per
cent. 1
The per cent distribution of factory operatives by the
number of hours of work in and outside of New York City
is given in Table 92 on the next page. The figures show:
(1) That the decade of the heaviest immigration from
Southern and Eastern Europe was marked by a gradual
reduction of the hours of labor in the State of New York;
(2) That the percentage of factory operatives working
ten hours or less on week days with a half -holiday on Satur-
day was much greater in New York City with its large
colonies of alien workers than in the remainder of the State
with a working population predominantly native;
(3) That after a decade of "undesirable immigration"
more than two thirds of all factory workers in New York
City work ten hours or less on week days with a half holi-
day on Saturday, whereas in the remainder of the State the
majority still work longer hours.
The preconceived notions about the "general character-
1 XIII. Census. Population, vol. i, pp. 79, 148, 825-827, 832 (com-
puted).
Hours of Labor
3*7
istics" of the recent immigrant do not stand the scrutiny
of incontrovertible statistical figures.
TABLE 92.
PER CENT DISTRIBUTION OF FACTORY OPERATIVES BY WEEKLY HOURS OF
LABOR IN NEW YORK CITY AND IN NEW YORK STATE OUTSIDE OF
NEW YORK CITY,
New York City
New York State outside of
New York City
Year
57 hours or
58 hours and
57 hours or
58 hours and
less
over
less
over
I9OI
53-7
46-3
I 7 .8
82.2
1902
54-8
45-2
22.2
77-8
1903
65.8
34-2
25.2
74-8
1904
1905
67.4
68.8
32.6
31-2
31-8
34-5
68.2
65-5
1906
69.0
31-0
35-0
65.0
1907
71.2
28.8
38.5
61.5
1908
70.9
29.1
40.9
59-1
1909
71.5
28.5
39-5
60.5
I9IO
75-5
24-5
40.4
59-6
1 Annual Report of the New York Bureau of Labor, vol. ii., 1910, Table
31, p. xlvi.
CHAPTER XIV
CHILD LABOR
labor has a depressing effect upon the rate of
wages. Thousands of children of immigrants are
employed in the mills of New England and the Middle
Atlantic States. The inference which readily suggests itself
to the popular mind is that child labor is the product of
immigration. It is a historical fact, however, that child
labor originated in the United States with the introduction of
the factory system during the first quarter of the nineteenth
century. Early writers on economic subjects favored the
employment of children in factories, because it would save
adult male labor for agriculture, fishing, shipping, and the
skilled trades. Child labor was advocated on religious and
philanthropic grounds. The various immigrant races which
succeeded one another in the nineteenth century found child
labor as an integral part of the factory system in the United
States. 1
During the ten-year period from 1899 to 1909, with its
unprecedented immigration, the average number of children
employed in factories remained stationary, viz., in 1899-
161,276, in 1909162,493, while the relative number de-
creased from 3.4 per cent to 2.4 per cent of all wage-earners. 2
1 Carlton, loc. cit., pp. 380-385.
1 XIII. Census, vol. viii. Manufactures, p. 253. It is probable that
the number of children at work has decreased as well. The number of
wage-earners for 1899, owing to the method of computation followed
at the XII. Census, was considerably underestimated: The average
number was computed "by using 12, the-number of calendar months,
as a divisor into the total of the average numbers reported for each
month." The effect of this method is shown in the case of twelve
318
Child Labor
The most significant fact to be noted concerning the rela-
tion between child labor and immigration is the large pro-
portion of children employed in factories in States where
there is practically no immigrant population. Children of
native-born American parents are drawn into the mills as a
substitute for immigrant labor. This conclusion is derived
from Table 93, showing the dependence of factories upon
child labor in six leading manufacturing States, according
to the recent census.
TABLE 93.
PER CENT OF CHILDREN UNDER 1 6 EMPLOYED IN FACTORIES, IN THE
UNITED STATES AND IN SIX LEADING MANUFACTURING STATES,
1909, AND PER CENT OF FOREIGN-BORN, I9IO. 1
State
Per cent of children
to all wage-earners
Per cent of foreign-
born to total
population
United States
2.4
14.7
South Carolina
I2.Q
O 4.
North Carolina
II .1
o.^
IVtassachtisetts
I C
IJ C
Pennsylvania
*.*
18.8
Illinois
I c
21 4.
New York
0.8
^O.2
In the four leading manufacturing States of the North
with a large immigrant population, child labor holds a sub-
ordinate place in the industrial organization, while in North
and South Carolina one in every eight or nine factory
operatives is under the age of 16. The lowest per cent of
child workers is in New York, which is overrun by immi-
grants, old and new.
selected industries, where the average number computed "as an abstract
unit (like the foot-pound) " was 475,473, whereas the total "computed
on the basis of time in operation would have exceeded 650,000, " the
variation being as high as 36 per cent. XII. Census. Manufactures,
Part I., pp. cvi., ex., and cxi.
1 XIII. Census, vol. viii.: Manufactures, pp. 270-271; vol. i: Popu-
lation, pp. 161-162.
320
Immigration and Labor
The latest available statistics of the distribution of chil-
dren employed in manufactures by nativity relate to the
year 1900. The figures are given in Table 94.
TABLE 94.
DISTRIBUTION, BY PARENT NATIVITY AND COLOR, OF THE NUMBER OP
CHILDREN OF BOTH SEXES, IO TO 15 YEARS OF AGE, ENGAGED IN
MANUFACTURES AND MECHANICAL PURSUITS, BY GEOGRAPHICAL
DIVISIONS,
Race and Nativity
Con-
tinental
United
States
North
Atlantic
Division
North
Central
Division
Western
Division
South
Atlantic
Division
South
Central
Division
Number:
White:
Native parents
II4,88l
46,534
19.155
1,696
35,292
I2,2O4
Foreign parents
159.679
104,574
44.796
3,199
4,172
3,038
Colored
9.7OQ
AQT.
670
288
A 78/1
306 s ?
Total
283,860
151,601
64.,6'U)
5,081
44,248
18,107
Per cent:
White:
Native parents
Foreign parents
Colored
40.5
56-3
5.2
30.7
69.0
O.^
29.6
69-3
I.I
62.9
c 7
79.8
9-4
10 8
66.7
16.6
16 7
Total
IOO.O
IOO O
IOO.O
IOO O
IOO O
IOO
In the country at large, the percentage ratio of children
of each nativity employed in manufactures corresponded to
the percentage of all breadwinners of the same nativity,
engaged in manufacturing and mechanical pursuits. 2 In
other words, on the whole the foreign-born sent to the
factories no more than their quota of children. There is a
marked difference, however, in the ratio of children of native
parents for each section of the country: in the South the
1 Occupations, XII. Census, Table LVIIL, p. clix.
"The per cent distribution, by parent nativity and color, of persons
of all ages engaged in manufactures in the United States was as follows:
white of native parentage, 39.8 per cent; white of foreign parentage,
56.0 per cent; colored, 4.2 per cent. Ibid., Table XXXVI., p. cxiii.
Child Labor 321
overwhelming majority of factory workers under 16 years
of age are children of native parents.
Another important fact is the age distribution of children
employed in factories. The Immigration Commission in its
study of households of cotton-mill operatives in the North
Atlantic States found but one child under 14 years of age at
work in a total of 795 children between 6 and 13 years, and
that a French-Canadian. * There are as yet no comparable
data more recent than the census figures for 1900. The
latter are presented in Table 95.
TABLE 95.
COTTON-MILL OPERATIVES UNDER 14 YEARS OP AGE IN THE PRINCIPAL
MANUFACTURING STATES, IQOO. 8
State Number
New England:
Maine 602
New Hampshire 527
Massachusetts 199
Connecticut 50
Rhode Island 615
Middle Atlantic: \
New York 51
New Jersey 1 16
Pennsylvania 311
Southern: j
North Carolina 5515
South Carolina 103
Georgia 2637
Alabama 1608
While, as has been shown above, the absolute number of
children employed in factories is greater in the North than
in the South, the children under 14 in the cotton mills of
the South far outnumber those of the same age in the great
manufacturing States of the North. This is, no doubt, due
to the child-labor laws of the Northern States.
No one in the Northern States to-day defends the employ-
ment of children under 14 in factories. In the Southern
States, however, the economic needs of the growing manu-
facturing industries have produced eloquent advocates of
1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 10, Table 46, p. 419.
a Occupations at the XII. Census, Table LXV., pp. ckix.-clxxxv.
322 Immigration and Labor
child labor in positions of influence. x Foreign-born wage-
earners are a negligible factor in the Southern labor market.
The growth of manufacturing industries in the South is
restricted by the natural increase of the native population.
In order to extend their operations, the manufacturers
of the South must resort to the employment of children, as
did their predecessors in New England a century ago before
immigration came to supply the needs of American industry.
This situation is by no means confined to the South.
Absence of foreign immigration has created a demand for
the labor of native American children in the canneries and
shoe factories of rural and semi-urban Missouri.
The rural districts of Missouri lost, from 1900 to 1910,
3 . 5 per cent of their population. The total population of the
State increased only 6 per cent. The foreign-born in
1910, as well as in 1900, constituted 7 per cent of the total
population of the State at large, and only ? 3.3 per cent of the
State outside of St. Louis and Kansas City. The additions
to the foreign-born population through immigration since
the census of 1900 averaged only 1310 persons annually,
but the increase was concentrated in St. Louis and Kansas
City, whereas the remainder of the State lost in ten years
8380 of its foreign-born population. 2 The statistics of the
State Labor Bureau show an increase of the number of
working children in the smaller cities, the towns and rural
sections, "which can be traced to the large number of shoe
factories and canneries which sprang up, outside of St. Louis,
Kansas City, and St. Joseph, during 1908." The foreign-
born labor supply in those sections is negligible. The
Commissioner of Labor offers the following explanation for
the increase in the employment of children:
1 "The cotton mills are set forth ... as the savior of the people, re-
ligiously, educationally, and, according to Dr. Stiles, physically."
Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science ,
Supplement, March, 1910. A. J. McKelwayrThe Mill or the Farm, p. 54.
2 XIII. Census. Population, vol. i., pp. 27, 61, 135, 149, 178 (com-
puted).
Child Labor 323
The increase in working women and children in 1908 over 1907, shown
by these statistics, does not mean that conditions are such that those
who ought to remain at home and take care of domestic affairs must go
out into the world and toil, but in reality is due to an increase in the
number of establishments in which the light, delicate touch of a gentle
hand is needed, instead of strength, endurance, and mechanical labor. . . .
It is necessary to state here that while the canning industry of Missouri
is still in its infancy, the year 1908 was probably the best the State has
ever had in this line, and that is why more employees were needed. . . .
The increase in child labor was not due to the stringency, the increased
cost of living, or to the poorer condition of the masses, but, instead, to
an increased demand for these workers from the new canneries and shoe
factories. Both these lines have a class of very light work, suitable only
for boys and girls, which does not pay enough weekly for older persons.
This assertion is not made in defence of child labor, but merely to explain
why it exists in canneries and shoe factories. x
The explanation sounds very similar to that offered in the
Southern States. 2 It accounts, as far as it goes, for the em-
ployment of children in canneries: an agricultural com-
munity is the natural location for the canning industry,
outside labor is scarce in rural districts and the canning
season is short. No local advantage for the shoe factories,
however, exists in rural Missouri. The centre of the shoe
manufacturing industry is Massachusetts, which in 1905
contributed 45 per cent of the total output of the United
States. 3 The seat of the shoe-manufacturing industry of
Missouri is St. Louis, whose output increased from 74 per
cent of the total for the State in 1899 to 81 per cent in 1904. 4
1 Reports of the Missouri Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1909, pp. 320-321.
3 " The cotton mills were the most powerful opponents [of theLouisiana
child-labor law], ably seconded by the canning industries. To hear the
representatives of both these industries, one, not knowing any better,
would have been convinced that the most healthful, remunerative, edu-
cational place in the entire world in which to develop children was in a
cotton mill or an oyster cannery. One fairly tingled to spend the rest
of life shucking oysters or peeling shrimp." Supplement, Annals
of the Am. Acad. of Political and Social Science, March, 1909. Jean M.
Gordon: The Forward Step in Louisiana, p. 163.
3 Census Report, Manufactures. 1905, Part I., p. ccxxx.
Ibid., pp. ccxxx. and ccxxxi. (computed).
324 Immigration and Labor
The principal inducement for locating new shoe factories in
rural sections of Missouri appears to be the availability of
cheap labor of native American women and children, who
can underbid the male immigrants employed in the shoe
factories of Massachusetts.
" CHAPTER XV
LABOR ORGANIZATIONS
Immigration Commission has made the statement
1 that " the recent immigrant has not, as a rule, affiliated
himself with labor unions, unless compelled to do so as a
preliminary step toward acquiring work. . . . Where he
has united with the labor organizations he has usually
refused to maintain his membership for any extended period
of time, thus rendering difficult the unionizing of the occu-
pation or industry in which he has been engaged.'* This
assertion could be proved only by a statistical study of the
membership of labor organizations. It is a characteristic
fact that with a Federal Bureau of Labor and a number of
State labor bureaus we have no compilation of the total
number of organized workers in the United States for a
series of years. x A great deal of information on the subject
is scattered in the published reports of labor conventions.
The inevitable gaps could be supplied from the records of
labor organizations. The Immigration Commission, how-
ever, made no effort to secure statistics of union member-
ship in a systematic way from official sources, but confined
its inquiries in the main to the heads of the households
covered by its investigation. The report of the Commission
contains data concerning 3325 trade unionists, whereas the
total membership of labor organizations in the United States
was estimated for 1910 at 2,625,000. * The reports of the
Commission contain a few fragmentary data on the member-
ship of labor organizations, apparently obtained from their
1 Reports of the Industrial Commission, vol. xvii., p. xviii.
*New York Labor Bulletin, September, 1911, p. 418.
325
326 Immigration and Labor
officials, but these data flatly contradict the conclusions of
the Commission.
We learn that "practically 36 per cent of the total number
of clothing workers in New York are organized; while 80
per cent of the cutters are members of the cutters' union.
Of the organized workers, about 60 per cent are Russian and
Polish Hebrews, 30 per cent Italians, and 10 per cent persons
of other races including foreign and native-born." 1 To
understand the meaning of these percentages, we must
compare them with the percentage of organized workers in
all industries. The total number of male industrial wage-
earners in the United States at the census of 1900 can be
estimated at 8,600,000 2 ; since very few women are affiliated
with labor organizations the number of males alone need
be taken into consideration in computing the percentage of
organized workers. The increase of the population of the
United States from 1 900 to 1 9 1 o was 2 1 per cent. The num-
ber of male industrial wage-earners in 1910 can accordingly
be estimated at 10,400,000, and the proportion of organized
workingmen in all industries at 25 per cent. Thus while,
on an average, only 25 per cent of all male wage-eairners in
the United States were affiliated with labor organizations,
among the clothing workers in New York City 36 per cent
were organized, all but one tenth of the organized workers
being Russian and Polish Hebrews and Italians. Of the
most skilled among them, the cutters, 80 per cent were mem-
bers of their union, i.e., relatively thrice as many as in all
industries of the country at large.
Of course, the question is whether the condition in the
clothing industry of New York may be accepted as typical.
The reports of the Immigration Commission furnish no
comparable data for the industries of the country at large.
The results of the study of households comprise less than
two trade-unionists in every 1000. Still, this being the only
1 Reports of the Immigration Commission? vol. II, p. 388.
2 1. A. Hourwich, " Social -Economic Classes of the Population of the
United States," Journal of Political Economy, March, 1911, p. 205.
Labor Organizations 327
statistical evidence which the Immigration Commission has
produced in support of its conclusions regarding the attitude
of recent immigrants toward trade unions, it is worthy of
note that upon the Commission's own showing trade-
unionism is as strong among the immigrants as among the
native American workmen. The ratio of organized workers
to all male wage-earners in each population group is shown
in Table 96.
TABLE 96.
ORGANIZATION OF NATIVE AND IMMIGRANT LABOR. 1
_ Nativity of wage-earners
Native-born of native father:
White ............................................ 13 .9
Negro ............................................ 17.9
Native-born of foreign father ....................... . . 14.1
Foreign-born ........................................ 13 .4
While on the whole trade-unionism is very weak in the
field covered by the investigation of the Commission, it is
manifest from the practical uniformity of the percentages
for each group that distinctions of birth, race, and color do
not explain this weakness.
Neither could a line be drawn in respect of unionism be-
tween the " desirable " immigrants from Northern and West-
ern Europe and the "undesirable aliens from Southern and
Eastern Europe. " This fact is brought to light by the com-
parison in Table 97 of the principal immigrant races that are
represented by at least 500 persons each 2 in the statistics
of the Immigration Commission. On the whole, the aver-
age percentage of union men among the "undesirable aliens"
is higher than among the immigrants of the preferred races.
1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. i, p. 417.
a Smaller groups have been omitted because, where the numbers are
small, the ratios are liable to be influenced by exceptional circumstances
and local conditions; for example, the highest percentage of organized
workmen, 100 per cent, was found among the Mexicans, because the
investigators of the Commission chanced to come across 56 Mexican
miners in a unionized mine. Ibid., pp. 418-419.
328
Immigration and Labor
TABLE 97-
ORGANIZATION OF IMMIGRANT LABOR 1
'Desirable" races
Total
number
Organized
Number
Per cent
573
524
724
515
537
I,IOI
133
87
107
48
26
51
23.2
16.6
14.8
9-3
4-8
4.6
Irish
Swedish
German
Total
3.974
452
II.4
"Undesirable" races
North Italian
881
1,408
761
684
1,706
2,428
1,501
3,280
351
497
163
144
234
258
146
313
39-8
35-3
21.4
21. 1
13.7
10.5
9-7
9-5
Hebrew
Ruthenian
Slovak
South Italian
Magyar
polish
Total
12,649
2,106
16.6
The percentage of trade-unionists among North Italians is
nearly three times as high as among native Americans of
native parentage; the Lithuanians furnish twice as many
as the more desirable Englishmen; the Hebrews twice as
many as the Swedes; the Ruthenians are far ahead of the
Americans of native stock; even the South Italians can
boast a percentage twice as high as the Germans; the Mag-
yars and the Slovaks march in front of the Swedes; and the
Poles, who are at the tail end of the procession of undesirables
from Eastern Europe, still outnumber two to one their more
1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. i, p. 418.
Labor Organizations 329
favored kinsmen, the Bohemians and Moravians. Con-
sidering that the native Americans and the members of the
races which contributed most largely to the earlier immi-
gration are, as a rule, engaged in higher occupations, where
they are for the most part segregated from the recent immi-
grants, it is clear that the latter could not be an obstacle in
the way of organization among the skilled men ; and that they
have not been an obstacle is shown by the fact that the re-
cent immigrants themselves furnish a higher percentage of
organized workmen.
As usual, when the facts do not fit its theory, the Com-
mission seeks to qualify the plain language of the figures:
These figures must not, however, be taken as representative of racial
tendencies except in a few cases, for the reason that the information
shown for one race may be for but one or two industries in which the
race is employed and which are so controlled by labor organizations that
membership in the labor unions is necessary to secure employment.
On the other hand, a race or several races may be employed in an indus-
try or industries in which no labor unions exist. . . . The fact that
certain races are most extensively employed in highly unionized
localities and industries is indicative of comparatively greater
assimilation and progressiveness on the part of the members of such
races. 1
The Commission thus assumes that affiliation of immi-
grants with labor organizations is a sign of their "assimi-
lation, " which implies that organization of labor is a native
growth, and that the foreigner merely imitates the ways of
the native. This view has no foundation in the history of
organized labor in the United States. The fact is that the
membership of most of the labor organizations has from
their inception been very largely foreign-born.
Historians have traced the embryo of labor organization
in America to the colonial period. Labor organizations
sprang up here and there during the first quarter of the
nineteenth century. Between 1825 and 1850 a number of
labor conventions were held. But all labor organizations
1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. I, p. 419.
330 Immigration and Labor
before the Civil War were ephemeral and soon disintegrated.
Their effect upon economic conditions was negligible. x
The depreciation of the currency and the consequent
rise of the cost of living during the Civil War stimulated
organization among workmen. Still the figures made acces-
sible by the research of Dr. Fite "plainly caution the
present generation against exaggerating the importance of
the war-time unions; they were numerous and bold in
leadership, but they were small in membership and em-
braced only a small part of the labor world. " 2
The plan of the X. Census comprised an inquiry into the
subject of trade unions in the United States. The statisti-
cal data collected were fragmentary. The development of
labor organizations up to 1880 is summed up as follows:
"But very few of the unions reported upon, so far as their
age could be learned, have had a long existence. The his-
tory of unionism in most cases is that an organization is
effected under the stress of some difficulty, flourishes for a
while, and then dies out, to be brought to life again in case
of urgent need." 3
Five years later, Col. Richard J. Hinton, a strong labor
sympathizer, contrasting the British with the American
labor organizations, noted with regret that "in the United
States the whole movement has hardly reached the stage of
toleration." 4
Official inquiries made about the same time in Illinois
(1886) and New Jersey (1887) established the fact that the
majority of the trade-unionists and Knights of Labor were
1 Mass. Report on Statistics of Labor, 1906, "The Incorporation of
Trade Unions," Part. III., pp. 131-134. Frank Tracy Carlton. The
History and Problems of Organized Labor, p. 41.
Emerson David Fite: Social and Industrial Conditions during the
Civil War, pp. 204-205.
* X. 'Census, vol. xx. Report on Trade Societies in the United States, p. 3.
Richard J. Hinton, "American Labor Organizations," The North
American Review, January, 1885, p. 49. ~An official report for the same
year states that "trade unions in America are in their infancy yet."
Ninth Annual Report of the Ohio Bureau of Labor Statistics (1885, p. 20).
Labor Organizations 331
of foreign birth, whereas the native Americans contributed
less than their quota to the membership of labor organiza-
tions. 1 This fact had been generally known before from
common ^observation. In the report of the New Jersey
Bureau of Statistics of Labor for 1884, immigration was
held directly responsible for the organization of labor unions.
The writer of an article on "Immigration and the Labor
Problem, " after stating that native Americans are displaced
by laborers "coming from countries in which wages are
lower than our standard" and where the standard of living
is therefore lower, goes on to say that
to the American laborer of twenty-five or thirty years since, such an
occurrence would have been an inconvenience but not altogether a dis-
aster. Failing to obtain the work he wanted at one place or in one trade,
he would turn to another and yet another, until he had found something
by which he could live. But the foreign-born operative has but little
of this cat-like facility of falling upon his feet. He knows but a single
trade; often, in the subdivision of mechanical employments, which is
almost uniformily prevalent and becoming still more so, only a small
fraction of that. Thrown out of his place, he must find another almost
precisely similar, or acquire a new training by a slow and painful process,
during which he earns little or nothing, and he has in far the greater
number of cases nothing laid up. That men should grow desperate and
wicked under such circumstances is not surprising. That they should
combine in leagues of various kinds; limit the hours of labor, or the
amount of work to be done in a given time; refuse to work with appren-
tices, or men outside of their own associations; strike, and agree not
only to remain idle themselves, but to prevent others from working; . . .
is the most natural thing in the world. 2
Thus, as late as 1884, the organization of labor unions was
decried in a State report as un-American, the work of foreign-
ers grown "desperate and wicked." Ten years later the
Minnesota Bureau of Labor undertook an investigation to
disprove that view. It is instructive to contrast the state
of public opinion in the early go's as reflected in the report
x The results of those inquiries are given in the Appendix, Table XXII.
Seventh A nnual Report of the New Jersey Bureau of Statistics of Labor
and Industries (1884), pp. 289-290.
332 Immigration and Labor
of the Minnesota Labor Bureau, with the sentiment of our
own day, when a Congressional commission regards unionism
as a manifestation of Americanism :
It has been repeatedly charged by a certain class of writers that
American trade unions are conspiracies to prevent American boys from
acquiring skilled crafts. This charge has been most clearly stated by
the Century Magazine, May, 1893. It says: "Under the present con-
ditions of trade instruction and employment in this country the Ameri-
can boy has no rights which organized labor is bound to respect. He is
denied instruction as an apprentice, and if he be taught his trade in a
trade school he is refused admission to nearly all trade unions and is boy-
cotted if he attempts to work as a non-union man. The questions of his
character and skill enter into the matter only to discriminate against
him. All the trade unions of the country are controlled by foreigners,
who comprise the great body of their members; while they refuse ad-
mission to the trained American boy, they admit all foreign applicants
with little or no regard to their training or skill. In fact the doors of
organized labor in America, which are closed and barred against Ameri-
can boys, swing open wide and free to all foreign-comers. Labor in free
America is free to all save sons of Americans. " The same magazine, in its
issue of July , 1 893 , says : ' ' They (the trade unions) are afraid of America 's
independent ideas in their unions, knowing, as they do, that American
workmen are not so servile and not so easily led as the more ignorant
foreign workmen. " a
The report of the Minnesota Bureau of Labor then pro-
ceeds to disprove, by figures relative to Minnesota labor
unions, the statements made in the Century articles. It
shows that in the three large cities of the State 62 per cent
of males of voting age at the census of 1890 were foreign-
born, whereas of the total number of trade unionists who
replied to the inquiries of the Bureau, 58.54 per cent were
1 Fourth Biennial Report of the Minnesota Bureau of Labor (1893-94),
P- 175-
3 The author of a doctor's dissertation, submitted to the University
of Chicago at the same time, strongly advocated restriction of immi-
gration, to ward off a "peril" which threatened American labor in "the
fact that our trade unions are almost exclusively controlled by foreigners
. . . incapable by long oppression in the industrial slavery of Europe
to understand or appreciate the true dignity or interests of American
labor. " Rena M. Atchison : Un-A merican Immigration, p. 1 05.
Labor Organizations 333
born in the United States and 41.46 per cent were foreign-
born. But a table in the report shows 1 1 of the unions with
more than 62 per cent of foreign-born members. Those
trades were the granite cutters with 70.09, bricklayers with
72.10, tailors with 100, bakers with loo, carpenters with
75-75 stonecutters with 72.75, blacksmiths with 100 per
cent of foreign-born members.
The change of public sentiment from 1894, when the
"ignorant foreign workmen" were accused of organizing
labor unions, to 1910, when the ignorant foreigners were
accused of keeping away from labor unions, is symptomatic
of the progress of organized labor during the intervening
period. In 1894, when the "ignorant foreigners" com-
prised mainly the races of "the old immigration," trade
unionism was still weak; after eighteen years of "undesir-
able immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe,"
organized labor has gained in numbers and won public
recognition.
An idea of the comparative strength of labor organizations
in the days of the old and the new immigration can be gained
from the distribution of the number of existing unions by the
period of their organizations, as shown in Table 98.
Very few of the existing unions were organized prior to
1880. The work of organization has since been proceeding
at an increasing rate of speed. During the first decade of
the new immigration, 1880-1890, more unions were organ-
ized and survived than throughout the whole previous his-
tory of the United States. In the next decade, 1890-1900,
when immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe first
outran "the old immigration," the number of new unions
organized in five of the six States (all but Illinois) exceeded
the total number of unions which had survived from pre-
vious times. But the greatest success rewarded the efforts
of union organizers during the first decade of the present
century. In Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Minnesota
more new unions were organized since 1900 than during the
whole ninteenth century. It must be borne in mind that
334
Immigration and Labor
Massachusetts and Connecticut have received large ac-
cessions to their population from Southern and Eastern
Europe. Thus the greatest activity in the field of organiza-
tion coincided with the unparalleled new immigration of
the past decade.
TABLE 98.
NUMBER AND DATE OF ORGANIZATION OF ACTIVE LABOR UNIONS IN SIX
INDUSTRIAL STATES. 1
1
1
5
Period
g
t>
at
"jj
2
1
B
6
1
|
1
a
ii
Total number:
Prior to 1880. . .
32
24
40
65
40
ii
1880-1889
116
6i
126
254
75
62
1800-1800. . .
107
1 08
7IO
278
24.1
107
Since 1900
6583
24.1
107 s
Annual average:
1880-1889
12
6
1 1
2 r
8
6
1800-1800. . .
2O
ii
71
28
24.
Since 1900
71
28
QI 6
22
The aggregate membership of labor organizations in the
United States and Canada was estimated by the Industrial
Commission at 1,300,000 for July i, I9OI. 7 The aggregate
'Compiled from Report on Statistics of Labor, Massachusetts, 1908,
pp. 185-186. Ohio Bureau of Labor Statistics, 24th Annual Report,
1900, p. 297. Minnesota Labor Report, 1905-6, p. 365; ibid., 1907-8, p.
83. Report of the Bureau of Labor Statistics of Illinois, 1886, p. 198;
ibid., 1901, p. 298. Report of the Connecticut Bureau of Labor Sta-
tistics, 1909-1910, p. 217. J2d Annual Report of the Missouri Bureau of
Labor. a Periods: Up to 1880; 1881-1890; 1891-1900; 1901-1908.
* 1900-1908. < 1900-1909. s 1900-1908. 6 In 1900-1901 183.
7 The total membership of enumerated unions was estimated at
1,208,000, to which was added an arbitrary allowance of 191,100 for
the Knights of Labor "and unenumerated organizations. " The former
were at the time in a moribund condition, and the Industrial Commission
believed that its estimate was subject to a probable error of 100,000.
Reports of the Industrial Commission, vol. xvii., p. xix.
Labor Organizations 335
membership of all unions in 1910 was estimated by the New
York Bureau of Labor at 2,625,000 for the United States
and Canada. 1 Thus in nine years from 1901 to 1910, with
their unprecedented immigration, the membership of la-
bor organizations doubled, whereas the average number
of wage-earners employed in manufactures increased from
1899 to 1909 only about 40 per cent, 2 the number of
railway employees from 1900 to 1910, 67 per cent, 3 etc.
The reports of the New York Bureau of Labor Statistics
since 1897 furnish a record of the annual increase or decrease
of union membership, which permits of a comparative study
of the relation between trade-unionism and immigration.
New York State is the receptacle of more than its propor-
tionate share of "the new immigration." New York City
is a temporary stopping-place for many a stranded immi-
grant lacking the funds for continuing his journey to final
destination. The evil effects of immigration, if such they
be, must appear in aggravated form in the State of New
York. The relation between union membership and immi-
gration is shown graphically in Diagram XX. 4 The curves
representing trade-union membership and the immigration
of breadwinners 5 run almost parallel, showing that union
1 New York Labor Bulletin, Sept., 1911, p. 418.
2 XIII. Census, volume viii. Manufactures, p. 240. The real
increase of the average number of wage-earners is smaller, because the
number for 1910 is the average of 12 monthly pay-rolls, whereas in
1900 the average number was computed "by using 12, the number of
calendar months, as a divisor into the total of the average numbers
reported for each month. " The effect of this change of method is shown
in the case of twelve selected industries, where the average number
computed "as an abstract unit (like the foot-pound)" was 475,473,
whereas the total "computed on the basis of time in operation would
have exceeded 650,000, " the variation being as high as 36 per cent.
XII. Census. Manufactures, Part I., pp. cvi., ex., cxi.
* Interstate Commerce Commission. Twenty-third Annual Report
tf the Statistics of Railways, pp. 33-34.
The figures from which the latter is plotted will be found in the
Appendix, Table XXIII.
A11 immigrants save those that have "no occupation (including
women and children)," in official terminology.
336
Immigration and Labor
membership rises and falls as immigration rises and falls.
The New York statistics thus disprove the conclusion of the
DIAGRAM XX.
r~
b
^
a
\_
/:
XX. Labor union membership in the State of New York, number of
immigrant bread-winners destined for the State of New York
and combined imports and exports through the port of
New York. 1897-1910.
Immigration Commission that "liis (the recent immigrant's)
availability and his general characteristics and attitude have
constituted a passive opposition which has been most
Labor Organizations 337
effective." 1 The third curve represents the aggregate ex-
ports and imports through the port of New York. The
import and export trade of New York gives employment,
directly and indirectly, to a large portion of the population
of the city. It feeds the traffic of all railways in the State
with terminals in New York. The fluctuations of the export
trade may therefore be taken as an index of the business
situation in the State of New York. It will be observed that
the curve of union membership follows very closely the
curve of foreign trade. The fluctuations of union member-
ship accordingly depend upon the business situation. The
latter likewise determines the fluctuations of immigration.
The harmonious movement of immigration and organiza-
tion among workers is thus accounted for by the fact that
both are stimulated by business prosperity and discouraged
by business depression.
The question may be raised, however: given the indus-
trial expansion of the past decade, would not the progress of
trade-unionism have been greater "without the availability
of the recent immigrant labor supply"? An answer to this
question is furnished by the comparative statistics of union
membership in the States of New York and Kansas for 1900-
1909. While New York has received great numbers of
immigrants during this period, the ratio of foreign-born in
Kansas has been steadily decreasing since 1880: in the
latter year the ratio was n per cent, in 1910 only 8 per
cent. The proportion of foreign-born from Southern and
Eastern Europe to the population of Kansas was only 2 per
cent. 2 At the same time Kansas has shared in the indus-
trial expansion of the period, as witnessed by the amounts
paid out in wages to factory operatives in 1899 an( ^ i99
shown in Table 99. While the increase in the United States
at large amounted to 71 per cent and in New York City to
1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. i., p. 541.
2 Statistical Abstract, 1910, Table 25, p. 53. XIII. Census. Popula-
tion, vol. i., p. 817; vol. ii., p. 669.
338
Immigration and Labor
65 per cent, in Kansas it reached 100 per cent. The
comparative growth of trade-unionism in New York and
Kansas in 1900-1909 must accordingly reveal the effects of
TABLE 99.
TOTAL WAGES PAID TO FACTORY OPERATIVES IN THE UNITED STATES AND
IN THE STATES OF NEW YORK AND KANSAS (MILLIONS OF
DOLLARS), 1899 AND 1909. x
1899
1909
Per cent
of increase
United States
2008
^427
71
New York .
7
Gey
6&
Kansas
I*
26
100
industrial expansion upon the progress of organization
among the wage-earners, with and without the availability
of the recent immigrant.
Table 100 shows the ratio of organized workers in each
of the two States to its total urban population. 2 The
relative number of organized workmen is higher in New
York with a large and growing immigrant population
drawn from Southern and Eastern Europe than in Kansas
with a small and decreasing foreign-born population.
Prior to the recent crisis the percentage of organized
workmen in New York was more than twice as high as in
Kansas. The industrial depression of 1909 reduced the
percentage of organized workmen in New York, while in
Kansas the year 1908 was a record year for labor organiz-
ations. Yet even then the proportion of organized work-
men in New York remained higher than in Kansas.
1 XIII. Census, vol. viii. Manufactures, Table III, pp. 542, 543.
* Urban population is defined by the census as "that residing in cities
and other incorporated places of 2500 inhabitants or more." (XIII.
Census, vol. i. Population, p. 53.) The population for 1900 is that
enumerated by the census. The urban population for each subsequent
year is estimated in accordance with the method followed by the United
Labor Organizations
339
TABLE loo.
PER CENT RATIO OF TRADE-UNION MEMBERSHIP TO URBAN POPULATION
IN NSW YORE AND KANSAS, 1900-1909.*
Year
New York
Kansas
1900
4.6
1-9
1901
5-0
2-3
1902
5-8
2.1
1903
6-7
2.6
1904
6.4
3<>
1905
6.1
3<>
1906
6.2
2.8
1907
6.6
2.9
1908
5-5
5-2
1909
5-3
4.4
The preceding ratios may be affected by the character of
the urban population in the two States : if the proportion of
wage-earners to the whole population in New York was
higher than in Kansas, the difference might in a measure
account for the higher percentage of organized workmen.
These doubts are resolved by Diagram XXI., which shows
for each State the ratio of union membership to the num-
ber of industrial wage-earners at the XII. Census. 2 The
curve for New York runs throughout the whole period
above that for Kansas.
These differences are by no means accidental. In the
early period of trade-unionism in the United States, when it
was generally regarded as a "foreign" plant and denounced
as "un-American," contemporary observers sought to ex-
plain the aloofness of the native American wage-earners
from labor organizations by their "indisposition to identify
themselves permanently with any class."
The foreign workman has the tradition of many generations and the
walls of caste to restrain him within certain limits as to his occupation;
States Bureau of Statistics, by adding to the population of the preceding
year one tenth of the increase from 1900 to 1910.
* See Appendix, Table XXIV. a Ibid.
DIAGRAM XXI.
- s
\
s
XXI. Male union membership in the states of New York and
Kansas, 1900-1909; Per cent ratio to the number of in-
dustrial wage-earners in 1900.
340
Labor Organizations 341
he has no possibilities beyond a given sphere, and is trained and de-
veloped within it. Thus environed, his career and ambitions lie in the
paths his fathers have trod, and his associations with his fellow craftsmen
make the trade union his natural and necessary place. Transported to
this country he brings his feelings for the union and his class associa-
tions with him as a habit. But the American mechanic's boy is born to
no conditions in life from which he may not rise, of hope to rise, or
which at least he may not abandon for better or worse. All the pre-
cepts of the schools and teachings of observation suggest other ways of
making a living, or at least other avenues in life, than those of his
father.*
In a later publication of the Massachusetts Labor Bureau
the unstable character of trade unions in New England up
to 1880 is explained by the fact "that early New England
workmen seldom regarded their condition as journeymen as
likely to be permanent. They nearly all looked forward
with some degree of hope to a time when they would become
employers."*
This condition still exists in smaller communities where
many of the native American wage-earners are home-own-
ers, 3 and in country districts where the factory workers are
drawn from the farms of the neighborhood. As a result, we
find labor better organized in New York City with a high
percentage of recent immigrants than in the remainder
of the State of New York, with a predominantly native
population.
In Table 101, the distribution of male trade-union mem-
bership between the city of New York and the remainder of
the State is presented in parallel columns with the distribu-
tion of male breadwinners in non-agricultural pursuits.
In New York City one half of all breadwinners in 1900
were foreign-born, whereas in the remainder of the State
three fourths were of native birth. At the same time New
York City had more than its proportionate share of trade-
1 Fourth Annual Report of the Illinois Bureau of Statistics of Labor
(1886), p. 228.
* Massachusetts Labor Bulletin, No. 10, April, 1899, p. 55.
Pratt, he. cit., p. 99.
342
Immigration and Labor
TABLE 101.
COMPARATIVE UNION MEMBERSHIP IN THE STATE OF NEW YORK AND IN
THE CITY OF NEW YORK, I9OO. 1
Geographical
division
Union membership
(male)
Male breadwinners in non-
agricultural pursuits
per cent
Thousands
Per cent
Ail
Nativities
Foreign-born
Ratio to total
State
234
146
88
100
62
38
100
56
44
New York City
11
Outside of New York City
union membership. The margin in favor of New York City
would be still greater if instead of all breadwinners indus-
trial wage-earners alone were considered, the proportion of
the latter being larger outside of the great cities than in
cities with a population of over 3oo,ooo. 2
The figures are for the year 1900. The conditions have
not changed since, as appears from Table 102 on p.
343-
The membership of the trade unions in New York City
more than doubled from 1900 to 1910, whereas in the re-
mainder of the State it increased by less than three fifths.
This difference was not due to a proportionate increase of
the population of New York City compared with the urban
population of the remainder of the State: while the popu-
lation of New York City increased somewhat faster than
the urban population outside of New York City, the relative
number of organized workers in New York City increased
still faster. The figures furnish unmistakable evidence of
greater progress of trade unions at the gate of the United
States, parallel with the growth of the foreign-born popu-
1 Report of the New York Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1910, vol. ii., pp.
xlix., L, 15. Occupations, XII. Census, Tables 41 and 43.
Hourwich, loc. cit.. Journal of Political Economy, April, 1911,
P- 324-
Labor Organizations
343
TABLE 102.
COMPARATIVE UNION MEMBERSHIP IN THE STATE OF NEW YORK AND IN
THE CITY OF NEW YORK, 1 900-1910. x
Both sexes
Year
State
New York
City
Outside of
New York
City
Union membership:
Absolute number
u
Increase
1900
1910
Thousands
245
48-2
Per cent
Thousands
154
338
Per cent
no
Thousands
91
144
Per cent
V8
Relative number:
<! II
Urban population:
Foreign-born white:
Ratio to urban
1900
1910
1900
1910
IQOO
100
100
100
100
63
1
64
66
37
37
30
36
34
2*
IOIO
4.O
2 1 *
lation, than in the remainder of the State where eight
ninths of the population are American-born.
Still, the strength of organized labor is measured above
mere numbers by its ability to marshal its forces in con-
tests over terms of employment. The strike statistics
which have been collected by the United States Bureau of
Labor do not extend to the period prior to 1881, but there
are official figures for Massachusetts going as far back as
1830, and for Pennsylvania as far as 1835. The data are
presented in Table 103 on the next page:
1 Report of the New York Bureau of Labor Statistics ; 1910, vol. ii., pp.
xlix., 1., 15. XIII. Census. Population, vol. i., pp. 179, 191 (computed).
344
Immigration and Labor
TABLE 103.
NUMBER OF STRIKES IN MASSACHUSETTS, 1830-1905, AND PENNSYLVANIA,
1835-1905. '
Massachusetts
Pennsylvania
Period:
Prior to 1880
ISO
IS2
1881-1905:
Total
Annual average
2774
III
4156
166
Making every allowance for the incompleteness of the re-
ports of early strikes, we see once more from the figures for
two of the leading industrial States that in the days of "the
old immigration*' the labor movement was negligible: the
average number of strikes in Pennsylvania during one year
since 1881 exceeds the total for the preceding half -century.
In order to trace the effect, if any, of the new immigration
upon the strike movement, the period 1896-1905, when
immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe became
predominant, is next compared with the ten-year period
next preceding.
Table 104 shows an increase of the number of strikers in
general, and of organized strikers in particular. Taking the
number of industrial wage-earners in 1890 as the average
for 1886-1895 and the number in 1900 as the average for
1896-1905, we find an increase of 34 per cent 2 ; the annual
average number of strikers increased at the same time
29 per cent, and the annual average of organized strikers
38 per cent. In other words. the strike movement kept
1 Eleventh Annual Report of the Bureau of Labor Statistics of Massa-
chusetts, 1880, p. 65. Report of the Secretary of the Internal Affairs of
Pennsylvania, Part III., Industrial Statistics, 1880-1881, p. 388.
Twenty-first Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor, 1906, pp. 492-
495-
a Hourwich, loc, cit. Journal of Political Economy, March, 1911,
p. 213.
Labor Organizations
345
TABLE 104.
STRIKES AND IMMIGRATION OF BREADWINNERS BY DECENNIAL PERIODS,
1 886-1 905.'
Period
Annual average number (thousands)
Percent of estab-
lishments in which
strikes failed
Immigrant
bread
winners
Strikers
Total
Organized
Unorgan-
ized
Organ-
ized
Unorgan-
ized
1886-1895
241
389
26 7
344
208
287
59
57
41.8
29.6
55-2
58.4
1806-1005
pace with the growing number of industrial wage-earners.
The percentage of unsuccessful organized strikes decreased.
The movement was apparently not affected either by
the increase of immigration, or by the change in its racial
make-up.
Immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe have at
times acted as strike breakers, but so have native Ameri-
cans. 2 In 1904, during the strike of the miners of the Ala-
bama district, "the operators brought in Magyars, Slovaks,
Greeks, Servians, Italians, and Finns, as well as native
whites, as strike breakers." 3 It is a matter of common
1 XXI. Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor, Table IV, pp. 478-
479, and Table V, pp. 490-491. Reports of the Commissioner-General of
Immigration, 1903-1905. Summary of Commerce and Finance, June
1903, pp. 4422-4423. Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1910, p-
246, Table 150.
3 In the big strike of 1877 "many American girls, it was said, acted
as strike breakers, replacing Bohemian women. " In the cigar industry,
in general, "when immigrant women went on strike they were replaced
-with comparative ease by American girls. " Report of Woman and Child
Wage-Earners in the United States, vol. ix., p. 199-201.
3 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 9, p. 197. In 1908,
''during the strike [of the miners of Birmingham], considerable numbers
of immigrants were brought in as strike breakers, but in not so great a
proportion as native whites from other coal-mining sections. " Ibid.,
, 2pp,
346 Immigration and Labor
knowledge, however, that in many strikes of national
dimensions, most of the participants were immigrants
from Southern and Eastern Europe.
The Immigration Commission has given expression to the
popular condemnation of the Southern and Eastern
European immigrants for their alleged "tractability" and
their "willingness seemingly to accept indefinitely without
protest certain wages and conditions of employment." 1 It
is worthy of note that the same criticism was directed against
English immigrants when they were among the "new
immigration." The following, from a labor paper published
in 1845, has a familiar sound:
Capital is striving to fill the country with foreign workmen.
English workmen, whose abject condition in their own country has made
them tame, submissive and "peaceable orderly citizens"; that is, work 14
and 16 hours per day, for what capital sees fit to give them, and if it is
not enough to provide them a comfortable house to shelter their wives
and children and furnish them with decent food and clothes, why they
must live in cellars, go hungry and ragged. 3
To-day the complaint against the immigrants from South-
ern and Eastern Europe who are "mainly, unskilled
laborers," is that "on the whole" they "have not shown
the same readiness to join trade-unions ... as have those
coming from the older immigration from the north and west
of Europe." 3 In general, as shown, the supposed connec-
tion between trade-unionism and the points of the compass
is not sustained by the statistics of the Immigration Com-
mission. In regard to unskilled laborers, in particular, it
must be borne in mind that "on the whole" they are not
eligible "to join trade-unions," the latter being confined
mainly to skilled crafts.
There is a tendency among certain theorists to idealize
1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. I , pp. 531 , 541. Jenks
and Lauck, loc. cit., pp. 191, 206-207.
* Documentary History of American Industrial Society, vol. viii., 1840-
1860. Voice of History, Fitchburg, Massachusetts, Oct. 9, 1845.
3 Jenks and Lauck, loc. cit*, p, 207.
Labor Organizations 347
the trade-union in the abstract as the economic organization
of "the working class." The craft union, as it exists in
real life, not in theory, partakes of the nature of the mediae-
val guild: its object is to assure work to its members. To
accomplish this purpose, it seeks to limit the number of
competitors. 1
To criticise individual union leaders for this attitude is to
betray a misconception of the essence of the craft union:
its exclusiveness is not an "abuse," it is a policy. To
organize "the working class" is not the aim of the trade
union. a It strives only to organize as many f ellow-craf ts-
* The policy of the flint-glass workers' union is thus described in the
Reports of the Industrial Commission, vol. xv., p. 325: "Being a highly
skilled trade, it is not troubled by the immigration of unskilled laborers.
Those who come to this country are mainly from Norway, Sweden, and
Alsace-Lorraine, where they have learned their trade. There are two
considerations which restrict the entrance of immigrants. First, the
initiation fee imposed by the union. This fee was formerly $100 for
foreigners, and $3 for Americans. The fee has been reduced to $50 for
foreigners, the American fee remaining at $3. There is an opinion in
the union that this extreme discrimination against foreigners is not
advantageous, as it compels them to enter non-union shops instead of
joining the union. This is known to have been the fact in at least one
large non-union establishment manned mainly by foreigners. " In this
case discrimination was practised against highly skilled immigrants from
Northern and Western Europe, usually classified as "desirable. "
a The philosophy of trade-unionism is expressed without equivocation
in the following quotation from the testimony of Mr. A. A. Roe, repre-
senting the railway brotherhoods, before the committee on Immigra-
tion and Naturalization:
' ' Mr. Roe. I take this position, without any hesitancy at all, that as I
see it, the influx displaces the workman of this country, the wage-earner,
and causes a competition for his position, increases the number of appli-
cants for work. This brought into existence the organizations, drove
men together. They had to get into the organizations to give them
power to maintain their position, to save the comforts of their homes,
and if you say that is a good thing, well and good.
" Mr. Sabath. It is a good condition: organization is a good con-
dition, and if they are responsible for any improvements in the condition
of the workingmen, then they are entitled to thanks.
" Mr. Roe. A better condition would be one that would not require the
348 Immigration and Labor
men as are necessary to control the trade. There is no place
for the unskilled laborer in the trade-union of the prevailing
type. There are situations where the interests of the craft
union may be antagonistic to organization among the un-
skilled, as has been exemplified in the recent Lawrence strike.
The United Textile Workers' Union of America, of which
Mr. John Golden is president, for many years previous to the
strike, had at Lawrence an organization confined to the
skilled men in the mills. It was easy for the mill owners to
satisfy the demands of the few skilled men, who were but
a very small fraction of the whole labor force. They were
willing to remain at work. The demands of the thousands
of unskilled workers, however, could not be satisfied with-
out a greater financial sacrifice than the mill owners were
prepared to make. The suspension of work caused by the
strike of the immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe
and Asia Minor was an injury to the members of the United
Textile Workers' Union, who had nothing to gain from the
success of the strike. Viewing the controversy not from an
altruistic, but from a business point of view, they naturally
sided with the mill owners against the strikers, "comforted
that the whirligig of time was bringing them around as bul-
warks of conservatism even in the eyes of the employers." 1
This diversity of economic interests of the aristocracy of
skilled labor and of the masses of unskilled men, women, and
children accounts for the fact that "the English-speaking
labor men have not been urged by such a missionary zeal
toward the recent immigrants as should have been theirs
on human grounds no more than on the basis of sound associ-
ation among the whole labor force." 2
organization; would not make the organization necessary. A better
condition would be one where hours , conditions of employment, and wages
were such that organization of labor for these purposes was unnecessary,"
Hearings before the Commission on Immigration and Naturalization,
House of Representatives, Sixty-first Congress, p. 256.
1 Robert A. Woods: "The Clod Stirs," The Survey, March 16, 1912,
pp. 1930-1931. *Ibid.
Labor Organizations 349
Discussing the possibilities of organization among the
unskilled, a student of organized labor says:
The immigrant is usually accustomed to some form of social organi-
zation. He is not as individualistic as is the typical American. He can
be organized with others into labor unions; and when the unskilled
immigrants from a variety of birthplaces are thus associated, the result-
ing union is usually strong, coherent, and easily directed by capable and
enthusiastic leaders. The McKees Rocks strike furnishes an excellent
illustration of the solidarity of the unskilled when organized. x
On the home training of Italian immigrants in organi-
zation the report of the Immigration Commission contains
interesting material, which unfortunately has been disre-
garded in its conclusions.
In recent years the labor-union movement has grown rapidly and to
large proportions among the industrial as well as the agricultural workers
of Italy, and it is said that the activities of the unions have helped to
advance wages in both fields. In 1907, according to Annuario Statis-
tico for 1905-1907, there were 2950 industrial unions in the Kingdom,
with a total of 362,533 members. From 1901 to 1904, inclusive, there
were 3032 industrial strikes, involving 621,737 workers, and in the
various years from 63 to 80 per cent of the strikes were reported as
"successful" or "partly successful." 11
The most noteworthy feature of this movement is the
progress of organization among farm hands, which has no
counterpart in the United States. The statistics presented
in Table 105 show that even the despised South Italian farm
laborer is capable of organization and concerted action.
On the labor movement in Russia, a compilation of
statistics from Russian official sources has been published
by the United States Bureau of Labor.
Previous to the revolution of 1905, labor organizations
and strikes were treated as conspiracies in Russia. During
the revolution the severity of the law was relaxed for a
short time, but with the suppression of the revolution the
old repressive policy was resumed. Thus the only oppor-
1 Carlton: loc. tit., pp. 346-347.
a Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 4 (in press).
350
Immigration and Labor
TABLE 105.
AGRICULTURAL LABOR UNIONS AND STRIKES AMONG AGRICULTURAL
LABORERS IN ITALY. 1
Geographical
division
Local unions, 1901
Strikes, 1901 to 1904 inclusive
Number
Membership
Number
Participants '
Northern Italy
The rest of the
Kingdom
28 9
1014
49,884
229,629
701
404
171,911
315,229
Total
1303
278,513
iios 3
487,140
tunity the wage-warners of the Russian Empire had to show
their capacity for organization and concerted action was in
1905. According to the statistics published by the Russian
government, the total number of strikers in factories and
mines during the year 1905 was 2,915,000. This figure does
not include the railways and the postal-telegraph service,
which were completely paralyzed by the strikes of I9O5. 3
According to the census of 1897, the total number of
railroad employees, exclusive of administrative officials,
was 682,000 and the total number of employees in the
postal-telegraph service, exclusive of higher officials, was
75,000. 4 The total number of strikers for the year 1905
may therefore be conservatively estimated at 3,672,000.
The highest number of strikers recorded in the United
States for any one year between 1881 and 1905 was 533,000,
in 1 902 . 5 The strikes in the factories of the Russian Empire
in 1905 affected 32.6 per cent of all establishments under
1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 4, Table 17 (condensed).
a Of the 1105 strikes among agricultural laborers a large majority
were reported as successful or partly successful.
3 Bulletin of the Bureau of Labor, No. 86: I. M. Rubinow, Foreign
Statistical Publications, Russia, p. 284. _
Premier Recensement Central de la Population de I' Empire de Russie t
1897, vol. ii., pp. II, 250-251.
Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1909, p. 240.
Labor Organizations 351
factory inspection, comprising 60 per cent of all wage-
earners. x
The strikes in the Russian Empire drew together wage-
earners of all those nationalities which make up the bulk
of our immigration from Russia : Hebrews, Poles, Lithuan-
ians, Russians, and Ruthenians (South Russians).
It is evident that a good many of the immigrants from
Russia, Poland, and Italy bring with them an understand-
ing of the aims of organized labor. These immigrants serve
as a nucleus of organization among their countrymen. 2 This
fact has been brought to the attention of the American
public in the recent strikes of the garment workers and
textile mill operatives.
From all available data it is clear that if organized labor
in the United States has not succeeded in welding together
a majority of the wage-earners and in securing for them a
greater share of the prosperity of the country, the fault is
not with immigration in general, nor with immigration from
Southern and Eastern Europe in particular. Race pre-
judice, which the coming of the immigrant has increased
among the English-speaking workers is considered by some
writers among the contributory causes which have retarded
the development of unionism in this country. 3 The pri-
mary cause, however, is the substitution of machinery for
human skill, which is taking the ground from the craft union.
Since the unskilled labor which has superseded the labor of
the skilled mechanic is performed by recent immigrants, the
breakdown of the old organization is conceived by the trade-
unionist as the effect of recent immigration. This view is
given expression in the following statement :
In the occupations and industries in which the pressure of the com-
petition of the recent immigrant has been directly felt, either because
1 Bulletin of the Bureau of Labor, No. 86, pp. 271-272.
a Since these lines were written (in 1912) the revolution in Russia and
the great strikes of 1920 in Italy have made labor a dominant force in
the economic and political life of those countries.
3 Carlton, loc. cit., p. 63.
352 Immigration and Labor
the nature of the work was such as to permit of the immediate em-
ployment of the immigrant or through the invention of improved
machinery his employment was made possible in occupations which
formerly required training and apprenticeship, the labor organizations
have been, in a great many cases, completely overwhelmed and
disrupted. 1
Where the invention of improved machinery has dis-
pensed with the necessity of training and apprenticeship.it is
plain that labor organizations which were built upon special
training and apprenticeship were doomed to die a natural
death for want of supporters. Could a union of blacksmiths
be maintained in a modern foundry where steam hammers
are used? With the occupation of the blacksmith gone, his
union must inevitably have been "disrupted" even in a
purely American community without a single immigrant
from Southern and Eastern Europe.
Another obstacle to the progress of trade-unionism is that
the principal industries to-day are controlled by combina-
tions, which have reduced competition among employers
of labor to a minimum. A trust can afford to hold out in a
strike as long as it chooses, since it can shift its losses to the
consumers. The workmen, on the contrary, cannot strike
without end. As a result, "the unions have practically
disappeared from the trusts, and are disappearing from the
large corporations." 8
1 Jenks and Lauck, loc. tit., p. 192.
a Prof. Commons in the American Journal of Sociology, vol. xiii.,
(1908), p. 759.
CHAPTER XVI
PAUPERISM AND CRIME
A. Introductory
preceding review of comparative statistics and de-
1 scriptive history of labor conditions in the past and
present has disclosed no evidence in support of the view that
the economic interests of the wage-earner have suffered in
consequence of immigration. But it is claimed that the
evil effects of immigration show themselves in an alarming
increase of pauperism and crime. The statistics of depend-
ency and delinquency, however, give no occasion for alarm.
According to an investigation made by the Bureau of Immi-
gration, the total number of inmates of penal institutions,
insane asylums, and almshouses in 1908 was 610,477, x which
included native and naturalized citizens and aliens. The
enumeration of the same classes by the Bureau of the
Census in 1904 gave their number as 634,877. 2 A compari-
son of these figures clearly shows that the large immigration
of the five-year period 1903-1908 was accompanied by an
actual decrease of pauperism and crime.
Whether or not the number of paupers in charitable insti-
tutions can " serve as a general index of prevailing distress/' 3
is beside the question: the contention is that pauperism is
1 Report of the Commissioner -General of Immigration, 1908, p. 96.
* Benevolent Institutions, p. 12. Paupers in Almshouses, p. 6.
Insane and Feeble-minded in Hospitals and Institutions, pp.6, 107.
Prisoners and Juvenile Delinquents, pp. 14, 228.
* Paupers in Almhouses, p. 8.
353
354 Immigration and Labor
on the increase, whereas the latest statistics show that the
millions of recent immigrants imposed no new burdens upon
the charitable and penal institutions of the country.
B. Pauperism
The Immigration Commission, in its conclusions, notes a
decrease of pauperism among immigrants of the present day,
compared with the past.
The number of those admitted who receive assistance from organized
charity in cities is relatively small. In the Commission's investigation
which covered the activities of the associated charities in 43 cities, in-
cluding practically all the larger immigrant centers except New York,
it was found that a small percentage of the cases represented immigrants
who had been in the United States three years or under, while nearly
half of all the foreign-born cases were those who had been in the United
States twenty years or more. This investigation was conducted during
the winter of 1908-09 before industrial activities had been fully resumed
following the financial depression of 1907-8, and this inquiry showed
that the recent immigrants, even in cities in times of relative industrial
inactivity, did not seek charitable assistance in any considerable
numbers. 1
The records of the charitable institutions of New York
City also show that the recent immigrant races furnish a
much smaller relative number of applicants for charity than
the old immigrant races. Table 106 gives the nativity of
lodgers who were sheltered in the Municipal Lodging House
in New York City during the first quarter of the year 1908,
when the crisis was in its acutest stage.
The immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe fur-
nished less than their proporti on of homeless men even in
a period of industrial depression. The population tables of the
XIII. Census for New York City are not as detailed as those
of the XII. Census. It may be inferred, however, from the
published figures that the ratio of pauperism relative to
population must have been still more favorable to the races
of Southern and Eastern Europe thaif shown in Table 106.
1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. I, p. 36.
Pauperism and Crime
TABLE 1 06.
355
PER CENT DISTRIBUTION, BY NATIVITY, OF LODGERS AT MUNICIPAL
LODGING HOUSE IN NEW YORK CITY DURING JANUARY, FEBRUARY,
AND MARCH, 1908, AND OF THE MALE POPULATION 21 YEARS OF AGB
AND OVER AT THE XII. CENSUS. *
Nativity
Lodgers
1908
Males of
full age,
1900
Total
IOO.O
IOO O
English-speaking :
United States
46.2
4.C 7
Ireland
21. 1
IO.Q
England, Scotland, and Wales
6.0
4.1
Germany
Q.5
15-1
Scandinavian
I 7
2 O
France
o s
o 6
Russia
4.O
5.8
Austria
2. 1
2.8
Italy
1 .4
6.3
64
63
English-speaking
74 2
60.7
All others
'* m
2 s *. 8
JQ.-l
Native
46.2
45.7
Foreign-born
n
51.8
54. 1
Northern and Western Europe
JQ. 7
12. Q
Eastern and Southern Europe. .
7 7
14.0
Other countries
6 4
. 6.3
The increase of the Russian population of New York
City in 1900-1910 was 168 per cent, which raised it to 10.3
per cent of the total population of the city; the proportion
of adult males in a national group comprising many recent
immigrants must necessarily have increased at a greater
rate. The increase of the Italians amounted to 134 per
cent, and that of the Austrians to 1 10 per cent. 2
It might be argued that the higher ratio of dependency
1 Report of the Commission of Immigration of the State of New York,
p. 201. XII. Census. Population, Part I., Table 83, pp, 938-945;
Table 80, pp. 930-931.
2 XIII, Census. Population, vol. i., pp. 178^ 826-827,
356
Immigration and Labor
among the Irish is the result of their "displacement by the
Southern and Eastern Europeans. ' ' It was shown, however,
by the Industrial Commission that in pauperism the Irish
had always been in the lead. The demonstration of this
fact is given in Table 107, which shows that in 1885-1895,
when the Italians and Hebrews from Russia and Austria
were but a small fraction of the population of New York
City, and even as far back as 1854-1860, when there were
practically none at all, the preponderance of the Irish among
the recipients of charity was as great as in more recent years.
TABLE 107.
PER CENT DISTRIBUTION, BY NATIVITY, OF FOREIGN-BORN RECIPIENTS
OF CHARITY, 1854-1860, AND 1885-1895, AND OF THE POPULATION
OF NEW YORK CITY, 1855 AND 1 890.'
Country of birth
Popula-
tion 1855
Relief
granted
1854-1860
Popula-
tion 1890
Alms-
house
paupers
1885-1895
Total for all nativities
IOO.O
IOO.O
IOO O
IOO O
Ireland.
27 O
60 o
12 6
60 4
England, Scotland, and Wales. .
Germany.
5-1
IS 2
4.5
n>.8
3-1
14. O
6.6
14. O
Italy
2.6
O 7
Russia and Austria-Hungary
(Hebrews)
a O
O.O
The proportion of English and Irish paupers in Boston in
the '30*8 and '40*8 was about the same as in New York City
half a century later:
TABLE 108.
COMPARATIVE PERCENTAGE OF ENGLISH AND IRISH PAUPERS IN BOSTON,
1837-1845, AND IN NEW YORK CITY, 1885-1895.'
In Boston
In New York City
1837-1840 6l . 7
1841-1845 59-2
1885-1895 64.8
1 Report of the Industrial Commission, vol. xv., pp. 460, 480.
* Census of Boston, 1845, PP- no-ill. Report of the Industrial
Commission, vol. xv., p. 480.
Pauperism and Crime
357
It is evident from the preceding figures that recent immi-
gration is not responsible for the high percentage of pauper-
ism among the old English-speaking immigrants. Dr.
Kate H. Claghorn, after an exhaustive statistical study of
immigration in its relation to pauperism, comes to the
conclusion that pauperism " is the result of a considerable
period of life and experiences here." It is not the able-
bodied workmen and their families, but the industrial
invalids that make up the lists of applicants for charity. *
Unemployment is responsible for but a minority of the
cases of pauperism, as appears from Table 109, based upon
a classification of 7225 Charity Organization Society cases
in New York City:
TABLE 109.
PER CENT DISTRIBUTION OF CHARITY CASES IN NEW YORK CITY, BY
NATIVITY AND CAUSES OF NEED (YEAR). 3
Per cent of
total for each
nationality
Nativity
Unem-
ployment
Other mis-
fortune
All other
causes
American
24. 57
44 27
*i 16
English
24.68
4.^ .4-7
?i.85
Irish
18.87
47. -IQ
a-i.74
German.
28 62
SO 66
20. 72
Italian
<iO 85
47.66
21 4Q
Russian and Polish ...
2-1.87
61.26
14.87
1 " The census of 1890 showed that 92 per cent of the foreign-born male
almshouse paupers had been in this country ten years or more. . . Over-
work, poor food, and life in the airless, sunless, and crowded tenements
of the city, or in the equally crowded and even more unsanitary dwell-
ings of the mill or the mining town the conditions accompanying the
early stages of the immigrant's progress tend strongly to break down
the physical health of the sturdy Italian or Austrian peasants, or even
of the Jews, more accustomed to the unsanitary conditions of city life."
Kate H. Claghorn : Immigration in its Relation to Pauperism. Annals
of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, July, 1904, pp.
187-200. 3 Ibid., p. 199.
358 Immigration and Labor
C. Crime
One of the favorite arguments against immigration since
the days of the Know-Nothings has been the assertion that
"the foreigner in proportion to his numbers furnishes by far
the greater part of crime. " x In the middle of the nineteenth
century the Irish immigrant was the object of popular odium
as Tsi of a potential criminal. 2 Fifty years later the
suspicion turned upon "the undesirable immigrants from
Southern and Eastern Europe. ' ' Although the latest statis-
tics of prisoners, published by the Bureau of the Census
simultaneously with the creation of the Immigration Com-
mission, showed "that the popular belief that the foreign-
born are filling the prisons has little foundation in fact," 3
yet the Immigration Commission approached the subject
under the influence of the popular prejudice. In its report
on Emigration Conditions in Europe the Commission
lends its support to "the not unfounded belief that certain
kinds of criminality are inherent in the Italian race."
Accompanying this inherent criminal tendency, in the opin-
ion of the Commission, "is also a seemingly inherent ability
to avoid arrest and conviction. " The evidence in support
of this indictment of the whole Italian race is merely cir-
cumstiitial. There has been a ' ' remarkable decrease in the
number of murders and homicides in Italy," and, it is alleged,
there has been a "startling growth of Italian criminality of
the same nature in the United States. " Although it " obvi-
ously cannot be mathematically determined" . . . "to what
extent emigration is responsible for the decrease of crime in
1 Sydney G. Fisher: " Immigration and Crime," Popular Science
Monthly, September, 1896, p. 625.
a " The newspapers and pamphlets of that time published statistics
which showed that, although the foreign population was only an eighth
of the whole, yet it furnished . . . 1000 more criminals than all the re-
maining seven eighths of the people. . . - Every one-hundred and fifty-
four of them produced a criminal." Ibidr- These early statistics were
discredited by later criticism. Cf. Roland P. Falkner: Statistics of
Crime in United States. Prisoners, 1904, p. 41.
Pauperism and Crime 359
Italy," yet "in view of the fact that the decrease has been
coincident with the emigration movement, and also with
the" supposed "growth of Italian criminality in the United
States, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that these
... results . . . had been due in large part to the emigra-
tion to this country of criminals and the criminallyinclined."
The Commission concedes that "there are of course other
elements which should be taken into consideration, such as
the advance of civilization and the better enforcement of
law in parts of Italy, " but these considerations are of little
weight. To be sure, according to Italian statistics of crime,
"Sicily, which has a large emigration, and Liguria, which has
much the smallest emigration in proportion to population,
show nearly the same per cent of decrease," in murders and
homicides. But these facts are of no consequence. The
homicidal tendency of the Italian immigrant is proved, on
the one hand, by the fact that in certain provinces which
"furnish the greatest number of transoceanic emigrants
according to the population, there has been an exceptionally
large decrease in the number of murders and homicides com-
mitted," and, on the other hand, by the fact, "that the
prevalence of murder and homicide is as a rule much greater
in Compartimenti which furnish the largest number of trans-
oceanic emigrants, and consequently are the source of the
greater part of the Italian movement to the United States." x
This criminological theory is significant in so far only as
it betrays the bias of the Commission against the immigrant.
Yet, notwithstanding its strong prejudice, which no evidence
could overcome, the results of its investigation prove to the
satisfaction of its own interpreters, that, "undue significance
has been attached" to the supposed effects of immigration
upon criminality.
"The number of . . . criminals arriving . . . taken as a
percentage of the whole coming is so small that little heed
need be paid to it. "
"Although available statistical material is too small to
1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 4, pp. 204, 205, 209.
360 Immigration and Labor
draw positive conclusions, such material as is available
would indicate that immigrants are no more inclined toward
criminality on the whole than are native Americans."
"It is impossible to produce satisfactory evidence that
immigration has resulted in an increase of crime out of pro-
portion to the increase in the adult population." 1
The State of New York, which is more affected by immi-
gration than any other State in the Union, has compiled
annual statistics of crime commencing with the year 1830.
The results of an analysis of these statistics, by the writer,
are briefly summed up in the following paragraphs. 2
Surveying the general trend for the seventy-five year
period 1830-1905, we find that the increase of crime has
merely kept pace with the growth of population. The
relative rate of criminality in 1890 was the same as in 1840,
notwithstanding the change in the racial composition of the
population of the State. In the year 1900 there was just
one more conviction for every 100,000 of the population than
in 1890, and in 1905 four convictions per 100,000 people in
excess of 1900. The fluctuations of the movement of popu-
lation and of the rate of criminality indicate that the causes
which are favorable to the growth of population tend to
reduce crime, and vice versa, the causes which retard the
growth of population are productive of an increase of crime.
The effects of immigration upon criminality can be traced
from 1850 when the census inquiries for the first time took
notice of nativity. The statistics for the half-century
following show that an increase of the percentage of the for-
eign-born population is accompanied by a decrease of crim-
inality, and vice versa. During the latest ten-year period,
1900-1909, the wave of criminality rose when immigration
was at its lowest ebb, while the high-tide of immigration was
contemporaneous with a decrease of crime.
1 Jenks and Lauck, loc. /., pp. 51, 52, 65.
a For a detailed statistical analysis of -the data upon which these
conclusions are based, the reader is referred to an article by the
present writer on "Immigration and Crime," in The American Journal
of Sociology, January, 1912.
Pauperism and Crime 361
Thus it is found that in the social profit-and-loss account,
crime and immigration figure on the opposite sides of the
ledger. Immigration does not impair the worker's oppor-
tunities to earn a living; on the contrary increase of immi-
gration goes parallel with increase of business prosperity
and decrease of crime.
PART IIL
IMMIGRANTS IN THE LEADING INDUSTRIES
[The Immigration Commission has devoted several volumes of its
report to a description of labor conditions in special industries which
are generally believed to typify the evils of recent immigration. Of
these, five will be considered in this part.]
CHAPTER XVII
THE GARMENT WORKERS
THE manufacture of clothing in the United States is an
immigrant industry. Immigrants have furnished
the labor and in most instances the capital. 1 The labor
conditions in this industry have attracted wide public
attention by frequent strikes, ever since the Russian Jews
have become thepredominant element among the operatives.
The clothing industry has become associated in the public
mind with the sweating system, and since the employees are,
with few exceptions, immigrants from Southern and Eastern
Europe, the conclusion is readily reached that the root of
the sweating system is in the character of the new immigra-
tion. This view draws support from the attitude of the
United Garment Workers of America, an organization of
Jewish garment workers, which, at its annual convention
in 1905, adopted a resolution demanding restriction of
further immigration for the protection of the foreign-born
workers already here. 2 And yet a dispassionate study of
1 Reports of the Immigration Committee, vol. 1 1, p. 417.
1 John R. Commons, Races and Immigrants in America, p. 115.
362
The Garment Workers 363
the clothing industry shows that labor conditions have very
substantially improved with the coming of the "new
immigration. "
The sweating system did not originate with the Jewish
clothing workers: it preceded them by more than half a
century. In the Report of Woman and Child Wage-
Earners in the United States, recently published by the
United States Bureau of Labor, we find a vast amount of
information on the employment of women in the clothing
industry in the first third of the nineteenth century, at the
time when the wage-earners were nearly all American-born.
The history of this period, like that of the better-known period of the
machine, is a tale of long hours, low wages, and exploitation. The
"sweating system," indeed, in the broad sense of that term, was es-
tablished in this country at the very beginning of the ready-made
garment business and has developed simultaneously with that business.
The contract system established stages and degrees of sweating, but a
study of the sweating system would have to extend back at least as
far as the beginning, in 1828, of Matthew Carey's agitation in the in-
terests of ... the working women, of whom he estimated that there
were in Philadelphia, New York, Boston, and Baltimore between 18,000
and 20,000. . . . The disclosures made by Matthew Carey during
the course of his investigation and agitation in behalf of the sewing
women seem, though quaintly worded, very modern in their substance.
It was set forth, for example, in the resolutions passed at a meeting in
Philadelphia on February 21, 1829, that "it requires great expertness,
unceasing industry from sunrise till 10 or n o'clock at night, constant
employment (which very few of them have) without any interruption
whatever from sickness, or attention to their families, to earn a dollar
and a half a week, and, in many cases, a half or a third of their time is
expended in attending their children, and no small portion in traveling
eight, ten or fourteen squares for work, and as many to take it back
when finished." . . . The committee appointed at this meeting re-
ported: "That . . . the wages paid to seamstresses who work in their
own apartments to spoolers, to spinners, to folders of printed books
and in many cases to those who take in washing, are utterly inadequate
to their support, even if fully employed . . . whereas the work is so pre-
carious that they are often unemployed sometimes for a whole week
together, and very frequently one or two days in each week." 1
1 Helen L. Sumner: "History of Women in Industries of the United
364 Immigration and Labor
In Boston (in 1830) the average weekly wages of a woman garment
worker, when fully employed, were given by a contemporary writer as
but a dollar or a dollar and a quarter, while the common rent of a room
was a dollar a week. 1
In other words, the weekly wages of a Boston working
woman were barely sufficient to provide for rent. While
fully employed, she was not self-supporting, but had to
depend upon her family for the necessities of life.
In Baltimore, too, in 1833, the wages of sewing women were declared
not sufficient for the genteel support of the single individual who
performs the work, although she may use every effort of industry which
her constitution is capable of sustaining. 3
Instances of the sweating system are again recorded in
1844, still before the first inrush of Irish immigration. It
was reported
that a man and two women working together from twelve to sixteen
hours a day earned a dollar amongst them, and that the women, if
they did not belong to the family, received each about $1.25 a week for
their work, the man paying out of the remaining $3.50 about $1.00 a
week for rent of his garret. *
From 1850, the Irish workers became predominant in the
clothing industry. At that period the clothing industry in
New York City was in its infancy. There were no factories,
and the workers occupied small rooms or sweatshops. 4
In 1853 the investigation of the clothing trade made by the New
York Tribune disclosed the existence of a "middle system." For
example, near one of the streets running from the Bowery to the East
River an old Irish woman was found who had four girls at work for
her, their compensation consisting solely of food for six days of the week.
In another case a woman had hired four "learners," two of whom re-
ceived only board and lodging, and the other two $1.00 a week each
without food.*
States." Report of Woman and Child Wage-Eat ners in the United States,
vol. ix., pp. 123-124. Ibid., p. 125. * Ibid., p. 126.
} Ibid., p. 141.
< Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. II, p. 369.
5 Sumner,/oc. cit., pp. 141-142.
The Garment Workers 365
According to the Immigration Commission, the "displace-
ment of the old races by the new, or recent, immigrants"
has been "one resulting through the willingness of the
'raw* immigrants to accept lower wages than those who
have been in this country for a longer period of time. " x
Yet when the earnings of the "raw" immigrant women of
the present day are compared with those of the " old races, "
it is found that the native American and the Irish working
women of past generations were "willing" to work only for
board and lodging, or even for board alone, depending
upon their families for other necessities, whereas the Jewish
factory girls are at least self-supporting. The question is
not whether wages to-day are all that could be desired, but
whether they have been reduced by recent immigration,
and Dr. Sumner's historical research proves the contrary.
One of the chief factors which kept down the wages of
working women in the early history of the clothing industry
was country competition.
" We know instances," said the New York Morning News, in 1845,
" where shirtwaist makers put their work out in the country in the
winter at II cents each. The work is done by those who do not make
it a means of living, but use it merely as an auxiliary to dress." The
Voice of Industry too, stated in 1845 that "a gentleman told us, the other
day, that he saw the daughter of a respectable farmer making shirts at
II cents apiece, for one of the dealers. He asked her whether she
thought it a sufficient price. "No,' said she, ' if I were obliged to
support myself, I could not do it by this work; but I merely employ
my time which otherwise I should not use. ' "
In the same year the chairwoman of a meeting of working women
in New York said that she knew several employers who paid only from
IO to 18 cents per day, and that one employer, who offered girls 20
cents per day, told them that if they did not take it "he would obtain
girls from Connecticut who would work for less even than what he
offered."
By 1850, the cheap labor of the farmhouse is said to have been em-
ployed " in the getting up of clothing, skirts, stocks, hosiery, suspen-
ders, carriage trappings, buttons, and a hundred other light things." 8
x Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 11., p. 369.
* Stunner, loc. cit., pp. 140-141.
366 Immigration and Labor
These conditions have changed as the direct result of
immigration. The rapid growth of the t^age- working
population created a market for ready-made clothing.
These new branches of work, whereby a product, which when for-
merly made by the custom tailor, the dressmaker, or the housewife cost
higher prices than most of the people could afford, is now made in the
latest styles, enable all classes of people to be better dressed and to
spend much more money every year for clothing. Herein the immigrant
* has created his own employment. x
The expansion of the clothing industry was made possible
by the introduction of the factory system with its greater
efficiency than home work. The operation of a factory
requires a regular force of employees whose livelihood must
be provided for by their wages. This is the reason why the
immigrant girl from Southern or Eastern Europe cannot
accept the low wages which the daughters of native Ameri-
can farmers regarded as satisfactory. A development
peculiar to the factory method of clothing manufacturing
was the substitution of male for female labor, with a
consequent increase of the rate of wages.
The view that the new immigrants tend to lower the
wages of the ql^er immigrants apparently finds support in
the statistics of the Immigration Commission, which show
for each race at present employed in the clothing industry
"a general increase in weekly darnings with the increased
period of residence. " 2 In other words, the earnings of the
(recent immigrants are lower than those of the older immi-
grants, because, it is explained, "the immigrants of long
residence have acquired a higher standard of living and
consequently demand a higher wage." 3 Quite naturally
then, "the older employees are unable to meet the competi-
tion of the recent immigrants, whose demands are not
great. "
The reasoning sounds plausible, still it will not stand close
1 Report of the Industrial Commission, vol. xv., p. xxvii.
* Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. n, p. 380.
> Ibid., p. 370. 4 Ibid.
The Garment Workers 367
scrutiny. Indeed, if the fact that the older immigrants
"demand a higher wage" be sufficient to secure to them an
actual increase in weekly earnings, then there is nothing
to prevent them from demanding and securing a higher
wage, notwithstanding the competition of the recent immi-
grants. If, on the contrary, the older employees are unable
to meet the competition of the recent immigrants, then the
increased period of residence could not help them to a
"general increase in weekly earnings." The fallacy of the
Commission's reasoning is due to the fact that it mistakes
cause for effect: higher earnings are not the effect, but the
cause, of a higher standard of living. Wages in the labor
market are not determined by the amount the worker
desires to spend, but by the services he is able to render. It
is plain that competition would not permit the clothing
manufacturer to pay higher wages to an older employee
merely as a reward for long residence, if recent immigrants
could be hired to do the same work more cheaply. If the
older employees are able to command, not merely to "de-
mand, " a higher wage, it is evidently because their services
are worth more than the "inexperienced labor" of the
newcomers. And it is equally evident that th!e immigrants
who "must have work on landing in New York, and . . .
find their way to the clothing manufactories," 1 do not
compete with the older employees for the higher positions
requiring experience.
But it is said that the new immigrants "annually crowd
the shops of the city (of New York) in thousands, forcing
workers who have preceded them to move up in the scale
of occupation or to enter other employment. . . . Some
of the displaced workers have opened tailoring or repair
shops of their own, others have gone into the shops of
custom tailors, and many have entered other lines of work."*
In every-day language, the opening of a shop by a former
wage- worker is not called "displacement," but advance-
* Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 1 1, p. 370.
*Ibid.
368 Immigration and Labor
ment. Custom tailoring requires a higher grade of skill
than the manufacturing of ready-made clothing. If a
clothing worker vacates his place in the factory to accept
a better position with a custom tailor and the vacancy is
filled by a new immigrant, no one in the trade will conceive
the change as "displacement" of the older employee by a
new hand. There remain only the undefined "other lines
of work," into which the incoming thousands are said to
have crowded those of their predecessors whom they could
not "force" to move up. A sidelight upon this residue
is thrown by the narrative of the history of the clothing
industry in Baltimore. The first people employed in the
clothing shops of that city were
the Germans, who entered the country in large numbers immediately
after the Civil War. Since that time the Russian Hebrews, Lithuan-
ians, Poles, Italians, and Bohemians have settled in the city and found
employment in the clothing shops, displacing the Germans in the
unskilled occupations, and forcing them up into higher work. It is also
noticed that, as the Russian Hebrews and Poles work up into the
skilled occupations, the Germans leave the industry and enter new
fields. This displacement seems to be self-displacement, as there is work
for all more work than there are laborers but the Germans are pro-
gressive, and as the new races have engaged in the clothing industry they
have risen in the scale of occupations, and in many instances have left
the industry and found employment in other skilled trades. 1
Thus we learn that, at least in Baltimore, those who have
left the industry have "found employment in other skilled
trades," and that the "displacement" is therefore "self-
displacement"; in other words, no displacement at all.
Expressed in more exact language, the report of the Com-
mission Shows +Vo+ *V ^k>thJT1 industry of Pfl]tJTnnrfi has
gsosm jrnore rapidly than thft supply nf Uhnr. The ex-
pansion of the industry created new positions for skilled
workers; these positions were filled first by Germans, next
by Russian Hebrews and Poles. This expansion not being
confined to the manufacturing of clothing, other indus-
1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 11, p. 411.
The Garment Workers
369
tries offered opportunities of which the Germans availed
themselves.
It is reasonable to assume that if there is "more work than
there are laborers" in Baltimore, the clothing manufacturers
of that city would have sufficient enterprise to import
some of the thousands who "crowd the shops" of New York
City. The fact is that the expansion of the clothing indus-
try in New York has been a great deal faster than in Balti-
more, as appears from Table no below. It is therefore
quite probable that the relation between the demand for,
and supply of, labor in the shops of New York is the same
as in Baltimore.
TABLE no.
COMPARATIVE GROWTH OF THE VALUE OF THE PRODUCTS OF THB
CLOTHING INDUSTRY IN NEW YORK AND BALTIMORE, 1 890-1905. x
City
i
Millions of dollars
Per cent of increase
1890
1900
1905
1890-1900
1900-1905
1890-1905
New York. . . ,
Baltimore
1
119
so
206
20
306
23
73
25
49
IS
157
44
The statistics of the Immigration Commission do not dis-f
close any tendency on the part of the new immigrant racesV
to accept lower wages than the immigrants of older races. \
(See Table in on page 370.) The percentage of recent
German immigrants earning $15 a week or over is much
less than the percentage of Hebrews and Russians and about
the same as the percentage of Italians with the same aver-
age earnings. On the opposite end, the percentage of
Germans earning less than $10 a week within the first
five years of their residence in the United States is some-
what greater than that of Hebrews, Russians, Poles, and
1 Census Reports, Manufactures, 1905, Part I, Table CLXVIII.,
p. ccxxxiii.
370
Immigration and Labor
Bohemians. These figures show that the "new immi-
gration" does not underbid the immigrants of the older
races. On the other hand, the variation in the earnings of
representatives of each race indicates that the rate of wages
r is. not determined by racial factors, but depends upon
? the personal qualifications and opportunities of individual
\workers.
TABLE in.
PER CENT DISTRIBUTION OF FOREIGN-BORN ADULT MALE CLOTHING
WORKERS, 1 8 YEARS OF AGE AND OVER, RESIDING IN THE UNITED
STATES LESS THAN FIVE YEARS, BY RACE AND WEEKLY EARNINGS . T
Race
Under Jio
$10 to 15
$15 and over
Hebrew (not Russian)
Hebrew (Russian)
33-9
-in. I
42.2
-JQ.Q
23-9
21 .O
75. -I
46.8
17.9
4O.2
10.8%
IO.O
Italian North
4.C -i
45. -i
0.4
4.O.O
to -o
SI .4 9
8.6
Italian, South
S7.6*>
-la.o
8.5
Polish
' f
VI 4
54. l3.
8.5
Bohemian and Moravian.
35-5
ot *<*
57 -0\
7-5
The Immigration Commission speaks in general terms of
the "availability of cheap woman and child labor of the
immigrant households" for locating "men's and women's
clothing manufacturing establishments" in certain districts
"developed in connection with some of the principal indus-
tries of the country." * But the statistics of the Commission
show that the earnings of recent immigrant women and
children in the clothing industry are higher than those of
( native Americans. Thus, adult Russian Hebrew women
averaged $8.09 per week, Polish women, $8.07, North Italian
women, $7.54, whereas native women of native American
parentage earned only $7.41 per week. The majority of
Polish women (55.4 per cent) earned more than $7.50 per
1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 1 1, p. 301, Table 35.
vol. i, p. 541.
The Garment Workers 371
week, while the majority of American women of native
parentage (57.2 per cent) earned less than that amount. 1
The same is true of girls between the ages of 14 and 18.
Russian Hebrew girls earned on an average $6.13 per week,
other Hebrew girls $6.24, South Italian girls $5.56, Polish
girls $5.25, whereas native American girls of native parent-
age made only $5.02 per week. Nearly one half (45.9 per
cent) of the latter earned less than $5 while only a little
over one fourth (27.4 per cent) .of the Russian Hebrew
girls earned less than that amount. 2
Confronted with these facts, Professors Jenks and Lauck_
seek to explain them by the assumption that "the lower
earnings of the American women" are due "to their in-
ability and disinclination to work such long hours as the v
foreign-born females in the case of certain piece-rate occu-
pations, as, for example, the clothing industry. 1 ' 3 This
explanation, however, is purely a matter of conjecture*
since the Immigration Commission has made no inquiries
regarding hours of labor in the clothing industry. As
shown above, the hours were long in the factories and sweat-
shops when the women workers were all Americans, and
were reduced with the coming of immigrants. The inquiry
of the Industrial Commission concerning the hours of labor
in the clothing industry in Pennsylvania brought out the fact
that the working hours averaged ten per day alike in the city
shops where the employees were Jews and Italians, and in
country shops, where none but Americans were employed. 4
The investigations of the Industrial Commission also
disclosed the fact that in the beginning of the twentieth
century, as half a century before, the American country ^
workers were willing to work for lower wages than the
immigrants in the cities.
In the country districts of Pennsylvania the garment workers are
Americans, some of whom can be further distinguished as "Pennsyl-
1 Reports of ihe Immigration Commission, vol. n, p. 293, Table 26.
2 Ibid., p. 298, Table 32. * Jenks and Lauck, loc. cit., p. 143.
Report of the Industrial Commission, vol. xv., p. 725.
372 Immigration and Labor
vania Dutch." In New Jersey they are Americans and German-
Americans ... but there is no evidence of a lower standard of living
than among their American neighbors. In spite of this, it is these people
and their American co-workers who are accepting a lower rate of wages than
the Jews in the city. '
The most striking difference between the country and town shops is
that the operators in the town shops are invariably men and in the
country shops they are women. . . . The women coat operators in
the country who get the highest wages paid women receive $5.34, and
the city women basters on vests are receiving $6.59. Here we find women
in the city engaged in a lower class of work and receiving higher pay than
the women in the country who are doing the highest grade of work. 3
The same difference existed between the wages of men in
city and country shops: Jewish pressers in the city averaged
$11.38 per week, whereas American pressers in the country
earned only $7.62 per week. 3
Because the native American country workers were
willing to accept lower wages than the recent immigrants
in the cities, the contractors found it profitable to give more
steady employment to country than to city workers. While
the latter averaged but twenty-eight working weeks in the
year, the former were given forty-four weeks, with the result
that their annual earnings at lower rates of wages exceeded
the earnings of city workers at higher rates. 4
What enables the American country workers of Pennsyl-
vania to underbid the Jewish garment workers of Philadel-
phia is the fact that
the country home workers are usually simply supplementing other
earnings. They are farmers' wives and daughters and those of farm
laborers. They make clothing in the intervals of housework and farm
work, for most of them help in the haying and harvesting. . . . Where
the shop replaces the farming-out system, the employees are drawn
from these same farmers' families, and a low standard of wages, in-
fluenced by the home earnings, prevails throughout.'
Another no less important cause of the "low standard
of wages" of native American country workers is their
1 Report of the Industrial Commission, vol. xv., p. 730.
a Ibid., pp. 727-729- 3 Ibid., p. 726.
Ibid., p. 725. $ Ibid., pp. 727-728.
The Garment Workers 373
V
isolation, in consequence of which "they must accept his
[the contractor's] rate of payment offered through the
driver who delivers the goods. " * The Southern and East-
ern European clothing workers in the cities, on the contrary,
are comparatively well organized. As shown in Chapter
XV the percentage of organized workers among them is
above the average for the country. Their capacity for
concerted action finds full expression only in strikes which
rally around the unions many workers not regularly affiliated
with them. The highest per cent of employees joining in
strikes in 1887-1905 was found among clothing workers, as
shown in Table 112:
TABLE 112.
PER CENT OF STRIKING EMPLOYEES IN THE CLOTHING INDUSTRY AND IN
ALL INDUSTRIES IN THE UNITED STATES, 1887-1905.*
Industry
Male
Female
Women's clothing
86.04.
62. II
81.84
4V 06
All industries
44. qi
28. IS
The strikes were, as a rule, led by organizations. Of the
20,559 establishments involved in strikes during the twenty-
five year period from 1881 to 1905, in only 355 were the
strikes not ordered by labor organizations, the annual
averages being 835 and 13 establishments, respectively.
The proportion of unorganized strikes among workers on
men's clothing was 10 per cent; among workers on women's
clothing 1 6 per cent, whereas the average for all industries
was 31 percent. 3
The percentage of thoroughly successful strikes of clothing
workers for the period 1881-1905 was much above the average,
viz. : the percentage in establishments manufacturing men's
1 Report of the Industrial Commission, vol. xv., p. 728.
a Twenty- first Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor, pp. 90-91.
*Ibid., pp. 35-36.
374 Immigration and Labor
clothing, 75.51, and in establishments manufacturing
women 's clothing 66.37, whereas the average for all indus-
tries in the United States was only 47.94.' These figures
will enable the student to appraise at its true value the
conclusion of the Immigration Commission that "as a gen-
eral proposition it may be said that all improvement in
conditions and increases in rates of pay have been secured
in spite of the presence of the recent immigrant." 2
The strike statistics published by the United States
Bureau of Labor permit of a comparison between the recent
period beginning with the fiscal year 1895, when the immi-
grants from Southern and Eastern Europe for the first
time outnumbered all others, and the earlier period from
January i, 1881, to June 30, 1894. During the 8o's the
principal nationalities employed in the clothing shops were
the Germans and the Irish: 3 since 1895 the Jews and the
Italians have become the predominating element among the
workers. It appears that during the thirteen and a half
years previous to the fiscal year 1895 the average annual
number of strikers in the clothing industry was 9,094,
and during the eleven and a half years following it rose to
38,683.'
This is the unbiased testimony of figures in answer to
the sweeping generalizations of the Immigration Commis-
sion about the reluctance of the Southern and Eastern
Europeans "to enter labor disputes involving loss of time,"
their "ready acceptance of a low wage and existing working
conditions" and "willingness seemingly to accept in-
definitely without protest certain wages and conditions
of employment." 5
1 Twenty-first Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor, pp. 81-82.
* Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. I , p. 540.
*Ibid., vol. i, pp. 516-517.
Computed from Annual Reports of the Commissioner of Labor:
X., p. 1567; XVI., pp. 15, 34, 355; XXL, p. 16.
Reports of the Immigration Commission^ vol. i, pp. 530-540.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE COTTON MILLS
THE cotton mills furnish a good field for the study of
the effects of immigration upon the condition of
labor in the United States. According to the investiga-
tion of the Immigration Commission, 68.7 per cent of the
operatives in the New England States were of foreign birth.
The races of the "old immigration" were represented by
37.8 percent, and those of the "new immigration" by 30.9
per cent. 1 The latter are mostly recent arrivals. In 1900
the proportion of immigrants from Southern and Eastern
Europe and their American-born children varied from
3.1 per cent in New Hampshire to 13.2 per cent in Massa-
chusetts. 3
The Immigration Commission has obtained from one of
the largest and oldest mill corporations figures showing
the movement of wages since 1875.3 The movement may
be divided into two periods: (i) from 1875 to 1898 and (2)
from 1899 to 1908. The first period, when the cotton-mill
operatives were practically all English-speaking, was one
of intermittent advances and reductions; on the whole
wages remained stationary. The second period, which is
marked by the advent of the Southern and Eastern Euro-
peans into the cotton mills, is conspicuous by an unin-
terrupted upward movement of wages, which was checked
only by the crisis of 1908. Still, even after the reduction
1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 10, Table 7, pp. 14-15.
Ibid., Table 19, p. 36. 3 2bid. t p. 291.
375
376 Immigration and Labor
made on March 30, 1908, wages remained 15 per cent
above the level of 1898. To be sure, the first period was
one of falling prices, which enabled the cotton-mill opera-
tives to maintain their usual standard of living notwith-
standing the ' reductions in wages, whereas, on the other
hand, the second period was one of rapidly rising prices
which offset the increase in wages. It is therefore possible
that the operatives were not better off during the later
period of rising wages than during the earlier period. Still,
assuming that every cut in wages merely restored the
previous relation between earnings and the cost of living,
it is plain that these reductions must have caused dissatis-
faction among the wage-earners. However, the operatives
of the New England cotton mills, all of them of Teutonic
and Celtic stock, acquiesced in these reductions. On the
other hand, though the advances in 1899-1907 may have
been nullified by the rising cost of living, each increase in
wages was nevertheless the outcome of successful bargaining
by the operatives for better terms of employment.
Still the question is whether the industrial expansion of
the period from 1899 to 1907 might not have enabled the
operatives to win more substantial advances had there been
no immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe. The
only method by which such results could have been accom-
plished was organization.
The more recent immigrant employees from Southern and Eastern
Europe and Asia, however, [says the Immigration Commission in its
summary volume], have been a constant menace to the labor organi-
zations, and have been directly and indirectly instrumental in weakening
the unions and threatening their disruption. The divergence in lan-
guage and the high degree of illiteracy and ignorance among the recent
operatives have made their work of organization among them very
difficult and expensive. 1
This conclusion is at variance with the facts recited
in the special report of the Commission on " Cotton
goods manufacturing in the North Atlantic States":
1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. I, p. 537.
The Cotton Mills 377
"Fall River, Mass., is the only distinctly trade-union
locality in New England," yet there, as elsewhere, the
unions are confined to the skilled occupations, whereas the
recent immigrants upon entering the cotton mills "take
up unskilled work. . . . Many of them never advance
beyond the unskilled work. These occupations are not
organized, and the coming of the foreigner there does not
concern the textile unions."* In Cohoes, N. Y., likewise,
" the unions manifest little interest in the immigrant employees
until they have advanced to the occupations controlled by the
labor organizations." 2 It is evident that "their work of
organization" among the unskilled immigrants could have
been neither "difficult" nor "expensive."
With regard to skilled occupations the Immigration
Commission has reached two diametrically opposite con-
clusions. In the abstract of the reports on immigrants in
manufacturing and mining it maintains that
the advancement in large numbers of the Southern and Eastern Euro-
peans to weaving, spinning, beaming, and similar occupations has tended
to bring them into more direct competition with the Americans and older
immigrant employees, and to destroy the advantage which the latter
class, who control and direct the unions, formerly possessed. *
In the special report on cotton goods manufacturing the
Commission says, on the contrary, that
at no time has there been a sharp competition between unionized laborers
on the one hand, and unorganized immigrant laborers in large numbers on
the other.
The latter conclusion is supported by the following
statements :
The textile occupations themselves, which are unionized, are protected,
by the long time required to attain proficiency, from any sudden or
immediate competition of unorganized foreigners. . . . Automatic
or improved machinery might change this situation, and the coming of
1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 10, pp. 123, 124.
. * Ibid., p, 123. * Ibid., vol. I, p. 538. * Ibid., vol. 10, p. 124.
378 Immigration and Labor
the immigrant might then be a more serious matter for the unions and
might subject them to a disastrous competition from unorganized workers
accustomed to a lower standard of living, . . . but that is not the condition
at present. ... As regards the attitude of the immigrants toward the
unions, when they advance to the skilled, organized occupations, even
if they do not join the unions, they do not oppose the organization or cut
under the unions 1 wages. ... At the time of strikes the recent immi-
grants come into the unions in large numbers. ... In times of strikes
these foreigners have stood by the unions, even though previously they
may not have been members. 1
The recent immigrants have not been used as strike-breakers.*
The only specific strike described in the report of the
Commission took place in Lowell, Mass., 3 in 1903. It is
characterized as "the only serious controversy between the
cotton manufacturers and the operatives" of that city.
The history of that controversy is briefly as follows. The
mill owners having refused an increase in wages, the unions
declared a strike. The mill owners on the same day re-
sponded by a lockout. While the mills remained closed,
pro-union meetings were held among the Greeks, the Poles,
and the Portuguese, and organizations were formed among
them. "At the commencement of the agitation for a ten
per cent increase in wages, the membership of the unions
constituted but a small fraction of the employees in the
mills; gradually, however, this membership increased as the
strike sentiment grew.*' The unions were defeated, how-
ever, by an unexpected turn in the cotton market.
The price of raw cotton began to rise to such an extent that the manu-
facturers who had provided themselves with the necessary supply in
advance were able to sell at a considerable profit. One mill actually
declared a 4 per cent dividend, on the basis of raw cotton sold at a good
advance, due to the high prices during the strike. In this way it would
have been possible for them to minimize, or even neutralize entirely
1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 10, pp. 124, 125.
'Ibid., vol. i, p. 538.
For some unknown reasons, the name-of the city is hidden under the
designation of "Community A." The disguise is betrayed, however,
in Table 125 on p. 232, which is a reproduction of Table 24 on p. 45,
where Lowell, Mass., is named.
The Cotton Mills 379
the loss occasioned by the idleness of their plants caused by the strike.
It thus became a matter of indifference to them whether work was
resumed or not. When this situation generally became known the
strike was doomed. 1
After a suspension of work lasting nine weeks the manu-
facturers reopened the mills. From one third , to two thirds
of the locked-out operatives returned to the mills on the
first day. The ranks of the strikers began to weaken, and
after staying out for three weeks the unions unanimously
voted to call the strike off. a
To form a fair judgment of the endurance shown by the
Lowell strikers, the length of time they stayed out must be
compared with the average duration of strikes in the cotton
mills of Massachusetts. The races of Southern and Eastern
Europe in 1909 supplied 34 per cent of the total number of
operatives in the Lowell cotton mills. 3 In the State at
large the proportion of immigrants from Southern and
Eastern Europe and Asia among the mill operatives of the
State varied as follows :
TABLE 113.
PERCENTAGE OF IMMIGRANTS FROM SOUTHERN AND EASTERN EUROPE
AMONG THE TEXTILE MILL OPERATIVES OF MASSACHUSETTS, l88O-
IQOO.*
Mills
, " Year
Per cent
Cotton (immigrants and their children). . . .
Textile (immigrants only)
1900
1890
1880
13-2
2-3
05
The average duration of strikes in the cotton mills of
Massachusetts for the twenty-year period from 1881 to
1900 was only thirty-six days. 5 Thus the length of time
1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, voL I, pp. 292, 293.
1 Ibid. J Ibid., Table 130, p. 237.
Ibid., Tables 14, 17, and 19.
* Sixteenth Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor, Table 3, p. 216.
380 Immigration and Labor
the Lowell strikers stayed out in 1903 was three quarters
in excess of the average for the period when nearly all the
operatives were of the English-speaking races. Going
over the annals of the strikes in the cotton mills of Massa-
chusetts from 1881-1890, when there were scarcely any
immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe and Asia
among the operatives, we find only one strike that can
compare in extent with the Lowell strike of 1903; it was in
1889, when 9000 weavers in thirty-four mills at Fall River
struck for a 10 per cent increase in wages. After staying
out only seventeen days they returned to work on the old
terms. x
Thus when the Greek, Portuguese, and Polish strikers
in 1903 surrendered after nine weeks of idleness, during
which they received no aid from the unions, they gave
an exhibition in endurance and adherence to a common
purpose, that was far above the average for any race of
cotton-mill operatives. Moreover, since the proportion of
the strikers who returned to the mills on the first day varied
from one third to two thirds, whereas the proportion of
Southern and Eastern Europeans among the operatives
was less than one third, 2 it is evident that a good many of
the English-speaking operatives must have surrendered
simultaneously with the Southern and Eastern Europeans.
The history of this strike is prefaced by the Commission
with the following remark:
// is not thought that the presence of immigrants in such large numbers
in Community A has exerted a decisive influence upon the success of trade-
unionism in the community. The weakness of the unions in Community
A is to be traced to less general causes of a local character.
The reader is at a loss to reconcile this conclusion, and
the facts leading up to it, with the general statement,
1 Tenth Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor, vol. I, Table I,
pp. 364-414-
a In 1909 the proportion was 34 per cent, but in 1900 only 13.2 per cent;
the proportion in 1903 must have been somewhere between these two
figures. 3 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 10, p. 291.
The Cotton Mills 381
quoted above from the abstract of the reports on immigrants
in manufacturing and mining, to the effect that "the more
recent immigrant employees from Southern and Eastern
Europe and Asia . . . have been a constant menace to the
labor organizations, and have been directly and indirectly
instrumental in weakening the unions and threatening
their disruption." 1
Considering :
(1) That the unskilled operatives have at no time been
organized ;
(2) That the recent immigrants seldom advance to the
skilled crafts ;
(3) That when they do advance to skilled occupations
they either join the unions of their crafts or stand by the
unions though not affiliated with them;
(4) That with the machinery heretofore in use there
has been no room for competition between organized
skilled operatives and unorganized immigrant unskilled
la borers ;
(5) That in past strikes the recent immigrants have stood
by the strikers and have never acted as strike-breakers:
It is evident that the presence of recent immigrants has
been no hindrance to union activity. The failure of the
unions to secure better terms from the mill corporations
than they did must therefore be due to other causes than
immigration.
The real cause of low wages in the cotton mills of New
England is the competition of the Southern cotton mills.
The subject is only hinted at in the report of the Immigra-
tion Commission. No immigrants being employed in the
Southern mills, the latter were apparently considered
beyond the scope of the Commission's investigation. A
1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. i., p. 537. Unfortu-
nately, the full report on cotton manufacturing has been printed only
as a Senate document and is accessible to a very limited number of
readers, whereas the misleading conclusions of the abstract on immi-
gration in manufacturing and mining have received wide circulation
through the free mailing list of the Commission.
382 Immigration and Labor
thorough discussion of the subject is found in the report of
the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor Statistics for 1906.
Comparing labor conditions in New England and South-
ern mills, the Massachusetts report says, by inference,
that when the sons and daughters of the farmers of the
surrounding country were replaced in the Northern mills
by foreigners, strikes and lockouts followed, and the doors
were opened to the trade unions, with the result that hours
of labor were reduced, wages were increased, and child
labor was restricted. 1 The development of the cotton
manufacturing industry in the South, with its natural
advantages and "cheap labor," has made successful
competition impossible for Massachusetts mills, unless
Massachusetts will "retrograde and increase its hours of
labor, reduce its wages, and employ its children to meet the
South in a battle on its own ground. " a
The ' 'cheap labor" of the Southern cotton mills is the labor
of the native white of native stock, who constitute 99 per
cent of all cotton-mill operatives in North Carolina, 97 per
cent in Georgia and Alabama. 3 The average yearly earnings
of the Southern operatives compared as follows with those of
the New England operatives, many of whom were Southern
and Eastern European, Armenian, and Syrian immigrants :
1 "When the native stock is all employed, the South must look to the
immigrant, and then will come the test of her ability to withstand the
enactment of just labor laws. She will be compelled to readjust her
hours of labor, increase her wages, discharge her child labor, and open
her doors to the trade union. She will go through the same experience
as the North. The North's first operatives were the sons and daughters
of the native farmers round about, but the grandchildren would not
follow in their parents' footsteps, preferring to go into other business.
This the South is finding to be the case with the children they are
attempting to educate, and foreigners must soon be taken to replace
them. Then will come a repetition of the experience of the Northern
mills. Strikes and lockouts will follow." Thirty- Sixth Annual Report
Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor (1906), Part II: Cotton
Manufactures in Massachusetts and the Southern States, p. 102.
Ibid., p. 1 06.
Occupations at the XII. Census, Table 41 (computed).
The Cotton Mills
383
TABLE 114.
AVERAGE YEARLY EARNINGS OF COTTON-MILL OPERATIVES, BY SEX AND
AGE IN THE PRINCIPAL STATES, 1904. x
State
Men
Women
Children under
I 6 years
New Hampshire
$4.18
$7-17
$188
Massachusetts . . ...
4.IO
74.0
27-1
Rhode Island
4.00
2-14.
222
Connecticut
5Q2
7.2 c
2IO
New York
JQ4.
'MO
1 88
524.
714.
IQ-l
Norfh Carolina
2^6
IQ4,
T 7.0
South Carolina ... .
24.4,
IQO
*o"
1 18
Georgia . .
28l
TOO
126
Alabama . .
272
2OS
T7O
As can be seen from the preceding table the average
earnings of adult men in South Carolina are only slightly
above the average earnings of children in Massachusetts;
the highest average earnings of adult men in the Southern
mills are much below the average earnings of women
employed in the Northern mills. This is a reversal of the
usual relation between men's and women's wages. It is this
competition of the cheap American labor of the Southern
mills that keeps down the wages of the Southern and East-
ern European, Armenian, and Syrian immigrants employed
in the cotton mills of the North.
1 Census of Manufactures, 1905, vol. i., Table 5, p. 188.
CHAPTER XIX
THE WOOLEN MILLS
THE recent strike in the woolen mills of Lawrence has
forcibly drawn public attention to the condition of
labor in the woolen industry. It developed in the hearings
held before the Committee of the House of Representatives,
and through investigations made by leading magazine
writers and social workers, that m this Industry^ protected
from foreign competition by the tariff and from domestic
competition by a high degree of centralization, the wages of
married men were insufficient for the support of their
families. The fact that the strikers were mostly recent
immigrants diverted the discussion from the issues of the
strike to the subject of immigration. It was readily be-
lieved that they had been " imported" because of their
low standard of living, for the express purpose of reducing
the wages of native American and other English-speaking
operatives. Professor Lauck, author of the report of the
Immigration Commission on "Immigrants in Industries,"
writing in the North American Review on the Lawrence
strike, claimed that
the American mill hand . . . because of his inability to work under
the same conditions and at the same wages as the recent immigrant, has
been forced to leave the woolen-goods manufacturing industry. 1
It has been taken as a self-evident truth that the wages of
the recent immigrants were low because they lived in con-
'W. Jett Lauck: "The Lesson from Lawrence," North American
Review, May, 1912, p. 664.
384
The Woolen Mills 385
gested quarters, and because they were underfed and poorly
clad. There has accordingly been little disposition among
people usually friendly to labor to waste sympathy upon
men and women who were "willing" to deny themselves
the barest necessities of life for the mere privilege of work-
ing in the mills. "The lesson from Lawrence" is to these
good people that the solution of the labor problem is in
keeping out the foreign laborer. As usual in all arguments
inspired by this theory, no regard is paid to historical
perspective.
The American operative was not "forced to leave the
woolen-goods manufacturing industry" by the coming of
the recent immigrants, because he had left it long before.
According to the census of 1880, there were among the
10,395 operatives of the cotton and woolen mills of Law-
rence only 41 1 1 native Americans, i. e., only 40 per cent, in-
cluding persons of native and of foreign parentage. The
majority were immigrants from Ireland, Great Britain, and
Canada, with a sprinkling of Germans (4 per cent). 1 The
immigrants from all other countries numbered I per cent
of all operatives. Thus, if the prevalence of immigrants
among the operatives be the result of the "forcing out"
of native Americans, it is clear that they were forced out by
English-speaking immigrants.
Even as recently as 1900 the immigrants from Italy,
Russia, Poland, and Austria-Hungary and their American-
born children, employed in the woolen and worsted mills of
Lawrence, numbered only 721 persons of both sexes, i. e.,
10 per cent of all operatives, whereas the total number of
native Americans of native parentage did not exceed
374, i. e., 5.2 per cent of the total force. 2 If it be true that
all but this little remnant of American operatives had been
"forced out" of the mills, is there any reason to attribute
their ousting to the pressure of the 10 per cent made up of
"recent immigrants" rather than to that of the 85 per cent
* Population, X. Census, Table XXXVI., p. 882.
1 Occupations at the XII. Census Table 43.
386
Immigration and Labor
representing the English-speaking immigrants and their
native-born children? Suppose the 10 per cent contingent
of recent immigrants forced out as many Americans, there
were still 90 per cent of the places in the mills to be filled,
and the contest for these places was between native Ameri-
cans of native parentage and English-speaking immigrants
and their children. Detailed figures are given in Table 1 15.
TABLE 115.
DISTRIBUTION OF THE OPERATIVES OF BOTH SEXES IN THE WOOLEN AND
WORSTED MILLS OF LAWRENCE, MASSACHUSETTS, BY PARENT
NATIVITY, 1900.*
Nativity
Number
Percent
Total
7I8O
IOO.O
Native parentage
374
5.2
6806
Q4.8
Native born
2005
27.O
4801
66. Q
Country of birth of parents:
Canada (English)
182
2.6
Canada (French)
673
0.4
Great Britain
1^61
18.9
Ireland
2078
28.9
Germany
872
12.2
7
.O
Austria-Hungary
45
.6
Italy
402
5.6
Poland
no
1.0
Russia
144
2.O
Other countries and mixed parentage. .
911
12.7
It is only since the federal census of 1900 that the immi-
grants from Southern and Eastern Europe and Syria have
become a conspicuous element among the woolen-mill
operatives of Lawrence. The report of the Immigration
Commission contains figures which "are practically a
census of the local establishments " for 1909. According to
those figures, 35.5 per cent of the operatives were immigrants
1 Occupations at the XII. Census, Table 43.
The Woolen Mills
387
from Southern and Eastern Europe and Turkey. But the
proportion of native Americans of native parentage was
6.9 per cent, as against 5.2 per cent in 1900. Since the
advent of the "new immigrants" the number of native Ameri-
cans of native parentage employed in the woolen and worsted
mills of Lawrence has more than doubled. The proof of this
fact is given in Table 116 next following:
TABLE 116.
NUMBER OF NATIVE AMERICANS OF NATIVE PARENTAGE EMPLOYED IN
THE WOOLEN AND WORSTED MILLS OF LAWRENCE, IQOO AND 1909. x
1900
1909
Per cent
increase
1900-1909
Sex
Woolen
mill
operatives
Worsted mill
operatives
Textile mill
operatives
not otherwise
specified. 3
Total
Male
Female.. .
Total.
142
147
33
52
45
63
22O
262
690
545
213
108
289
85
108
482
1235
156
The only inference justified by the figures of the Immigra-
tion Commission is that the same economic conditions
which have brought the recent immigrants to the Lawrence
woolen mills have also induced increasing numbers of native
Americans of native stock to accept employment in the
same mills. In 1909, the average number of wage-earners
in the woolen mills was 20,203, as against an average
number of 12,216 employed in igo4. 3 These figures are
1 Occupations at the XII. Census, Table 43. Report of the Immigra-
tion Commission, vol. 10, Table 81, p. 742. The same figures are dupli-
cated in Table 85, p. 752.
2 As some of these operatives may have been employed in woolen
and worsted mills, their total number is included in this comparative
table. The percentage of increase is thereby reduced below the actual
figure.
* XIIL Census, vol. ix: Manufacturers, p. 527.
388 Immigration and Labor
indicative of a great expansion of the industry in recent
years, which has created new places both for native Ameri-
cans and for new immigrants.
What has been the effect of this expansion upon the
rates of wages? Professor Lauck, speaking for the Immi-
gration Commission, holds that "the rate of wages in the
presence of a large supply of immigrant laborers tends to
decline." 1 This obiter dictum, however, is unsupported by
figures. The statistics of wages quoted further in the report
decidedly contradict the opinion of their compiler. In the
thirteen occupations selected by him for comparison, " these
figures indicate an apparent increase of 19.65 per cent in the
rate of weekly wages . . . during the past twenty years."
In another mill the average earnings of weavers show "an
increase of 75 per cent." 3 If there be such a tendency as
that enunciated by Professor Lauck, its operation has
apparently been suspended at Lawrence during the past
twenty years.
The statistics of the Immigration Commission furnish
material for a comparison of the variation in the rates of
wages in the presence and in the absence of the recent
immigrant labor supply, viz., from 1889 to 1899 and from
1899 to 1909. In 1890 the population of Lawrence num-
bered in all 159 immigrants fr^m Austria, Portugal, Italy,
Russia, and Turkey. 3 By 1900, as stated, their number
in the woolen mills reached only 8.6 per cent of all opera-
tives. Their presence in the mills was certainly a negligible
factor in determining the rates of wages. In the ten years
following, however, their numbers increased to 35.5 per
cent of the total force. As elsewhere, they have taken over
"the simpler, cruder processes, " while the English-speaking
operatives have been assigned to the higher grades of work. 4
It is therefore, possible to observe the effect of recent immi-
gration upon the rates of wages for unskilled labor, as well
as the effect of the absence of ther competition of recent
1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 10, p. 773.
Ibid., pp. 773, 774. i Ibid., p. 750. 4 ibid., p. 772,
The Woolen Mills
389
immigrants upon the rates of wages in those occupations
to which they are not admitted. The comparative rates
of increase in the wage scales are presented in Table 117.
TABLE 117.
PER CENT INCREASE IN THE RATES OF WAGES PAID BY ONE OF THE
TWO LARGEST WORSTED MILLS IN LAWRENCE TO SKILLED AND
UNSKILLED OPERATIVES, IN 1889-1899, AND 1899-1909.*
Occupation
Per week
Per hour
1889-1899
1899-1909
1889-1899
1899-1909
Skilled:
Loom fixers . . . .
0.0
4.7
0.0
16.7
5-3
0.0
o.o
o.o
0.0
16.4
23.3
5.9
31.2
j 8.3)
ji8.o[
134-3)
12. 1
5-5
28.9
16.8
0.0
0.0
0.0
16.7
5.3
0.0
o.o
o.o
o.o
20.5
0.0
9.5
35- 7 x
25.0
I 35 ' ?
(40.0)
16.0
10.
33-4
20.8
Wool sorters
Warp dressers
Unskilled:
Doffers
Spinners . .
Comb minders
Drawing girls:
Highest grade
Lowest grade
Dyehouse hands
The preceding table demonstrates :
(1) That from 1889 to 1899, the rates of wages of the
skilled operatives remained stationary, and that they
increased from 1899 to 1909, i. e., during the period of the
great influx of immigrants from Southern and Eastern
Europe and Turkey;
(2) That in three of the unskilled occupations the rates
of wages remained stationary in 1889-1899, in the absence
of "the new immigration,'* and increased in 1899-1909, in
the presence of that immigration ; that the wages of spinners
were raised during the earlier period 5.3 per cent and during
1 The percentages have been computed from the rates per week and
per hour quoted in the Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 10,
p. 774. Occupations for which two or more rates were given in 1899
and only one in 1889 and 1909 have been omitted.
390 Immigration and Labor
the recent period from 8.3 to 34.3 per cent; that the
wages of doffers increased during the first period 16.7 per
cent and during the second, 3 1.2 per cent;
(3) That since the immigrants from Southern and East-
ern Europe and Asiatic Turkey have begun to enter the
unskilled occupations in large numbers, the percentage of
increase in the wages of unskilled operatives has been greater
than the percentage of increase in the rates of skilled workers,
who are practically all of the English-speaking races.
If the rates of wages are affected by the racial charac-
teristics of the immigrants, then the preceding figures
admit of no other conclusion than that the immigrants
from Southern and Eastern Europe and Asiatic Turkey
have a racial "tendency" to push the wages upward,
whereas the English-speaking workmen are willing to
acquiesce for a long time (10 years) in such wages as the
recent immigrants would consider unsatisfactory. This
palpably unsound conclusion is the logical consequence of
the false assumption underlying the report of the Immigra-
tion Commission on immigrants in manufacturing. The
only other possible interpretation of the preceding table of
variations in the rates of wages is that the wages remained
stationary in 1889-1899 because the growth of the woolen
industry was slow during those years and that the wages
increased in 1899-1909 owing to the rapid expansion of the
woolen industry, which created an active demand for labor.
The rapid increase of the number of recent immigrant em-
ployees was the effect of the increased demand for labor at
higher wages.
The growth of a Western city, like Los Angeles, from a
city of 102,000 inhabitants in 1900 to one of 319,000 in 1910
through migration of native citizens, is accepted by the
American public as a matter of course. But the average
American, being out of touch with the strange peoples
whom he sees filling the mills of feis growing city, does not
realize the simple fact that "the channel of communication
between the economic opportunity or labor demand in the
The Woolen Mills 391
United States and the labor supply abroad is ordinarily
the oral or written accounts of immigrants who have worked
in the worsted and cotton mills." The native resident of
Lawrence, who may never have been as far away from home
as New York, cannot imagine how these thousands of
strangers could have found their way to his town without
"some organized effort." "Everywhere one goes in the
city tales are told of the efforts made by one woolen com-
pany to procure laborers in Europe." 1 The Commission
has made an effort to investigate these tales with the
following results:
One informant had a cousin in Glasgow who had written concerning
pictures of the new mill which he had seen, and concerning an agent of
the woolen company. Nothing more definite could be learned. Another
informant who was much exercised over reports of this sort had written
to the Secretary of the Wool Sorters' Union of Bradford, England, a
district said to have been well covered with advertising matter, asking
for information. The English trade-union official had, however, seen
no advertisements of this sort. A clergyman in close touch with the
industrial situation expressed himself as " convinced that agents are sent
to Europe to get labor." The priest of the Italian congregation, one of
the largest of the foreign churches the greater part of whose member-
ship has come from abroad within the past few years states that
accounts of the mills and assertions that "wages of $10 a week" are paid
have appeared in Italian and other European newspapers.*
It is evident that in this age of the daily press news of
the American labor market travels fast all over the globe.
It is not at all impossible that the Table on page 774 of
the Report of the Immigration Commission on Cotton Goods
Manufacturing, showing that some classes of the operatives
in the Lawrence mills earned as much as $14, $15, and even
$16 a week, may yet be republished in some Old World
newspaper and have the effect of stimulating the immigra-
tion of a fresh supply of Italian or Syrian laborers for the
Lawrence woolen mills.
In view of the general conclusion of the Immigration
1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. IO., p. 770.
'Ibid.
392 Immigration and Labor
Commission that the recent immigrants are willing to work
"indefinitely without protest" for low wages, 1 it is interest-
ing to note the characterization of the recent immigrants
by a number of superintendents and foremen of the two
largest Lawrence mills. "While opinions differ somewhat,
there appears to be a considerable uniformity of judgment
as to their characteristics." The Italians are quick to
leave their positions if they see any apparent advantage
elsewhere. One mill superintendent stated that "they no
sooner get a job than they want something better; they
work in droves; discharge one and they all go." a
That such characteristics are favorable to concerted
action for economic improvement, has been demonstrated
by the recent strike of the polyglot working force at the
Lawrence mills. An observer whose sympathies were with
old-line trade-unionism, noted with surprise that "the
capacity of this great host of recent immigrants, represent-
ing a number of supposedly alienated nationalities, for
continuous, effective solidarity is one of the revelations of
the present strike." 3
The measure of success achieved by these alien strikers
can be realized by comparison with the statistics of strikes
for the twenty-year period 1881-1900, when the operatives
in the woolen and worsted mills of Massachusetts were
practically all of the English-speaking races. During that
period there were in all 81 strikes, of which only 9 were
declared by labor organizations, while 72 were unorganized
movements, like the recent strike at Lawrence. The
aggregate number of strikers in the State of Massachusetts
for the twenty years was only 5618, i. e., about one third of
the number engaged in the one recent strike at Lawrence.
The aggregate number thrown out of employment by the
strikes was 10,144 for the whole period, but 16,117 opera-
1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. I, p. 541.
1 Ibid., vol. 10, p. 771.
T\it, Survey, March 16, 1912, p. 1930: "The Clod Stirs. " By Robert
A. Woods, head worker of South End House of Boston.
The Woolen Mills 393
tives remained at work while the strikes were on. Of the
83 mills involved only 31 were forced to close while 52 were
able to run with the majority that remained at work. *
Thus with all odds against them, the recent immigrants
speaking in sixteen different languages, have given proof
of far greater cohesion than the English-speaking operatives
of former years.
x Sixteenth Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor, Table iv. t
pp. 332-355-
CHAPTER XX
THE IRON AND STEEL WORKERS
THE twelve-hour day, the twenty-four-hour shift, and
Sunday labor, not as an emergency, but as an integral
part of the system, have of late caused wide discussion
of the iron and steel industry. The public conscience
demanded to know who was responsible for those labor
conditions. The offenders were easily discovered. Inas-
much as three fourths of the unskilled men working those
long hours were found to be Southern and Eastern Euro-
peans, it became evident that it was they who were to
blame for accepting such intolerable working conditions.
A representative of a labor constituency, speaking on the
floor of Congress, declared that "in the steel mills of
Pittsburgh, Chicago, and Milwaukee, where thirty years
ago the so-called princes of labor used to get from $10 to
$15 a day, the modern white coolies get $1.75 for twelve
hours a day, seven days in the week," the change being
due to the "Slavonians, Italians, Greeks, Russians, and
Armenians," who "have been brought into this country by
the million 1 ' and "simply because they have a lower stand-
ard of living . . . have crowded out the Americans, Germans,
Englishmen, and Irishmen, " from the mills. x
Such generalizations as these represent the popular con-
ception of the causes of long hours and low wages in the
iron and steel industry. The principal fallacy underlying
'Speech of Hon. Victor L. Berger,-of Wisconsin, in the House of
Representatives, Wednesday, June 14, 1911. Congressional Record, pp.
2026-2030.
394
The Iron and Steel Workers 395
this interpretation has been shown in Chapter VII.: there
has been no "crowding out" of American, English, Irish,
or German steel workers by immigrants "brought" from
Southern and Eastern Europe. The development of the
iron and steel industry has been so rapid that all but a
small percentage of the English-speaking workmen have
been advanced to higher positions and their places have
been filled with Southern and Eastern Europeans. The
new immigrants do not compete with the native and older
immigrant workmen, and can therefore not affect their
wages. 4fc
The parallel between the "princes of labor" and the
"white coolies" is equaljpr without an historical foundation.
Princes have at all times been few. "The old reputation
of the steel industry as one of exceptionally high wages is
false so far as the rank and file are concerned," says Mr.
Fitch of the Pittsburgh Survey staff, who has made a study
of the steel workers, "neither, on the other hand, should it
be singled out as an unusual type, as an industry in which
the majority of the men are paid at the lowest rates." 1
The rollers, heaters, and other skilled men, whose earnings
in the early days often exceeded the salary of the superin-
tendent, were only a small fraction of the total force.
The high earnings of the few skilled men often repre-
sented profit rather than wages. In the early '80 's the
contract system was the prevailing method of hiring labor
in the mills:
A man would contract with the company to run a single mill, from the
furnaces to the piling beds of the shears, and like any other contractor
he derived his profit from the margin between what the company paid
him for the tonnage turned out and what he paid the men for it. The
contractor, while usually known as the roller, frequently did no work
at all, having two practical rollers employed on the mill. At the same
time he secured a considerable income for himself by paying the men as
low wages as possible, and steel workers got a reputation for being very
highly paid workmen on account, of the large earnings of these contractors.
A statement from the proprietor of one of the "largest rolling mills in
1 John A. Fitch, " The Steel Workers." The Pittsburgh Survey, p. 150.
396
Immigration and Labor
the District," regarding wages paid in his mill in 1881-1882, was to the
effect that under the contract system one steel worker had made $25,000
in a year. A sheet shearer made $12.00 per day and paid his helper
$2.00. A hammerman in charge of both turns made $i 7.00 per day and
paid his helper $2.50.'
The proportion of employees who were paid each rate
of wages in the rolling mills of Ohio in 1884, when the
number of Southern and Eastern Europeans among them
was negligible, appears from Table 118. The number of
TABLE
-C/ llO^k
SELECTS? ROLLING
f
CLASSIFICATION OF EMPLOYEES IN SELECTEU ROLLING MILLS OF OHIO
BY RATES OF WEEKLY WAGES, 1884.'
Total
Rates of weekly
wages
Skilled*
Semi-
skilled
Laborers
Number
Per cent
Under j
$IOtOj
10
\12
699
360
699
360
32-3
16.9
$12 to*
5l5
199
199
9 .6
$15 to 1
>i8
95
95
4-5
$18 to \
$25 to J
^25
flO
415
4
419
H7
19.6
6.9
$30 to $60
158
158
7-5
$60 and over
57
57
2.7
Total
777
298
1059
2134
100.0
"princes of labor" did not exceed 57 in a total force of
2134, i. e., 2.7 per cent. On the other hand, the number of
"white coolies" who were paid less than $10 a week, i. e.,
less than $1.75 per day, was then as high as one third of the
total force, and those who were paid less than $12 a
week numbered nearly one half of all employees. There is
no reason to assume that the wages in Ohio materially
1 Fitch, loc. /., p. 99.
'Report of the Ohio Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1885, Table 51, pp.
185-186. The statistics comprise only those mills for which complete
data were available.
Includes: Rollers, nailers, heaters, and puddlers.
The Iron and Steel Workers 397
differed from those paid at the time in other centers of the
iron and steel industry.
The Immigration Commission made a comparative
statistical study of the rates of wages paid by one steel
company at different periods, going as far back as 1880,
and reached the following conclusion:
An inspection of the wage scale paid by the steel company during the
past eighteen years the period marked by the coming of the immigrants
in greatest numbers reveals the fact that wages have risen and fallen
in good and bad times equally for skilled labor, largely free from direct
immigration competition, and for unskilled labor, now largely per-
formed by immigrants. 1
The wage scale appearing in the report includes no rolling
mills where exceptionally high rates were earned by a few
men of special skill. The highest rate appearing in the
scale for 1 880 is $3 per day paid to engineers ; the highest
in 1885 is $3.42 for brick masons. Neither of these two
classes were iron and steel workers in a proper sense. The
highest paid among iron and steel workers proper in 1880
were boiler-makers, whose maximum rate was $2.75. But
the wages of laborers in 1880 were as low as $1.10, and in
1885 as low as $i. There was a general drop in the
rates of wages at the blast furnaces and in the Bessemer
department between 1880 and 1885, when immigration
from Southern and Eastern Europe was insignificant.
There was also a drop in the rates for several occupations
from 1890 to 1895, which was obviously due to the effects
of the crisis of 1893. Since 1895 wages at the blast furnaces
and in the Bessemer department have been on the increase,
while in the mechanical department, the wages of skilled
mechanics have been subject to sharp fluctuations. On the
other hand, the wages of unskilled laborers, most of whom
are from Southern and Eastern Europe, have steadily
1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 8, p. 601.
Immigration and Labor
risen, while the pay of the engineers, who are mostly "Eng-
lish-speaking, " has not come up to the 1880 level. A
summary of the figures is given in Table 119 next below. 1
TABLE 119.
DAILY WAGES OF EMPLOYEES IN STEEL COMPANY NO. I, l88o-I9O8.
Laborers
Other unskilled or
semi-skilled
All others
Year
Lowest
Highest
Lowest
Highest
Lowest
Highest
1880
$I.IO
$1.23
$1.05
$1-55
$1.60
$3.00
1885
I.OO
1.04
.68
1.48
1-54
342
1890
I.OO
I.IO
75
1.25
1.26
2.70
1895
I.OO
I.IO
I.OO
1-35
145
3.00
I90O
I.OO
1.20
1.15
1.50
1-55
3-65
1903
1.30
1.30
I.IO
2.IO
2.25
3-24
1908
1.38
145
1. 20
2.2O
2.25
3-60
As stated, the wage statistics of the Immigration Com-
mission do not include rolling mills. From data published
by the Ohio Bureau of Labor Statistics it appears that the
average wages of laborers in rolling mills increased, from
1884 to 1902, 50 per cent, as shown in Table 120:
TABLE 120.
COMPARATIVE WAGES OF LABORERS IN ROLLING MILLS, OHIO, 1884-1902.'
Year
Number reported
Average daily wages
1884
1902
4,134
11,560
$1.05
1-58
An intelligent comparison of the wages of iron and steel
workers at present and in the period preceding the immigra-
1 For details of the scale, see Appendix, Table XXV.
Reports of the Ohio Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1885, p. 187; 1903, p.
429.
The Iron and Steel Workers 399
tion of Southern and Eastern Europeans must take into
consideration the revolution in technical methods which has
occurred in the iron and steel industry during the interven-
ing years. Prior to 1890, less than one half of all pig iron
produced was made into steel; in 1909 all but 7 per cent of
the pig iron reached the market as steel. Until 1890 the
manufacture of iron other than steel exhibited a rapid
growth; from 1880 to 1890 its output doubled. Since the
latter year, however, it began to decline; from 5,000,000
tons in 1890 it dropped to about 1,800,000 tons in 1909.
The majority of the men who had acquired skill in the iron
mills found their occupations gone. Judged by the ton-
nage of pig iron, the change must have affected as many
iron workers as there had been employed in all the mills in
1887. At the same time the production of steel has in-
creased sixfold since 1890.* This marvelous growth was
made possible only by the adoption of new methods of
steel-making. All these changes necessitated a thorough
readjustment of the laboring forces. The transformation
is well described in the following excerpts from Mr. Fitch's
study of The Steel Workers:
Through the revolutionary changes in method, machinery has dis-
placed men to a remarkable extent. The proportion of skilled steel
workers needed for the operation of a plant has decreased. At the
same time, the large companies have so increased their capacity that
they are employing more men than ever before, until to-day 60 per cent
of the men employed in the steel industry are unskilled, and that 60
per cent is greater in numbers than the total working force twenty
years ago. In no part of the steel manufacture have inventions and
improvements had such an effect upon working conditions as in the
rolling mills. Twenty years ago these mills were alive with men. To-
day you will find large numbers of men in the guide and merchant mills,
but at the blooming mills, the plate mills, and the structural and rail
mills, you have to look sharply not to miss them entirely. These mills
have become largely automatic. The two improvements that have
contributed most to the cutting-down of the laboring force are the
electric crane and the movable roll tables. . . . The electric crane
1 Computed from Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1911, p. 710.
400 Immigration and Labor
operates over the whole length of the mill. Heavy material, that
formerly a dozen moved with difficulty, is now picked up and moved
easily by two men, working with a crane. Roll changing has become an
easier and swifter process through the aid of the crane, and practically
all the heavy lifting and carrying within the mill is thus accomplished
by electric power. ... As in the case of blast furnace improvements,
the effect has been to reduce the number of men employed. . . .
This tendency to make processes automatic has resulted not only in a
lessened cost with an increased tonnage, but it has also reinforced the
control of the employers over their men. When the roll tables were
introduced, they threw many roughers and catchers out of employment;
beyond that, they lessened the importance to the employers of the men
remaining. Men can learn to pull levers more easily than they can
reach the skilled mastery of a position where the greatest dependence
is on the man and the least on the machine. Accordingly this develop-
ment has lessened the value to the employer of all the men in a plant, and
at the same time has made the job of every man, skilled and unskilled,
to a greater or less degree insecure. . . . The aim to-day seems to be
to make the whole process as mechanical as possible. Fifteen or twenty
years ago a large proportion of the employees in any steel plant were
skilled men. The percentage of the highly skilled has steadily grown
less, and the percentage of the unskilled has as steadily increased.
The plants of the Carnegie Steel Company in Allegheny County employ
in seasons of prosperity an aggregate of over 23,000 men. Of these
about 17 per cent are skilled, 21 per cent semi-skilled, and 62 per cent
unskilled, according to the classification employed by the company. 1
Taking the classification of Table 118 as a standard of
comparison, we find that in 1884 more than one third of
all men employed in rolling mills were skilled, whereas by
1907 their proportion had shrunk to 17 per cent. Had
there been no expansion in the steel industry, more than one
half of the skilled men employed in 1884 would have been
reduced to the semi-skilled grade. But as the growth of
production outran the progress of labor-saving methods
and machinery, the skilled and semi-skilled men who were
displaced from one department were absorbed in others,
and still there were openings in the higher grades which were
filled by promotion from the ranks of the older unskilled
men. Of course the whole trend of the technical progress
1 Fitch t loc. tit., pp. 3-4, 55-56, 139-141-
The Iron and Steel Workers 401
in the steel industry being toward elimination of human
skill, the advancement of the minority to skilled and semi-
skilled positions depended upon the employment of ever-
increasing numbers of unskilled laborers. For reasons
explained in Chapter VIII.,
English, Irish, and German immigration began to fall off at just about
the time that the steel industry began to expand so rapidly and at the
same time to introduce the automatic processes. This created a tre-
mendous market for unskilled labor just as the field of immigration
was shifting from Northwestern to Southeastern Europe. Slavs coming
to America to perform the unskilled manual labor, and finding it in the
steel industry, sent for their relatives and neighbors. These automatic
accretions, through letters and friends returning to the old country and
spreading the tidings of where work is to be had, are at once the most
natural and most widespread factors in mobilizing an immigrant labor
force. 1
Mr. Fitch is careful to note that "the newer immigrants
are not working for less pay for a day's rough work than the
races they replaced. The money wages paid for common
labor in the Pittsburgh steel mills have been going up during
the period referred to. " 2 It is clear that the recent immi-
grants were not "brought" to this country to undercut
the wages of the older employees.
The Irish were -not driven out of the blast furnaces by a fresh immi-
gration with lower standards of living [says Mr. Fitch further]; rather
the conditions in the industry the twelve-hour day, the days and the
weeks without a day of rest, the twenty-four-hour shift made the life
intolerable. They could make as good a living working fewer hours
a day, and only six days in the week, in other positions and in other
industries. So the Irish worker went out and the Slav came in. 3
The effect of these readjustments on the distribution of
the working force by race and occupation in the Pittsburgh
district can be seen from Table 121.
The average proportion of Southern and Eastern Euro-
peans among the iron and steel workers, according to the
investigations of the Immigration Commission, was 44.5
1 Fitch, loc. cit. t p. 143. Ibid., pp. 142-143.
* Ibid., p. 146.
402
Immigration and Labor
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The Iron and Steel Workers 403
per cent in the East and 49.4 per cent in the Middle West. *
The proportion of Slavs among the employees of the Car-
negie Steel Company was accordingly above the average,
which ought to emphasize the effects of immigration upon
labor conditions in the iron and steel industry.
The classification of employees by the Carnegie Steel
Company is different from that followed in Table 34. a The
Immigration Commission draws the dividing line between
skilled and unskilled occupations at $1.45 a day, whereas
the Carnegie Steel Company includes among the unskilled
some occupations with a higher average wage. Moreover,
the Immigration Commission has disregarded the semi-
skilled class. According to the classification of the company,
a little over one sixth of the "unskilled" employees in 1907
were English-speaking; of the semi-skilled two fifths were
immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe ; among the
skilled only one tenth were of the new immigrant races.
The wages of each of these classes have been variously
affected by the changes in machinery and methods. The
wages of unskilled laborers, five sixths of whom are immi-
grants from Southern and Eastern Europe, "have increased
in the last few years. In 1892 they received 14 cents an
hour at Homestead. In 1907-08 their pay was i6j^ cents
an hour in the mills of the United States Steel Corporation
an advance of 18 per cent over the hourly pay of 1892.
This increase fell short by 4 per cent in keeping pace with
the increased cost of necessities as indicated by the Bureau
of Labor Bulletin. ... In May, 1910, announcement
was made of a general increase in wages for all employees
of the United States Steel Corporation. It was described
as approximating 6 per cent over existing rates. Common
laborers' pay was increased in the mills of the Corporation
in the Pittsburg district from i6j^ cents an hour to 17^2
cents. This is an increase of 25 per cent over the 14-cent
rate paid in 1892. "
1 Compiled from the Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 8,
Table 23, pp. 34-35. 3 See Chapter VII.
404 Immigration and Labor
At the opposite extreme are placed, by Mr. Fitch, "the
men of highest skill, headed by the rollers and heaters, who
have gangs working under them and are practically fore-
men. These men represent not over 5 per cent of all
employees." They are only a minority among the men
classed by the company as skilled. Of the latter class, as
stated, only one tenth are Southern and Eastern Europeans ;
it is reasonably certain, however, that none of them are
among "the men at the top." 1 These "aristocrats of
labor" have had their earnings reduced since 1892. The
cuts vary, according to position, from 5.39 per cent to 41.20
per cent.
The intermediate 35 per cent are "the real steel workers.
. . . They are men skilled in steel manufacture. . . .
These men are individually essential to the industry.'''
Their wages have remained in a "stationary condition,
and if compared with the increased cost of living," exhibit
a "downward tendency. " The proportion of Slavs among
them can be estimated at 31 per cent. 2 This class holds in
every respect an intermediate place; they have not fared
as well relatively as the immigrants from Southern and
Eastern Europe who form the bulk of the unskilled force ;
still with one third among them drawn from the new immi-
gration they have done better than the "aristocrats of
labor" who do not come in contact with the new immigrants.
The question arises, has not the competition of the Slav
prevented the wages of the skilled men below the grade of
foreman from rising apace with the cost of living? An
1 " I was unable to learn of any Slavs who had worked up to positions
as rollers or heaters in the Pittsburgh mills," says Miss Byington in her
study of Homestead. "This is due without doubt to the poorer
industrial equipment of the immigrants, as well as to the unwillingness
of the foremen to give the better positions to them.*' The Pittsburgh
Survey, "Homestead," p. 148.
"This ratio is obtained by computation from Table 121, allowing
5 per cent of all employees for the "men at the top" and placing all
skilled and semi-skilled Southern and Eastern Europeans in the inter-
mediate class.
The Iron and Steel Workers 405
answer to this question may be found if the wages of the
Pittsburgh skilled men are compared with those of the skilled
men employed in the Southern mills where there is very
little competition from new immigration.
The boundary line drawn by the Immigration Commis-
sion between skilled and unskilled workers $1.45 per
day obviously does not fit the conditions in the Pitts-
burgh district, where common laborers were paid 16.5 cents
per hour previous to the recent raise. The recent report of
the United States Bureau of Labor on labor conditions in
the iron and steel industry divides all employees into three
classes: (i) The lowest class, of the same grade as
common laborers, whose earnings are less than 18 cents per
hour; (2) the highest class, whose earnings are 25 cents and
over per hour; and (3) the intermediate class, from 18 to
25 cents. The proportions of these classes in the total
number of employees are: 49.7 per cent for the unskilled,
23.6 per cent for the skilled, and 26.7 per cent for the inter-
mediate. 1 The latter class differs too widely from the
intermediate class of the Pittsburgh Survey to be comparable
with it. A fairly uniform basis, however, can be selected
from the three classifications, as follows :
(1) From the Pittsburgh Survey: all employees earning
over $2.50 per day. 8
(2) From the report of the Bureau of Labor: all
employees earning 25 cents and over, per hour.
(3) From the report of the Immigration Commission:
all male employees 18 years of age and over who earn $17.50
and over per week.
The close similarity of the three groups appears from the
comparative table on page 406.
The proportion of Southern and Eastern Europeans in
this grade was 16.1 per cent in the East, while in the South
the aggregate of Southern and Eastern Europeans and
1 Summary of Wages and Hours of Labor from the Report on Conditions
of Employment in the Iron and Steel Industry in the United States, p. 26.
3 Fitch, loc. tit., Table 8, p. 163.
406
Immigration and Labor
negroes in the same grade was only 2.2 per cent. Thus in
the East there were relatively about twice as many English-
speaking employees receiving the highest rates as in the
South, notwithstanding the much higher percentage of
Southern and Eastern Europeans competing for the same
positions in the East.
TABLE 122.
PER CENT OF SKILLED IRON AND STEEL WORKERS, BY LOCATION.
Earnings
Location
Source
250. and
over per
hour
$2.50 and
over per
day
117.50 and
over per
week
Allegheny County
Pittsburgh District
Pittsburgh Survey
U. S. Bureau of
Labor
2d 06
28.17
East
Immigration Com-
mission
24..O
South
i Immigration )
Commission
T 1 2fi
I* 6
U. S. Bureau of (
Labor
A^.U
In order to assemble into one group all Southern mill-
workers who perform the same grade of labor as the men
employed in Eastern mills at $17.50 per week and upwards,
we must descend one step and admit all Southern iron and
steel workers earning $15 per week.
As can be seen from Table 123 on page 407, two fifths
(42 per cent) of the skilled iron and steel workers in the
Southern mills earn only from $15 to $17.50 per week,
whereas all employees of the same grade in the Eastern
mills are paid not less than $17.50 per week. The differ-
ence cannot be explained by the competition of Southern
and Eastern Europeans or negroesfbecause the aggregate
of those two racial groups among Southern iron and steel
Corkers earning $15 and over does not exceed 1.8 per cent,
The Iron and Steel Workers
407
whereas in the Eastern mills the Southern and Eastern
Europeans constitute 16.1 per cent of all mill men earning
$17.50 and upwards.
TABLE 123.
PER CENT OF SKILLED IRON AND STEEL WORKERS WITH SPECIFIED
EARNINGS IN EASTERN AND SOUTHERN MILLS. 1
District
Earnings per week
Per cent of all
employees
Per cent
within the grade
South
($15 to $17.50
J $17. 50 and over
9.8
13-6
4 2
58
East
( $15 and over
$17. 50 and over
23-4
24. O
100
IOO
There is considerable variation in the proportion of
skilled and unskilled labor employed in various departments
of iron and steel mills. This variation may affect geographi-
cal comparisons which take no account of industrial speciali-
zation. In order to eliminate this source of error the
proportions of employees earning 25 cents per hour and
over in productive occupations 2 are compared in Table
124 by departments. The figures show that, in all de-
partments but one, a larger proportion of all ^employees
are paid those rates in the Pittsburgh district than in the
South. It may be assumed that the substitution of ma-
chinery for human skill in the Pittsburgh district is as far
advanced as in the Southern mills; the proportion of skilled
1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 9, pp. 134, 355.
2 The following table is confined to "productive occupations" in
order to exclude from the comparison, as far as possible, others than
iron and steel workers. "The wages of workmen in mechanical
trades are much more nearly standardized in the different districts
than of the employees in the productive occupations, who are depend-
ent almost entirely on the iron and steel industry for employment. "
Summary of Wages and Hours of Labor in the Iron and Steel Industry,
P- 33-
408
Immigration and Labor
men in each department of the Pittsburgh mills may, there-
fore, be accepted as the standard. It follows, accordingly,
that in the Southern mills a fraction varying from one sixth
to two thirds of all skilled men are paid less than 25 cents
per hour, whereas in the Pittsburgh district all men of the
same class are paid 25 cents and over.
TABLE 124.
PER CENT OF EMPLOYEES IN EACH DEPARTMENT EARNING 25 CENTS AND
OVER PER HOUR, IN THE PITTSBURGH AND THE SOUTHERN DISTRICT. 1
Department
Pittsburgh
South
Difference
Per cent of
all employees
Per cent of
Pittsburgh
ratio
Puddling mills . . .
70
47
38
36
II
6
58
3i
22
2O
65
22
2
12
-16
-16
-16
+ 4
-4
-17
-34
-42
-44
22
-6 7
Blooming mills
Bar mills
Bessemer converters. . . .
Miscellaneous mills
Open-hearth furnaces . . .
Blast furnaces
The exception noted above applies to eleven miscellaneous
rod mills in the United States employing a total of 333 men
at 25 cents and over per hour, 2 i. e. t about J per cent of
the total in productive occupations. The number is too
small to affect the labor situation. 3
The preceding comparisons lead to the conclusion that
the rates of wages of iron and steel workers vary inversely as the
ratio of recent immigrants: The wages of the unskilled,
the bulk of whom are Slavs, have kept pace with the cost
of living; the wages of the "aristocrats of labor," none of
whom are Slavs, have been reduced; the money wages of
1 Summary of Wages and Hours of Labor in the Iron and Steel Indus-
try, p. 32. Ibid., pp. 16 and 25.
a At the present writing the full report of the Bureau of Labor is still
in press, while the published summary does not go into details of a
local character.
The Iron and Steel Workers 409
other skilled men, two thirds of whom are English-speaking,
have remained stationary the wages of this class of em-
ployees are lower in the South, where they meet no immi-
grant competition, than in the Pittsburgh District.
This correlation between the percentage of recent immi-
grants and the variation of the rate of wages is not the
manifestation of some innate racial predisposition to higher
wages, but the working of the law of supply and demand
in the labor market. The employment of a high percentage
of immigrants in any section, industry, or occupation is
an indication of an active demand for labor in excess of the
native supply. Absence of immigrants is a sign of a dull
market for labor. The wages of the unskilled Slav laborers
have been raised because of the increasing demand for
unskilled labor, not in the steel industry alone, but in other
industries as well. The unskilled Slavs "can dig ditches
or heave coal any day just as well as they can throw chains
around piles of steel billets or shovel scrap into furnaces."
On the contrary, the skilled English-speaking steel workers,
though "individually essential to the industry . . . could
not enter any other industry without a reduction in earn-
ing power, because they are skilled only as steel work-
ers. " Hence their acquiescence in a lowered rate of wages,
whereas the unskilled Slav with his supposedly "lower
standard of living" has been able to command as high a
wage (measured by purchasing power) as his English-
speaking predecessor.
Long hours and Sunday work have not come with the
new immigration. "Sunday work has been general in
blast furnaces in this country from the beginning." 2 In
rolling mills the practice has varied. There were some
mills which ran on Sundays, as far back as the 8o's, before
"the Slav invasion." The Amalgamated Association of
Iron and Steel Workers in the days of its power raised no
objection to labor on Sunday. Its main concern was solely
with wages, and it is a historical fact, worthy of notice,
1 Fitch, loc. cit. t p. 154. * Ibid., p. 168.
410 Immigration and Labor
that the twelve-hour day was staunchly defended by the
organized iron and steel workers when the steel manu-
facturers, prompted by technical considerations, attempted
to reduce the day to eight hours.
The twelve-hour day was the outgrowth of metallurgical
conditions in the old iron mills. In puddling one charge has
to be melted, worked, and taken out before the next can
go in. From the beginning of the industry in the Pittsburgh
District, five charges or "heats" have been a day's work for
a puddler. In the mills rolling sheet iron, too, the working
day was determined by the number of heats. In the early
days of the iron industry five heats took about twelve hours.
This was the basis of the twelve-hour day with the two-shift
system. With the progress of improvements in furnace
construction and methods, it became possible to finish a
turn of five heats in a shorter time and the actual working
day gradually shrank to one of ten hours and even less.
As a result of the shortened time, there came to be periods
of idleness between shifts. In a sheet mill this interim
between shifts was especially objectionable, for sheet iron
is rolled so thin that good results can be obtained only when
the rolls are expanded by the heat. The rolls are so shaped
that when cold they cannot turn out a sheet of uniform
thickness ; consequently after a period of idleness hot scrap
is sent through them until they reach the correct expansion.
To avoid these periods of idleness, the manufacturers, in
the 8o's, sought to introduce an eight-hour day. This was
for a long time resisted by the union, which stood firmly for
the twelve-hour shift. The reason for this unusual attitude
was that the skilled men who belonged to the union were
paid at piece rates and apprehended a loss of a part of their
earnings in case they might not be able to turn out five
heats in eight hours. The question was discussed at several
national conventions. Some of the officers took the ground
that a reduction of hours was desirable even if it originally
involved a loss of earnings to individuals. The introduc-
tion of a three-shift system would create a demand for half
The Iron and Steel Workers 411
as many more skilled men as were employed at the time
and would eventually enable the members of the union to
win an increase in piece rates. But the rank and file of the
membership could not see so far ahead and forced the officers
to insist upon the twelve-hour day. Some lodges which
had accepted the eight-hour shift were suspended. One
of the presidents of the union who supported the manu-
facturers in their effort to introduce the eight-hour day was
denounced by the membership as a traitor to the cause of
labor. The controversy lasted several years in the 8o's,
when the iron and steel workers were all of the English-
speaking races. Later the union relaxed its rule against
the eight-hour system, but the manufacturers had mean-
while readjusted themselves to the old twelve-hour shift. 1
This episode characterizes the spirit of the Amalgamated
Association.
The Association was originally organized as a union of
skilled iron workers and was very strong in the iron industry.
But with the decline of the latter the power of the organiza-
tion began to wane. It never gained strength in the steel
mills. Out of 3800 men at Homestead when the strike
began in 1892, only 752 were members in good standing of
the Amalgamated Association. "The Association has
always been an organization of skilled workers and has
centered its efforts on securing better conditions for that
class of labor alone, " says Mr. Fitch. " It was only in 1889
that the constitution permitted the admission of all men,
except, however, common laborers." 2
Nevertheless, when the Amalgamated Association struck
in 1892, the common laborers, the despised Hungarians
and Slavs, stood by it. 3 The defeat of the Homestead
strike broke the organization. It had been rapidly increas-
1 See Fitch, loc. cit. t pp. 90-97. * Ibid . pp. 97, 98.
* "A great cause was in the balance, and in their humble way the
army of the poor Hungarians and Slavs understood it, " says a trade-
union historian of the Homestead strike. Myron R. Stowell: Fort
Prick, or the Siege of Homestead, p. 86,
412 Immigration and Labor
ing its membership since 1885, when it had numbered only
5700, to the year preceding the great strike, when it reported
to the national convention a membership of 24,000, organized
in 290 lodges. During the year following the strike, it
lost about one half of that number. There were slight
increases at times in later years; since 1903, however, it
has been gradually declining, until it had, in 1910, only 103
lodges with a little over 8000 members. x This is less than
5 per cent of the total number of iron and steel workers in
the United States. 2
The strength of the organization of the iron and steel
workers in the 8o's lay in their special skill. Though a
minority of the force, they were indispensable to the indus-
try, because they could not be replaced. It is for this very
reason that they barred common laborers from their organi-
zation: they did not want to become involved in con-
troversies over the wages of day laborers who could easily
be replaced by others. But when improved machinery
displaced the skill of the mechanic the organization of the
skilled iron and steel workers lost its foothold. To-day,
says Mr. Fitch
every man is in training for the next position above. If all of the
rollers in the Homestead plant were to strike to-morrow the work would
go on, and only temporary inconvenience, if any, would be suffered.
There would simply be a step up along the line: the tableman would
take the rolls, the hooker would manipulate the tables, perhaps one
of the shearmen's helpers would take the hooker's position, and some-
where, away down the line, an unskilled yard laborer would be taken
to fill the vacancy in the lowest position involving skill. The course
would vary in the different styles of mills, as the positions vary in
number and character, but the operating principle is everywhere the
same. In the open hearth department the line of promotion runs
through common labor, metal wheelers, stock handlers, cinder-pit man,
second helper, and first helper to melter foreman. In this way the
companies develop and train their own men. . . . Thus the working
1 Fitch, loc. cit., p. 297.
3 In May, 1910, there were 172,706 workers employed in the steel
mills of the United States. Summary of Wages and Hours of Labor in
the Iron and Steel Industry, p. 17.
The Iron and Steel Workers 413
force is pyramided and is held together by the ambition of the men
lower down; even a serious break in the ranks adjusts itself all but
automatically. x
In 1909, an attempt was made by "the men lower down"
to unite all mill workers in a common demand for better
terms of employment. In the McKees Rocks strike the
leaders and the rank and file were mostly recent immigrants.
Of this strike Mr. Fitch has the following to say :
In the summer of 1909 there was a demonstration of the spirit of
immigrant workmen that opened the eyes of the public to qualities
heretofore unknown. For many weeks at McKees Rocks they persisted
in their strike against the Pressed Steel Car Company. It had been
thought that the Slavs were too sluggish to resist their employers, and
unable to organize along industrial lines. It was proved in this conflict
that neither theory was correct. 3
'Fitch, loc. cit., pp. 141, 142.
Ibid., pp. 237, 238.
CHAPTER XXI
THE COAL MINERS
THE Immigration Commission considered the coal-
mining industry as typical of the conditions created
by immigration, and gave it accordingly the most promi-
nent place in its report. Two volumes are devoted to
bituminous coal, and a portion of a third to anthracite.
The findings of the Commission may be briefly summed up
as follows : the English-speaking mine workers do not desire V
to associate with the immigrants from Southern and Eastern
Europe, consequently those immigrants are undesirable.
There are in the reports some valuable data on the economic
side of the question, but they have had no part in shaping
the conclusions 6f"the Commission. It views the con-
ditions in the coal-mining industry with the eyes of the
English-speaking trade-union officials, who apprehend in v
the multitudes of Slav and Italian mine workers a growing
menace to their influence in the organization.
To follow the Commission's summary historical review
of the coal-mining industry, the conflict between the English-
speaking and non-English-speaking races began in the &o&'
when a series of unsuccessful strikes forced "a greater or
less number of natives, English, Irish, Scotch, and Germans,"
to leave "Pennsylvania in search of better working con-
ditions in the Middle West or the localities in the Southwest
or West to which the recent immigrants had not penetrated
in important numbers. " The same situation was repeated
in the ^30*5 in West Virginia. The "constantly growing
number of Southern and Eastern Europeans . . . com-
pletely inundated the older employees," with the result
414
The Coal Miners 415
that many of them "moved westward in search of better
working conditions," and "the immigrants from Southern
and Eastern Europe were left in undisputed control of the
situation." In their new retreat the English-speaking /? Di-
mmers remained undisturbed until the first decade of theT
present century, when the advancing columns of the South-
ern and Eastern Europeans reached them there. "As the
pressure, resulting from the increase in numbers of the recent
immigrants has become stronger . . . the older immigrants
and natives," who were unable to change their occupation,
moved " from localities and Amines where the competition of
the Southern and Eastern European has been most strongly
felt to other localities in the Middle West or Southwest."
But soon the first detachments of the Southern and Eastern
Europeans made their appearance in the Southwestern
fields and forced the "Americans and individual members
of the English, Irish, Scotch, and Welsh races" to retreat
to New Mexico and Colorado. The narrative concludes
with the following statement, which sounds the keynote, as
it were, of the whole report :
From the standpoint of the natives and the older immigrant employees,
it therefore seems clearly apparent that the competition of recent immi-
grants has caused a gradual displacement, commencing in Pennsylvania '^
and extending westward, until at the present time the representatives
of the pioneer employees in the bituminous mining industry are making
their last stand in the Southwest, and especially in Kansas, where they
are gradually being weakened and are withdrawing to the newly opened
fields of the West, to which the recent immigrant has not come in jm-
portant numbers. Along with this displacement of the older employees
in the different coal-producing areas has proceeded the elimination of a
correspondingly large proportion from the industry and the development
of such working and Hying conditions that the sons of natives and the
second generation of immigrant races have only to a very small extent
consented to enter the industry. 1
The story of the pioneers "making their last stand"
against the invaders has a pathetic sound uncommon in
1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. i, p. 536.
PRODUCTION OF COAL IN STATES WITH AN ANNUAL
1880
\20ro39
(i unit = 1 ,000,000 tons)
416
OUTPUT OF NOT LESS THAN I.OOO.OOO TONS.
IQOO
.^\
.
. J ^ ^K- ;
/ ^'^.^ ^-.yyyo : . :: . : }_ __ '
v WIS.
^<ir/&^n&M&YMB& )
H.G.
vv:-.. ; v rV ^:/ ; . :; v^::
s.c.
w
1910
,
\i ' ^M^TOk^A^i---^^
20ro39
(i unit = 1 ,000,000 tons)
417
4i 8 Immigration and Labor
official statistical publications. It does not belong, how-
ever, to the realm of history. A tribe of Indian huntsmen,
retreating before the advancing lines of paleface invaders,
could find new hunting-grounds in the untrodden wilds of
the West and the Southwest. But the coal miners could
not have withdrawn to new territory unless capital had
gone there before them, and had opened mines, built houses,
and established commissary stores. From an impersonal
standpoint "it therefore seems clearly apparent" that the
"* migrations of the English-speaking miners were the effect
of the opening of new coal-field_s in the West andTSouthwest
whicn offered better opportunities to the mine worker than
the older fields of the East. In the sparsely settled West
and Southwest, far away from Eastern competition, coal
prices were higher, and the mine operators were in a position-
v to offer inducements to Eastern miners who were willing
to go westward. Turning from the summary to the ma-
terials of the Immigration Commission we learn that
both Kansas and Oklahoma were sparsely settled about 1880, when
mining on a large scale was begun, and the management of the properties
induced Americans, English, Irish, Scotch, and Welsh to come from the
coal regions of Pennsylvania to work in the mines. The first employees
*were brought by special car or trainload from the mining localities of
Pennsylvania and the Middle West.
Gradually large numbers of the old employees migrated
from the Middle West to the West, the South and South-
west "where there was an active demand for experienced
miners because of the rapid development of the coal
industry. f ' a
The motive forces of the migration of coal miners from
the East to the West and Southwest clearly appear from the
statistics of the production of coal by States. A glance
at the maps on pp. 416 and 4173 shows that between 1880
1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 6, p. 22 ; vol. 7, pp. 9,
II. 15- 'Ibid., vol. 6, pp. 666, 667.
The figures for these maps are taken from the Report of the United
States Geological Survey on Coal, 1910, p. 14. States producing less
than 1,000,000 tons are not included.
The Coal Miners
419
and 1890 coal mining developed in Virginia, Tennessee,
and Alabama in the South; in Oklahoma and Indian Terri-
tory in the Southwest; and in Colorado, Montana, and
Washington in the West; that between 1890 and 1900 new
fields were opened in Michigan, Arkansas, Texas, New
Mexico, and Utah; and that while this development was
going on in the West and Southwest, production in the old V
States was also fast increasing. Alt is plain that the men to
work in the new mines had to come from somewhere. The
increase of the population of the United States, both by
births and immigration, did not keep pace with the growth
of coal production, as can be seen from Table 125 next
below. The progress of machine mining has been slow: in
1910 less than one half (41.74 per cent) of the total output
of bituminous coal was machine-mined. 1 Certainly the
native population alone was insufficient to supply the in-
creasing demand for labor. 2 The extent of the demand
can be seen from Diagram XXII. 3
TABLE 125.
GROWTH OF POPULATION AND OF THE PRODUCTION OF COAL, l88O-I9IO.
Year
Per capita
production t
Per cent of increase for decade
tons.
Population
Coal production
i860
1.5
1890
2-5
25-5
854
1900
3-5
20.7
91.0
1910
5-5
21.0
86.0
* United States Geological Survey: The Production of Coal in the United
States, 1910, p. 51.
This is the unanimous testimony coming from all sections of the
country. See Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 6, p. 23; vol.
7. pp. 145, 146, 156, 217, 220.
* The figures for the diagram are taken from the compilation in the
Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 6, p. 5, Table 5.
Mines and Quarries, 1902, p. 669, Table 6. United States Geological
420 Immigration and Labor
The development of coal mining outside of Pennsylvania
from 1880 to 1889 was sufficient to have absorbed every old
employee who had been working in the bituminous coal
DIAGRAM XXII.
20
$0
so
30
20
JO
$0
g
SO
30
go
1 ,
90
80
20
50
30
go
10
100
SO
eo
20
o
JO 00
CO
30
to
I
1
00
1
00
S 5
il
Si
00
1
0\
CO
00
I
Penn.
All Other
States
Middle West
South and
Southwest
Penn. and
Middle West
xxn.
Number of persons employed in bituminous coal mines, 1880,
1889, and 1907 (thousands)
mines of Pennsylvania in 1880. The development of
mining in the South and Southwest since 1889 has been
sufficient to have furnished employment to every wage-
earner who had been at work in the bituminous coal mines
Survey: Production of Coal, 1910, p. 21.
vol. i., p. 24.
XIII. Census. Population ,
The Coal Miners 421
of Pennsylvania and the Middle West in 1889. At the
same time the additions since 1889 to the force employed
in the bituminous coal mines of Pennsylvania alone have
equaled the increase in the operating forces of the Southern
and Southwestern mines, while the additions to the number
of employees in the Middle West since 1889 have exceeded
the total number of the mine workers of Pennsylvania for
that year. This growth of the industry stimulated a great
deal of shifting of labor from one place to another.
The main inducement for experienced miners to migrate
westward was the greatejcjopportunity for advancement in
the rapidly developing coal mines of the new fields. The
proportion of supervisory or better-paid positions in an old
coal mine, like in any other establishment, is limited. The
opening of every new mine, however, creates new positions
for skilled and experienced miners. While the expansion
of mining operations in the older States offered many
opportunities for advancement to old employees, still in
no single concern could all the employees be raised to higher
positions at one time. The more ambitious, to whom the
road to promotion at their old places appeared too long,
sought better opportunities in new fields. Their places
had to be filled by new immigrants. There was no "dis-
placement " l of the old by the new employees; the Southern
and Eastern Europeans did not "inundate" the oldej:
employees, but merely filled the vacuum produced by the
continuous pumping out of the older employees. The
ultimate result of these migrations within the coal-mining
industry has been that "the largest portion of those remain-
ing, including the most efficient and progressive element, t
have, as a result of the expansion of the industry, secured \
advancement to the more skilled and responsible positions." 2 /
The openings for the English-speaking mine workers were
not confined to mining.
1 The misuse of the word "displacement" in the Reports of the Immi-
gration Commission has been adverted to, in Chapter VII.
* Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. I, p. 537.
422 Immigration and Labor
The period of development in coal mining and coke manufacturing
was also a period of great expansion in manufacturing industries . . .
so that for the intelligent and ambitious American, German, English,
Irish, or Scotch employee there were abundant opportunities to secure
more pleasant or better paid work in shops and factories near
home.*
Moreover, the growth of mining communities has created
Business opportunities for alert Americans and English-
speaking immigrants. An illustration is furnished by the
Borough of South Fork, Cambria County, Pennsylvania,
alias "Representative Community B," 2 where "the English-
speaking races seem to leave the mines as soon as they
accumulate earnings and to enter mercantile pursuits or
seek more remunerative or more pleasant work of other
kinds. The greater number of the business and professional
men in the town were formerly mine workers." 3
The Immigration Commission believes that this advance-
ment is "probably without direct connection with recent
^immigration." 4 This is, however, a mistaken view.
..t^'V Bituminous coal is practically the only product of the
locality." 5 It is owing only to "the opening of the new
mines and the extension of the old ones" 6 that the popu-
> lation of the "representative community" has grown from
1295 in 1890 to 2635 in 1900 and to 4592 in 1910. Two_
'thirds of this increase were due to immigration, not counting
\the native-born children of immigrants. 7 And it is ob-
1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, p. 335. The quotatio* relates
to Pennsylvania, but the same is true of the United States in general.
a The description of that community contains nothing of a confidential
nature that would warrant the withholding of its name from the public
in an official report. Moreover, the disguise is too thin to be effective:
there is only one incorporated place in the State of Pennsylvania that
had a population of 2635 in 1900 (XIII. Census: Population, vol. in'
P- 558).
3 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 6, p. 563. See also
p -^- \M>id., P . 563.
Ibid., p. 532. 6 ^d., p. 563.
7 In 1900 the total number of foreign-born in the borough was 587;
in 1908 it was estimated at 1900. Ibid., p. 533.
The Coal Miners 423
viously ^^^aSE^S^^LS^^^^-^f-^ borough that
has made room for more professional and business men.
Speaking generally, the "employees displaced as miners "
could not "have gone into manufacturing plants and shops
. . . into street railways and trolley service, or into business
for themselves," 1 had not the recent immigrants furnished
the labor to do the disagreeable and dangerous work in the
manufacturing plants and mines and the passengers to
ride on the trolley cars.
"The displaced employees did not better their economic
condition," however, in the Middle West says the Immi-
gration Commission. The "subsequent history of the
old employees" in that section is recited as follows:
No extensive data are available as to the subsequent history of the
pioneer miners in the Middle West who were displaced by the recent
immigrant. It is well known, and has already been pointed out, that
many of them advanced in the industrial scale, becoming foremen and
attaining other responsible positions. It has also been mentioned that
a large number abandoned the occupation of miner for positions as day
or shift men. Many also migrated and located in other sections of the
Middle West where hand mining continued to be followed, and many
also moved to other coal-fields, principally to Kansas and Oklahoma,
in the Southwest. The reports from several communities also show that
many of the former miners who left the industry entirely . . . entered
mercantile, clerical, mechanical, and other lines of work. The reports
further unite in the statement, however, that the displaced employees
did not better their economic condition. 3
There are irreconcilable contradictions in this "history." C*^ 1
It seems inconceivable that those of the "displaced" pick
miners who "advanced in the industrial scale, becoming
foremen and attaining other .responsible positions" (there
are alleged to have been "many of them"), "did not better ^-
their economic condition." It is contrary to common
experience that the "displaced" miners "who left the in-
dustry" to enter mercantile or mechanical lines of work
should not be earning more as business men or mechanics
1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 6, p. 426.
Ibid., p. 668.
424 Immigration and Labor
than they had been earning with pick and shovel inside
of a coal mine. The "data . . . as to the subsequent
history of the pioneer miners" are admittedly scarce.
The loose "statement" of the anonymous "reports" is
clearly sheer hearsay, which deserves no place in an official
report.
The Immigration Commission attaches undue importance
to the social prejudice against "a Hunkey's job," which it
considers "one of the strongest forces toward the displace-
ment of the older employees either from the industry or
.v'from certain occupations within the industry." 1 The
Commission mistakes here cause for effect. The contempt
for " a Hunkey's job " did not exist so long as the bulk of the
English-speaking operatives were employed on that grade
of work. Yet, then as now, the "tendency" on the part
of the native American "to abandon the occupation of
coal digging and to enter the better class of positions about
the mines" must have been "decidedly marked," 2 when-
ever an opportunity presented itself. ) We further learn that^
"the exodus of former operatives from the industry" was
stimulated by "the fact that there were opportunities to
secure work whichjpaid as well or better than mining, that
this worlTwas often more agreeable and less dangerous." 3
It was only after their~elevation (or "displacement," as
the Commission would have it) from the ranks of coal
diggers to the more exalted station of mine bosses and street
car conductors that they began to look *down upon those
who had succeeded them. This caste feeling is far too
general in all climes and conditions of life to be classed
</ among the effects of "recent immigration."
Still more strained is the argument that the recent
j, immigration "is preventing them [the English-speaking
miners] from allowing their children to enter the industry.
The prosperous miner educates his children for softer-
handed work and they have t^mpve away from Community
1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 6, p. 426.
'Ibid., vol. 7, p. 221. * Ibid., vol. 6, p. 335
The Coal Miners 425
A [Shenandoah, Pa.] to find it. The well-to-do store-
keeper and the professional man moves away to find a
more suitable environment for his growing children." 1
This statement implies that but for the recent immigrant,
a prosperous American father, who has the means to educate
his son for "softer-handed work/' would allow him to do
the disagreeable and dangerous work of a coal miner. Could
a "well-to-do storekeeper" or a professional man find
better opportunities for his son in a coal-mining town like
Y' Shenandoah with a population of 25,000, were all the coal
miners men of pure Anglo-Saxon blood ?
The increasing consumption of coal by the expanding
American industries which has drawn to pur coal mines the
great masses of Southern and Eastem,European immigrants,
has also stimulated the introduction of mining machinery. ^
The tendency of machinery is to replace the skilled miner
by the unskilled laborer. The old American, English,
Welsh, and Irish miners were pick miners. The introduc-
tion of mining machines, though gradual, must have dis-
placed many of them and forced them to seek employment
elsewhere. To be sure, the expansion of the coal-mining
industry has been so rapid that the displaced pick miners
soon found more remunerative employment as machine
runners or in supervisory capacities. But this industrial
transformation did not proceed without social waste and
friction. When a new labor-saving machine is introduced,
no provision is made for the men whose labor is to be
dispensed with. The time, however short, spent in search
of other employment may cause them hardship and anxiety.
Meanwhile, they see their places taken by aliens speaking
a foreign tongue. The impression is created that it is these
unskilled foreigners who have displaced the English-speak-
ing miners. The pick miners, like labor in general, opposed
1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 16, p. 66 1. Community
A is situated in Schuylkill County, Pa., and can be identified by the
number of its inhabitants given on p. 663 (XIII. Census: Population,
vol. iii., p. 558).
426 Immigration and Labor
the introduction of machinery. 1 It_ naturally appeared to
them that without the recent immigrants who were willing
^to work at the machines the introduction of mining ma-
chinery would have been impossible. These views* o the
English-speaking miners have found their way into the
reports of the Industrial Commission 2 and of the Immigra-
tion Commission. 3 Mine operators who certainly know
the economic advantage of the use of machinery have
/assumed an apologetic attitude by throwing the blame upon
y the immigrant, whose lack of "skill" makes the use of
machinery imperative. 4 The truth is that a team of in-
experienced, unskilled Slavs working under one machine
^runner are more efficient than an equal number of skilled
and experienced English-speaking pick miners.
The comparative efficiency of pick and machine mining
appears from the following calculation based on the report
of the Ohio Chief Inspector of Mines for 1909. To every
1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 6, p. 662.
a Reports of the Industrial Commission, vol. xv., p. xxxiv.
3 "To some extent, the employment of the recent immigrant may
have stimulated the use of mining machinery, inasmuch as this machinery
renders it possible to employ in large numbers inexperienced and un-
trained men* Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 6, pp. 423,
424. Elsewhere, under the significant caption "Deterioration of
working conditions and methods caused by employment of recent
immigrants," the Commission quotes the opinions of "the miners and
union officials," who criticize the operators, "who, to fill abnormal
demands for coal, employed inexperienced immigrants in such large
numbers that it was impossible to teach them to mine by approved
^methods. . . . The statement is then made by the old employee that
this state of affairs . . . leads to the introduction of machines. "
Ibid., p. 670.
* "The operators claim that, owing to the large percentage of immi-
grants at work in the mines who are unskilled, they are forced to use
machines in order to maintain a good quality of coal, because where no
machines are used the recent immigrants 'shoot the coal off the solid*
instead of properly undercutting it, jind, with excessive charges of
powder, they thus produce a much larger percentage of slack coal than
is produced when undercutting is done with the machine or by hand. "
Ibid., p. 650.
The Coal Miners 427
five pick miners there was employed one inside day hand.
An average day's work per pick miner was 2.2 tons of lump
coal, or 3.3 tons "run of mine." The average daily pro-
duction per inside man was accordingly 1.8 tons of lump
coal or 2.7 tons "run of mine." In machine mining there
were on an average eight loaders, drillers, and shooters to
each runner, and two other inside day hands to one runner.
The average quantity cut by each machine runner per day
was twenty-nine tons of lump coal or forty-three tons "run
of mine." The average daily production per inside hand
was 2.6 tons of lump coal or 3.9 tons "run of mine." 1
The margin in favor of machine mining was 0.8 tons of
lump, or 1.2 tons "run of mine" per inside man, which was
equivalent to a saviiiL_of 30 per cent. Moreover, with
pick mining, ten out of every twelve inside men were skilled
miners, whereas with machine mining only one in every
eleven was a skilled man and the other ten were semi-
skilled day men or unskilled coal loaders. The average
price per ton paid to contract-miners is accordingly lower
for machine mining than for pick mining. In Illinois the
margin varied in 1901-1911 from 11.3 to 16.9 cents per
ton. 2 The saving resulting from machine mining is esti-
mated by an authority as follows:
At a mine producing 1000 tons per day and having a 15 cent margin
in favor of machine mining, the gross saving would be about $150 a day,
or $30,000 per year of 200 days. . . . The $30,000 saving will pay for
the machine plant, installation, and cost of maintenance, as well as inter-
est and depreciation, in about one year's time. The advantages of coal
cutting are: (i) v an increased percentage of large coal; (2) 'the coal is
mined in a firmer and better condition; (3) a more regular line of face is
obtained, leading to more systematic timbering; (4) increased safety
conditions for the miner; (5) thin seams can be profitably mined; (6)
increased output; and (7) fewer explosives are required for getting down
the coal. 3
1 Thirty- Fifth Annual Report of the Chief Inspector of Mines, Ohio, pp.
90, 93. 94, 99, ioo.
* Illinois Coal Report, 1911, p. 121.
*Coal and Coke, by Floyd W. Parsons, "The Mirieral Industry,"
1909, pp. 143, 144.
428 Immigration and Labor
jr To imagine that the opposition of the English-speaking
'miners could have forced the mine operators to waive these
savings, is to assume that without Slav and Italian immi-
gration the laws of modern industrial evolution would have
been suspended in the United States.
Statistics show that machine mining has made great
progress in States with a small percentage of Southern and
Eastern European coal miners and has been lagging behind
/ in States with a large percentage of Southern and Eastern
European coal miners. This fact stands out conspicuously
in Diagram XXIII. 1 In 1900, the greatest progress of
machine mining was reported from Ohio, while Vest Vir-
ginia was the most backward State, though the proportion
of Southern and Eastern European miners in both States
was the same. More than four fifths of the machine
product of Ohio must have been mined by English-speaking
men. The second rank in the order of the percentages of
machine-mined coal was held by Kentucky, where the
proportion of Southern and Eastern European miners was
negligible. In Indiana likewise more than four fifths of all
machine-mined coal was produced by English-speaking
mine workers. On the other hand, Pennsylvania had four
times as many Slavs, Italians, etc., working in coal mines as
Ohio, yet machine mining was less advanced in Pennsyl-
vania than in Ohio. In Pennsylvania and Illinois the
percentage of machine-mined coal was greater than the
percentage of Southern and Eastern European miners.
Bearing in mind the greater average production per man
where mining is done by machines, it can be clearly seen
that a great deal of pick mining in those two States must
have been done by Southern and Eastern Europeans. The
occupation statistics of the census of 1910 have as yet not
1 See Appendix, Table XXVI. The production of bituminous coal
in the States shown in the diagram amounted in 1910 to 80 per cent of the
total for the United States, and their aggregate production of machine-
mined coal for the ten-year period 1900-1909 to 90 per cent of the total
output of machine-mined coal in the United States.
DIAGRAM XXIII.
o 10 ao 30 40 50 60 70 80 90
I I I LI I I I M I I I M I I M I I I I I I I I I I I M I J | I | | | | | | | I I \
KY.
IND.
v////^//s//////Y////////
ll KX
W.VA.
i I I I I I I I M I I I I | | | | | | I
o 10 20 30 40
QrS.*.CV*OPAN3TQPQPUL*riOH 1910
Per cent of bituminous coal mined by machine, 1900 and
1910, compared with per cent ratio of Southern and East-
ern European miners to all miners, 1900; and with per
cent ratio of Southern and Eastern Europeans
to the total population, 1910, for the prin-
cipal States.
430 Immigration and Labor
been published. Still for the purposes of the present com-
parison a fairly accurate index of the employment of
Southern and Eastern Europeans in the mines is furnished
by the ratio of each nationality to the total population of
the State for iQio. 1 The order of the States, according to
the proportion of machine-mined coal, has changed since
1900: Pennsylvania has been outranked by Indiana and
Illinois by West Virginia. It will be observed that in each
t vof these changes the State with the lower proportion of
Southern and Eastern Europeans exhibits greater progress
^ of machine mining. Again, we find Ohio in the lead, while
Pennsylvania with twice as many Southern and Eastern
Europeans reports a little over one half as much machine-
mined coal. The second rank according to the progress of
machine mining is held by Kentucky, where the proportion
of Southern and Eastern Europeans is negligible, whereas
^Illinois with almost as many Southern and Eastern Euro-
peans in proportion as Pennsylvania is at the bottom of the
scale. West Virginia, which had been far behind Pennsyl-
vania in 1900 with regard to the introdugion of machinery,
in 1910 stood even with Pennsylvania. For these two
States we find in the report of the Immigration Commission
the percentage of Southern and Eastern Europeans em-
ployed in the coal mines in 1908, viz., in Pennsylvania, 64.3
per cent ; in West Virginia, 28.9 per cent. * The proportion of
machine-mined coal was 45 per cent in each State. If the
introduction of machinery were stimulated by immigration,
it might be expected that the percentage of machine-mined
coal in Pennsylvania would be twice as high as in West
Virginia. Assuming that in West Virginia all unskilled
labor connected with machine mining was done by recent
immigrants and negroes, it can be seen at a glance that in
^the mines of Pennsylvania where the Southern and Eastern
1 This can be clearly seen from a_ comparison of the three series of
percentages of Southern and Eastern Europeans in Table XXVI of
the Appendix.
* Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 6, Tables 140 and 143.
The Coal Miners 431
Europeans predominate, a large proportion of them must
have been employed at pick mining. x
There are many factors of a local character, such as rail-
way freights, market conditions, the nature of the coal -?
deposit, etc., which may produce variations in the per- /
centage of machine-mined coal for individual States. A
definite tendency, however, becomes apparent if the six
States are combined into two groups: (i) Ohio, Kentucky,
and Indiana, and (2) Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and
Illinois. In the first group the percentage of machine-
mined coal for 1910 was higher than in the second group.
In 1900, Ohio was in advance of Pennsylvania, while Ken-
tucky and Indiana were in advance of Illinois and West
Virginia; taken as a whole, the first group had a larger
percentage of machine-mined coal than the second. At the
same time the proportion of Southern and Eastern Euro-
peans was larger in the second group, taken as a whole, than
in the first. In 1900, as well as in 1910, Pennsylvania had
a higher percentage than Ohio, West Virginia, and Illinois.
On the whole, then, it seems, the percentage of machine- ^r
mined coal is higher in that group which has the lower
percentage of recent immigrants. This conclusion is in
accord with economic conditions : where the supply of labor
grows slowly, resort must be had to machinery to satisfy
the rapidly growing demand for coal.
1 The proportion of Southern and Eastern European miners employed
at machine and pick mining can be calculated as follows: An allowance
of 30 per cent must be made for the saving of labor by machinery. Of a
team of nine working at a mining machine, one, the runner, is an English-
speaking miner. Exclusive of the runners, the mining of 45 per cent of
the output required the services of (!) 45 (0.70) -=28 per cent of all mine
workers. The proportion of Southern and Eastern Europeans being
65 per cent of the total employed, there was a surplus of 37 per cent
equal to 37 -*- 65 * 57 per cent of all Southern and Eastern Europeans, for
whom there was no place at machine mining. In this calculation no
account is taken of the English-speaking semi-skilled men employed at
machine mining. If an allowance be made for them, the percentage ot
Southern and Eastern Europeans who could not have been utilized at
machine mining would be still larger.
432 Immigration and Labor
The Immigration Commission states that in every section
of the country a period in the development of the coal-
i/mining industry was_reached when^ the supply of labor,
rst,"~of native Americans, and later of English-speaking
immigrants, became inadequate " to satisfy the demand and
r recourse was necessarily had by the mining operators to
immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe. Without
. the employment of mine workers drawn from this class of
JK immigrants, the growth in the bituminous mining industry
f would have been impossible." 1 At the same time the
Immigration Commission believes that one of the effects
of recent immigration, "which seems to be well established,
%r is the decrease of the average number of working days
I annually "avaflaHte'To'the' older employee." 2 Thejncon-
fJJae_^ apparently escaped the
attention of the Commission. The evidence by which
the last-quoted statement is "established" is not given in
the report of the Commission, beyond the bare " allegation "
of "the older miners" of Illinois that "even under normal
industrial conditions there are two miners for every place
that offers steady work for one miner. "J
The fact is, as noted by the Commission, that coal mining
is a seasonal trade. 3 The demand is greatest in the fall
and winter, and declines with warm weather. The mine
operators run their mines in accordance with market
Conditions, as can be seen from Diagram XXIV. 4 In this
1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 6, p. 423. See also pp.
23, 24, 260, 661 ; vol. 7, pp. 216-217; in the South "the demand for labor
has outgrown the supply"; vol. 16, pp. 592, 655.
'Ibid., vol. 6, p. 668. s Ibid., vol. 6, pp. 97, 668.
Based on Thirteenth Annual Coal Report, Illinois, 1911, pp. 54-55.
JThe Commission quotes, in the same connection (vol vi., p. 669),
"the conviction on the part of natives that a preference is shown for the
immigrants in the distribution of work. " If the statistics of the Immi-
gration Commission may be trusted, they disprove this conviction on
the part of the natives. The figures which are given in Table 343 (p.
649) of the same volume, relate to the Middle West, where that "con-
viction" is said to prevail. The native and Southern and Eastern
The Coal Miners
DIAGRAM XXIV.
433
Tons
00,0001
_ 7600,000
_ 7200,000
. 6,500,000
_ 6J*00,000
op.ooq
600.000
200.000
_4800000
.440QOOC
JULY AUG. SEP. OCT. NOV. DEC. JAN. FEB. MAR. APR. MAY JUNE
XXIV. Coal production by months in Illinois, 1906-1910.
European miners were distributed by the number of months worked
in 1907 as follows:
Per ce
at working
Months
Native-
born
Italians, Lithuanians,
and Poles
J2 .
182
I 1
68.2
AQ 7
IOO.O
O67
It must be understood, however, that these statistics are of as little
value as the opinions of the few "old miners" quoted by the Immigra-
tion Commission. The total number of native miners included in its
"study of households" was only 371 for all bituminous mines in the
United States and 79 for all anthracite mines. (Ibid., vol. 6, p. 97;
vol. 16, p. 619.) The number is too small to serve as a basis for any
434 Immigration and Labor
respect the mine operators do not differ from other entre-
preneurs. There is nothing to prevent a manufacturer of
awnings from distributing the work of his establishment
evenly over the whole year; yet he prefers to manufacture
them when there is an immediate demand for them. An
even distribution of mining operations over the whole
year would necessitate an outlay for wages and supplies,
and a permanent investment for additional storage facilities.
/Such an additional investment would be prohibitive for
\many of the smaller operators, while the larger ones could
v gain no advantage from it, since competition would not
permit them to shift the interest to the consumer.
So long as the mines run full time at one season and part
time at others, unemployment is inevitable. The difference
between coal mining and other industries is only that,
instead of discharging a portion of the force and keeping
the rest fully employed, the coal operator retains the full
v force in his employ, but keeps them all on part time.- There
are several economic reasons for this system. In the first
place the operator wants to keep his full force always ready
on call. Coal mines are, as a rule, not located in great
urban" centres where there is at all times an available
supply of men seeking employment. Chief among the
contributory causes is the real estate interest of the mining
company. Every operator who opens a new mine in an
unsettled locality must provide houses for his employees.
After having invested in workmen's dwellings, the mine
operator is interested in keeping them occupied. To lay
off a part of his employees during the summer months would
involve a loss of rent, as they would leave in order to seek
employment elsewhere. Where the mining company is also
running a general store for its employees, it wants to retain
conclusions. The greatest variation between the native and foreign-
born appears in the percentage of bituminous coal miners employed
six months and over, viz., 82.2 for the native and 88.8 for the foreign-
bora (ibid., vol. 6, p. 97). The difference of 6.6 per cent represents
only twenty-three native workers scattered all over the United States.
The Coal Miners 435
them as customers. While the mine operators are guided
in their policy by business considerations, rather than by
philanthropy, the mine workers as a class have no ground
for complaint against this policy, so long as coal mining
remains a seasonal trade. The other alternative would be
v full employment for some and complete idleness and want
for the others.
Inasmuch as the demand for coal fluctuates from year
Vto year, it is inevitable that when the demand suffers a
temporary decline, there should not be enough work to
give full time employment to all the men who were needed
during the previous season of maximum activity. An
illustration of these fluctuations can be seen in Diagram
XXIV. This is the basis of the complaint of the miners
that too rapid a pace of development eventually pleads to
undef-employment. x These cyclical variations, however,
,are not peculiar to coal mining alone, but are incidents of
the modern industrial development in all lines of production.
In fact the fluctuations in the demand for coal are merely
the reflections of the fluctuations in the industrial field as
a whole. That they are not the product of immigration,
but, on the contrary, they run parallel with the fluctuations
of immigration, has been shown in Chapter VI. (See Dia-
gram X.)
The fluctuating character of the coal-mining industry
produces a migratory type of mine worker. To the old
employee, however, who is permanently working at one
mine, these migratory applicants for work naturally appear
as one of the causes of fluctuation in the opportunities for
employment. The Immigration Commission is voicing
the complaint of "the older employee to the effect that the
k recent immigrants being largely unmarried and at the same
f time, migratory in their habits, move readily from one
locality to another, always seeking the community where
there is a demand for labor and thus cause^in .numerous
instances, an oversupply of labor, which reacts to the injury
1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 6, p. 669.
436 Immigration and Labor
of the employees permanently working and living in the
locality affected." 1 The recent immigrants accordingly
^cause an oversupply of labor by seeking a place "where
there is a demand for labor, " whereas if they stayed where
there is no demand for their labor there would supposedly
be no oversupply of labor. But what of "the older em-
ployees" who are permanently living in the communities
where there is no demand for the labor of the migratory
immigrants? Might they not regard it as an "injury"
to themselves if the immigrants resolved to abandon their
migratory habits and stay where there is no demand for
them? The oldest inhabitants of a mining town are
naturally inclined to view every question from the angle of
their local interests. But their criterion need not be gener-
ally accepted as representative of the interests of labor at
large.
/Complaints have often been made that, apart from the
g/fluctuations in the demand for coal, under-employment
\in the anthracite mines is the result of a deliberate
pn the part of the operators to employ a larger force than
might be required when the mines run at full capacity. 2
There was a good foundation for this complaint in the past.
In the '70*8, after the breakdown of the union of anthracite
coal miners, the coal companies engaged a larger force
which resulted in the curtailment of the average production
per man. This was, however, in the days of British, Irish,
and German immigration. During the last ten years, i. e.,
V since the beginning of the new immigration, the average
annual production per man has been fast increasing.
The following table shows an increase of the average
annual number employed from 44,000 in 1870-1874 to
68,000 in 1875-1879, while the average annual output
increased only 10 per cent. The expansion of the busi-
ness obviously did not call for an increase of 55 per cent
1 Reports of the Immigration Commission^ vol. 6, p. 669.
a Reports of the Industrial Commission, vol. xv., p. 405. Peter Roberts,
The Anthracite Coal Industry, pp. 126-127.
The Coal Miners
437
in the number of employees. As a result the average
tonnage per emplgyeejieclined 28 per cent. It rose again
during the first half of the '8o's still remaining 20 per cent
TABLE 126.
NUMBER OF WAGE-EARNERS EMPLOYED IN ANTHRACITE COAL MINES,
AND PRODUCTION OF COAL BY FIVE-YEAR PERIODS, 1870-1909.
Average annual production 2
Average annual
(long tons)
Period
(thousands)
Total millions
Per employee
1870-1874
1875-1879
n
2O
22
448
322
1880-1884
85
31
361
1885-1889
no
38
342
1890-1894
130
4 6
350
1895-1899
145
50
343
1900-1904
151
56
372
1905-1909
171
71
417
below the average of 1870-1874. It declined again during
the second half of the '8o's and remained stationary until
1900. Since that time a marked improvement is notice-
able. The annual average per employee in 1900-1904 was
higher than in 1880-1884, and in 1905-1909 it came within
7 per cent of the average of 1870-1874. If the comparison
is carried back to the first half of the *8o's, when the English-
speaking mine workers were given more days per man than
ever since the defeat of the strike of 1875 up to 1900, it
appears that in 1905-1909, during the height of Southern
and Eastern European immigration, the average mine
worker was given 15.5 per cent more work than at the time
the Slav and Italian employees in the anthracite
mines were a negligible quantity. This means that the
See Appendix, Table XXVIII.
3 Computed from the Report of the United States Geological Survey:
The Production of Coal, 1910, pp. 189-190.
438 Immigration and Labor
recent immigrant labor supply has been smaller in propor-
tion to the demagdjorjaborjnjg^ the supply
of mine workers from Northern and Western Europe thirty
years ago.
As stated above, the reports of the Immigration Com-
mission for every district concur in that the native labor
'/supply wasjnadequate ioj:Jiie._QperatiQn. of the mines_f rom
the very beginning, that the supply of immigrants from the
-r, ^British Isles and Germany soon also proved insufficient,
**/ Jand that the mine operators from remoter districts were
/ bidding in the Eastern labor market for immigrants of
^ every nationality willing to work in the Western mines.
If it is true that the demand for labor exceeded the avail-
able supply, it necessarily follows that wages must have
( risen. That such has been the fact is not denied by the
Immigration Commission. It s'eeks, however, to qualify
it in accordance with its preconceived ideas about the
immigrant. We are told that in Pennsylvania "the com-
panies were not compelled as a result of agitation or protest
to increase wages ... in order to hold the native and
former workmen, since they were able to fill their places
. . . with recent immigrants who were content with the
wages . . . which prevailed in the bituminous regions.
// is true that wages have risen in the industry, but as a rule
only to meet the competition of other industries which use
unskilled labor." 1
. Thus "the companies were not compelled ... to
*pncrease wages," because the recent immigrants "were
^{content" with the prevailing wages, and yet somehow
wages have risen. " It might be inferred that the com-
panies voluntarily increased wages though the recent
immigrants did not ask for it, were it not for the concluding
statement that the raise was made " to meet the competition
of other industries which use unskilled labor. " Apparently
then in those "other industries" wages were also raised,
and the recent immigrants, though "content" with lower
1 Reports oj the Immigration Commission, vol. 8, p. 424.
The Coal Miners 439
wages in coal mines, were equally content to quit the mines
and accept higher wages in other industries. The most
important of those industries in Pennsylvania is the iron
and steel industry, in which most of the unskilled laborers
are also recent immigrants. So it would seem that in order
to hold these new employees the iron and steel companies
, were compelled to increase wages, and the coal companies
- in order to hold their own recent immigrants had to follow
suit.
An index of the increase in the earnings of the Pennsyl-
vania coal miners since the beginning of the "new immigra-
tion" is furnished by the average wages per ton in the an-
thracite coal mines at the XI. and XIII. Censuses, which
increased from 83 cents in 1889 to $1.14 in 1909, i. e., 37.3
per cent. At the same time the progress in the use of
mechanical power raised the average output per wage-
earner. 1
In the unionized bituminous coal mines of the Pitts-
burgh district the scale is agreed upon at joint conferences
held biennially since 1898 between the operators and the
United Mine Workers. This is the period of the great
influx of Southern and Eastern Europeans into the coal
mines of the Pittsburgh district. Table 127 shows sub-
stantial increases^kr the scale for undercutting by machine
and day-occupations, in which English-speaking mine
workers are employed, as well as for loading which is
the work of Southern and Eastern Europeans, and for
pick mining, at which men of all races are employed. In
4 other words, the Southern and Eastern Europeans have
had the same measure of success in bargaining for wages as
the English-speaking employees.
While wages have increased, the hours of labor have
been reduced from ten to eight. Moreover, "many kinds
of work, such as entry cutting, room turning, removing
clay, etc., for which formerly nothing was paid, now have
a regular scale. This 'dead work/ in a mine employing
1 XIII. Census, vol. xi., Mines and Quarries, pp. 188, 189.
(j
440
Immigration and Labor
one hundred and fifty men, would add about $i .50 per week
to the wages of each of them. It means an addition of
about ten per cent to a miner's pay. " x
TABLE 127.
UNION SCALE OF WAGES IN BITUMINOUS COAL MINES, 1898-1908. a
Occupation
1898-1900
1906-1908
Increase
per cent
Per ton
$0.66
Per ton
$0.90
36.4
Air Machines.
Undercutting in rooms
.125
.1708
36.6
f
.36
.456
26.7
Electric Machines.
Undercutting . .
.08
.11
37.5
Loading
.36
47
3O.6
Inside Day Work.
Tracklayers, bottom cagers, drivers,
trip riders, water and machine
haulers, and timbermen
Per day
I.QO
Per day
2.56
4O.O
Pi pemen for compressed air plants. . .
All other inside labor
1.84
1.75
2.50
2.-*6
30-4
74.0
Trappers (boys)
.75
I.I-z
SO.7
The advances in the scale of wages paid to various
classes of employees in non-unionized mines of Pennsyl-
vania 3 are shown in Table 128, condensed from the report
of the Immigration Commission.
J Wages for all grades of employment have increased
since 1895. The rate of increase for common laborers,
, who are practically all Southern and Eastern Europeans,
v is higher than for machine bosses, who are Americans or
English-speaking foreigners.
The report of the Immigration Commission contains
statistics of average daily earnings for 79,575 mine workers
classified by race and nativity. As there is no classification
of each racial group by occupation, the elaborate averages
1 Leiserson, loc. cit. t p. 319. Ibid., p. 320.
3 That the mines are non-unionized appears from the fact that they
are running on a ten-hour basis.
The Coal Miners
441
TABLE 128.
WAGE SCALE OF EMPLOYEES IN THE COAL MINES OF ONE STEEL COMPANY
IN PENNSYLVANIA, 1 895-1908. x
Occupations
Daily wages
Increase per
cent
1895
1908
Machine boss . .
$2.50
53
50
.42
31
71
75
55
.62
25
25
.21
.20
.07
25
3
.06
.00
.70
$3.20
2.65
2.50
2.50
2.40
2.40
2.40
2.25
2.2O
2.IO
2.OO
1-95
l.8o
1-55
145
145
1-35
1.20
.90
28.O
66.7
66.7
76.1
83.2
404
38.2
45-2
35-8
68.0
60.0
61.2
50.0
44-9
16.0
40.8
27.4
2O.O
28.6
Boss driver
Team driver
Sheer (mule)
Motorman
Trip rider
Carpenter
Coupler ....
Tipple engineer
Tipple man
Switchman
Oiler (dilly road)
Patcher
Traooer (bov) .
and per 1000 ratios computed from "80 or more males
reporting," are of no value for comparative purposes.
The fact that the Mexican earns $2.44 per day, whereas
the American of native parentage earns only $2.3i, 2 does
not mean that the Mexican has a higher standard of living
and therefore " insists" upon a higher wage, whereas the
American, with his lower standard of living, is "content " to
accept a lower wage._\The higher average of the Mexican
"X fs simply the result of a different distribution of the Mexicans
by locality and grade of work. A selection of race groups
graded according to percentage earning each specified
amount per day is presented in Table 129. It clearly
1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 8, Table 322.
3 Ibid., vol. 6, p, 50.
442
Immigration and Labor
shows that the immigrants from Southern and Eastern
- Europe are often earning more than native Americans of
native stock and English-speaking immigrants.
TABLE 129.
PER CENT OF ADULT BITUMINOUS COAL MINE WORKERS OF SELECTED
RACES EARNING EACH SPECIFIED AMOUNT PER DAY, BY LOCALITY. x
Earning $2.00 per day and over.
Earning $3.00 per day and over.
Rank
Locality and race
Per
cent
Rank
Locality and race
Per
cent
I
2
3
4
5
6
8
I
2
3
4
I
2
3
4
I
2
Middle West:
Russian
95-0
94-3
90.8
89.1
87.2
86.2
84-3
83.7
76.5
76.4
73-3
70.1
82.9
73-1
67.9
65.8
97.2
96.1
I
2
3
4
5
6
8 7
9
10
i
2
I
2
I
2
3
4
Middle West:
Croatian ....
69.9
46.3
45-0
41.7
37-9
36.9
31-3
27.4
26.2
25.1
13-5
7-7
19.4
12.9
56.8
38.3
31-6
18.9
Croatian
South Italian
South Italian
Scotch
English
White of native father.
Welsh
Russian
Scotch
North Italian
Irish
Irish
Welsh
Pennsylvania:
Slovenian
Slovak
White of native father.
Pennsylvania:
Lithuanian . .
Russian
White of native father.
South:
Slovak
White of native father .
South:
Slovak
Polish
White of native father.
Southwest:
Lithuanian
White of native father.
Southwest:
Slovenian
South Italian
German
White of native father.
White of native father.
Comparable data on the earnings of employees engaged
in the same class of work are available only for West
Virginia. The average earnings of pick-miners for one
month were as follows: American, white, $78.18; Magyar
1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 6, Tables 34-35, pp.
54-56.
The Coal Miners 443
and Slovak, $76.68; South Italian, $69.11.* There is no
substantial difference between the Magyar and Slovaks, on
the one hand, and the white Americans, on the other; their
wages averaged about $3.00 a day. The earnings of the
Italians were lower, but this may have been due to
the fact that some of them did not work every day in the
month. 2
The conclusion of the Commission with regard to the^
Virginia and West Virginia coal fields is that "although it
is not clear that the employment of the immigrant has
reduced wages . . . it is obvious that if immigrant labor
had not been available either a much higher wage would
have been paid, more labor-saving devices used, or less
development would have been possible. " 3 In other words,
wages have not been reduced, but had there been no immi-
grants on hand, either wages would have been higher,
or they would not have been higher. The conclusion is
indisputable.
The Immigration Commission holds the recent immi-
grants responsible for the evils of the company houses and
the company stores. It is the usual method of reasoning:
the company house and the company store exist only
V because the recent immigrants "consent" to accept them. 4
This is a consistent application of the theory of "freedom of
contract": wages are low, because wage-earners "consent"
to accept low wages; hours of labor are long, because
laborers "consent" to work long hours; factories are un-
sanitary, because operatives "consent" to work in unsani-
tary factories. Every problem involved in the relation
between labor and capital finds an easy solution in this
philosophy.
The fact is that the real estate and the mercantile end of
a mining company's business are often no less important,
as sources of income, than the mine. There are mining
companies whose sales of coal do not cover their operating
1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 6, p. 202. 2 Ibid.
3 Ibid., p. 223. Ibid., pp. 659, 666.
444 Immigration and Labor
expenses, but the renting of houses to employees and the
profits of the commissary store yield enough to pay divi-
dends on the entire investment. This system is much older
than immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe.
An item in the Pottsville Miners' Journal for January, 1850, states
that there were 42,000 houses rented by the operators in the anthracite
coal fields. From the earliest records of mining, operators have erected
abodes for their employees, and the practice has been continued until
very recent times among all the companies. 1
Company houses are as usual in the South, where the
white miners are mostly of old American stock, as in those
fields where recent immigrants predominate.
The company store has also had a long history.
The Pottsville Miners' Journal states that in 1848 . . . men worked
for $3.50 a week and took that out in orders. ... In 1850, the laborer
got from 60 cents to 65 cents a day and the miner from 80 cents to 90
cents. These were low wages but they were actually lower than the
amounts specified, for the men were not paid in money. They had to
take their earnings out in goods which made a difference of from 15 to
20 per cent against the wage-earner. 3
Many and persistent attempts have been made to do away with this
evil, all of which so far have come short of their object. It was an
issue of the Bates strike of 1849. The Workingmen's Benevolent
Association of 1868-75 attempted to remove it. It was one of the
planks in the platform of the Knights of Labor who flourished in the
Middle and Southern coal fields in 1886-88. And the labor organiza-
tion which now flourishes in the anthracite coal fields has undertaken to
correct this evil. "'What the employees could not do by labor unions
representatives have tried to do by legislative enactment. In
June, 1 88 1, a law was passed to enforce payment in lawful money of
the United States or "any order or other paper whatsoever, redeemable
for its face value in lawful money of the United States." This law
was declared unconstitutional. ... In June, 1891, another act was
passed, making it unlawful for "any mining or manufacturing corpora-
tion of the commonwealth, or the officers or stockholders of any such
corporation, to engage in or carry on any store known as company
store." . . . Another attempt was made at the recommendation of
an investigating committee in 1897 to abolish this evil. All these
1 Peter Roberts: The Anthracite Coaljndustry, p. 130.
Ibid., p. 109.
The Coal Miners 445
legislative actaJhayfi mme shortj^ their objects. The company store
still flourishes. . . . Their number is not as large as they once were;
they are gradually dying out, but the institution dies hard. 1
In West Virginia "every mining company has a company
store, and the operatives are compelled to deal in the
company store, because they are paid only once a month,
but may between pay-days obtain trading scrip which is
good only at the company stores." 2 Nearly one half (46
per cent) of all mine workers in West Virginia are native y
white Americans, and only 30 per cent are immigrants from
Southern and Eastern Europe. 3 It is clear that the recent^f
immigrant is no more responsible for the company store
than the native American miner.
It is a fair conclusion from all available facts that the
terms of employment in the coal mines at present are in no
respect less favorable to the mine Worker, and that the
wages are higher, than in the past, when the bulk of the
mine workers were native Americans or immigrants from
Northern and Western Europe.
The ability of the wage-earner to influence the terms of ^
employment in large-scale industry finds full expression I
only in collective bargaining. The history of labor unions /
in the bituminous coal-mining industry, according to the
Immigration Commission's version, has been a constant
struggle on the part of the English-speaking mine workers
to organize the Southern and Eastern Europeans and to
hold them in line.
(
In the Pennsylvania bituminous mining area the entire period from ,
1870 to 1894 was marked by a series of labor dissensions and strikes,
each of which left the labor organizations in a weaker condition than did
its predecessor, for the reason that the older employees, who were the
leaders in the movement for higher wages and better working conditions,
finding themselves unable to control the conditions imposed by the
increasing employment of recent immigrants, and finally realizing that it
1 Peter Roberts : The Anthracite Coal Industry, pp. 129-130.
Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 7, p. 201.
3 Ibid., p. 161.
446 Immigration and Labor
was impossible to control the incoming supply of immigrant labor,
abandoned the Pennsylvania mines and sought similar employment in
other bituminous localities where the pressure of competition of recent
immigrants was not so strong. . . . Practically, the same situation
with the same results was experienced in the mines of West Virginia.
Recent immigrants did not enter the mines of that State in large num-
bers . . . until after the year 1890. The competition was soon felt,
however, and the significance of their presence revealed by the strikes
which occurred in the Fairmont, Elk Garden, and other fields in the
years 1894 and 1895. Natives and older immigrant employees left
the mines, as they had done in Pennsylvania, thus creating vacancies
which were filled by the employment of additional numbers of recent
immigrants, who reduced the strength of the labor organizations. The
* rapid expansion of the mining operations after 1894 also brought into
the mining fields a constantly growing number of Southern and Eastern
Europeans, who completely inundated the older employees and uncon-
sciously, but_effectually, Demoralized the labor unions and put aTstop to
anyeffbrts toward organization. . . . |In the Middle West] during the
past ten years . . . although the labor unions have largely maintained
their strength, conditions have changed and the preservation of the
standards of the organization has been a matter of the greatest difficulty.
Mining operations have undergone a great expansion, and recourse has
been had to races of recent immigration in greater and greater numbers.
These newcomers have entered the labor organizations principally
because they have considered it a necessary step preliminary to securing
<work in the mines, and not because they have had any sympathy or
interest in the labor-union program. They have also manifested com-
paratively little activity in its behalf. l
The preceding summary abounds in errors of fact] which
produce a distorted view of the history oFTrade-unionism in
the bituminous coal-mining industry. The cardinal fact
of that history is that so long as the English-speaking
mine workers were in the majority, their organizations were
ephemeral and their strikes mostly unsuccessful; it is only
since the Southern and Eastern Europeans 'have become an
important factor in the coal mines that the miners* organi-
zation has gained strength. The growth of the United
Mine Workers of America appears from Table 130 next
following. Whereas in 1890 scarcely 15 per cent of all
mine workers in the United States were affiliated with
1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. I , p. 535.
The Coal Miners 447
labor unions, in 1904 the proportion of organized mine
workers exceeded one half of the total number employed. x
Since 1898 terms of employment in the bituminous coal
mines are periodically agreed upon between conferees of the
conventions of organized mine operators and organized
mine workers, holding sessions after the fashion of two
houses of an industrial parliament.
TABLE 130.
MEMBERSHIP OF THE UNITED MINE WORKERS OF AMERICA, 1890-1904. a
Year Number Year Number
1890 20,912 1898 32,9O2
1891 17,044 1899 61,887
1892. I9.376 1900 115,521
1893 14,244 1901 198,024
1894 , 17,628 1902 175,367
1895 10,871 1903 247,240
1896 9,617 1904 : 260,075
1897.. 9,731
The Industrial Commission says in a survey of the history
f the miners' unions up to the end of the past century:
Labor organization among the coal miners has passed through ex-
traordinary vicissitudes. The Welsh, Scotch, English, and Irish miners
were well organized and maintained high wages, but in 1875, not owing
to the presence of immigrants, but as a result of a strike against a
falling market, their organization was entirely broken and their wages
greatly reduced. Not until 1897, in the bituminous field, and 1900,
in the anthracite field, was a reorganization effected, this time not of
the original British stock alone, but also of the mixed nationalities from
Southern and Eastern Europe. . . . While there have been serious
problems in the organization of mixed nationalities, an equally serious
problem which has confronted the organization of these immigrants
has been the competition of the unorganized Americans of native stock. Y
This was fully shown in the experience of the miners prior to 1897,
when their organizations in Northern Illinois were defeated by the
native Americans in Southern Illinois. In the first mining district of
Illinois the per cent of Americans is only eleven, and in the seventh, in
the Southern part of the State, it is eighty. Yet, it was these American
miners in the thick and more easily mined veins of the Southern section
1 Frank Julian Warne: The Coal Mine Workers, pp. 120, 206, 212, 218.
'Ibid., pp. 117, 120, 212, 218.
448 Immigration and Labor
whose competition reduced wages so low that they were actually earning
less than in the Northern districts. The success of the strike in 1897
consisted mainly in the fact that the Southern American-born miners
were brought into the Union and placed on a basis of equal competition
with the foreign-born miners. A similar condition at the present time
confronts the mining organization of the four great States of the bitumi-
nous field in the competition of West Virginia, where the native whites
of native parents number 57 H per cent and the colored miners number
21 per cent of the total number of miners, compared with 20 to 48 per
cent native whites of both native and foreign parentage in the other
States. Prices and wages in West Virginia are 30 to 70 per cent below
those under similar conditions in the other States. . . . The organiza-
tion of 150,000 bituminous mine workers, over one half of whom are
foreign-born of diverse races, is menaced more by the unorganized
Americans of native stock than by their own internal divisions. 1
In another part of the same report the history of the
contests in Illinois is given in greater detail :
The jeopardy fl-d jWgat_nfJjhe tinionsJias-beea- owing as often to
thecompetition of unorganized A.mencass^^_na,tive stock in new
fiekJsTas in the competition of the foreign-born. This is fully demon-
stratecTBy the experience of the miners prior to 1897, when they were
defeated by the competition of Southern Illinois, and, since 1897, when
they were jeopardized by the competition of West Virginia. Beginning
with 1886 . . . the local organization of miners known as the Federa-
tion of Miners and Mine Laborers acquired such strength that it was
able to summon the operators of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Illinois to
annual conferences for the purposes of agreements regarding the scale
of wages in these competitive States. . . . During the entire period
of these interstate conferences, from 1886 to 1893, it has been impossible
for the unions to organize Southern Illinois. The miners injthat section
w^re predominatingly Arrlencans^ Theyj^re^larm laborers who had
timlext5D4J3e-nitn^r^ a source of readylSshTTTTTheir rates per ton
for mining coal were twenty-eight to thirty-eight cents, as compared
with sixty-two to seventy cents in the Northern fields. ... In order
to protect the miners in the Northern, thin-veined districts, and permit
their coal to come into the market at living wages, the union has forced
the miners in the Southern, thick-veined districts to increase their
earnings from the lowest in the State to the highest in the State. This
is one of the necessities of the system of differentials in arranging scales
of prices for different sections of the^same competitive field, and it was
exactly the evil of the former unorganized condition that the American
1 Reports of the Industrial Commission, vol. xv., pp. xxxv.-xxxvi.
The Coal Miners 449
miners in the Southern field had reduced their compensation so low
notwithstanding the greater productivity of the mines, that they were
earning less than the meager wages of the foreign-born miners in the
Northern fields. . . . The present high wages of the Southern field are not,\
therefore, owing to a higher standard of living or superior capacity for
organization of Americans as compared with foreigners, but are owing to C
the inj^ajj^iandj/nterference oj fp feigners, who, in self-protection, forced 1
the Americans to a higher position than the one they were willing to accept.*
The Immigration Commission quotes the opinion of
"the older employees" "that in general the immigration
of Southern and Eastern Europeans has been very disastrous
to the labor unions in the coal-mining industry. In some
districts the unions have been entirely disrupted, and old X
operatives assert that this was directly due to the coming
of the later immigrants." 2 The illustrations cited by the
Commission in support of this claim prove the very op-
posite of it. In the strike of 1884 in the Connelsville coke
region the Slav, Magyar, and Italian workmen joined the I
American and Irish strikers. The strike was defeated, '
but "the percentage of recent immigrants was relatively
small" ; no reason is given why the defeat should be attrib-
uted to that small number rather than to the weakness of
the English-speaking majority. In 1 890 the strike was again
defeated, although "in this case also the immigrants joined
the strike." In 1894 the men struck again. ' The Ameri-
cans, English, and Irish were leaders of the strike and the
immigrants very generally joined the organization which
had been effected only two weeks previously." The strike
originally extended to seventy-seven out of eighty-five
plants; after six weeks of striking ninety- two per cent of
all ovens were idle. By that time, however, many of the
strikers "were enduring severe hardships." Still the
majority held out for two months longer, and a minority
stayed out in all for five months. The strike was defeated.
That was the end of the organization in that field. 3
1 Reports of the Industrial Commission, vol. xv., pp. 407-409.
3 Reports of the Immigration Commission^ vol. 6, p. 332.
3 Ibid., pp. 332-334.
450 Immigration and Labor
It is sought to fasten the responsibility for the defeat of
these strikes upon the Slav, Magyar, and Italian strikers;
"the American and Irish leaders" are said to have "found
difficulty in restraining them from violence during the
strikes." In general, it is remarked that "in strikes the
recent immigrant members . . . are often inclined to
resort to violence and other methods that bring the union
and its_c^^eJnto-xiisrpute7 Tr ~
In view of the recent developments in the McNamara case
these protestations of "the American and Irish leaders"
may be accepted cum grano salis. " The undesirable alien "
is a convenient scapegoat to appease public_ppinion 1 _ which
is not burdened with memories of the long ago. The ter-
rorism of the Molly Maguires has a literature. Rioting is
chronicled as an incident of almost every strike of import-
ance in the coal mines for the last sixty years. The first
great strike of which there is any record occurred in the
spring of 1849 under the leadership of the Bates union.
"The strike was accompanied by violence. Miners,
armed with cudgels, formed themselves into bands and
marched down the Black Valley to collieries which were
working, and by intimidation compelled the men to join
their ranks."
In the strike of 1868 an effort was made by the strikers
to draw into the contest all mine workers of the anthracite
region.
They marched to the Mahanoy Valley and stopped the collieries
there, then they advanced to the Schuylkill Valley and did the same
there. Thus most of the Southern and Middle collieries were closed.
They resolved then to continue their march to the Wyoming Valley
and persuade the miners there to join their ranks. The employees of
the Wilkes-Barre District joined them. Along the line of march they
compelled all classes of workmen to throw down their tools and fall
into line. The mechanics of Wilkes-Barre were forced to quit work
and join the strikers; the same was done with the force working on the
Wilkes-Barre jail at the time. The sheriff of Luzerne County addressed
them and asked them to disperse, but to no purpose.
1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 6, pp. 332-333.
The Coal Miners 451
On January 10, 1871, the Workingmen's Benevolent
Association declared a general strike in all anthracite col-
lieries in sympathy with the miners of the Northern field.
Practically all collieries were shut down and remained so
until May, when " a few shafts were started by the
Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Company. Riots en-
sued. The military power of the State was called out and
in a conflicit between it and the strikers, two of the miners
were shot and several wounded. ... Labor was utterly
defeated in the contest."
In 1877 the great railroad strike tied up the anthracite
coal mines. The miners of the Delaware, Lackawanna &
Western and of the Delaware & Hudson collieries joined
in the strike. " Labor riots were the order of the day." 1
This is the record of the anthracite region only. The
battle of the Homestead strikers with the Pinkertons in
1892, the troubles in the metalliferous mines of Colorado and
Idaho, the recent strike of the firemen on the Southern rail-
ways, and many other episodes in which none but English-
speaking workmen were involved, conclusively prove that
violence jn_ strikes is not a racial characteristic of "the\/
recent_immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe." A
Since the United Mine Workers has won the support of
these immigrants, who now form the backbone of that
organization, very little is heard of strike riots. For the
past fourteen years, as stated, terms of employment in the
bituminous mines are peaceably agreed upon between
representatives of organized mine operators and organized
mine workers.
The United Mine Workers has so far failed in its
efforts to gain a foothold in West Virginia and in the South-
ern fields. But its defeat is not attributable to recent
immigrants. "Until 1897 the immigrant labor employed
was not in excess of 10 per cent of the total operating
forces." 3 Consequently, the defeat of the strikes of 1894
1 Roberts, loc. cit., pp. 172-181.
* Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 7, pp. 146-147.
452 Immigration and Labor
and 1895 could not have been brought on by recent immi-
grants. The next strike took place in 1902. " A majority
of the mines were closed for a considerable period." The
operators imported strike-breakers Americans, as well as
immigrants and the strike ultimately failed. 1
Since that time West Virginia has been a non-union field.
But it had been a non-union field also previous to the strike
of 1902, when 57.8 per cent of all mine workers were native
white of native parentage and 73.4 per cent belonged to the
English-speaking races. Yet shortly before the strike of
1902, prices and wages in West Virginia were "30 to
70 per cent below those under similar conditions in the
other States." 2
On the other hand, in Alabama only 13 per cent
of all mine workers are foreign-born, and only 10 per
cent from Southern and Eastern Europe, while 26 per
cent are native white of native parentage and 31 per cent
English-speaking white, the other 59 per cent being
negroes. Yet "a very small proportion of natives . . .
are identified with organized labor . . . for the rea-
son that in only one small district of the Southern field
is organized labor recognized." 3 A series of questions
naturally arises : Why is organized labor not recognized in
the Southern field? Why have the natives not organized?
Why have they not won recognition for organized labor?
There seems to be no chosen people endowed with special
trade-union qualifications: there are well-organized mines
with a predominantly non-English-speaking force and unor-
ganized mines manned chiefly by Anglo-Saxons.
The inability of the immigrants to understand the English
language may have been an obstacle to organization among
them in the early days when they were few. At present,
however, when every European language is spoken in
every mining field, there is no difficulty in rinding a
1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 7, pp. 150-151.
3 Reports of the Industrial Commission, vol. xv., pp. 407-408.
s Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 7, pp. 142, 196.
The Coal Miners 453
sufficient number of English-speaking persons of each
nationality who can represent their countrymen in union
matters. x
There are no available statistics of the distribution of
union membership by nationality. It can be estimated,
however, for the State of Illinois. In 1904, 51,167 out of
54,685 mine workers in that State, i. e. t 93 per cent were
affiliated with the United Mine Workers of America. 2
According to the census of 1900, 78 per cent of the total
number of mine workers in Illinois were of "English-speak-
ing" parentage. 3 Assuming that every one of the latter
class was a member of the organization 1 5 per cent of the
remaining 22 per cent, i.e., 75 per cent of all persons of Slav
and Italian parentage, must likewise have been affiliated
with the organization. In fact, the percentage of organized
Slavs and Italians must have been higher, since their pro-
portion among the coal miners of Illinois had increased from
1900 to 1904. Moreover, it is reasonable to assume that
some of the English-speaking mine workers did not belong
to the union, which would further add to the estimated per-
centage of organized Slavs and Italians. On the other
hand, in Kentucky 99.5 per cent of all mine workers were of
English-speaking parentage, and in Tennessee 99 per cent. 4
But the proportion of union men among them was 2 1 per
cent in Kentucky and 24 per cent in Tennessee. 5
The most significant test of the strength of the organiza-
tion is its recognition by the Steel Trust :
The Slav in the mines is paid from 50 to 90 per cent more per
hour than his countrymen working in the mills and factories of Pitts-
burg, at jobs requiring the same amount of skill and strength. In
many cases the same company is compelled to pay these different rates
for the same class of labor. The great steel mills and glass factories
1 The proportion of English-speaking persons among the Southern
and Eastern European coal miners enumerated by the Immigration Com-
mission varied for different nationalities from 30 to 75 per cent.
Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 6, p. 196, Table 122.
3 Wame, loc. cit., p. 1 1 7. See Appendix, Table XXVII.
< Ibid. sWarne,
454 Immigration and Labor
of the district are all non-union. The companies which own them also
own many of the coal mines of Allegheny and Washington counties.
These are all union mines, and the United States Steel Corporation,
Jones & Laughlin, the Pittsburgh Glass Company, as mine owners, sign
agreements with the unions which provide for an eight-hour day and
a scale of wages almost double what they pay for the same labor in the
manufacturing plants. Prof. John R. Commons has summed up, for
the Pittsburgh Survey, a comparison of the men in the mills with those
in the mines, in the following words:
"Taking everything into account wages, hours, leisure, cost of
living, conditions of work I should say that the common laborer
employed by the steel companies in their mines is 50 to 90 per
cent better off than the same grade of labor employed at their mills
and furnaces; that the semi-skilled labor employed at piece rates is
40 to 50 per cent better off; but among the highest paid labor, the
steel roller and the mine worker are about the same."*
It should be borne in mind that the highest-paid positions,
both in the mines and in the mills, are controlled exclusively
by native Americans or by the old immigrant races, whereas
the unskilled positions are practically all held by Southern
and Eastern Europeans. In the semi-skilled positions, the
English-speaking and the non-English-speaking workmen
meet on common ground. It thus appears that the activity
of jthe union has secured the best terms for the Southern and
Eastern Europeans, and a very substantial improvement for
alTempIoyees where__the_ Southern and Eastern Europeans
arejajactor in the labor situations, whereas in the highest
grades controlled by the English-speaking races, the organ-
ized mine-workers have gained no better terms than those
which the steel companies were willing to offer to the
unorganized steel workers.
It is worthy of note that the Immigration Commission,
while dwelling upon the failure of the United Mine Workers
to extend its control to the bituminous fields of Pennsyl-
vania outside of the Pittsburgh district, has passed in silence
the signal success of the same organization in the anthracite
coal fields, where the same nationalities are employed as in
the bituminous mines of Pennsylvania.
1 Leiserson, loc. cit., pp. 318-319.
The Coal Miners 455
The history of organization in the anthracite coal field
begins as early as 1848. In that year the "Bates Union,"
so-called, was organized. It existed only two years. There
was no organization in the anthracite coal fields until
1868, when the Workingmen's Benevolent Association was
founded. It succeeded in organizing for a while 85
per cent of all mine workers. But in 1871, after an unsuc-
cessful strike, it lost the Northern field, which remained
unorganized for twenty-six years. In the Middle and
Southern fields it led a moribund existence until 1875. For
nine years there was again no organization. From 1884
to 1888 there were first two organizations which in 1887
consolidated into one under the auspices of the Knights of
Labor, which was at that time in the heyday of its triumphs.
But a disastrous strike which lasted from November,
1887, to March, 1888, put an end to the organization of the
anthracite coal miners.
In 1897 the United Mine Workers undertook the organi-
zation of the anthracite mines. Its growth was slow until
1900, when it engaged in its first great strike which was won
after all collieries had been practically tied up for six weeks. x
The strike of 1900 was followed by the great struggle of
1902 which was ended by the award of President Roosevelt's
Anthracite Coal Strike Commission.
, This brief survey shows that all organizations of the
English-speaking workers were short-lived and seldom sur-
vivect~c>ne unsuccessful strike. It is only since the~a3vent~
of the Southern and Eastern Europeans that the union has
taken a firm hold of the industry.
Dr. Roberts, reviewing the history of unionism in the
anthracite coal industry, says :
John Graham Brooks, when he studied the Lattimer riots of 1897,
found on the Hazleton Mountain over a dozen nationalities. He ex-
pressed the conviction that it was a hopeless task to attempt to form
them into a labor organization. Paul de Rousiers, in his essay on
Les Tentatives de Monopolisation de I' Anthracite, expressed a similar
1 Roberts, loc. cit., p. 184.
456 Immigration and Labor
opinion. He compared the present personnel of anthracite employees,
"largely composed of Polanders, Hungarians, and Lithuanians, who are
turbulent and incapable of being advantageously formed into an
association," with the Americans, Germans, and English of 1868, who
so successfully organized the Workingmen's Benevolent Association,
and believed they could not be successfully organized into a labor
organization. Both eminent men have proved to be false prophets.
Thestanchest members of the union are the Slavs, and the organizers of
the~United Mine Workers of America have successfully overcome racial
differences, national antipathies and industrial prejudices, and formed
into one body the fifteen or sixteen nationalities now constituting the
anthracite mining communities. 1
The opinions of those "false prophets" were still reit-
erated after the strikes of 1900 and 1902 by labor men, who
"had learned nothing and forgotten nothing," and were
embodied by the Immigration Commission in its report.
These foreigners, [says Dr. Roberts elsewhere] have proved capable
of forming labor organizations which are more compact and united
than any which ever existed among the various English-speaking
nationalities, who first constituted these communities. It is conceded
by men intimate with the situation throughout the coal fields during
the last strike, that its universality was more due to the Slav than to
any other nationality. There would have been in all probability a
break in the ranks in Schuylkill County had it not been for the firm and
uncompromising stand of the Slavs in favor of the strike. They have
been trained to obedience, and when they organize they move with a
unanimity that is very seldom seen among nations who pride themselves
on personal liberty and free discussion. 3
These lines were written by Dr. Roberts previous to the
strike of 1902. The significance of the latter was that the
other side to the controversy was a trust which was (and is)
in complete control of the whole anthracite coal industry.
The outcome of the contest has been the creation of a demo-
cratic organization of all mine workers to which the trust
cannot deny recognition, with a machinery for fixing wages
and other terms of employment, as well as for the settlement
of disputes.
After twenty years of immigration from Southern and
1 Roberts, loc. ciL, pp. 196-197. Ibid., pp. 171-172.
The Coal Miners 457
Eastern Europe, the coal miners are more strongly organized
than they had ever been before the English-speaking mine
workers relinquished the lower grades of work to the recent
immigrants; the hours of labor have been reduced, wages
have risen, and the majority of the older employees have
advanced on the scale of occupations.
On the other hand, a "small part [of the 'pioneer em-
ployees and their descendants'] consisting of the inert,
unambitious, thriftless element, have remained on the lower
level of the scale of occupations where they are in open com-
petition with the majority of the races of recent immigra-
tion in comparison with whom they are generally considered
less efficient." 1 It is said in their behalf that their anxiety
to be "removed from contact and competition with the
immigrant" has "forced" them "into day or shift work^at
a lower rate of pay than in digging coal." 2 In order to
escape the ruinous competition of the recent immigrant,
the English-speaking miner, it would seem, is willing to
accept lower wages than the immigrant. It may be ques-
tioned whether this small residue of English-speaking mine
workers who are "considered less efficient" than the South-
ern and Eastern Europeans could have succeeded better in
competition with native or English-speaking miners, had
there been no immigration from Southern and Eastern
Europe. Probably the reference to "competition with the
immigrant" is merely a pleonasm, the idea being that the
English-speaking miner is willing to make a financial sacrifice
in order to be "removed from contact with the immigrant."
The objection to the recent immigrant is accordingly in-
spired by pure and simple race prejudice. This is, how-
ever, beside the question, so long as it is maintained that
immigration should be treated "upon economic or business
considerations. ' ' 3
1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. I, pp. 536-537.
2 Ibid., vol. 6, pp. 666-667; vol. 7, p. 222.
3 Recommendations of the Immigration Commission.
CHAPTER XXII
WORK ACCIDENTS
greatest of all the dangers of the new immigration,
which have been discovered by the investigation of the
Immigration Commission, is that their employment in
mines and manufactures jeopardizes the lives of American
wage-earners. The Commission has devoted to the sub-
ject a special chapter in its report on bituminous coal
mines. 1 Its conclusions are summarized by Professors
Jenks and Lauck as follows 2 :
The lack of industrial training and experience of the recent im-
migrant before coming to the United States, together with his illit-
eracy and inability to speak English, has had the effect of exposing the
original employees to unsafe and unsanitary working conditions, or has
1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 6, chapter viii., pp.
209-241; also, pp. 491-492, 543, 651-652; vol. 7, pp. 68-69.
a The Commission is, of course, not responsible officially for the
statement of those authors. But the book is very largely a verbatim
transcript of the most essential portions of the Commission's voluminous
report. On the subject of accidents, the report of the Commission says
in Volume 6:
"The responsibility for accidents rests in most cases with the men
injured . . . they know little or nothing of rock formations, of fire
damp, of the properties of coal dust, and of the handling of explosives
matters about which every coal miner should be thoroughly informed.
To determine whether a piece of slate or -roof is or is not likely to fall
often requires a considerable degree of experience, and the majority
of the Slavs, Magyars, and Italians have not this experience. Another
element of danger is contributed by the fact that few of the recent
immigrants speak or understand English, while almost none are able
to read or write the language. It is probable that the instructions of
the mine bosses and inspectors are, because of this fact, frequently
458
Work Accidents 459
led to the imposition of conditions of employment which the native
American or older immigrant employees have considered unsatisfactory
and in some cases unbearable. When the older employees have found
dangerous and unhealthy conditions prevailing in the mines and manu-
facturing establishments and have protested, the recent immigrant employees^
usually through ignorance of mining or other working methods, have
manifested a willingness to accept the alleged unsatisfactory conditions.
In a large number of cases, the lack of training and experience of the
Southern and Eastern European affects only his own safety. On the
other hand, his ignorant acquiescence in dangerous and unsanitary work-
ing conditions may make the continuance of such conditions possible and
become a menace to a part or to the whole of an operating force of an
industrial establishment. In mining, the presence of an untrained
employee may constitute an element of danger to the entire body of
workmen. There seems to be a direct causal relation between the
extensive employment of recent immigrants in American mines and the
extraordinary increase within recent years in the number of mining
accidents. // is an undisputed fact that the greatest number of accidents
in bituminous coal mines arise from two causes: (i) the recklessness, and
(2) the ignorance and inexperience, of employees. When the lack of
training of the recent immigrant abroad is considered in connection
with the fact that he becomes a workman in the mines immediately
upon his arrival in this country, and when it is recalled that a large
proportion of the new arrivals are not only illiterate and unable to read
any precautionary notices posted in the mines, but also unable to speak
English and consequently without ability to comprehend instructions
intelligently, the inference is plain that the employment of recent immi-
niisunderstood. An inspector, for example, tells an immigrant miner,
in English of course, that his roof needs propping. The miner seems
to understand, but does not, and a fall results. In some mines printed
signs are used to indicate the presence of gas or other peril. These are
quite unintelligible to most of the foreigners, because, through lack of
training, they are unable to recognize the presence of danger, and further,
because of their keenness for earning money, the immigrants are often
willing to work in places where more experienced or more intelligent
men would refuse to work. For the same reasons they will frequently
be satisfied with and accept mine equipment too defective for safety.
. . . The ignorance and inexperience of the workmen of the races of
recent immigration employed in mines are responsible in a large measure
for the high death rate reported. Owing to the large number of factors
affecting the situation, no hard and fast conclusion can be drawn, but
the inference from the data available clearly warrants the assertion
that the employment of immigrant mine workers has a direct bearing
upon mining casualties." (pp. 232-233, 241.)
460 Immigration and Labor
grants has caused a deterioration in working conditions. No complete
statistics have been compiled as to the connection between accidents
and races employed, but the figures available clearly indicate the con-
clusion that there has been a direct relation between the employment
of untrained foreigners and the prevalence of mining casualties. 1
The two causes from which, according to this explanation,
the greatest number of accidents arise, are but the familiar
defenses in an employer's liability case under the common
law: (i) negligence of the injured employee or of a fellow-
servant, (2) assumption of risk by the injured employee.
The Immigration Commission rests its conclusions on
the opinions of State mining officials and experts of the
Federal Government, seemingly supported by an array of
statistical figures. An examination of these authorities,
however, will show that they have merely accepted the
mine operator's point of view without turning their atten-
tion to the technical and the economic side of coal mining
in the United States.
Miss Eastman, in her study of work accidents for the
Pittsburgh Survey, has carefully scrutinized the sources of
the accepted explanation of the causes of work accidents.
In vivid conversational style she thus characterizes the
typical attitude "of those best informed upon the subject" 3 :
"So you have come to Pittsburgh to study accidents, have you?"
says the superintendent, or the claim agent, or the general manager, as
the case may be. "Well, I 've been in this business fifteen years and
I can tell you one thing right now, p5 per cent of our accidents
are due to the carelessness of the man who gets hurt. Why, you simply
would n't believe the things they '11 do. For instance, I remember a
man," and he goes on to relate the most telling incident he knows to
prove his assertion. This is the almost invariable reaction of the
Pittsburgh employer and his representatives to a query about industrial
accidents. And the statements of such men are the chief source of
effective public opinion on the subject in Pittsburgh.*
1 Jenks and Lauck, loc. cit., pp. 189-190.
* Phrase used by the Immigration Commission (Reports, vol. 6, p.
216).
3 Crystal Eastman: Work-Accidents and the Law, p. 84.
Work Accidents 461
The returns of the mine inspectors on the causes of acci-
dents are based upon the results of the coroners' inquests.
Miss Eastman questions the reliability of the evidence
secured at the inquests :
Foremen and fire bosses are required at once to inspect a room where
an accident has occurred, and, if death results, one of them is always
summoned to the inquest. He almost invariably testifies, "I found
plenty of posts in the room." Since it is his business by law to see
that there are plenty of posts in the room, and since the inquest is very
casual, unimpressive, he could hardly be expected to testify otherwise.
Private conversation with miners sometimes brings other information
to light. ... An old Scotch miner of sixty, said . . . that he "had
often seen the foreman and boss hurry to a room where an accident had
happened and fill it with posts, so that when the inspector arrived there
would be plenty of posts on hand." 1 The coroners' records were, as a
rule, meager, sometimes illegible, and almost never clear and satisfactory
in detail. The testimony, moreover, has a tendency to lean to one
side. The witnesses are employees of the company, including almost
always the superior of the man killed. It is to his interest to clear him-
self of all implications; second, to clear his employer. The easiest and
safest way of accomplishing these ends is to blame the dead man.*
Thus, when we read in the reports of the Pennsylvania
Department of Mines for 1907 that "a careful examination
of the reports shows that 332 accidents, or 41.19 per cent,
were due to the carelessness of the victim," 3 this statement
means no more than that the reports which reached the
department "blamed the dead man" in two cases out of
every five. Of course, 41.19 per cent is still short of a
majority, but it is turned into a majority of 62.29 per cent
by omitting "the 273 fatalities of the Naomi and Darr
mines, which were caused by the carelessness of other
persons. ' ' 4 These undefined ' ' other persons ' ' include ' ' offi-
cials in direct charge of the mines." The propriety of
omitting two great mine disasters, which resulted in the
1 Crystal Eastman: Work- Accidents and the Law, p. 39.
a Ibid., p. 85.
* Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 6, p. 216.
* Ibid., p. 216. (Quoted from the report of the Pennsylvania Bureau
of Mines.)
462 Immigration and Labor
loss of 273 lives through the carelessness of " other persons,"
is open to question. 1 Yet that statement of the Pennsyl-
vania report is the only direct statistical evidence in support
of the Commission's conclusion ''that the responsibility
for a majority of the accidents in coal mines rests with the
men injured. This being the case" continues the Com-
mission "it is evident that an inquiry as to the responsi-
bility of a given race for accidents may perhaps best be
answered by showing the extent to which its numbers are
sufferers from accidents.*' 2
Disinterested mining experts, however, do not accept the
apologetic theory of the mine operators as an "undisputed
fact."
At the summer meeting of the Mining Institute of
America, held in 1910, shortly after the Cherry Mine holo-
caust, the causes of mine fires were discussed in a paper,
from which the following is quoted :
In looking over the accounts of some of the mine fires which have
startled the general public more than others, I was forcibly struck with
three of them (Avondale, Hill Farm, and Cherry), especially in the
general aspect at least of the similarity of their cause and effect, and of
the cycle of years between each. The Avondale Mine was a single-
shaft opening. The structural material used in the shaft lining, parti-
tions, derrick, and breaker, was composed of wood. The fire originated
at the bottom of the shaft, caused by the carelessness of the furnace man
in lighting the furnace fire, thereby setting fire to the wooden partition,
etc. This fire occurred in the month of September, 1869, and in it 109
lives were lost. As you remember, no adequate means were at hand
with which to extinguish the fire. . . . The Cherry Mine'disaster . . .
originated at the No. 2 seam landing of the escapement shaft and was
1 Dr. John Randolph Haynes, Special Commissioner on Mining
Accidents of the State of California, in a paper read at the last annual
meeting of the American Association for Labor Legislation, at Washing-
ton, D. C, questioned the independence of State mining inspectors:
" They do not wish to lose their positions, which they are very likely
to do if they annoy the owners of coal mines, who very commonly
own the railroads which carry the coal, and enjoy intimate relations
with banks and other corporations that exercise quiet but effective
power in State politics." "A Federal Mining Commission," American
Labor Legislation Review, vol. ii, No. I, p. 145. * Ibid., p. 233.
Work Accidents 463
caused by the ignition of hay from the flame of a crude, improvised, unpro-
tected illuminating contrivance. The flame from the hay was commu-
nicated to the overabundance of wood supporting material at the landing,
and adding thereto the inadequate means available to successfully deal
with afire of such magnitude, with the ill-judged actions of the inexperi-
enced men at the bottom, the trap was complete and the men caught
therein, so we have now to record the greatest and most disastrous mine
fire in the history of the coal-mining industry of this country, so far as
the loss of life is concerned. Two hundred and sixty -eight lives were
lost in the Cherry Mine disaster.
It has always appeared to me that the causes of mine fires were so
apparent to the thoughtful and intelligent mining men that their occur-
rence and their ill effects were unnecessary. . . . The prevention of
mine fires lies in the removal of the causes, which are well known, and the
knowledge of means and methods to be employed for their elimination,
being within the range and scope of the ability of the ordinary mine
official, the wonder is that they do happen. To secure freedom from
mine fires I believe lies almost entirely within the intelligently directed
administrative powers of the mine management, and in my opinion if the
mine officials are careful, alert, and capable, immunity from them can
be secured. . . .
Every coal mine should consist of two separate openings and one of
them should be used exclusively for an escapement. . . . The escape-
ment shaft, if over one hundred feet in depth, should be equipped with
safe and efficient hoisting apparatus. The structure at the hoisting
shaft should be built of steel, and the engine and power house should
be built of concrete, brick, or masonry; the shaft linings to be of con-
crete, and the shaft bottoms, if needing supports for the roof, should be of
steel I beams, concrete, or brickwork; doors between main shaft and
escapement shaft should be so located as to be easily accessible to the
workmen from all parts of the mine by convenient traveling ways, other
than those which lead directly to the bottom of the hoisting shaft;
mule stables, if not entirely prohibited in the mines, should be built
of incombustible material and illuminated with protected incandescent
electric lights; all oil, electric, and gasoline pump houses should be kept
free from combustible material, and be built of concrete, brickwork, or
masonry. When the main workings pf a mine have advanced five
thousand feet in length and the remaining extent of the property and
the other conditions warrant it, an auxiliary escapement opening should
be provided and equipped with efficient and necessary machinery; a water
system under sufficient pressure . . . should be installed at all important
mines, . . . and all parts and connections kept in first-class condition
and ready for use at all times; all electric cables or wires, etc., should be
well supported and insulated, and not allowed to come in contact with
464 Immigration and Labor
combustible material. . . . A telephone system should be provided at
important mines so that communication can be had between persons
outside, and all important stations inside of them; refuge chambers,
efficiently constructed and equipped and conveniently located, should
be provided in all large and dangerous mines.
Mines should be provided with a powerful reversible fan, and it should
be placed on a separate shaft, cased in steel, and fitted with relief doors. 1
These details have been quoted in order to show that
effective prevention of accidents in mines presupposes a care-
fully planned equipment involving considerable expense.
A separate roadway for miners means additional tunneling
work. Two separate openings for every coal mine cost
twice as much as one. Refuge chambers require additional
excavation and construction work. Concrete or brick is
more expensive than wood, which is generally used as
structural material in coal mines. A powerful reversible
fan placed on a separate shaft cased in steel is another item
of expense ; so is a water system under sufficient pressure,
a telephone system, etc. All this is well known to mine
superintendents, "but they are pressed for dividends by the
presidents and their companies; the presidents are not
heartless, but they are pressed for dividends by their
directors who . . . are interested in the mines only* as a
matter of profit." 2
The dilemma of the mine superintendent was set forth
in a paper on "Mine Accident Prevention," which was
recently read before the Alabama Coal Operators' Associa-
tion by Mr. J. J. Rutledge, a geologist and mining engineer
of many years' experience, who has made his way from the
bottom up, beginning as assistant mine foreman and advan-
cing to the positions of mine manager and superintendent.
He has visited many of the important coal mines in this
country, and has been brought into close personal contact
with mine foremen and superintendents. He is of the
opinion that "the person who is the greatest factor in the pre-
'"Mine Fires," by Thomas K. Adams. Mines and Minerals, De-
cember, 1910. a Haynes, loc. cit., p. 145.
Work Accidents 465
vention of mine accidents is the mine foreman or manager.
. . . He should never cancel any requisition for supplies
that are absolutely required. Perhaps the greatest abuse of
this sort is the cancellation of supplies which are required to
make ventilation more effective." But it is not unusual
that the foreman or manager "is handicapped or hindered
in his work by the failure to receive proper supplies or equip-
ment from his superiors." That he might "be encouraged
to demand the same and . . . be insured against possible loss
of employment by reason of his making such a demand . . .
the law should back him up in making such demands." 1
It is an undisputed fact that poor and defective methods
of ventilation largely increase the danger of gas explosion :
"An adequate air supply is not only required as a safeguard
against the accumulation of dangerous gases, but is pre-
requisite to the maintenance of the health of miners and
animals employed underground." 2
But the mine manager who is not "insured against pos-
sible loss of employment" will take his chances and cancel
requisitions for "supplies that are absolutely required."
These conditions naturally breed a spirit of carelessness
among mine officials, which is, according to expfert opinion,
"first among the causes of the high fatality rate in Ameri-
can mines." Such was the conclusion reached by three
European government experts, among them the Belgian
Inspector-General of Mines, who made an examination of
American mines upon the invitation of the United States
Government. By way of illustration, one of these experts
related the following incident:
While passing through a mine in West Virginia with a party carrying
both naked and safety lamps, he lifted his lamp toward the roof to test
for gas and was surprised to find it present in very dangerous quantities.
Turning to the mine superintendent, he remarked, " You should not
1 J. J. Rutledge: " Mine Accident Prevention." Mines and Minerals,
December, 1910.
* F. L. Hoffman: "Fatal Accidents in Coal Mines." Bulletin of the
United States Bureau of Labor, No. 90, p. 471.
466 Immigration and Labor
allow naked lamps to be used in this mine." "Oh," replied the super-
intendent, easily, "we are installing a ventilating system that in a
few months will rid the mine entirely of gas and render the use of safety
lamps unnecessary." "Before that time arrives," protested the Euro-
pean expert, "your mine will be blown up." And this is precisely
what happened. The naked lamps were not excluded, the mine was
blown up a few weeks later, and hundreds of miners lost their lives.
... No European mining superintendent would dream of taking such
chances as he foolishly took at the cost of so many lives; and, if he were
so inclined, the government inspector would not permit him to do so. 1
Mine explosions and mine fires impress the imagination
by the appalling destruction of lives in a single accident.
A great many more lives, however, are sacrificed under
ordinary circumstances in every-day accidents, which find
their way only into the statistical reports of State mine
inspectors, being too common to be noticed by the news-
papers.
Every advance in mining engineering within recent years
has had the effect of increasing the risks of the miner in the
United States. One of the original dangers in underground
coal mines is from falls of roof, which are the result, at
least in part, of insufficient timbering. This risk has been
considerably increased by the use of high explosives. 2
With the installation of improved mining machinery, ex-
posure to unguarded machines has been added to other
perils of mining. 3 Electrocution threatens the miner as a
result of the application of electricity to mining. The chief
inspector of coal mines for Pennsylvania gave warning of
this danger in his report for 1901 :
Electricity in various forms has been the cause of many of the
deaths in soft coal mines, either from the men coming in contact with
the electric trolley wire, or with the electric wire that carries the power
to the electric cutting machines. In my opinion, separate travelling
ways should be provided for the workman, when the haulage is done by
electricity.*
'Haynes, loc. cit., p. 143. * Eastman, loc. cit., pp. 38-39.
Hoffman, loc. cit., pp. 476-477- 4 Ibid., pp. 478-479.
Work Accidents 467
When this recommendation was adopted in one Colorado
mine ten years later, the Engineering and Mining Journal
found the fact of sufficient interest as news to print the
following letter from a correspondent:
This mine has introduced a decided novelty in the form of a separate
roadway for the miners to enter and leave the workings, thus doing away
with the necessity of their travelling along the haulage-ways, and pro-
viding an additional avenue of escape. in time of danger. 1
The displacement of the mule by the cable car or electric
motor has been the source of a new danger to the life of the
miner. Many miners are killed by the running trains of
coal. This is, of course, clearly the result of their own
negligence: why do they travel in the haulage- way? The
fact is, however, that the man-entry and track are dark
from beginning to end and low, so that one would have to
travel in a stooping position all the way. The track is cov-
ered with loose slate and big chunks of coal. Therefore the
miners prefer the haulage entry, where there are occasional
lights, a smooth path to walk, and a higher roof. 2 Most of
these risks are humanly preventable, 3 and their continuance
is due to economic conditions beyond the control of the
mine worker, even with a perfect command of English.
The economic cause of the high rate of fatalities in
American coal mines was squarely stated by Dr. J. A.
Holmes, Director of the Bureau of Mines, in an address
delivered at the annual meeting of the National Civic
Federation in New York, November 23, 1909:
There can be no permanent industry without reasonable profits.
It is unjust and irrational that in this great and essential branch of
industry reasonable profits or even the payment of operating expenses
should be dependent upon met'wds involving unnecessary sacrifice of
human life. . . . Ruinous competition exists not only between the
operators in the same fields, but between the operators of one field as
against those in another field or in another state where different mining
laws and regulations are in force. This competition is ... forcing
1 The Engineering and Mining Journal, January 14, 1911, p. 135.
2 Eastman, loc. tit., pp. 38-39. a Ibid., p. 46.
468 Immigration and Labor
even the larger operator to mine coal under conditions which he cannot
approve, but from which he finds no escape. . . . Each must live (or
succumb) by underbidding the other, which he can do only through
following the wasteful and unsafe mining methods which prevail in
this country to-day in spite of the desire of every operator, to improve
them. The American mine owner is as humane as the mine owner of
any other country, and he would like to follow every practice and use
every appliance for safety to be found in Great Britain, or France, or
Belgium, or Germany, or elsewhere, but he pays his miners higher
wages and, at the same time, receives for his coal at the mine half the
price received for similar coal by the operator in those countries. . . .
The ruinous competitive system upon which coal mining in the United
States is based at the present time should be changed and the price
paid for coal at the mines should be such as will permit and secure
safe and efficient mining mining unaccompanied by either this large
loss of life or waste of resources, mining which can have due regard
not only to the safety, but also to the health and comfort of the men
who toil underground. x
Thus in the opinion of the head of the bureau created
for the purpose of safeguarding the lives of the mine work-
ers, "unnecessary sacrifice of human life" is conditioned
by competition among mine operators.
According to the inspector-general of mines of Belgium
(quoted above), "similar dangerous conditions once existed
in France and Belgium, now the safest coal-mining countries
in the world/* but they were removed by stringent legisla-
tion and by an effective enforcement of the law. 2 In
Europe wooden shafts are not permitted, the maximum
amount of explosives to be used in one blast is limited by
law, all machinery must be properly guarded, etc. Dr.
Holmes believes that the adoption of similar regulations in
the United States would prevent three fourths of the present
'Joseph A. Holmes: "Coal Mine Accidents and their Prevention,"
Thirty- Fifth Annual Report of the Chief Inspector of Mines of the State
of Ohio, 1909, pp. 126-128.
a Haynes, loc. cit., pp. 148, 150-151. Clarence Hall and Walter O.
Snelling: "Coal Mine Accidents: their Causes and Prevention." Bul-
letin of the United States Geological Survey, No. 333, p. 6. Eastman, loc.
cit., p. 46. Hoffman, loc. cit., pp. 476-477.
Work Accidents
469
loss of life, 1 which implies that "the greatest number cf
accidents in bituminous coal mines" (contrary to the view
accepted by the immigration Commission), do not arise
from "the recklessness, ignorance, and inexperience of
employees."
This opinion is derived from the statistics of accidents in
the United States and foreign countries. The comparative
rates of fatal accidents in American and foreign coal mines
are shown graphically in Diagram XXV., reproduced from
DIAGRAM XXV.
4
3.5
3.
3
-
2J5
2.1
3
2
1.93 |.
3
1.71
1.5
to
m
1.6
1.46
1
as
NITED STAT
1
ERMANY
*J
DC
i
-j
1
t
USTRIA
1 1 1 :i 4
iBblil
QC lo 1^- let <*j|
^
*
2
5
*f
2 tE 25 li a
XXV. Fatal accident rates in coal mines per 1000 workmen employed
in the United States and foreign countries.
the recent study of the Minnesota Bureau of Labor on the
subject of industrial accidents. * The rate of fatal accidents
in the United States is thrice as high as in France and
Belgium, which shows that two thirds of the fatal accidents
in the American mines could be prevented. Considering,
1 Haynes, loc. tit., p. 140.
Twelfth Biennial Report of the Bureau of Labor, Industries and Com-
merce of the State of Minnesota,, 1909-10, p. 203.
470 Immigration and Labor
however, that the natural conditions in American mines
are more favorable for the safe extraction of coal than in
any other country in the world, x Dr. Holmes's estimate that
three fourths of all mining accidents are due to absence
of proper precautions is quite conservative.
The difference between the accident rate in the United
States and those in Austria and Russia deserves special
attention, a large percentage of American mine workers
being Austrian and Russian immigrants. The American
fatality rate is twice as high as the Austrian, Of course,
the popular explanation is, that the Austrians and Russians
employed in American mines do not understand the English
language, whereas in their home countries thev work under
the direction of foremen who speak their own languages.
In so far as the failure of foreign-born mine workers to
understand warnings and instructions given in the English
language may affect the rate of accidents in American mines,
the difference is clearly chargeable to the carelessness, not of
the mine workers, but of the mine operators who fail to pro-
vide competent foremen speaking the languages of their em-
ployees. In Prussia, where a large and growing percentage
of the coal miners are Poles, 2 the fatal accident rate is never-
theless 37 per cent below the average for the United States. J
1 United States Geological Survey, Bulletin No. 333, p. 13. The
European experts above referred to "unanimously reported that the
natural conditions in American mines were much better than in Europe.
They found, for example, that up to the present time Americans were
not operating in the very deep levels of four thousand feet and lower,
not uncommon in Europe, where the task of supplying fresh air and
getting rid of dangerous gases is very difficult. In America, also, only
thick seams more easily ventilated are, as yet, generally worked. . . .
Of late years, with the gradual exhaustion of higher levels, of the thicker
seams, and of the supplies of supporting timbers, conditions have come
to resemble more nearly those found in Europe, and it is for this reason
that the percentage of fatalities has so rapidly increased in the past
decade." Haynes, loc. cit. t pp. 141-142.
* See Chapter VIII., p. 182. The average for 1900-1904 in Prussia
was 2.06 per 1000 employees.
United States Geological Survey, Bulletin No. 333, p. 8.
Work Accidents 471
This comparison may be pursued further. If it is true
that the rate of fatalities in the United States is increased
by the employment of immigrants from Southern and
Eastern Europe, it may be expected that the rate will be
higher in those States where the percentage of Southern
and Eastern Europeans is higher among the coal miners.
The comparative numbers of lives lost per thousand em-
ployees and per one million tons of coal mined in the prin-
cipal mining States during the twenty-year period 1889-
1908 are shown on Diagram XXVI, the distance from left
to right representing the percentage of persons of Slavic
and Italian parentage among the miners in I9OO. 1 These
States produced, in 1908, 86.6 per cent of the total output
of bituminous coal in the United States. 2
We find the highest rate of fatal accidents per one million
tons mined, in Oklahoma, with 14 per cent of Southern and
Eastern European mine workers; next follow Tennessee
and Alabama, with I per cent and 2 per cent of Southern
and Eastern Europeans respectively. On the other hand,
in Pennsylvania with 36 per cent, and Illinois with 22
per cent, the rate of accidents is much lower, and ap-
proximately the same as in Ohio with 9 per cent, and
Indiana with 5.5 per cent. The course of the other curve
is the same: West Virginia, Alabama, and Tennessee, with
small percentages of Southern and Eastern European mine
workers, have higher fatality rates per one thousand em-
ployees than Pennsylvania and Illinois with much larger
percentages of Southern and Eastern Europeans.
1 For rates of fatal accidents cf. Hoffman, loc cit., p. 452; the percent-
ages of miners of Southern and Eastern European parentage were
computed from XII. Census Report on Occupations, Table 41. The
figures are given in the Appendix, Table XXVII. The census classifica-
tion of breadwinners by occupation, nativity, and state makes no distinc-
tion between coal miners and metalliferous miners. This comparison
accordingly comprises only such States in which there are no metalli-
ferous mines, or the number of metalliferous miners is negligible, com-
pared with the number of coal miners.
3 Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1910, Table 120, pp. 208-209.
II
Si
sis
1
8.3
472
Work Accidents 473
These comparisons are not invalidated by the increase
of the proportion of Southern and Eastern Europeans among
the coal miners since 1900. The investigation of the Immi-
gration Commission in 1900 found 64.3 per cent of Southern
and Eastern Europeans among the coal miners of Penn-
sylvania, while the official statistics for West Virginia in
1908 showed 28.9 per cent of the same races 1 ; and yet the
average fatal accident rate per one thousand employees or
per one million tons in West Virginia was much higher
than in Pennsylvania.
The Immigration Commission lays great stress on the
fact that the percentage of fatalities among the foreign-
speaking miners in those two States is relatively higher than
among the English-speaking employees. This difference,
however, proves nothing without a further classification
of both language groups by occupation. The distribution
of the English-speaking and non-English-speaking mine
workers on the scale of occupations is not uniform, and there
is a wide range of variation in the degree of risk incident
to each occupation. The influence of the first factor will
be clear from the following. Machine runners and car
loaders work side by side in the mine. The machine runner
is the man who runs the mining machinery necessarily a
skilled miner; the car loader is a common laborer. And
yet we find that in 1899-1908 the proportion of native white
among machine runners who lost their lives in West Vir-
ginia was 80.8 per cent, while the proportion of Southern
and Eastern Europeans among car loaders killed was 48.4
per cent; on the other hand, the proportion of Southern
and Eastern Europeans among machine runners killed was
only 6.4 per cent, while the proportion of native white
among car loaders killed was 24.3 per cent. 2 It would be
absurd to infer from these figures that the Southern and
Eastern Europeans were more experienced and more careful
1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 6, p. 226, Table 140; p.
228, Table 143.
> Jloffnjan, he cit., p. 640.
474
Immigration and Labor
than the native white, when the truth is that there are few
Southern and Eastern Europeans among the machine
runners and few native white among the car loaders. In-
asmuch, however, as there are several loaders to one machine
runner, more loaders are killed than machine runners. The
effect of these arithmetical aberrations upon the general
average is to swell the ratio of Southern and Eastern
Europeans to the total of fatal accidents.
The effect of the nature of the risk upon fatal accidents
by lace and nativity is shown in Table 131.
TABLE 131.
NUMBER AND PER CENT DISTRIBUTION OF FATAL ACCIDENTS IN COAL
MINES OF WEST VIRGINIA BY PRINCIPAL CAUSES AND NATIVITY OF
PERSONS KILLED, 1899-1908, AND PER CENT DISTRIBUTION OF
EMPLOYEES BY NATIVITY, I9OO. 1
Race or nativity
Per cent of
employees
Falling coal,
slate, etc.
Explosions
Other causes 2
Number
s
8
1
Number
Per cent
Number
Per cent
Native white
46.3
21.8
3-o
28.9
392
207
68
285
41.2
21.8
7-1
29.9
246
130
59
387
30.0
15-8
7-1
47.1
194
84
8
61
55-9
24.2
2-3
17-6
Negro
Northern and
Western Europe. . .
Eastern and Southern
Europe
Total
IOO.O
952
IOO.O
822
100.0
347
100.0
If the "relative number of fatalities among the employees
of a given race or group of races" can "serve as a valuable
indication of the extent to which the high death-rate in the
mines is to be attributed to the employment of men by
1 Bulletin of the Bureau of Labor, No. 90, Table XX., p. 646. Reports
of the Immigration Commission, vol. 6, p.~228, Table 143.
* Cars (inside and outside) , motors and machinery, electrocution and
falling into shafts.
Work Accidents 475
that race or group, " J then the following conclusions logically
follow from the preceding table:
1 . While the recent immigrants contribute no more than
their proportionate share of fatalities from falling coal,
slate, etc., the high death-rate from explosions is attribut-
able to them. On the other hand native Americans con-
tribute less than their quota of accidents from these causes.
2. The older immigrants from Northern and Western
Europe contribute twice their share of fatalities from falls
of roofs and explosions, which indicates that the employ-
ment of older immigrants is a menace to the safety of the
men inside the mines.
3. The native white contribute more than their quota
of fatalities from cars, motors, machinery, and contact with
electric wires, whereas the Southern and Eastern Europeans
contribute considerably less than their quota, which indi-
cates that the high death-rate from those causes is at-
tributable to the employment of men of native American
stock.
4. The replacement of native Americans by Southern
and Eastern European immigrants who apparently show
greater aptitude for handling complicated modern machin-
ery than native Americans, would tend to reduce the fatality
rate from cars, motors, machinery, and electric shocks.
On the other hand the displaced American mechanics
could be employed to advantage as common laborers in
the mines, which would tend to reduce the fatal accident
rate from falling roofs and explosions.
The palpable absurdity of these conclusions proves that
the premises from which they are deduced are untenable.
The low percentage of Southern and Eastern Europeans
among the sufferers from accidents due to machinery,
motors, etc., merely indicates that they do not come in
contact with these death-dealing agencies as often as
Americans. Similarly, the lower ratio of native white
among the sufferers from falling roofs and explosions is
1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 6, p. 233.
476 Immigration and Labor
attributable to the fact that a large proportion among them
are employed in supervisory positions, where they are not
exposed to the ordinary risks incident to working under-
ground.
It is sought to deduce a causal connection between the
increase of the fatal accident rate and the employment of
recent immigrants from their ignorance of mining conditions
which exposes them to greater danger. If this be so, it is
an argument, not against immigration, but against the
development of the coal mining industry. It is evident that
if the mining industry is to grow apace with the development
of the country, new men must continually be engaged. No
one is born with mining experience, even in the United
States, and there is no other place where mining experience
can be gained except in a mine. The danger resulting from
allowing inexperienced men, whether native or foreign-
born, to work in a coal mine merely emphasizes the need
of providing by law for the employment of a sufficient
proportion of experienced miners to supervise the work of
new employees. x So dangerous, however, are the working
conditions in American mines that, according to Mr.
Hoffman, "mine experience, even of considerable length,
is not necessarily a protective factor." 2 His opinion rests
upon a classification of accidents by occupation and length
of experience. It appears that in every occupation the
majority of those who were killed in West Virginia in 1899-
1 Says Mr. John Laing, chief of the West Virginia Department of
Mines, in a letter to the Immigration Commission: "In our large mines
where in the past labor was turned loose to shoot coal, load coal, and
care for themselves, we now have an officer known as 'assistant mine
foreman* employed to every thirty-five men, who works in the mine
and whose specific duty is to see that all coal is properly mined, that
all places are timbered, that a system of ventilation is properly brought
forward, etc., before a miner be permitted to do blasting of any
kind." Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 6, p. 238.
3 "It is significant," says Mr. Hoffman, "that there should have
been 43 deaths of men who had been at work from 10-14 years,
13 deaths of men with 15-19 years of mine experience and 1 1 deaths of
men with 20 or more years' experience." Loc. cit., p. 485.
Work Accidents
477
1908 had an experience of not less than one year, and in
some occupations one of more than five years, e. g., fire
bosses 100 per cent; track layers 60.8 per cent; machine
runners 59.5 per cent, etc. Among the miners, the most
numerous and exposed class, 39.7 per cent had an experience
of over five years. x
The preceding classification deals with length of experi-
ence, without regard to race or nationality. It might be
argued that the Southern and Eastern Europeans are handi-
capped by ignorance of the English language even after
years of employment in the mines and possibly swell the
numbers of victims with long experience. This supposition
is dismissed by the West Virginia statistics in which the
accidents are classified by nativity and length of experience,
as shown in Table 132:
TABLE 132.
NUMBER AND PER CENT OF TOTAL ACCIDENTS TO COAL MINERS, CLASSIFIED
BY NATIVITY AND LENGTH OF EXPERIENCE IN WEST VIRGINIA,
1899-1908. 3
Numbe
r
Per cent
Length of experience
English-
speaking
white
Southern and
Eastern
European
1
i!
IP
Southern and
Eastern
Europeans
!
Under I year
124
ISO
66
18 i
24. 4
22.8
15 years
221
^06
IJC
\2 2
*q~4
40.6
1Q.8
14.1
1 6O
1 08
4Q.7
i^y.w
26.O
^7.4 '
Total
686
616
280
IOO O
IOO.O
IOO.O
This table shows that experience of the mine workers
counts for very little in fatal accidents: one half of all
English-speaking mine workers had had an experience of
1 Hoffman, loc. cit., Table XVII., p. 643,
d., Table XIX., p. 645.
478 Immigration and Labor
more than five years when they lost their lives. Of the
Southern and Eastern Europeans killed, one fourth had
worked more than five years in the mines and three fourths
more than one year. The smaller percentage of Southern
and Eastern Europeans who lost their lives after an experi-
ence of more than five years cannot be taken as proof that
inexperience was the cause of death in all other cases: it
must be borne in mind that most of the Southern and East-
ern European miners in West Virginia are recent immigrants,
who for this arithmetical reason alone must contribute a
larger number to the death roll of persons with brief experi-
ence. If it is sought to explain the prevalence of more
recent immigrants among the victims of accidents by their
negligence, due to inexperience, it must follow as a corollary
that the higher percentage of miners of long experience
among the English-speaking victims proves them to be
twice as careless or as ignorant as the Southern and Eastern
Europeans. This assumption does not agree, however,
with the fact that the percentage of recent employees among
the victims of accidents is approximately the same for
every language or race group. It is clear that the knowl-
edge of the English language gives the new mine worker
scarcely greater immunity from accident than that which
the law of chance allows to the non-English-speaking miner.
The cause of accidents in coal mines is not philological,
but technological.
Withal, it is an undeniable fact that the fatal accident
rate has increased in the bituminous coal mines of the
United States within the last twenty years, simultaneously
with the increasing numbers of Slavs and Italians employed
in the mines. This coincidence is accepted as sufficient
proof that the increasing employment of Southern and
Eastern Europeans in coal mines has been the cause of the
increase in the fatal accident rate. This explanation is
contradicted, however, by the sfatistics of accidents in
the anthracite coal mines of Pennsylvania, for which there
are data going as far back as 1870. In 1909, 60 per cent
I
479
480 Immigration and Labor
of the inside employees in the anthracite mines were of
the non-English-speaking races. 1 As shown on Diagram
XXVII, 2 the greatest relative numbers of fatal accidents
were recorded back in 1870-1874, when the employees
were all English-speaking. The lowest rate per one million
tons mined is reported for the year 1903, and the next
lowest for the year 1909.
In the face of this fact, the increase in the number of
recent immigrant employees cannot stand as an explanation
of the increase of the accident rate in bituminous mines.
The European mining experts, mentioned before, lay stress
upon the " gradual exhaustion of higher levels, of the thicker
seams, and of the supplies of supporting timbers, . . .
and it is for this reason (they hold) that the percentage of
fatalities has so rapidly increased in the past decade." 3
No doubt "contributory negligence" on the part of the
Southern and Eastern European may figure as a factor in
many accidents. It is claimed, e. g., by American and
English-speaking miners, that the lives of the mine workers
are endangered by the carelessness of the recent immigrants
whose "desire . . . for large earnings . . . leads them to
neglect to take the proper measures . . . relative to tim-
bering and other precautions, for the reason that these
measures require the loss of time from their productive
work and the consequent decrease in earnings." 4 This
claim is nothing but the outworn common-law defence of
"negligence of fellow-servant," in an employer's liability
action. From the modern point of view the employer's
duty to furnish his employees a safe place of work is not
discharged by leaving the necessary timbering to be done
by volunteers for the common good without extra compen-
sation. It is his duty to hire special men for that work and
to keep the mine safe at his own expense. Be it as it may,
1 Report of the Department of Mines of Pennsylvania, 1909, Part I.
pp. 25-26. a The figures will be found in the Appendix, Table XXVIII.
* Haynes, loc. cit., p. 142.
* Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 6, p. 652.
Work Accidents 481
it is well to remember, however, that in those days when
there were no "ignorant foreigners" to whom the responsi-
bility for mine accidents could be shifted, it was the "reck-
lessness" of the English-speaking miners 1 that was to
blame. As far back as 1875, a Pennsylvania mine inspector
said in his report: "I am sorry to have to report that a
majority of the accidents that occur in the coal mines are
the result of recklessness of the workmen themselves." 2
This comment was as general in the early reports of the
Pennsylvania state mine inspectors, according to Dr.
Roberts, as in the recent reports quoted by the Immigration
Commission. It is evident that an American farmer boy
who for the first time goes down into a mine is as incapable
of a proper appreciation of the dangers of mining as a recent
Slav immigrant. But even an experienced miner faced
every day of his life with the "one universal characteristic"
of American mining conditions "the criminal disregard of
the considerations of safety" 3 at length comes to feel that
"a man may as well pass in his checks that way as any
other." 4 If he is to continue as a miner, he must develop
a frame of mind akin to that of a soldier in war-time. While
carelessness on the part of the miners may be a contri-
butory cause in many accidents, the "carelessness" itself is,
as Dr. Roberts put it a "psychological effect of accidents. " s
In the iron and steel mills there is the same disposition
as in coal mining to shift the responsibility for accidents to
the ignorance of the "Hunkie." Speaking of the "per-
sonal factor" in industrial accidents, Miss Eastman sub-
ordinates it to "the pressure and speed at which the plant
is run, an expression of the employ er's direct financial
interest in the output."
One of the older and wiser mill superintendents in the Pittsburgh
District told me [says she], that the one greatest cause of danger in
1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, p. 232.
Roberts, loc. cit., p. 154. * Haynes, loc. cit. t p. 148.
* Words of a miner quoted from the report of a Pennsylvania mine
inspector, Roberts, loc. cit. t p. 154. s Ibid,
482 Immigration and Labor
the steel mills is the tremendous rush of the work. "In the mills in
England," he said, "they begin to work about 6, stop at 8:30 for forty-
five minutes for the men to get breakfast; stop again at I for an hour
for the men to get dinner, and stop again at 5 130 for half an hour. At
these periods everything stops. The machinery is quiet. This is the
reason why the English mills do not produce as much steel in the same
length of time as the American mills. Here the machinery never stops.
Another shift is always ready and waiting to step into the place of the shift
that is leaving. Not a moment is lost. If a mill stops three minutes
for repairs, or for any other cause, a detailed report of this must be
made by the man in charge. If this happens two or three times under
one man, the matter will be taken up with a question as to his efficiency.
Under this kind of a drive, how can anybody be careful? "
When we read then, of a man who went up to make repairs without
stopping the crane, or of a man who tried to throw a belt without slow-
ing down the shaft, we must not lay the resulting accident unquestion-
ingly to his own personal, ill-considered haste. Perhaps he was but a
part of a great machine going too fast for safety. Every man in the
process must keep the pace of the whole. He can no more go his own
gait than a spoke in a wheel can go its own gait. *
But the Southern and Eastern European is charged with
more than ignorant carelessness or passive acquiescence
in dangerous conditions, the very existence of such con-
ditions "has been due to ... his tractability or sub-
serviency":
When the older employees have found unsafe and insanitary working
conditions prevailing in the mines and industrial establishments, and
have protested, the recent immigrant employees, usually through ignor-
ance of mining or other working methods, have manifested a willing-
ness to accept the alleged unsatisfactory condition. 2
As an illustration of such ineffective "protests," the
commission cites a case where an American miner was
discharged for refusing to work in a chamber which was in
need of timbering, and was replaced by a foreigner. 3 Similar
examples could, doubtless, be multiplied at will, considering
the general disregard for safety in coal mines. Such indi-
1 Eastman, loc. tit., pp. 64, 85, 94.
9 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. I, p. 501.
*Ibid. t vol. 6, p. 241.
Work Accidents
483
vidual objections, however, scarcely amount to a "protest."
If the English-speaking miners had shown a disposition to
"protest" against dangerous working conditions, it cer-
tainly must have found some expression in their strikes.
We learn that during the twenty-year period from 1881
to 1900, there occurred 2515 strikes in the coal and coke
industry, involving 14,575 establishments. Of the latter
number there were nine (p) in which strikes were declared
against dangerous working conditions. 1 These figures con-
clusively prove that the American miners made no concerted
protest against dangerous working conditions even in the
early *8o's, when the Southern and Eastern Europeans
employed in the mines were but a handful.
To what extent,if at all, individual objectionsof the "older
employees" would have been effective in advancing the
introduction of better working conditions, in the absence
of Southern and Eastern European immigrant employees,
can be judged by a comparison with another extra-hazard-
ous industry, viz., steam railroads, in which the proportion
of non-English-speaking employees is very small.*
1 Sixteenth Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor, pp. 352-353,
480-481. The objects for which these strikes were ordered were as
follows:
Number of estab-
lishments
Succeeded
For better ventilation
A
i
The same and for repair of machinery
For change of machinery
I
I
I
Against use of electrical mining machines
without jacketed motors . ...
I
For company to have roadway in mine
sprinkled
I
For enforcement of mining laws concerning
the placing of timbers . .
I
I
Total
According to the census of 1900, the ratio of non-English-speaking
workmen employed on the railroads was only 7.5 per cent. Reports of
(he Immigration Commission, vol. i, pp. 821-829.
484 Immigration and Labor
There is a marked distinction in this respect between
different classes of railroad employees. The trainmen are
as a rule, English-speaking, the Slavs, Hungarians, and
Italians being employed mainly on construction work.
In Diagram XXVIII. are plotted the accident rates per 1000
employees in bituminous and anthracite coal mines and on
railroads, for the twenty-year period from 1889 to 1908. l
The accident rate for all railway employees is not much
lower than the rate for coal miners. But the fatal accident
rate among trainmen is a great deal higher and has been
steadily increasing since 1894.
The number of accidents resulting in personal injuries
to railroad employees is still greater. In 1891-1909 it
varied from one in every thirty-three, to one in every
seventeen employees. The ratio of injured trainmen
varied during the same period from one in every twelve,
to one in eight. It stood at the last figure in 1906-1908
and declined to one in nine during the year 1909.* This
means that in nine years' service every trainman has a
probability of one hundred per cent to sustain personal
injuries.
The ratio of native Americans to all railroad employees
killed in work accidents, according to available informa-
tion, was 72 per cent in the Pittsburgh district, 3 and
62.8 per cent in Illinois; the proportion of those who suffered
personal injuries in Illinois was 66.6 per cent. 4 The
trainmen who run the greatest risk of death, or personal
injury, are all English-speaking and cannot be replaced by
non-English-speaking immigrants. Strike statistics show
that the employees in all industries combined under the
head of "transportation" struck for 212 different causes
1 The figures on which this diagram is based arc given in the Appendix,
Table XXIX.
a Statistical Abstract of the United Stales, 1910, Table 181, p. 284.
Eastman, loc. cit. t p. 14, Table 3; number of native Americans
89, out of a total of 123 killed in accidents.
* Fifteenth Biennial Report of the Bureau of Labor Statistics of Illinois,
pp. 161, 251.
a
fi
- g
"\W -r
486 Immigration and Labor
in 3436 establishments, but the number of establishments
in which strikes were declared against unsafe machinery and
other dangers incident to employment was only seven. 1
This comparison may be extended to all classes of em-
ployment, loss of life and limb being an incident rather
than an accident of modern industry. The Sixteenth
Annual Report of the United States Commissioner of Labor
enumerates 1422 different causes of strikes for the twenty-
year period 1891-1900. The total number of establishments
which were affected by strikes during that period was
117,509. The number among them where strikes were de-
clared against unsafe machinery and other dangers incident to
employment was only eighty-three. 2
These figures testify that "acquiescence in dangerous
and unsanitary working conditions " is the general attitude
of organized and unorganized workers in labor disputes.
This apparent indifference cannot be explained by the
obstruction of the Southern and Eastern Europeans be-
cause the majority of the wage-earners as late as 1900
were of native birth. 3 It may reasonably be assumed that
organized labor does not feel strong enough to enforce
demands which would involve large outlays by employers
for safe equipment and other improvements. The indi-
vidual workman realizes that it would be quixotic on his
part to "protest" singly against evils which organized
labor is powerless to remedy.
1 Sixteenth Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor, Table X. pp.
510-513. *Ibid., Table XI, pp. 519-541-
Hourwich, loc. cit., p. 327, Table VIII.
PART IV
CONCLUSION
CHAPTER XXIII
PROBABLE EFFECTS OF RESTRICTION A FORECAST
IT was recognized by the Immigration Commission that the
industrial expansion of the preceding twenty years would
have been impossible without "the new immigration."
But the Commission held "a slow expansion of industry"
preferable to "immigration of laborers of low standards." 1
The Commission accordingly recommended that "a sufficient
number be debarred to produce a marked effect upon the
present supply of unskilled labor." 2
What is "a sufficient number"? A learned advocate of
restriction, Prof. Fairchild, referring to the period from
December, 1907, to August, 1908, when emigration exceeded
immigration by 124,124, finds that "this figure is almost
infinitesimal compared to the total mass of the American
working people or to the amount of unemployment at a normal
time, 1 ' The net result of the emigration movement of those
nine months was tantamount to a prohibition of immigra-
tion, yet it had "a very trifling palliative effect." 3
The slowing down of the pace of industrial development
must necessarily curtail the opportunities for advancement
of the wage-earners who are already here. 4
1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. I, p. 45. 2 Ibid., p. 47.
Henry Pratt Fairchild: "Immigration and Crises," The American
Economic Review, December, 1911, p. 758.
4 The skilled crafts whose organizations were urging the adoption
of the recommendation of the Commission for the exclusion of unskilled
immigrants were apparently willing to swallow the recommendation
in favor of legislation that would facilitate the importation of skilled
labor under contract. (Reports of the Immigration Commission,
vol, i, p. 47-)
487
488 Immigration and Labor
On the other hand, the unemployed could gain nothing
from a slow growth of industry. In times of rapid indus-
trial expansion the demand for labor is more active than
in times of industrial stagnation. Inasmuch as unem-
ployment is not due to an absolute oversupply of labor,
but results from seasonal and cyclical variations in the
general demand for labor, as well as from variations in
the demands of individual employers, it is clear that these
causes could not be removed by reducing the supply of
labor. If the industries of the United States can furnish
steady employment all year round to eighty per cent of all
wage-earners and in times of maximum activity to ninety-
five per cent, 2 but must have the full one hundred per cent
ready on call, there being no agency for dovetailing the de-
mands of scattered individual employers, these ratios will
not be affected by the scale of national production.
If instead of letting the number of factory workers grow
to seven million by 1909, the law had kept it at 5,600,000,
as it had been in 1904, i.e., twenty per cent below the 1909
figure, the industrial reserve of twenty per cent would not
have been wiped out, but would have only been smaller
in proportion. Yet the 1,120,000 irregularly employed
in 1904 exerted the same economic pressure on the
4,480,000 who were employed all year around, as the
1,400,000 on the 5,600,000 in 1909. The problem of the five
per cent irreducible minimum of unemployed was no less
serious when they were only 280,000 in 5,600,000, than when
they grew to be 350,000 in 7,000,000. The mere exclu-
sion of unskilled immigrants, and even of all immigrants,
will not provide employment for all masons and carpenters
in the winter, or for the full winter force of a Wisconsin
logging camp in the summer. Nor will the restriction of
immigration revolutionize the world of fashion, so as to
permit of the filling of orders for ladies' garments out of
*A11 figures in this example are merely estimates based upon the
statistics of the XII. and the XIII. Census. They are used only for
purposes of illustration.
Probable Effects of Restriction A Forecast 489
season. In order to provide regular employment for the
industrial reserve, all industries would have to be run upon
a common time schedule, like railway trains are run on
connecting lines. No plan of such a reorganization of
industry has as yet been proposed that would be acceptable
to all advocates of immigration restriction, let alone the
proprietors of half a million independent mining, manu-
facturing, and mercantile establishments. It is hardly
reasonable to expect a systematic adjustment of business
activity on such a gigantic scale to grow up spontaneously
from a purely negative measure shutting out immigration.
As a theoretical proposition, it seems quite plausible
that the exclusion of "a sufficient number" of immigrants
"to produce a marked effect upon the supply of unskilled
labor" must force employers to pay scarcity rate of wages.
It is needless, however, to indulge in abstract speculation
on the possible effects of a reduced supply of unskilled
immigrant labor, when such a condition actually exists in
the United States throughout the agricultural sections.
Few immigrants seek employment on the farms. At the
census of 1900 the total number of Southern and Eastern
European male farm laborers in the United States was only
3 7, 40 1. 1 The number of all foreign-born male farm laborers
had actually decreased from 1890 to i9oo. 2 Moreover, there
is a constant stream of native labor from the farms to the
cities, which has led to an actual decrease of the rural
population in many agricultural counties. Farmers gen-
erally complain of scarcity of farm labor during the agri-
cultural season. Nevertheless, the wages of farm laborers
are lower than the wages of unskilled laborers in mines and
mills, where the proportion of recent immigrants is rapidly
increasing. Scarcity of labor has not forced the farmer to
pay scarcity wages, but has merely retarded the growth of
farming. In many places the area under cultivation has
actually decreased. On the other hand, the problem how
1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. I, Table A, pp. 821-829.
2 Occupations, XII. Census, Table XXXIV, p. cviii.
490 Immigration and Labor
to increase production with the same supply of labor has
been solved by labor-saving machinery. The shutting-
out of unskilled immigrants would have similar effects in
manufacturing and mining. The labor that would thus be
displaced would form one substitute for immigration.
The coal mines of Alabama and other Southern States
which have failed to attract immigrants utilize the labor
of farmers and their sons. The 2,300,000 tenant-farmers
in particular offer great possibilities as an industrial re-
serve available during the winter months when the de-
mand for labor in the coal mines is most active. The farm
being their main source of subsistence, they are able and
willing to offer their labor during the idle winter months
more cheaply than freshly-landed immigrants. The efforts
of trade-union organizers among this class of English-
speaking workers have met with scant success. With the
farmer who works in a mine during the winter months,
the dominating interest is his farm, whereas his interest
in his employment is but transitory. He may not return
to the mine the next winter; he accordingly expects no
benefit from an eventual gain in wages, whereas a pro-
tracted strike may deprive him of his earnings which are
needed immediately to pay interest on a mortgage or to
buy a machine. He is therefore reluctant to enter into a
labor contest. The substitution of the cheap labor of the
American farmer for the labor of the Slav or Italian immi-
grant would tend to weaken the unions and to keep down
wages.
The discontinuance of fresh supplies of immigrant labor
for the cotton mills of New England would give a new
impetus to the development of the cotton industry in the
South, where there is an abundant supply of child labor.
The shortage of immigrant labor could also be made up for in
part by the available reserve of cheap female labor.
The employment of all these, substitutes for regular
wage-earners certainly has its limitations. Summer is the
most active season in many manufacturing industries.
Probable Effects of Restriction A Forecast 491
Other industries are localized and cannot spread out to
agricultural districts. But there is in the United States,
as in all industrial countries, a steady flow of labor from
rural to urban districts. In the absence of immigration
of unskilled laborers the depopulation of the rural districts
would be accelerated. A stimulated movement of labor
from the farm to the factory must act as a drawback on the
growth of farming, and the prices of foodstuffs would rise
in consequence, which would tend to offset the advantages
to the wage-earners from a possible rise of wages.
Still, should all the substitutes for immigrant labor prove
inadequate for the needs of the employers, it does not
necessarily follow that scarcity prices would rule in the
American labor market. It must be borne in mind that
capital is international.
Billions of American capital are already invested in
Mexican and other foreign undertakings. At present this
is but a minor item compared with the profits of American
industries annually reinvested at home. If, however, a
scarcity of labor were created in the United States, more
American capital would seek investment abroad. Instead
of investing their profits in new mines and mills in the United
States, American capitalists would export their money to
build up new enterprises in countries with cheap labor.
The increased investment of American capital in the
industrial development of foreign countries with cheap
labor must eventually react upon labor conditions in the
United States. Certain of the most important American
industries depend in part upon the export trade. At present
the great smelting works of New Jersey import ore from
Mexico and employ Slav immigrants to smelt and refine it
into lead and copper, a great deal of which is then exported
to Europe. Should the immigration of Slav laborers be
barred the lead and copper producers could accommodate
themselves to the situation by erecting plants in Mexico and
exporting the refined lead and copper directly to London.
Such a plan would not be a new departure in the world of
492 Immigration and Labor
industry. American, English, French, Belgian, and German
manufacturers in the past found it more profitable to estab-
lish factories in Russia than to export their products to that
country. A scarcity of labor in the United States would
induce many American manufacturers to extend that policy.
Such an emigration of American capital would materially
affect the export trade of the United States and eventually
throw out of employment a number of American wage-
earners dependent upon that trade.
It is evident that while restriction of immigration can
limit the supply of labor, it is powerless to prevent a cor-
responding limitation of the demand for labor.
The Immigration Commission believed that "a slow ex-
pansion of industry," in the absence of "the immigration
of laborers of low standards," would raise "the American
standard of wages." Yet the Commission did not explain
how a mere Platonic desire to maintain a high standard of
living could of itself raise the rates of wages, unless the
relation of demand and supply in the labor market were
favorable to the wage-earner. The recent crisis has fur-
nished a practical illustration bearing upon this point.
When the operations of the steel mills were reduced, a
great many men were laid off. The companies, however,
offered their skilled men positions as laborers. 1 Neither
their high American standard of living, nor their high
standard of wages, nor their efficiency enabled them to
insist upon higher wages than those which had been paid
to unskilled laborers before the crisis. "A slow expansion
of industry" is synonymous with an inactive demand for
labor, and it is an elementary maxim of Political Economy
that an inactive demand for labor is unfavorable to in-
creases in wages.
1 "The few unskilled places that were open were filled by Americans
who were normally skilled workmen, but who at the time of the depres-
sion were compelled to take any kind of-work they could get. "Reports
of the Immigration Commission, vol. 8, pp. 39, 40.
"Skilled American employees . . . were glad to turn to unskilled
occupations at twelve to fifteen cents an hour." Ibid., p. 597.
CHAPTER XXIV
THE LESSONS OP THE WAR
THE World War offered an opportunity to test the effects
of restriction of immigration under the most favorable
conditions. During the war immigration was reduced to a
very low level. Departing aliens at times outnumbered both
the newcomers and returning immigrants. Though the out-
break of the war was followed by a year of industrial depres-
sion in this country, the United States soon became the chief
producer of war supplies for the Allied nations. Beginning
with the spring of 1916 the supply of labor in the United
States fell short of the demand in the labor market. The
entrance of the United States into the war withdrew more
than two million workers from industry. The government
assumed the function of regulating wages in the leading
industries, with the co-operation of the officers of the Amer-
ican Federation of Labor. Prominent men of avowed labor
sympathies were placed at the head of the War Labor Board.
If the economic condition of the American wage earner can
be improved by suspension of immigration, here was the
opportunity to observe its beneficial effects.
Indeed, the final report of the Commission on Industrial
Relations, prepared by Mr. Basil M. Manly, Director of
Research and Investigation, contains the following state-
ment: "The great diminution of immigration as a result of
the European war, has already begun to show its salutary
effects." l The report does not specify the particulars in
which these "salutary effects" had manifested themselves
by August 9, 1915, which is its official date. It baldly asserts
that the "evidence presented to the Commission" warrants
1 Industrial Relations: Final Report and Testimony, vol. i, p. 144
494 Immigration and Labor
the conclusion "that the enormous influx of immigrants dur-
ing the past twenty-five years has been the largest single factor
in preventing the wage scale from rising as rapidly as food
prices." l The evidence was not published by the Commis-
sion; reference is only made in the Director's letter of sub-
mittal to reports presented to the Commission by Professor
Lauck and Mr. Sydenstricker. The data contained in these
reports were perused by them in a book published in 19 17.*
This is what they actually have to say on the subject:
The recent advances in wage rates which have been occasioned by
the unusual demand for labor at a time of restricted immigration con-
stitute, of course, a certain advantage in economic status to wage earn-
ers in many instances. . . . How far these increases in rates, aside from
the increases in earnings made possible by steady employment during
a period of great industrial activity, have kept pace with increases in
prices of necessaries and of the ordinary comforts used by wage-earning
families, is impossible of statement until accurate statistics are ob-
tained and published. 8
A vast amount of statistical data on every aspect of the
economic situation has since been published. A brief sum-
mary of t'he available evidence will be sufficient to disprove
the optimistic assurance of the Industrial Commission.
At the annual meetings of the American Economic and
the American Statistical Association held at Atlantic City
in December, 1920, two series of index numbers of physical
production were presented, one by Dr. Walter W. Stewart,
the other by Dr. Edmund E. Day. Though their indices
differ for particular years, yet both show a growth of pro-
duction during the war period much in excess of the rate of
the preceding quadrennial period.
A comparative summary of the principal items of both
series for the years 1910, 1914, and 1918 is presented in
Table 133 next following, where the index numbers are con-
1 Industrial Relations: Final Report and Testimony, vol. i, p. 144.
s W. Jett Lauck and Edgar Sydenstricker: Condition of Labor in
American Industries, p. xi.
9 Ibid., pp. 70-71.
The Lessons of the War
495
verted to the base of 1914 as 100. The comparative growth
of manufactures, mining, agriculture, and population, during
the war and the preceding period beginning with 1899, is
shown graphically in Diagram XXIX, reproduced from Doc-
tor Day's Chart A.
TABLE 133
INDICES OF MANUFACTURES, MINING, AND TRANSPORTATION, IQIO,
1914,
Manufactures
Mining
Year
TVAnJTV>rfr at inn
Day's
Stewart's
Day's
Stewart's
1910. . . .
97
9 8
IOO
94
96
1914....
IOO
IOO
IOO
IOO
IOO
1918
125
144
138
132
139
This unparalleled growth of industry was marked by ex-
traordinary profits. The following analysis is quoted from
a survey presented to the United States Railroad Labor
Board by Prof. W. Jett Lauck, on behalf of a number of
labor unions. His evidence is taken from the financial re-
ports of 205 large corporations, with an aggregate capital
stock of over $5,000,000,000. Their annual net income in-
creased from an average of 8.7 per cent for the pre-war
period 1912-1914, to an average of 23.9 per cent for the
war period 1916-1918.
After all expenses of operation and maintenance had been paid (says
Professor Lauck), after all charges for replacement of capital had been
set aside in fact, after every conceivable or imaginary expense had
been met these great groups of corporations, controlling the various
products essential to our life, made profits which were sufficient to re-
place the entire value of the capital stock within a period of slightly
over four years. This is proved by their own published reports.
l , "An Index Number of Production," by Walter W. Stewart. Amer-
ican Economic Review, March, 1921, p. 68. "The Measurement of
Variations in the National Real Income," by Edmund E. Day. Quar-
terly of the American Statistical Association, March, 1921, p. 555.
496
300
Immigration and Labor
DIAGRAM XXIX.
200
1099
1905
1910
1915
1919
XXIX. Indices of Physical Production for Agriculture, Mining and
Manufacture, 1899-1919.
Those corporations were not at all exceptional. The ex-
traordinary profits of industry during the war appear in a
document submitted to the Senate by the Treasury Depart-
ment, entitled "Corporate Earnings and Government Rev-
enue." This document shows the incomes of approximately
20,000 corporations. Altogether they earned in 1917 an
average return on capital stock of 33.5 per cent, after all
taxes had been deducted.
Over one-fourth of these corporations, 5,724 in number, showed net
profits of over 50 per cent on capital stock. And over one-tenth of them
(2,030) showed net profits of over 100 per cent. In other words, there
were over 5,000 corporations which, in 1917, earned over one-half the
value of their capital stock and over 2,000 that earned the entire value
in a single year. 1
1 W. Jett Lauck: The Relation Between Wages and the Increased Cost
of Living, pp. 7, 9-12.
The Lessons of the War 497
The preceding analysis was made by a representative of
organized labor. The same conclusions, however, are reached
by Professor Friday, who, in his study of the relations between
profits, wages, and prices, endeavors to take a judicial atti-
tude, although inclining at times toward the capital side.
The net income of all corporations, as reported to the Bureau
of Internal Revenue, amounted in 1914 approximately to
$3,700,000,000; in 1916 it more than doubled, reaching well
nigh $8,600,000,000. When the United States entered the
war, the corporations were made to yield to the government
in excess profit taxes about $2,000,000,000, and yet their
profits for the year 1917 remained at the level of the pre-
vious year. Of course the net earnings of the various classes
of corporations widely varied. The earnings of mining and
manufacturing corporations in 1917 were nearly 330 per cent
of those of 1913, the largest pre-war year. A classification
of manufacturing, mining, and mercantile corporations ac-
cording to the percentage ratio of their net income to in-
vested capital shows that more than one-half of the total
net income was earned by concerns which made 30 per cent
or over. The profits of railroads and other public utility
corporations, being regulated by the public authorities, did
not rise to such heights, yet in 1916 they were 53 per cent
above the 1913 level, and in 1917 they still remained 30 per
cent above the pre-war level. "The popular impression,"
sums up Professor Friday, "that the war has brought a large
increase in profits is fully borne out by the facts. The
growth has been large, even after the payment of income and
excess profits taxes." 1
A glance at Diagram XXIX will show how far the growth
of population lagged behind the industrial expansion of the
war years. This was directly due to the decrease of immi-
gration. The annual net immigration or emigration of bread-
winners from July i, 1914, to June 30, 1919, is shown in
Table 134.
1 David Friday: Profits, Wages, and Prices, pp. 14, 15, 18, 36, 38, 39.
498 Immigration and Labor
TABLE 134.
NET IMMIGRATION OR EMIGRATION OF BREADWINNERS,
Year ended Net immigration (+)
June 30th or emigration (-)
1915
1916
1917
1918
1919
Total +138,149
The excess of all alien arrivals over all departing aliens, in-
cluding dependents ("persons without occupation, mostly
women and children," in official terminology) aggregated
during the same period 431,884. Thus, the additions to the
population through immigration during the war period rep-
resented mostly dependents of immigrants who had previously
settled in the United States. The addition of 138,149 immi-
grant breadwinners was by far insufficient to make up for the
mortality among earlier immigrants. 2
The effects of the cessation of immigration upon the state
of the labor market are reflected in the statistics compiled
by the New York State Industrial Commission. From the
month of March, 1916, to the end of the year 1918, the sup-
ply of labor registered at the public employment offices
varied from 97.1 per cent to 47.1 per cent of the demand for
labor. 3
Such was the relation of supply and demand at the gate-
way of the United States. That this condition was not
exceptional, is evidenced by the suspension of the contract-
labor law in 1917, 1918, 1919, and 1920, in order to enable
1 See Appendix, Table XXXI.
2 During the ten years from July I, 1910, to June 30, 1920, the excess
of arriving over departing aliens aggregated 3,123,000 persons (see Ap-
pendix, Table XXX.). The increase of the foreign-born population
from the XIII. to the XIV. Census (1910-1920) was only 358,000 (see
Table 7 on p. 88). The decrease of the number of foreign-born by
death thus amounted to 2,765,000.
8 See Appendix, Table XXXII.
The Lessons of the War 499
mine operators and other employers in the Southwest to
import Mexican laborers under contract. 1 During those
four years 50,800 Mexican contract laborers were imported
under departmental regulations which were tantamount to
peonage. 2 This measure is justified, in a report of a com-
mittee appointed by Ex-Secretary of Labor Wilson, by "the
fact that immigration from Europe had practically ceased."
It is explained that "a dire and imperative need was met in
making the exceptions and permitting Mexican labor to enter
this country on easy terms to meet the abnormal demand for
common labor." It should be remembered that Mr. Wilson
was made the first Secretary of Labor as the spokesman for
organized labor, having been a vice-president of the Amer-
ican Federation of Labor and a district president of the
United Mine Workers. Obviously such a striking departure
from the policy of organized labor must have been necessi-
tated by a genuine scarcity of labor. 8
The effects of the war upon the state of the labor market
during the war are well summarized in the following excerpt
from a recent book on war-time strikes:
In times of emergency and consequent abnormal labor demand, there
arises a competition for men which disturbs to a marked degree the wage
relationships of normal times. For normal times, as our economic
system is constituted, have always meant times of labor surplus. . . .
When, however, the demand for men far exceeds the supply, employers
compete among one another and are willing in many cases to pay
wages even higher than union rates. In open-shop industries men were
offered these increased rates irrespective of their union membership.
... A further consequence of the abnormal war conditions was an un-
precedented mobility of labor. Every method, including patriotic ap-
peals in the press and on public platforms, was used to bring home to
the workers of other localities the need of men in places where war
1 Monthly Labor Review, November, 1920, p. 223.
2 See note in the Appendix.
8 Still, the same Secretary Wilson, in a press statement under date of
January 10, 1918, said that there was "an ample supply of labor both
for the army and for industry." (The Evening Telegram, New York,
January 13, 1918.) Apparently, however, such official pronouncements
must be taken with a grain of salt.
500 Immigration and Labor
material was being produced. Influenced both by the patriotic motive
and the desire for better wages, men and women left their homes and
traveled to distant cities. This movement of the workers was acceler-
ated by the action of employers who, not content with elaborate news-
paper advertisements offering high rates of wages, even went as far
as to send labor scouts all over the country. Both of these practices
had to be curtailed by the government when toward the end of the
war the competition for men became fiercer than ever and the U. S.
Employment Service was organized in an effort to control the situation.
. . . Workers not only left their homes but they changed from one in-
dustry to another with a freedom never before known. General wage
levels were a matter of common knowledge. And the worker knew not
only the pay of men in his own industry but also that of workers in many
other trades. 1
According to scholastic theory, "with employers com-
peting more eagerly to get workmen, with the better em-
ployers ready to pay appreciably higher wages than before,
with resident laborers not subject to fresh competition from
abroad, the time is ripe for a real increase of wages." 2 Did
this ideal combination of economic factors during the late
war actually produce the "salutary effects" anticipated by
the Commission on Industrial Relations?
Applying the standard chosen by the Commission, viz., the
rise of the wage scale apace with food prices, we find that the
purchasing power of union wages considerably declined dur-
ing the war, as shown in Table 135.
A painstaking study of the movement of real wages gauged
by retail prices of food has been made by Professor Douglas
1 Alexander M. Bing, War-time Strikes, pp. 196-197. According to a
special study of mobility of labor made by the United States Bureau of
Labor Statistics for the decade 1910-1919, "each year, on the average,
the number of persons who quit, who were laid off or were discharged,
as well as the number who had to be hired, was much larger than the
total number of workers on the force at any one time." During the
period from the entrance of the United States into the war, to the armis-
tice (i.e., from May, 1917, to October, 1918), the monthly mobility rates
were far above the average. ' ' Mobility of Labor in American Industry, ' '
by Paul F. Brissenden and Emil Frankel: Monthly Labor Review, June,
1920, pp. 41-43.
"Hourwich's Immigration and Labor," by Robert F. Foerster: The
Quarterly Journal of Economics, August, 1913, p. 668.
The Lessons of the War 501
TABLE 135.
PURCHASING POWER OF UNION WAGE RATES, MEASURED BY RETAIL
PRICES OF FOOD, 1913-19! 8. 1
Year Per hour Per week
1913 100 100
1914 ioo 99
1915 101 101
1916 94 93
1917 78 77
1918 79 77
and Miss Lamberson. They have arrived at the following
conclusions concerning the effects of the war upon the con-
dition of the American wage worker:
All the evidence seems to indicate that at the termination of the
great war the return in commodities which the American workman
received for an equal length of time worked (one hour) was from 7 to
17 per cent less than it was before the sharp, upward movement of
prices in 1916. The purchasing power of the established week's work,
moreover, was from 10 to 20 per cent less than in 1915. American labor,
as a whole, therefore, cannot legitimately be charged with having prof-
iteered during the war. Rather, like Alice in Wonderland, it was
compelled to run faster in order to stay in the same place. 2
The material for these conclusions was taken from the
wage statistics of ten leading industries. The authors, there-
fore, caution the reader against generalization from their re-
sults without certain reservations, of which the following are
the most important :
1 Monthly Labor Review, March, 1919, p. 120. The United States
Bureau of Labor Statistics has expressed the view that union rates of
wages are merely minimum rates and that in practice union workers
earn more than that minimum. Other students, however, take the
opposite view. "The union rates of pay are the so-called minimum
rates. As a matter of experience, however, these minimum rates are
usually the prevailing rates." Hugh S. Hanna and W. Jett Lauck:
Wages and War, p. 2. This view is concurred in by Mr. Bing, an em-
ployer of labor, of large business experience, who served the govern-
ment during the war. Bing, loc. tit., p. 196.
2 "The Movement of Real Wages," by Paul H. Douglas and Frances
Lamberson : The A merican Economic Review, September, 1 92 1 , pp. 425-
426.
502 Immigration and Labor
The industries covered do not include such war-time industries as
munitions plants. Some of the occupations within these industries
enjoyed increases in wages more than sufficient to compensate for the
increase in the cost of living. On the other hand, neither are the rail-
road workers and the coal miners included, and their wages notoriously
lagged behind the increase in prices. Farm laborers also lost during the
war period. 1
Still, in recent studies of the United States Bureau of Labor
Statistics, and in the compilations of the National Industrial
Conference Board, retail prices of food alone have been con-
sidered unsatisfactory as a measure of the cost of living,
inasmuch as they do not reflect the changes in other items of
the family budget, notably rent. 2 The adequacy of other
standards, however, has likewise been questioned. 3 Profes-
sor Litman, in his study of prices during the war, comes to
the following conclusions:
As to any definite conclusions regarding increased cost of living and
the effect of this increase upon the status of the workingman and his
family, one may subscribe without reservation to the statements of
1 "The Movement of Real Wages,'' by Paul H. Douglas and Frances
Lamberson: The American Economic Review, September, 1921, pp. 421-
422.
According to the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, the
average cost of housing for thirty-two cities showed practically no change
from 1913 to the end of 1917; in December, 1918, it increased 9.2 per
cent from the 1913 average. The increase in rents came as the after-
math of the war. Monthly Labor Review, July, 1921, p. 112.
* "At the present time, index numbers of the cost of living, like all
other index numbers, are still in the experimental stage of development.
They cannot yet be considered instruments of precision like thermome-
ters or micrometer calipers. And no one is at this time justified in sit-
ting with an eye peeled on the index number of the cost of living and
measuring its movement in one direction or another, and believing that
whatever the index registers is above question or criticism. For retail
price quotations of standardized goods and services are not easy to
collect, and when one index number is compared with another, small
but not unimportant discrepancies frequently appear. . . . They are
due to differences in the manner of collecting price quotations, in the
instructions to enumerators, in the training and judgment of the
enumerators, and in the kinds of goods and services that are included in
the survey by each agency." Leo Wolman: "The Cost of Living and
Wage Cuts," The New Republic, July 27, 1921.
The Lessons of the War 503
the United States Commissioner of Labor Statistics, that after all these
years of investigation and statistical toil in the cost-of-living field, we
don't know clearly the difference between the higher cost of living and
the cost of higher living. 1
Yet, after a careful examination of all available data, Pro-
fessor Litman cautiously concludes that "it does not seem
that wages rose as rapidly as the prices of commodities. 2
This view is concurred in by those who speak for organized
labor. The following is from Prof. Lauck's statement be-
fore the United States Railroad Labor Board, quoted on a
previous page:
An examination of the experience of every industry shows, practi-
cally without exception, that wage increases have lagged behind price
increases, and usually very far behind. . . . They [the workers] have
merely struggled as best they could and in the only way they could to
keep their old standards of living. In this struggle they have met with
only very partial success. For the great body of wage earners, wages
have not kept step with prices. As a result, labor as a class is now
worse off than it was before the war. Almost without exception a
day's wage buys less than it did in 1912 to 1914. In other words, in
the distribution of the income of the country, labor is receiving a
smaller proportion than it did before the war, while capital in the form
of profits, interest, and rent is receiving a very much larger pro-
portion. 3
On the other hand, the same statistical material leads Pro-
fessor Friday to the opposite conclusion, viz., "that the real
wages of labor have risen, and are higher to-day than they
were in 1914." 4 But at the end of the same chapter, he
qualifies this general statement as follows:
There are so many different kinds of labor, so many different kinds of
wage payment, and so many different rates of pay, that the task of
obtaining a general view of the course of wages is considered by experts
to be one of the most difficult and complicated scientific undertakings
1 Simon Litman: Prices and Price Control in Great Britain and the
United States During the World War, p. 201.
2 Ibid., p. 197.
3 Loc. cit., p. 5.
* Friday: Profits, Wages, and Prices, p. 107.
504 Immigration and Labor
in the whole field of economics Consequently all general statementa
regarding wages, of which many are always appearing in print and on
the platform, should be accepted with extreme caution. 1
His own computation of the increase in wage rates and
employment of from ten to twelve million workers shows
that the yearly earnings per employee increased from 1913
to 1917 slightly over 30 per cent, 2 whereas it appears from
other sources that the cost of living during the same period
increased 42 per cent. 3
The most conclusive corroboration of the decline in real
wages is furnished by the investigations of the Bureau of
Child Hygiene of New York City, which show a decided in-
crease of the proportion of malnourished school children dur-
ing the World War. The figures are presented in Table 136.
TABLE 136.
PROPORTION OF MALNOURISHED SCHOOL CHILDREN IN THE BOROUGH OF
MANHATTAN, NEW YORK CITY. 4
Year Per cent
I9H 5
1915 6
1916 12
1917 21
This condition was not peculiar to New York City only.
Dr. Thomas D. Wood, in an address delivered before the
National Council of Education, February 28, 1918, estimated
"that between 15 and 25 per cent of our school children are
undernourished." 5
^ Was this lagging of wages behind the advancing cost of
living due to the failure of the wage workers to "insist" upon
a higher rate of wagesto put it in the language of the eco-
1 Friday: Profits, Wages, and Prices, pp. no-ill.
8 Ibid., p. 122.
' Monthly Labor Bulletin, February, 19*1, p. 61.
4 "What Is Malnutrition?" by Lydia Roberts. Children's Bureau,
Publication No. 59, p. 7.
1 Ibid. t pp. 7, 19.
The Lessons of the War 505
nomic experts of the Immigration Commission? The statis-
tics of strikes during the world war prove that labor did
not submissively acquiesce in the terms offered to it by
employers.
In the period from 1881 to 1905 there occurred on an aver-
age 1,532 strikes a year. During the three years 1916-1918
the number of strikes averaged more than twice as many,
viz., 3,697. The annual average number of strikers during
the decade, preceding the predominance of the "new immi-
gration" was 267,000, and in the first decade of its ascend-
ancy 344, ooo. 1 During the years 1916-1918, the annual
average number of strikers rose to i,3io,ooo, 2 i.e., 391 per
cent above the average of 1886-1895, whereas the num-
ber of persons engaged in manufacturing and mechanical
pursuits, trade, and transportation, increased from the X.
to the XIII. Census (1880-1910) only 208 per cent. 3 Nor
were those strikes unorganized outbursts of inarticulate dis-
content. The percentage of strikes in which the workers
were members of unions rose from 82 in 1915 to 90 in 1917,
and remained at 83 in 1918. 4
Moreover, strikes were not the only means by which labor
was able to assert its claims:
During the war the principle of collective bargaining was of necessity,
albeit in many cases rather grudgingly, recognized by all employers
engaged on direct government work or in the production of essentials.
The Quartermaster Corps, the Ordnance Office, the Emergency Fleet
Corporation of the Shipping Board, the National War Labor Board,
the Fuel Administration, and many other government agencies, sought
to secure greater and more continuous production by means of collective
agreements covering wages. 5
1 See Table 104, on p. 345.
2 Alexander M. Bing: War-time Strikes, pp. 292-293.
3 XIII. Census Reports, vol. iv, p. 41.
* Bing, loc. cit., p. 297.
5 Royal Meeker, Commissioner of Labor Statistics: "Employees
Representation in Management of Industry," Monthly Labor Review,
February, 1920, p. 2.
506
Immigration and Labor
Neither could the presence of the "un-Americanized" for-
eign worker serve as an explanation for the decline of real
wages. It has been brought out, on the basis of the calcula-
tions of the Bureau of Applied Economics, that whereas the
real wages of common laborers in the iron and steel industry
of whom 64 per cent are foreign born have gone up, those of
locomotive firemen of whom 84 per cent are native-born
Americans have declined to a point 31 per cent below "the
minimum budget under American standards." 1
Among the potent factors in the decline of real wages
must be noted the movement of labor from agriculture to
urban industries in response to the attraction of higher
wages. In consequence, agricultural production during the
war barely kept pace with the growth of population, 2 while
the demand for breadstuff s was increased by exports abroad,
as indicated in Table 137. The great interests which control
TABLE 137.
WHEAT PRODUCED, EXPORTED, AND RETAINED FOR CONSUMPTION, FISCAL
YEARS I9II-I9I8. 3
Millions of bushels
Years end<
;d June 30
Increase (+)
or decrease ( )
1911-1914
1915-1918
Per cent
Produced l
2 7 en
3IQO
-1- 16
Exported, domestic 2
4,-ie
OI "?
-j-IIQ
Domestic, retained for consumption. . .
2,315
2,275
2
Per cent exported
16
2O
*
The production is of the calendar year preceding the fiscal year
1 including wheat flour reduced to wheat.
the agricultural produce market were thereby enabled to
raise the prices of food. What the wage earner gained in
1 Editorial in The New Republic, February 25, 1920, p. 373. XIII.
Census Reports, vol. iv, Table VI: Laborers in blast furnaces and steel
rolling mills, iron foundries, and other iron and steel factories; loco-
motive firemen (computed).
9 See Diagram XXIX.
8 Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1918, p. 559. For statistics
of exports of other breadstuffs, see Appendix, Table XXXIII.
The Lessons of the War 507
money wages, he was forced to surrender in the higher prices
of necessities of life. This fact is established by Prof. Wesley
C. Mitchell's study of prices during the war, from which
Table 138 is compiled.
TABLE 138.
INDEX NUMBERS OF THE YEARLY PRODUCTION AND PRICES OF VEGETABLE
PRODUCTS, 1913-1918. l
Years Production Prices]
1913 100 100
1914 106 95
1915 112 98
1916 100 in
1917 107 173
1918 106 191
The next question to be considered is, What were the sub-
stitutes for immigrant labor during the war years? The
movement of workers from agriculture to urban industries
has already been referred to. It struck the public eye in
the migration of Negroes from the agricultural South to the
industrial East and Middle West. The volume of that
migration is officially estimated at from 400,000 to 500,000.
"Shortage of labor in Northern industries" is given as "the
direct cause of the increased Negro migration during the war
period." "The agricultural regions of the Southern states
began to suffer for want of the Negro worker." 2
1 "History of Prices During the War," by Wesley C. Mitchell: W. I.
B. Price Bulletin No. I, p. 45. "In vegetable husbandry the harvest
depends partly upon the acreage sown, which the farmer can control,
but quite as much upon the weather. Thus the annual supply of veg-
etable products increased in the dull year 1914 and increased largely
again in 1915. Nineteen sixteen was a bad year, and all the efforts to
encourage agriculture in 1917 and 1918 did not bring the harvests close
to the 1915 record." (Ibid., p. 46.)
2 ' ' The Negro at Work During the World War ' ' : Department of Labor
Division of Negro Economics, George E. Haynes, Director. Second
Study on Negro Labor, p. 10. See also: Emmett J. Scott: Negro Mi-
gration During the War, pp. 3, 14. According to a preliminary state-
ment issued by the Bureau of the Census, the Negro population of
Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana decreased
from 1910 to 1920 by 142,598. On the other hand, of the total numerical
increase in the Negro population of the United States during that de-
508 Immigration and Labor
Another substitute for immigrant labor was found in the
employment of women. The statistics on the subject are
scattered in government publications. An illustration is fur-
nished by the Annual Report of the Director-General of Rail-
roads for 1919, from which we learn that in October, 1918,
the number of women employed on tbe railroads had in-
creased, from the entrance of the United States into the war,
by about 70,000, which represented an addition of 225 per
cent. 1
The increased employment of children in industry during
the war emergency was still another substitute for immigrant
labor. The subject is dealt with in a report of the Children's
Bureau, from which the following is condensed :
By the latter part of 1915 the effect of foreign orders for war goods
was beginning to make itself felt in the increased employment of chil-
dren. Beginning with the autumn of 1915 an unprecedented rise began
in the number of children entering gainful employment, and heavy in-
creases were practically everywhere recorded for 1916 and 1917, even
before the United States entered the war. After the entrance of the
United States into the war the number of children taking out employ-
ment certificates continued to rise. The forces at work pushing chil-
dren into industry included the growing cost of the necessities of life com-
bined, in many cases, with the absence on military duty of members of
the family who had previously contributed to its support. High wages
offered by employers hard pressed for help proved a powerful magnet,
drawing into business and industry many children under sixteen who
in normal times would have remained in school. In several cities the
increase in 1918 was so striking as to arrest attention even in that year
of generally large increases. In Washington, D. C., there was an in-
crease of more than 163 per cent in 1917-18 (July 1st to June 3Oth)
over 1916-17. In Louisville, Kentucky, there was an increase in 1918
of 52 per cent, following an increase in 1917 of 174 per cent, so that the
cade, 69 per cent took place in the North, although its Negro popula-
tion in 1920 was only 14 per cent of the total for the United States.
In several of the Northern states the rates were extraordinarily large,
e.g., in Pennsylvania, 46.7 per cent; in Ohio, 67.1 per cent; in Michi-
gan, 251 per cent; in Illinois, 67.1 per cent.
1 Monthly Labor Review. March, 1920, p. 156
The Lessons of the War 509
number of children receiving employment certificates was in 1918 over
four times as great as in 1916. In Philadelphia an increase of 82 per
cent in 1917 was followed by a still further increase of 15 per cent in
1918. It should be kept in mind that the figures here given relate only
to children legally certificated, and give no indication of the numbers
going to work without complying with the law. Reports from labor
commissioners and factory inspectors indicated the difficulty experi-
enced during the war years in adequately administering child-labor
laws. Parents and children, tempted by the high wages offered the
children at a time when the excessive cost of living presented a serious
problem, would connive at evasions of the law in order to have the chil-
dren work in factories and munitions plants. In Philadelphia violations
of the child-labor law were four times as great in 1917 as in 1916. In
inspections made by the Children's Bureau of sixty-three shipyards
where steel ships were being built, approximately 60 per cent of the
children found at work who claimed to be sixteen and were without
certificates were actually only fourteen or fifteen years of age. The
reply of the Assistant Secretary of the Industrial Commission of Wis-
consin to an inquiry sent out in 1918 by the Children's Bureau in regard
to this subject pointed out the fact that "The general effect of the war
upon the enforcement of the child-labor law has been to increase the
difficulty of enforcing the law. The scarcity of adult labor has made
the employer more ready to take minors into his employ. Many em-
ployers now employ children who have never done so before to any
extent." x
What is the lesson that can be drawn from the experience
gained in the late war? Amidst the present industrial crisis
one must not lose sight of the fact that this is but one of the
cyclical disturbances of the capitalistic system which will be
followed by resumption of "business as usual." There will
be profits which will seek investment in new fields. Prior to
the war most of that surplus was applied to the expansion of
American industry, which created a demand for immigrant
labor. If restriction of immigration is to become the per-
manent policy of the United States, our recent war experience
does not warrant the assumption that the resulting scarcity
of labor will inure to the benefit of the American wage worker.
1 "Trend of Child Labor in the United States, 1913-1920," by Nettie
McGill. Monthly Labor Review, April, 1921, pp. 6-10.
Immigration and Labor
It seems likely that the restriction of immigration of labor
from Europe will lead to emigration of American capital to
Europe.
That this is not mere speculation, appears from an official
report of the Commercial Secretary of the British Embassy
in Berlin, who states that arrangements have been in progress
between American capitalists and German corporations, look-
ing toward the investment of American capital in German
industry. The electrical and textile industries and shipping
are mentioned. 1
The decline of real wages during the late war is merely a
repetition of the story of the Civil War; the cause of it has
been stated in a previous chapter. 2 The bargaining power
of the wage earner does not extend to the market in which
he appears as a consumer. Advances in wages come as a
result of the slow process of collective bargaining, involving
the use of the cumbersome machinery of arbitration, with
occasional resort to industrial warfare, whereas the prices of
commodities consumed by the wage earner are controlled by
monopolistic combinations, which promptly add every ad-
1 General Report on the Industrial and Economic Situation in Germany
in December, 1920, p. 6. Presented to Parliament by Command of His
Majesty. London, 1921. In a press dispatch cabled from Paris under
date of September n, 1921, it was reported that an agreement was
signed between representatives of a big American syndicate and the
Archduke Frederick of Austria and his family, by which the syndicate
took over the whole of the Archduke's estates in the dismembered
Austrian Empire. These estates include the rich steel works and mines
at Teschen, vast forest lands stretching across many miles of several
new Central European republics, farms, factories, etc. The value of
the property is conservatively estimated at $200,000,000. In the syn-
dicate which is taking the control of this property are mentioned names
prominent in American financial circles. The negotiations began in
the summer of 1919. An arrangement was made in October, 1919,
whereby the Archduke was to transfer his various properties and in-
terests to a corporation which was then organized in Switzerland. The
deal involves litigation in the courts of the new republics, and ex-
premier Viviani of France is reported to have been retained as counsel
to represent the claims of the Austrian Archduke before the League of
Nations.
* See p. 306.
The Lessons of the War 511
vance in wages to the market price of the finished product. 1
Thus the raise of wages of one group of workers is in effect
charged up to the working class as a whole.
The leak is in the control of prices. The government, dur-
ing the war, assumed the authority to regulate prices, but it
delegated this authority to representatives of the interests
which were to be regulated. 2 The profiteering which resulted
from the methods of price control adopted by the various
war agencies, was exposed in a report submitted by the
Federal Trade Commission to the Senate in the summer of
1918. The profits assured to the big interests were "enor-
mous ... far beyond anything that was necessary to keep
men in industry and to stimulate their initiative and enter-
prise." 3 What is wanted in order to secure to the worker a
real advance in wages, is regulation of profits in the interest
of the consumers, of whom the wage earners constitute the
most numerous single group.
Restriction of the supply of labor does not touch the prob-
lem of price control. Immigration laws can prevent the
American capitalist from employing foreign labor in the
United States. But with the present rates of exchange he
may find it as profitable to employ the same labor in Europe
in the manufacture of goods for the world market. The re-
duction of the supply of labor will be met by a reduction of
the demand for labor. Restriction of immigration will merely
speed the advance of financial imperialism.
1 "Wage earners, as soon as they could make their economic demands
felt, thereupon received wage increases so that they might in a measure
cope with the advance in the cost of living. This meant increased labor
costs to the producers and middlemen, and they instantly advanced
prices again. Almost without exception, these price advances were out
of all proportion to the increase in labor costs. This necessitated further
wage increases to labor, and we find the vicious circle established, with
the profiteers invariably in command of the situation." "Profiteers,"
by W. Jett Lauck: The Socialist Review, July, 1920, p. 52.
1 "Most of the important positions in the Food Administration were
entrusted to successful organizers and administrators of private busi-
ness enterprises." Litman: loc. cit., p. 211.
* Friday: loc. cit., p. 155.
Appendix
IN ANSWER TO CRITICS 1
THE first edition of this book was attacked by two authors
of books on immigration. This record of the critics calls
for an examination of their objections.
Prof. Fairchild goes at it with the habits acquired in mark-
ing examination papers. It could not escape his trained eye
that the name of Prof. Willcox was misspelled (with one "1"
instead of two). The error is repentantly admitted, and has
been corrected in the present edition. He is less fortunate,
however, in other attempts of a similar kind. Thus he finds
fault with the remark in the footnote on p. 60 that the con-
clusion of the Immigration Commission that "'the employ-
ment of the wife, or keeping boarders or lodgers, is less fre-
quent among the native-born of foreign father' ... is de-
rived from the reports in just four families, whose heads
are native-born of foreign father." He has taken the pains
to look up the reference, and announces to have found that
there were 26 such families instead of 4. Examination of
Table 44, on p. 310 of the volume quoted shows, however,
in the column headed "number of wives having employment
or keeping boarders or lodgers," exactly 4 such wives. As
there is, presumably, one wife to each family, this is equiva-
lent to four families. The critic has evidently been misled
by the figure 26, which is shown in another column headed
"number of selected families," for the "total native-born of
selected families."
This desire to pick flaws reaches a climax on p. 762 of
Prof. Fairchild's review. In Table 8 the author has copied
from the Reports of the Immigration Commission, the sta-
1 Henry Pratt Fairchild, in The National Municipal Review, vol. ii,
(1913)- Robert F. Foerster, in The Quarterly Journal of Economics,
August, 1913.
Appendix
tistics of the movement of third-class passengers between
the United States and European ports during the calendar
years 1899-1909. The number of west-bound passengers is
reported to have fallen from 1,378,000 in 1907, to 420,000 in
1908, which shows a decline of 058,000-, the net immigration,
i.e., the excess of east-bound over west-bound passengers for
the year 1908, is 237,000. These figures are commented
upon by the author as follows :
During the industrial crisis of 1908, immigration dropped at once
nearly a million, compared with the high-water mark of the previous
year. . . . The result was a net loss of nearly a quarter of a million through
emigration (p. 92).
Prof. Fairchild has not troubled himself to look at Table 8,
instead of which he has made a computation of his own from
some other source he does not take the reader into his
secret and has obtained the figures 859,642 and 41,198, re-
spectively, instead of those commented upon by the author.
On this ground the author is charged with "intent to mis-
lead." The American academic world prides itself upon its
"catholicity": there are two sides to every question, etc.
But, when met by heterodox opinion, the priest of the Tem-
ple of Wisdom loses his scholarly poise and falls into the ways
of the vulgus profanum.
Concerning the merits of the criticisms, it must be noted
that both reviewers reject the statistical method of treat-
ment of the subject of immigration. Prof. Fairchild exhorts
against "the besetting sin of the professional statistician, the
assumption that nothing is true which cannot be proved by
statistics" (p. 763). He is seconded by Dr. Foerster, who
believes that "we must go heavily armed with hypotheses.
. . . For to-day [he says] guarded deductive reasoning is in-
dispensable, and often by appropriate tests is found valid"
(pp. 670, 671).
It will be remembered that a Commission was appointed
by Congress to investigate the immigration question, and
Appendix 517
that after nearly three years of study the Commission brought
out a report recommending restriction of immigration, in
support of which it presented many volumes of statistical
material. This evidence is ruled out by the learned econo-
mists, who prefer to go back to deductive reasoning and
hypotheses. Is it because they realize that the truth of the
conclusions of the Commission "cannot be proved by sta-
tistics ' ' ? Still, since other university professors who directed
its investigations tried to prove the case for restriction of
immigration by statistical evidence, it was incumbent upon
the negative side to show that their statistics had failed to
establish the truth of their contentions.
Let us consider, however, whether deductive reasoning
would do better than the inductive method. The prerequisite
for the application of the deductive method is the existence
of axioms and postulates based upon common observation
of facts. In pure mathematics these facts are few and sim-
ple, and are within the daily experience of every person.
Economic science, on the contrary, deals with a great num-
ber of complex phenomena which are not within the knowl-
edge of everybody. The so-called deductive Political Econ-
omy is in reality also based upon observed facts, but the
field of observation is confined to the narrow environment of
the scholar. A pertinent illustration is the theory of wages
to which both reviewers swear allegiance, viz., that the de-
mand for labor at periods of shortage of labor "must of
necessity have raised the wages of laborers already in the
country, if the foreign sources of supply had been cut off." l
The experience of labor in the late war, as well as in the Civil
War, has discredited this theory. Mere facts, however, have
no place in the speculative theory of the reviewers.
What importance can it have says Dr. Foerster to ask whether
wages in an immigrant occupation are higher or lower now than they
once were? Legislators must ask, how does unrestricted immigration
affect wages (p. 658).
1 Fairchild, loc. cit., p. 760. See also Foerster, loc. cit n p. 668.
518 Appendix
Obviously he thinks that that question can be answered
by intuition, without a comparative study of the actual
ratfes of wages. Economists have not agreed, however, upon
the premises from which the legislators could readily deduce
an answer satisfactory to Dr. Foerster. Prof. Commons,
who made a study of immigration for President McKinley's
Industrial Commission, reached the conclusion that immi-
grants come in response to demand for labor, which is de-
pendent upon industrial expansion, and that when the ex-
pansion of industry is strong, "there is no overcrowding of
the labor market" and "the new labor as well as the existing
labor may secure advances in wages" (see pp. 114, 302).
In order to answer Dr. Foerster's hypothetical question, the
legislators must therefore first ascertain the following facts :
(1) Is American industry expanding fast enough to create
a demand for immigrant labor or, on the contrary, is there
an overcrowding of the labor market ?
(2) Has immigrant labor, as well as native labor, actually
secured advances in wages, or has immigration retarded the
advance of wages ?
Answers to these questions imply that very "historical
comparison" which is spurned by Dr. Foerster (p. 657).
He claims that the Immigration Commission attempted to
study the movement of wages in connection with immigra-
tion, and indulges in the following speculation:
If wages declined as immigrants entered a field and underbid the
workers, that would presumably prove that immigration lowers wages"
(p. 658).
This hypothesis merely proves that Dr. Foerster speaks
of the reports of the Immigration Commission without hav-
ing familiarized himself with them. The Commission never
attempted a historical study of wages, nor has it proved
Dr. Foerster's hypothesis. The burden of proof is obviously
on the restrictionist, who contends- that contemporary immi-
gration is responsible for low wages. The author's task has
been purely negative, to show the lack of evidence to support
Appendix 519
the contentions of the restrictionists. How was he to go
about it? We are taught by Dr. Foerster that "wherever
wages change we must note what else characteristically
changes" (p. 670). In conformity with this rule, the author
compared the wages of immigrant and native railway men
for a number of years. Census statistics of wages in manu-
factures were compared by states in parallel columns with
percentages of foreign-born. If wag;es declined as immi-
grants entered a field, states with a large percentage of
immigrants would show lower average earnings than those
with a smaller percentage of immigrants. Likewise, the
movement of wages of railway employees for a period of
years would show a greater advance in those occupations in
which native Americans predominate than in those in
which immigrants are employed. This is, however, not the
case.
Both reviewers find fault with the author for making com-
parisons of money wages "without reference to the relative
cost of living." That the author is fully aware of this factor
the reader can see from the following sentence, appearing on
p. 294: "A rise or a fall in money wages is no indication of
an increase or decrease of the resources of the wage-earners,
unless coupled with comparative statistics of the cost of
living." But when the movement of wages is compared by
occupations for a number of years, the change in the cost of
living affects all workers alike and may, therefore, be elim-
inated. The defects of our statistics of the cost of living do
not permit of a thoroughgoing comparison of real wages
over different sections of the country. But, relying upon
Dr. Hearing's conclusion in hi's Wages in ike United States,
"that average wages are rather constant for\ given industry
from state to state," we may properly infer that the cost of
living must likewise vary but little from state to state.
From such data as are available, it does not appear that
immigration has had a depressing effect upon real wages.
In the woolen mills, "since the immigrants from southern
and Eastern Europe and Asiatic Turkey have begun to enter
52O Appendix
the unskilled occupations in large numbers, the percentage
of increase in the wages of unskilled operatives has been
greater than the percentage of increase in the rates of skilled
workers, who are practically all of the English-speaking
races" (p. 390). Mr. Fitch, in his study of the steel workers
for the Pittsburgh Survey, has brought out the fact that the
wages of the unskilled immigrants have kept pace with the
cost of living, whereas the wages of the skilled native workers
have been reduced (see pp. 404-409). Comparisons of the
standard of living of the workers at different periods be-
ginning with 1800 show a decided improvement of the con-
dition of labor, going parallel with immigration (see pp.
295-297). This was, of course, due to the industrial progress
of the country, in which the workers had a share. Prof.
Fairchild thinks that, with the wonderful development of
industry in the United States, the share of the workers
should have been larger if it had not been for the influx of
immigrants. But this is begging the question.
He cites the example of Germany, where the expansion of
industry improved the condition of labor, and asks why it
has not had the same effect in the United States, the infer-
ence being that in the United States the advancement of
labor was retarded by immigration. He overlooks, however,
the fact that the period of German industrial expansion was
also a period of immigration of Polish and Italian workers
to Germany. Thus improvement of the condition of labor
came along with immigration.
But, cleverly interjects Dr. Foerster, if statistics "really
prove that heavy immigration does not hurt the terms of
employment of labor, then they also prove that such immi-
gration betters the terms of employment" (p. 662). He
assumes that because a certain proposition is true, the con-
verse proposition, too, must be true. Perhaps, however,
one must not expect from an economic scholar a familiarity
with Euclid's rules of deductive reasoning.
From an economic point of view immigration is merely a
movement of labor to the market where there is a demand
Appendix 521
for it, precisely as the movement from the country to the
city. Immigration to the United States supplied the un-
skilled labor which was wanted by the rapidly expanding
American industries. The expansion of industry created a
lively demand for skilled workers, as well as many positions
of a supervisory character these positions were filled by
native workers and older immigrants. To this extent im-
migration indirectly did better their terms of employment.
This tendency has been recognized by the experts of the
Immigration Commission (see p. 163).
On the other hand, reduction of the supply of labor, in-
stead of raising wages, may react upon the demand for labor.
A demonstration was furnished by the "non-essential" in-
dustries during the late war. The supply of foreign labor
was cut off, shortage of labor necessitated the suspension of
building activities, with the result that whereas from 1897
to 1917 relative full-time weekly earnings in the building
trades had grown faster than the average for ten leading
industries, in 1918 they fell behind the average. 1 The after-
effect of the suspension of building operations has been the
present housing crisis, which has raised the cost of shelter
58 per cent since the armistice. 2 This is tantamount to a
reduction of the real wages of the working class, as a whole,
for the benefit of the landlord class.
Deductive reasoning proves as fallacious in relation to
the problem of unemployment. Prof. Fairchild rules out all
the evidence disproving the hypothesis that immigration is
responsible for unemployment. It is wrong to assume, he
thinks, that the effects of immigration upon the labor market
must manifest themselves immediately; they may be cumu-
lative, and will tell a few years later, during a period of in-
dustrial depression. Indeed, inasmuch as over five million
immigrants were admitted to the United States within the
1 Douglas and Lamberson, loc. cit. t Table IV.
2 Changes in Cost of Living and Prices. Bureau of Applied Economics.
Bulletin No. 6, Addendum, September 25, 1920. (Estimate of the
National Industrial Conference Board.)
522 Appendix
past ten years, and there are to-day over five million un-
employed in this country, is it not self-evident that had
those five million aliens been kept out, there would be a job
for everybody in this country to-day? Yet on the other
hand, Australia, with a total population of five millions to a
continent as large as the United States, and without immi-
gration, has also known unemployment on a scale as large
in proportion as the state of New York. Prof. Fairchild
dismisses this argument "without opinion," to use a legal
phrase. The fallacy of his interpretation of cyclical unem-
ployment lies in the ready assumption that unemployment
is the result of an excessive supply of labor, whereas, to
quote Mr. Beveridge, "it depends upon the nature of the
demand for labor, not upon the volume of the whole supply"
(see Chapter VI). The advocates of restriction of immigra-
tion overlook the fact that parallel with the immigration of
labor to the United States prior to the war there was going
on an immigration of European capital to the United States.
It was estimated that the total amount of European capital
invested in permanent securities and loans in the United
States was approximately $6, 500,000,000. l This was equal
to about 14 per cent of the total capital invested in American
industries (exclusive of agriculture). 2 The foreign-born non-
agricultural population constituted about the same percen-
tage of the total non-agricultural population of the United
States. 3 In other words, European capital came together
1 George Paish, The Trade Balance of the United States, pp. 174, 175.
(Senate Document 579, Sixty-first Congress, 2d Session.)
1 The wealth invested in mines and quarries, factory land and im-
provements, manufacturing machinery, products of mining and manu-
facturing in stock, steam railroads, canals and shipping, telegraphs,
telephones, street railways, central electric light and power stations,
private waterworks, and other business property, was estimated for
1904 at $46,900,000,000. Wealth, Debt, and Taxation (Bureau of Cen-
sus), pp. 12, 17, 22, 27.
8 The proportion of foreign-born among the farmers in the United
States was 13.2 per cent in 1900 (Occupations at the XII. Census, Table
XXXVI., p. cxiii.), i.e. t approximately the same as among the popula-
tion at large.
Appendix 523
with European labor to assist in the development of American
industry.
The Immigration Commission contended that there was,
nevertheless, an oversupply of unskilled labor due to immi-
gration. The guiding idea of its report is the belief that
native Americans and older immigrant workers had been
displaced by recent immigrants. In support of this theory
the Commission quoted census statistics for the decade 1890-
1900. On closer examination, however, the figures of the
censuses of 1890 and 1900 proved quite the opposite of what
the Commission intended to prove. Yet Prof. Fairchild
would not give up a hypothesis merely for want of facts to
support it. The decade 1890-1900, he objects, is incon-
clusive, because it was a period of light immigration, but if
the author had consulted the figures of the XIII. Census,
which followed a decade of heavy immigration, they would
tell another story. Regardless of the general rule that the
burden of proof is not on the negative, but on the affirmative
in the present case, upon that side which affirms the theory
of "racial displacement" it is characteristic of Prof. Fair-
child's easy methods of reasoning that at the time he made
this guess the occupation statistics of the XIII. Census had
not yet been published, so he manifestly did not know what
they would show.
The present writer was not satisfied, however, to rest his
conclusions on the period relied upon by the Immigration
Commission, but, anticipating such hypothetical objections
as those of Prof. Fairchild, he perused the report of the
Massachusetts state census of 1905, which showed "no ma-
terial change in the make-up of the industrial forces during
the first five years of the present century" (see p. 176).
The years 1900-1905 were marked by heavy immigration;
the total for the five-year period, 3,841,646, exceeded the
total for the previous decade; 1 the net immigration for the
five calendar years 1900-1904, preceding the Massachusetts
state census, was nearly equal to the net immigration for the
1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. i, pp. 56, 57.
524 Appendix
next five years, 1905-1909, preceding the XIII. Census of
the United States (see Table 8, on p. 90) ; Massachusetts is
one of the states with a large immigrant population. In
the absence of any data to the contrary, the results of the
Massachusetts census could properly be accepted as an indi-
cation that the data for 1890-1900 still held good in 1910.
The XIII. Census report on occupations was subsequently
published in an uncompleted form, with a new classification
which rendered its figures non-comparable with those of the
preceding censuses.
Another of the popular myths related to the subject of
labor supply is the alleged "stimulation" of immigration.
The author has quoted the statement of the Immigration
Commission that "owing to the rigidity of the law and the
fact that special provision is made for its enforcement, there
are probably at the present time relatively few actual con-
tract laborers admitted." This does not satisfy Prof. Fair-
child. He insinuates that the author has deliberately omitted
other qualifying statements of the Commission. He quotes a
sentence to the effect that "a very large number . . . come
in response to indirect assurance that employment awaits
them" (which, as a matter of fact, he could have found on
p. 94 of this book, reproduced in almost identical language
from another page of the same volume). He further quotes
the opinion of the Commission that "it is certain that Euro-
pean immigrants, and particularly those from southern and
eastern Europe, are, under a literal construction of the law,
for the most part contract laborers" (p. 761). He is not dis-
turbed by the glaring contradiction between this conclusion
and the other that "owing to the rigidity of the law" and its
effective enforcement there are "few actual contract laborers
admitted." He fails to perceive the distinction between a
statement of facts and a conclusion, and is apparently un-
familiar with the time-honored rule of evidence that one
may accept the testimony of witnesses concerning facts,
without accepting their conclusions from those facts.
Closely connected with the subject of unemployment is
Appendix 525
the effect of machinery upon the demand for labor. Here
again deductive reasoning has failed our learned economists.
Prof. Fairchild denies "the assumption (sic!) that labor-
saving machinery supplants skilled labor to a much greater
extent than unskilled labor" (p. 763). He is seconded by
Dr. Foerster, who has picked out a number of exceptions, of
which only one need be mentioned here: "The old cobbler
was not superior to the worker in the modern shoe industry"
(p. 665). He should brush up on his Taussig, where he will
find the following:
The cobbler of former days put together a shoe by himself; in a
modern factory the shoe goes through some eighty different processes.
. . . The machines now used . . . have extended the principle of the
automatic repetition of identical movements to tasks long thought
too intricate to be amenable to such methods. . . . The skillful work-
man and the adaptable tool retain a large place in industry; but the
range of their work tends to become more and more restricted. 1
This proposition has become a truism. The author has
quoted a statement of Professors Jenks and Lauck which in-
cidentally refers to the fact that "the invention of mechan-
ical methods and processes" has resulted in the employment
of "unskilled industrial workers as a substitute for the
1 Principles of Economics, by F. W. Taussig, vol. i, pp. 35-36. That
the theory originated by Prof. Fairchild and Dr. Foerster had been
unknown to their predecessors in the field of economics, appears from
the following references: "The effect of improvements in machinery,"
according to an early writer, consists "in substituting one description
of human labor for another the less skilled for the more skilled."
Andrew Ure: The Philosophy of Manufactures, p. 321 (Third edition,
London, 1861). "A factor that has had a real tendency to lower the
actual average earnings of the wage-earner in many of the industries is
the displacement of the skilled operative by machinery, which permits
the substitution of a comparatively unskilled machine hand. This
tendency is noticeable in many lines of industry." Twelfth Census,
Manufactures, vol. i, p. 123. President McKinley's Industrial Commis-
sion, discussing the effects of immigration upon wages, remarked that
"machinery ... by displacing the skilled mechanic, makes room for the
unskilled immigrant." Report of the Industrial Commission, vol. xv,
p. xxiii.
f
526 Appendix
skilled operatives formerly required" (see p. 290). That in
some cases the machine has substituted a new kind of skill
for the old one, may be conceded. But the error is in the
deductive reasoning from insufficient facts, which are gen-
eralized out of all proportion to their real place in modern
industry. If Dr. Foerster had taken note of the statistics
compiled by Mr. Fitch in his study of the steel workers
(reproduced in Table 121 of this book) he would realize that
the skilled workers constitute only about one-sixth of the
force of a modern steel plant, whereas more than three-fifths
are unskilled laborers. Owing to his misconception of the
effects of machinery he fails to "see that the introduction of
new labor-saving machinery as a substitute for immigration
would displace the skilled labor of the native American
workers and reduce them to the condition of unskilled
laborers (see Chapter XXIII).
The contempt of both reviewers for facts is reflected in
their judgments on every economic and social problem.
Discrimination between recent immigrants from southern
and eastern Europe and older immigrants from northern
and western Europe, runs through the whole report of the
Immigration Commission, yet Dr. Foerster wonders, are
there really "persons who ask for restriction on the ground
that former immigrants were 'more desirable' than the
present ones"? (p. 658). He ridicules the idea that "a re-
duction in the day's work, all other things being equal, pro-
vides more days of work for every employee." Yet it is a
fact that the American Federation of Labor has repeatedly
urged the shortening of the work day on this very ground. 1
Prof. Fairchild, speaking of child labor, says:
The only reasonable basis of comparison is the total number of chil-
dren of the given ages in each nativity group in the country. If the
author had made this comparison ... it would have appeared that
nearly three times as large a percentage of all children of foreign parents,
l See Report on Unemployment, by" John Koren, in "Waste in In-
dustry," by The Committee on Elimination of Waste in Industry of
the Federated Engineering Societies (1921), p. 296.
Appendix 527
of the given ages, are employed in the specified occupations as children of
native parents (p. 762).
As a matter of fact, the author did make such a compari-
son in Table 94, on p. 320, with the result that the percentage
of children of foreign parents employed in manufactures was
found to be exactly the same as that of children of native
parents, and not "three times as large," as Prof. Fairchild
imagines.
Dr. Foerster interprets the employment of children in
large numbers in the Southern mills as the effect of immi-
gration. The Southern manufacturers are compelled to em-
ploy children in order to meet the competition of the cheap
immigrant labor of the North. Reference to Table 114
shows, however, that the average yearly earnings of adult
males in the cotton mills of South Carolina were at the cen-
sus of manufactures of 1905 about equal to the earnings of
children in the cotton mills of Massachusetts ($244 and
$233, respectively), and that the earnings of adult males in
Pennsylvania were more than double the earnings of adult
males in North and South Carolina. It was a case of the
native Southerner underbidding the immigrant. The ab-
sence of adequate laws against child labor in the South is
thus obviously due to the demand for labor, not for cheap
labor adult male labor is cheap enough in the South. In
the Ncrth, too, child labor was employed in the early days of
the cotton manufacturing industry; later, however, with the
growth of immigration, the cotton mills secured a supply of
adult labor which made it practicable to dispense with
child labor (see Chapter XIV).
In reference to pauperism, Dr. Fairchild boldly asserts
that it would be difficult to find "statistics which would not
go to show that the amount of pauperism among the foreign-
born was vastly out of proportion to their total numbers in the
population'' (p. 762). It does not matter that Tables 106-
109 do present such statistics, drawn from official sources,
and that the Immigration Commission, though unfriendly to
immigration, after an investigation which covered the activi-
528 Appendix
ties of associated charities in forty-three cities, came to the
conclusion that "the recent immigrants, even in cities in
times of relative industrial inactivity, did not seek charitable
assistance in any considerable numbers" (p. 354).
A brief chapter has been devoted by the author to the
refutation of Gen. Walker's theory that immigration has
displaced millions of unborn Americans. To Prof. Fairchild's
mind, however, the reiteration of Gen. Walker's hypothesis
by other prominent writers (none of whom has contributed
a single new fact in support of it) somehow vests it with
added authority. Magister dixit. He is not disturbed by
his own admission, in his book published a short time before,
that "the proposition ... is absolutely incapable of mathe-
matical proof." l
To prove that the world-wide "volitional limitation of the
family" has no relation to immigration to the United States,
figures were quoted, in the first edition of this book, from
Mr. Newsholme's The Declining Birth Rate, showing the num-
ber of children born to an average family of the British aris-
tocracy to have declined within half a century from 7 to 3.*
The decline of the birth-rate among the upper classes of Eng-
land led Prof. Karl Pearson to the following conclusions:
The mentally better stock in the nation is not reproducing itself at
the same rate as of old. . . . For the last forty years the intellectual
classes of the nation, enervated by wealth or by love of pleasure, or
following an erroneous standard of life, have ceased to give in due pro-
portion the men wanted to carry on the ever-growing work of the
Empire. 8
Still, if facts do not count with Prof. Fairchild against a
preconceived idea backed up by authorities, the authority
of Prof. Willcox, ranged on the opposite side of the question,
1 Henry Pratt Fairchild: Immigration^ pp. 341-342.
* These statistics have since been superseded by a nation-wide inves-
tigation, the results of which are quoted in the present edition.
' Quoted in the first edition, p. 226, from The Declining Birth Rate,
by Arthur Newsholme, pp. 42-43.
Appendix 529
ought to have appealed to him. That he has not a word to
say about Prof. Willcox's arguments, although he has
noticed the wrong spelling of Prof. Willcox's name, is ground
for suspicion that he did not read the chapter on Race
Suicide, and based his peremptory judgment on the brief
summary on p. 18.
Verily, there are none so blind as those who would not
see.
Appendix
Note to page 499.
IMPORTATION OF MEXICAN CONTRACT-LABORERS.
Under the departmental regulations, Mexican contract laborers are
admitted on the express condition that they will remain at work with
the employer by whom they were imported. If a contract laborer de-
serts his employer and attempts to seek work elsewhere, he is to be
deported from the United States. There is a possibility that a contract
laborer who has deserted his employer might successfully conceal his
identity and find other employment. To guard against such an emer-
gency the employer is required to withhold a part of the wages of the
contract laborer, pending the fulfillment of his contract, and to deposit
the same with a postal savings bank in the name of the laborer. In
case the latter deserts, he forfeits the amount deposited for his benefit.
To be sure, the regulations require the employer to pay his contract
laborers the prevailing rate of wages. 1 But this is merely nudum jus,
which could not be enforced in practice. Suppose the employer pays his
imported laborer under the prevailing rate, what remedy has the latter
to enforce his claim? He dare not leave his job and seek employment
on better terms, for fear of deportation. For the same reason he dare
not strike for higher wages. He must accept the wages stipulated in
his contract (made in Mexico) although they may be below the pre-
vailing rate paid for the same work in the same locality. "That wages
paid and conditions provided" for the imported Mexican laborers were
"perhaps in many cases not ideal," is admitted in a report of an investi-
gating committee appointed by Secretary Wilson. It is learned from
the same report that 10,691 imported contract laborers, i.e., 21 per
cent of the total number, deserted. 8
1 "The New Mexican Immigration," by J. B. Gwin: The Survey,
August 3, 1918, p. 491.
1 Monthly Labor Review, November, 1920, p. 223.
STATISTICAL TABLES
TABLE I. ANNUAL AVERAGE IMMIGRATION DISTRIBUTED BY OCCUPA*
TIONS (IN THOUSANDS), 1.861-1910. x
Occupation
1861-1870
1871-1880
1881-1890
1891-1900
1901-1910
Professional
i
2
3*
2
IO
Skilled
^o
j-i
CA
AA
1^2
Agricultural pursuits,
total
22
26
17
2<\
TCQ
Common laborers ....
C-I
60
I-I-I
IO1
*ov
227
Servants .
9
II
25
l-I
O2
All other occupations. . .
10
II
13
12
33
Total
125
14. t
265
210
651
TABLE II: FLUCTUATIONS OF EMPLOYMENT OF MALE WAGE-EARNERS
IN THE MONTH OF MAY, 1899.*
Greatest number laid off
Industry
Glucose
Fur hats
Jewelry
Steam fittings and heating apparatus
Number
1,267
1,650
1,924
1, 680
Total.
6,521
* Monthly Summary of Commerce and Finance, June, 1903, pp. 4408-
44 1 1 . Reports of the Immigration Commission. A bstract of the Statistical
Review of Immigration to the United States, 1820-1910, Tables 11-12.
Annual Reports of the Commissioner-General of Immigration, 1899, Table
VII.,p. 19; 1900, Table VII., p. 21; 1901, Table IX., p. 26; 1902, Table
IX., p. 29; 1903, Table IX., p. 33; 1904, Table IX., p. 30; 1905,
Table VIII., p. 29; 1906, Table VIIL, p. 31; 1907, Table VIII., p. 31;
1908, Table VIII., p. 35; 1909, Table X., p. 46; 1910, Table X., p. 45.
a Compiled from U. S. XII. Census Report on Manufactures, Pt. I,
Table 2, pp. 20 et se^.
a Difference between the greatest number employed at any time
during the year and the number employed in May (i.e., the least number).
531
532 Appendix
TABLE II. (Continued).
Greatest number of temporary Help wanted.*
Industry Numbet
Awnings, tents, and sails 1,312
Bags, paper 33 8
Baskets and rattan and willow ware 1 ,889
Belting and hose, leather 63
Blacksmithing and wheel wrighting 345
Boxes, wooden packing 2,771
Brass castings and brass finishings 7 21
Bread and other bakery products 2,661
Bicycle and tricycle repairing 3,696
Carpets, rag 290
Carriages and wagons 14> l8 7
Cars, general shop construction and repairs by street
railroad companies 57^
Cheese, butter, and condensed milk, factory product 5,789
Clothing, men's, custom work and repairing 16,861
Cork, cutting 123
Corsets 84
Dyeing and cleaning 771
Dyestuffs and extracts 178
Electroplating 483
Furniture, cabinetmaking, repairing and upholstering .... 2,384
Gas, machines and meters 193
Gloves and mittens 561
Grease and tallow 142
Grindstones 487
Hosiery and knit goods 1,723
Lamps and reflectors 439
Lock and gun smithing 100
Lumber, planing mill products, including sash, doors, and
blinds 13,399
Lumber and timber products 93,238
Monuments and tombstones 4,43
Painting, house, sign, etc 48,838
Paperhanging 5,637
Paper and wood pulp 4,002
Photographic materials 55
Pipes, tobacco 138
Plumbers' supplies 7 834
Refrigerators 383
1 Difference between the number employed in May (i.e., the greatest
number) and the least number employed at any time during the year.
Appendix
533
TABLE II. (Concluded).
Industry
Safes and vaults
Ship and boat building, wooden
Slaughtering, wholesale, not including packing.
Tin and terae plate
Tobacco, chewing, smoking, and snuff
Tobacco, cigars, and cigarettes
Washing machines and clothes wringers
Window shades
Zinc, smelting and refining
Total. .
Number
137
5,346
743
1.594
3,983
6,348
212
247
590
252,01 7
TABLE III. MAXIMUM AND MINIMUM NUMBER OF WAGE-EARNERS EMPLOYED n
MANUFACTURES DURING ANY ONE MONTH, NUMBER AND PER CENT UNEM
PLOYED, 1899, AND PER CENT FOREIGN-BORN ENGAGED IN MANUFACTURED
AND MECHANICAL PURSUITS, 1900, BY SEX AND BY STATES.'
Rank ace ord-
Unemployed
ing to
Number employed
; per cent
State*
(oo's omitted)
4
:|!
.
.
I .-A
8>H
1
So
8 g g
*1
P
1*
Maximum month
Minimum month
*!
*liS
H
I. MALES
i
5
North Carolina
May 47,9
August 42,5
5,4
11.3
1.0
2
3
South Carolina
November 32,8
July 26,0
6,8
20.5
1.7
3
19
Georgia
March 70,2
July 59.9
10,3
14.6
2.8
4
Virginia
May 60,0
January 52,0
8,0
13.3
3-9
i
Tennessee
May 44.4
August 41,0
3,4
7.7
4-5
5
42
Mississippi
October 28,4
July 19,6
8,8
31.0
4.6
7
25
Alabama
October 49,2
July 40,3
8,9
18.1
5-5
8
33
Arkansas
November 28,5
July 22,1
6,4
22.5
6.4
9
35
Oklahoma
May 2,2
July i,7
5
22.7
9.0
10
ii
12
17
22
47
West Virginia
Kentucky
Louisiana
May 31,9
May 56,9
November 54,3
July 27,4
January 48,0
July 28,3
4,5
8,9
26,0
14.1
15-6
47-9
10.3
"5
12.4
13
43
District of
Columbia
September 16,7
February 11,1
5.6
33-5
13-0
14
13
Indiana
May 144.5
December 125,3
19,2
13-3
14.7
15
16
48
36
Indian Territory
Florida
November 2,4
March 36,0
June 1,1
July 27,8
1,3
8,2
54-2
22.8
15-2
1 6.0
17
20
Delaware
September 19,2
February 16,3
2.9
i5-i
17.7
18
24
Maryland
September 80,2
January 66,6
13,6
16.8
18.4
' Compiled from XII. Census Report on Manufactures, Vol. I, Table 3, pp. 62-63
Occupations at the XII. Census, p. 164, Table 34.
a States where the number of males or females, respectively, employed durinj
the maximum month was less than 1000, are not included.
534
TABLE III. (Continued)
Appendix
Rank a
ing
perc
fj
ccord-
to
ent
M ^ ~
il
<*
State
Number employed
(oo's omitted)
Unemployed
(Per cent
foreign-born
Number
(oo's omitted)
Per cent of
greatest num-
ber employedj
Maximum month
Minimum month
19
44
Texas
October 56,5
June 37,6
18,9
33-5
18.9
2O
23
Kansas t
May 33,3
January 27,8
5,5
16.4
194
21
27
Missouri
May 115,2
January 93,1
22,1
19.2
2O.6
22
10
Ohio
May 304,6
January 266,5
38,1
12.5
24.1
23
38
Maine
September 60,6
January 45,5
15,1
24.9
24.2
24
39
Iowa
September 54,9
January 40,0
14,9
27.2
26.5
3
40
21
Oregon
Vermont
June 1 6, 9
May 26,9
January 12,3
January 22,8
4,6
4,1
27.2
15-2
28.8
29.6
27
2
New Mexico
May 2,6
February 2,4
2
7-7
30.c
28
26
Nebraska
September 22,6
February 18,4
4,2
18.6
30.7
29
45
Idaho
May 1,7
anuary I ,i
6
35-3
30
7
Pennsylvania
May 596,7
January 531,5
65,5
II.O
33-2
3 1
3 1
California
September 80,4
January 63,2
16,9
2I.O
34-4
32
Washington
May 38,0
January 27,0
11,0
29.0
34-9
33
3
New Hampshire
May 49,o
[anuary 45,0
4,0
8.2
f\
37-8
34
18
Arizona
May 3,5
November 3,0
5
14.2
37-5
35
16
Colorado
October 24,3
February 21,0
3,3
13-6
J
38.4
36
12
New Jersey
May 191,6
January 166,4
25,2
13.2
38-S
37
II
Wyoming
August 2,3
February 2,0
3
13-0
40.$
38
6
Connecticut
May 135,2
January 121,2
14,0
IO.4
39
15
Illinois
May 345,7
January 299,2
46,5
13-5
44-*
40
28
Michigan
May 151,2
January 121,6
29,6
19.6
44-*
41
32
Wisconsin
May 134,0
January 104,1
29,9
22.3
44-*
42
43
8
4
New York
Massachusetts
May 639,9
October 355,2
January 564,5
January 322,8
75,4
32,4
H.8
9.1
44-5
46.3
44
37
Utah
September 6,2
February 4,7
24.2
45
9
Rhode Island
September 66,9
January 59,0
7\9
11.8
47.C
46
29
Montana
May 10,6
February 8,5
2,1
19.8
CJ
47
46
North Dakota
September 2,7
February 1 ,6
1,1
40.7
53-!
48
34
Minnesota
May 74,2
January 57,5
16,7
22.5
\j*j ^
53-*
UNITED STATES
May 4333,9
January 3800,9
533,o
12.3
32-;
II. FEMALES
I
5
North Carolina
May 16,7
July 14,7
2,0
12.0
O.2
2
3
South Carolina
March 10,1
September 9,3
8
7-9
3
ii
Georgia
April 11,6
Bily 10,0
1,6
13-8
o.;
4
34
Mississippi
October 2,1
ily 1,4
7
33-3
o.f
5
24
Alabama
May 4,3
dy 3,3
1,0
23-3
I.C
6
H
Virginia
October 13,2
ily ii, i
2,1
15-9
i.t
7
8
Tennessee
May 6,2
ebruary 54
8
12.9
j i
8
30
West Virginia
October 4,0
July 2,8
30.0
3- (
9
10
23
Kentucky
Indiana
April 1 0,0
September 22,8
August 7,8
July 15,9
2 ',2
6,9
22.0
30.3
4.1
5-4
Appendix
S3S
TABLE III. (Concluded).
iank accord-
Unemployed
ing to
per cent
Of A+jh
Number employed
(oo's omitted)
tij
3
f|
Sd
e*
DlabC
|i
5*1
Jj-5?
9P
o
y g 8
PH K
jr
C O
PP,
Maximum month
Minimum month
g
<g|g
' i
ii
19
Louisiana
Vfarch ) , n
December f 6 '
July 4,8
1,2
20.0
5-6
12
36
District of
Columbia
April 2,2
August 1,3
9
40.9
5-9
13
28
Kansas
October 3,7
February 2,7
1,0
27.0
6-5
14
37
Delaware
September 5,8
uly 2,4
3,4
58.6
6.6
15
16
Missouri
September 25,7
July 20,6
19.8
8.4
16
29
Iowa
September 9,5
January 6,8
2 ',7
28.4
9.6
17
27
Maryland
September 36,0
February 26,3
9,7
26.9
9-7
18
9
Ohio
Dctober 56,9
January 49,4
7,5
13-2
IO.O
19
25
Texas
May 3,4
August 2,5
9
26.5
10.4
20
33
Oregon
September 2,2
August 1 ,5
7
31-8
12.4
21
6
Pennsylvania
April 131,6
July 115,8
15,8
12.0
13-0
22
12
Vermont
April 4,8
July 4,1
7
14.6
14.6
23
32
Colorado
October 2,3
January 1 ,6
7
304
14.8
24
26
Nebraska
October 3,0
January 2,2
8
26.7
15-8
25
38
California
August 27,6
August 1 1 ,4
16,2
58-7
17.0
26
27
21
15
Washington
Wisconsin
May 1,4
October 17,4
August 1,1
; anuary 14,6
2,8
21.4
16.1
19.1
19.9
28
35
Florida
March 2 ,o
July 1,3
7
35-
20.3
29
30
31
18
10
20
Michigan
New Jersey
Illinois
October 25,6
October 55,1
April 64,1
July 20,5
July 47,7
July 51,6
74
12,5
19.9
134
19-5
22.7
25-2
26.1
32
22
Minnesota
May 10,5
July 8,2
2,3
21.9
27.0
33
4
Connecticut
October 44,3
January 40,7
3,6
8.1
27.9
34
13
New York
October 244,4
'uly 208,0
364
14.9
29.6
35
17
Maine
October 21,1
February 16,9
4,2
19.9
32.8
36
2
Rhode Island
December 30,8
August 28,^
2,4
7.8
39-5
37
7
Massachusetts
April 149,5
August 130,6
18,9
12.6
40.6
38
i
New Hampshire
December 22,5
August 21,1
1,4
6.2
46.2
UNITED STATES
October 1089,8
July 949,3
I4<>5
12.9
214
536 Appendix
TABLE IV. PERCENTAGE RATIOS OF UNEMPLOYED AND OF FOREUM
Rank according
to per cent
-
|
Occupation
Unemployed a*
any time during
Foreign
White
}
I
the year
I
Males
Telegraph and telephone
operators.
9 .6
6.3
2
34
Confectioners.
II.2
35-9
3
47
Bakers.
H.3
56.4
4
32
Butchers.
H.5
35-2
5
49
Brewers and maltsters.
I2.I
71.9
6
27
Bartenders.
12.5
31.1
I
7
37
Porters and helpers (in stores).
Cotton mill operatives.
12.6
19.8
38.3
9
Street railway employees.
13-3
24.2
10
19
Machinists.
134
27.7
ii
18
Blacksmiths.
13.7
/ /
27.7
12
5
Printers, lithographers, and
/ /
pressmen.
15-0
I 5-9
13
10
Steam railroad employees.
15-8
20.08
14
30
Paper and pulp mill
15
ii
operatives.
Servants and waiters.
16.9
I7.O
33-0
21.5
If
22
Steam boiler makers.
18.4
9
29.6
17
4 6
Bleachery and dye works
T
18
9
operatives.
Draymen, hackmen,
19-3
53-0
19
20
21
39
36
3
teamsters, etc.
Woolen mill operatives.
Brass workers.
Messenger, errand, and office
19-3
19-5
19.6
197
20.4
43-1
37-3
boys.
10 8
22
23
24
21
Upholsterers.
Cabinet makers.
Plumber and gas and steam
20.9
20.9
28.1
56.5
fitters.
22.O
IO.I
*"*
11
24
2
Tool and cutlery makers.
Oil well and oil works
22.0
30.2
27
38
employees.
Textile workers (not soe-
22.8
10.5
28
26
cified).
Wood workers (not spe-
23.8
41.8
29
30
43
cified).
Leather curriers and tanners.
Gold and silver workers.
24.6
24.8
25-3
30.8
47-7
34-5
Appendix
537
WHITE BREADWINNERS IN THE PRINCIPAL OCCUPATIONS, 1900.
Rank according
to per cent
%
Unemployed at
I
|
Occupation
any time during
the year
White*
A
1
.1
1
3 1
44
Wire workers.
25.3
49-8
32
15
Tinplate and tinware makers.
25-9
24.9
33
50
Tailors.
27.0
75-8
34
29
Tobacco and cigar factory
operatives.
27.2
32.6
35
35
Iron and steel workers.
28.1
35.9
36
37
42
28
Silk mill operatives.
Boatmen and sailors.
29-3
33-3
47.1
31.8
38
39
25
Coopers.
Sawing and planing mill
34-3
30.8
employees.
35-1
20.1
40
41
Marble and stone cutters.
39-5
44.6
41
45
Hat and cap makers.
41.0
50.4
42
16
Carpenters and joiners.
41.4
25.4
43
*3
Painters, glaziers, and
varnishers.
42.4
23.5
44
40
Miners and quarrymen.
44-3
43.7
45
20
Laborers (not specified).
44-3
28.1
46
47
4
2 3
Paper hangers.
Brick and tile makers.
44-5
48.4
13.5
30.0
48
33
Masons (brick and stone).
55-5
35-3
49
17
Plasterers.
56.1
25.8
50
12
Glass workers.
59-9
22.7
Females
I
I
Telegraph and telephone
operators.
10.7
6.2
2
14
Servants and waitresses.
14.8
25.9
3
18
Cotton mill operatives.
14.9
38.2
4
3
Printers, lithographers, and
5
presswomen.
Bookbinders.
16.5
16.7
7.3
II.O
6
g
Dressmakers.
19.8
16.5
7
10
Hosiery and knitting mill
operatives.
20.0
17-9
8
7
Box makers (paper).
26.4
14.5
9
16
Woolen mill operatives.
31.1
32.1
10
Q
Shirt, collar, and cuff makers.
22.1
1 6.6
II
;?
15
Textile workers (not specified).
22.1
30.7
12
II
Seamstresses,
24-2
18.5
1 XII. Census. Occupations, pp. ccxxvii. et seq., Tables LXXXVIIL
and LXXXIX.; pp. cxiv.-^xvi., Table XXXVII.
538 Appendix
TABLE IV. (Concluded).'
Rank according
to per cent
|
3
1
Occupation
Unemployed at
any time during
the year
Foreign
White
.1
a
3
13
14
12
4
Silk mill operatives.
Milliners.
25.8
26.3
23.0
10.9
15
16
17
13
Tailors.
Tobacco and cigar factory
26.4
38.2
17
6
operatives.
Boot and shoe makers and
27.2
25.2
repairers.
42.5
I4.I
18
2
Laborers (not specified).
44.1
6.8
TABLE V. BITUMINOUS COAL MINES: GREATEST AND LEAST NUMBER
EMPLOYED, PER CENT UNEMPLOYED AT ANY TIME DURING THE
YEAR 1902, AND PER CENT FOREIGN WHITE MINERS IN 1900, IN
THE PRINCIPAL STATES. x
Rank according to
per cent
Number employed
Per cent
Per cent
Foreign-
Unem-
State 3
unem-
ployed
white
miners
born
ployed
Greatest
Least
I
3
Texas
2.035
1,881
7.6
62.7
2
3
ii
2
Wyoming
Pennsylvania
4,920
93,620
3,481
87,355
29.2
6.7
4
5
Illinois
39,557
32,809
I7.I
48.5
i
10
9
Iowa
Kansas
10,719
8,120
7,749
6,179
27.7
23-9
39-7
33-6
I
i
Ohio
IndianTerritory
27,770
5,109
24,241
4,054
12.7
2O.7
27-0
26.9
9
i
Maryland
4,881
4,706
3-6
22.3
10
ii
12
7
12
6
Indiana
West Virginia
Arkansas
11,614
26,197
2,826
9,408
16,564
2,304
19.0
36.7
18.5
21.3
14.3
13-6
1 Compiled from Census Report on Mines and Quarries, 1902, pp.
/IO-7I5, Table 60; Occupations at the XIL, Census, Table 41.
"All States with less than 1,000 employees have been omitted;
likewise New Mexico, Colorado, Missouri, and Washington, there being
& large number of metalliferous miners in those States who are not
segregated from coal miners in the census statistics of occupations.
Appendix
539
TABLE VI. LABORERS, MALE: PER CENT FOREIGN WHITE AND
PER CENT UNEMPLOYED, BY STATES, 1900. 1
Rank according to
per cent
StRtO
Foreign
White
Unemployed
Foreign
White
Unem-
ployed
I
22
North Carolina .
O.I
42.1
2
5
Georgia
0.4
37-4
3
12
South Carolina
0.4
39-8
4
13
Alabama
0.6
40.6
36
Tennessee
0.6
45-5
6
20
Virginia
0.7
41.6
8
II
50
Mississippi
Indian Territory
0.9
1-5
39-7
65.0
9
33
Arkansas
1.6
45-o
10
6
Florida
1.7
38-0
ii
42
Kentucky
3-3
49.0
12
49
Oklahoma
3-3
56.5
13
District of
Columbia
4.1
38.6
14
30
West Virginia
5-5
44.2
15
26
Louisiana
5-7
43-5
10
40
Kansas
8.8
47.1
17
4
New Mexico
8-9
37-0
18
48
Indiana
9.8
52.1
19
28
Maryland
12.7
44.0
20
44
Missouri
13-3
49.4
21
23
Oregon
14.4
42.4
22
35
Texas
16.8
45-3
23
9
Delaware
17.5
39-3
24
38
Idaho
19.6
45.9
25
47
Iowa
20.9
51-2
26
Nevada
22.8
48.0
27
43
Ohio
24-3
49-3
28
18
Nebraska
26.2
4L5
29
2
Vermont
26.4
35**
3
Colorado
274
40.8
3
Wyoming
28.6
35-5
32
24
Washington
29.9
43-0
33
34
Maine
30.2
45-0
34
46
Utah
30.2
49.6
37
South Dakota
31-3
45-7
96
29
California
32.9
44.0
37
38
15
17
Pennsylvania
Arizona
33-4
40.8
40.8
41.2
39
Montana
41.0
44.6
40
32
I
Michigan
New Hampshire
41.1
43-3
44-8
33.6
42
45
Illinois
44.1
494
1 Computed from Occupations at the XII. Census, Table 41.
540 Appendix
TABLE VI. (Concluded).
Rank according to
per cent
State
Foreign
White
Unemployed
Foreign
White
Unem-
ployed
43
44
45
46
i
49
50
16
27
25
19
39
7
21
10
Wisconsin
New York
North Dakota
New Jersey
Minnesota
Connecticut
Massachusetts
Rhode Island
United States
48.0
50.2
52.1
52.9
Si
65.8
65.6
41.0
43-7
434
41-5
46.6
38.1
41.8
39-4
28.1
44-3
TABLE VII. COTTON MILL OPERATIVES, MALE: PER CENT FOREIGN
WHITE AND PER CENT UNEMPLOYED, BY STATES, 1900.
Rank according to
per cent
State
Pore'gn
White
Unemployed
Foreign
White
Unem-
ployed
I
13
North Carolina
0.2
14.8
2
7
South Carolina
0.2
II.4
3
20
Alabama
I 7 .6
4
9
Mississippi
0-3
II.5
I
19
15
Georgia
Virginia
0.4
0.9
I7.I
15-4
7
i
Maryland
1.2
7-5
8
22
Tennessee
1.8
29.6
9
10
Kentucky
3-1
13-0
10
14
Texas
5-3
15.2
ii
23
Louisiana
7.2
34.0
12
3
Indiana
9.1
94
13
4
Delaware
17.8
II. I
14
16
Pennsylvania
19.6
16.1
15
8
Colorado
23.9
11.4
10
12
New York
30-7
14-3
II
17
21
New Jersey
Vermont
36.8
48.2
~ **
16.4
21.7
19
5
Connecticut
60.5
II. I
20
21
ii
18
Rhode Island
Maine
634
65.9
5
22
6
Massachusetts
72.3
Ii. I
23
2
New Hampshire *
74-5
9.1
United States
38.4
13-0
1 Computed from Occupations at the XII. Census, Table 41.
Appendix
S4i
TABLE VIII. PERSONS EMPLOYED IN ALL INDUSTRIES OF MASSA-
CHUSETTS, 1888-1908. x
a
3
H
11
II
|
1
I!
Year
*** "5
Year
1
c
'
o
O
*
II
I
a
li
1888
221,307
169,610
51,697
1899
420,701
312,054
108,647
1889
293,321
224,887
68,434
1900
440,363
322,200
118,163
1890
322,288
251,107
71,181
1901
456,137
339,405
116,732
1891
335,919
260,419
75,500
1902
483,392
373,385
110,007
1892
352,939
271,399
81,540
1903
500,348
377,563
122,785
1893
345,388
222,370
123,018
1904
493,354
363,245
130,109
1894
310,167
206,423
103,744
1905
534,712
411,869
122,843
1895
351,915
258,776
93,139
1906
565,472
448,830
116,642
1896
358,529
241,363
117,166
1907
607,151
453,349
153,802
1897
377,399
272,204
105,195
1908
570,712
383,588
187,124
1898
386,383
271,847
H4,536
TABLE IX. IMMIGRANT BREADWINNERS DESTINED FOR MASSACHU-
SETTS, 1 897-1 908. a
Year
Number
Year
Number
Year
Number
1897
17,147
1901
30,174
1905
56,349
1898
15,983
1902
39,747
1906
55,737
1899
21,724
1903
49,941
1907
64,764
1900
29,369
1904
43,998
1908
31,335
1 Massachusetts Statistics of Manufactures, 1889, pp. 61, 68, 202;
1890, pp. 91, 257, 315; 1891, pp. 91, 127, 135; 1892, pp. 33, 47, 399;
1893, pp.4i, 53, 3"! 1894, pp. 51, 89, 204; 1896, pp. 28, 70, 168; 1897,
pp. 30, 70, 175; 1898, pp. 29, 31, 33, 35, 73, 169; 1901, pp. 70, 80, 82, 87;
I 93, PP- 3 3 2 39, A 2 ' Annual Reports of the Bureau of Labor,
XXXVII., pp. 285, 288, 316; XXXVIII., pp. 322, 353, 355, 367, 403;
XXXIX., pp- 2, 36; XL., p. 2.
3 Report of the Commissioner-General of Immigration, 1897, Table IX;
1898, p. 26; 1899-1901, Table VII; 1902-1908, Table IX.
542
Appendix
TABLE X. INCREASE OR DECREASE ( ) OF THE NUMBER OF BREAD-
WINNERS, CLASSIFIED BY SEX, NATIVITY, AND OCCUPATION,
IN THE UNITED STATES, 1890-1900 (THOUSANDS).
Occupations
Aggregate
Native white
Foreign
white
Colored
Native
parents
Foreign
parents
All occupations, exclusive
of farmers:
Both sexes .
5.304
2,538
1,580
504
682
Males
4,081
1,223
312
2,014
524
I6 4
1,232
348
105
425
79
28
410
272
15
Females
A. Professional service:
Both sexes.
Males
199
"3
1,423
IOI
63
587
65
40
495
24
4
135
9
6
206
178
28
461
Females
B. Business and clerical
pursuits: *
Both sexes
Males
1,070
353
3,569
415
172
1,787
376
119
980
IOI
34
341
Females
C. All other occupations :
Both sexes
Males
2,812
757
21
1,498
28 9
5
791
189
~3
300
4i
II
9
2
Females.
I. Occupations showing a
general decrease in the
demand for labor:
Both sexes..
Males, total
20
4
i
2
3
ii
2
Brick and tile
makers, etc
Dairymen. .
IO
8
I
T
7
I
, . T
'Occupations at the XII. Census, Table 34, p. cviii., and Table 2,
pp. 10 et seq. Compendium of the XI. Census, 1890, Part III, Popula-
tion, Table 78, pp. 452 et seq.
* Agents, bankers, and brokers, officials of banks and companies,
manufacturers and officials, etc., boarding- and lodging-house keepers,
bookkeepers and accountants, clerks and^copyists, stenographers and
typewriters, commercial travelers, salesmen and saleswomen, hotel
keepers, merchants and dealers (wholesale), restaurant keepers, saloon
keepers, livery-stable keepers, and undertakers.
Appendix
543
TABLE X. (Continued).
Native
white
Foreign
Native
parents
Foreign
parents
white
Colored
All others in this
group 3
2
I
I
Females: total
I
I
Dairywomen
I
I
II. Occupations in which
native white have
been displaced by
immigrants or their
children:
Both sexes
7
59
37
29
Males, total
22
72
34
15
I
Boatmen.canalmen,
pilots and sailors
i
2
4.
Boot and shoe-
makers and re-
pairers
II
12
4
2
I
Carpenters anc
joiners
18
25
16
8
Masons (brick anc
stone) ....
6
5
4
4
Tailors
^8
I
4.
"35
Woodworkers (not
otherwise speci-
fied 1
10
7
I
4,
All others in this
fiTOUD *
21
18
2
6
i
Females, total
29
13
3
14
i
Cotton mill opera-
28
25
i
4
_ . Q
Seamstresses
y
I
i
5
Other ^textile mill op
3
2
2
2
i
All others in thi
erouo 5 ..
2
2
'Includes boxmakers (paper), broom and brush makers.
* Includes distillers and rectifiers, harness and saddle makers and
repairers, hat and cap makers, leather curriers and tanners, marble and
stone cutters, millers, and plasterers.
s Includes bleachery and dye works operatives, hucksters and
peddlers.
544 Appendix
TABLE X. (Concluded).
Native
white
Foreign
P___- j
Occupations
Aggregate
Native
parents
Foreign
parents
parents
III. Occupations in which
immigrants have been
displaced by native
white:
Both sexes
87Q
678
288
82
c
Males, total
810
661
241
40
52
Agri cultural
68=;
<;88
i8d
IO
77 6
All others in agricul-
tural pursuits '. .
Blacksmiths . .
13
16
16
7
TO
14
-~2
4
~ i
Clerks and copyists
Hostlers
55
U 1
24
32
2
j
I
Saw and planing-
mill employees.. .
All others in this 8
24
6
H
3
*j
2
16
j
Females, total
69
17
47
42
47
Servants and wait-
69
16
47
41
47
Paper- and pulp-
i
I
IV. Occupations showing
a general increase in
the demand for labor:
Both sexes
2,704
i,i73
658
405
468
Males
2,044
QI3
SIQ
336
276
Females
660
260
T-JQ
oo
60
102
A oy
6 Negroes only. There are no comparative data for other colored
agricultural laborers at the XI. Census.
'Includes gardeners, florists, nurserymen, etc., lumbermen, wood
choppers, etc., stock raisers, herders, and drovers.
Includes brewers and maltsters, potters, telegraph and telephone
linemen, trunk and leather-case makers, etc.
TABLE XL NUMBER AND INCREASE OR DECREASE, OF FOREIGN-BORN
(THOUSAN
1 1 '
Occupations.
German
Irish
English and V
1890
1900
Increase
(+)
or
Decrease
(-)
1890
Z900
Increase
(+)
or
Decrease
1890
1900
Ir
D
Farmers, planters, and
overseers
282.7
10.7
69.6
19.9
37-9
26.7
95-6
36.2
20.4
19.2
IO.2
36.3
IS-S
154-9
97.0
414.9
263.7
1 8.0
66.5
30-S
30.0
23.0
83.6
39-7
18.8
Z9.0
&
12.0
129.6
8 4 .6
421.6
19.0
+ 7-3
3-1
+ 10.6
+ 2.1
3-7
12.0
+ 3-5
1.6
.a
ri:J
- 3-S
-25.3
12.4
+ 6.7
93-4
2.9
25.2
IO.2
14.4
IS-4
46.7
21.7
36.5
27-9
2.3
S-8
19.6
202.4
35-9
245.4
67.0
7-9
20.6
14.9
13.9
15.4
41.9
21.2
31.2
22.9
1.7
3-8
14.6
158.9
30.4
247.9
7II.2
-26.4
+ 5.0
-4-6
+ 4-7
+ -5
.0
- 4-8
- .5
- 5-3
- 5-0
- .6
2.O
- S.o
-43.5
5.5
+ 2.5
90.5
7.2
4.6
16.6
10.3
17.2
16.2
40.4
21. 1
9.1
56.7
1.6
3.8
23.8
36.4
26.7
130.7
57.7
9.6
IS.2
14.2
19-7
16.1
32.8
20.5
8.3
44.9
9
2.3
19.6
28.3
21.6
127.3
-
Manufacturers and offi-
cials etc
Merchants and dealers
(except wholesale)
Bookkeepers, accountants,
clerks, and copyists
Blacksmiths and m a-
chinists .
Steam railroad employees.
Miners and quarrymen
Saw- and planing-raill em-
ployees . .
Tailors . .
Textile mill operatives
Laborers (not specified) 3 .. .
Agricultural laborers and
all others in this class. . .
All others
Total
1.337-7
1,276.0
-61.7
804.7
487.4
439.0
*XI. Census, Part II., Table 109, p. 484. Reports of the Immigration Cor,
Laborers in 1890 include in some agricultural districts agricultural labore
[ALE BREADWINNERS, CLASSIFIED BY NATIONALITY AND OCCUPATION
IQOO. 1
Scotch.
Bohemian.
Hungarian.
Italian
Increase
Increase
Increase
Imcrease
JO
I90O
or
Decrease
1890
1900
or
Decrease
1890
1900
or
Decrease
1890
1900
or
Decrease
.1
16.5
+ -4
14.4
18.1
+ 3-7
.8
1.4
f .6
2.2
4.4
+ 2.2
.0
3-3
-f 2.3
3
5
h *
.2
.6
+ -4
.2
l.i
f -9
9
7
7
4.4
4.6
5-8
ft?
+ 2.1
1.2
i
2.1
I.O
I.O
+ .9
+ -6
1-3
4
4
2.9
1.4
I.O
+ 1.6
-f- i.o
+ .6
7.0
5
2.3
16.0
2.0
3-8
-f 9.0
tii
7
5-3
12.5
+ .6
+ .2
.6
2.7
.7
3-7
i;z
.5
'5
.9
1.4
+ '.9
.8
3-3
1.6
IO.2
-f .8
+ 6.9
'7
: 3
7.8
2.7
9-7
+ T '-l
2.1
x.o
.7
9
1.8
.8
1.6
-f .8
+ .1
-f- .7
3
X.3
7-3
,1
26.5
t 5
+19.2
4
10.3
9-7
1.6
17.3
25.5
+ 7*0
4-15-8
.4
.1
t-7
r-8
.4
I.O
3-6
7-3
.0
I.I
~ -5
1-3
3-3
.2
8.2
.7
4.9
.4
10.0
- .6
+ 1.6
+ .2
+ 1.8
.1
x.8
3
II. 8
.1
3-7
I.O
19.8
.0
.2
2-3
1.2
39-0
5
7-8
3-9
91.8
-f -3
+ 5-5
5
5
.
M
7.2
37.8
+ -7
+ 5-3
3-6
11.9
4.8
19.3
+ 7-4
.7
8.8
1.4
23.8
+ -7
-fiS.o
6.5
28.2
12.2
76.7
+ 5-7
+48.5
129.9
II-7
51-3
71.4
20. 1'
36.S
88.4
+5I-9
114.1
276.4
+ 162.3
vol. i, pp. 821-829, Table A.
Appendix 545
TABLE XII. FOREIGN-BORN ENGAGED IN GAINFUL OCCUPATIONS
IN GERMANY, 1900.'
Occupations
Thou
sands
Males
Females
Agriculture
en
21
Trade
77
IO
Transportation
M
Manufactures
245
12
Common labor
26
IO
Professional pursuits
18
IO
Living on income from property
18
16
Servants
I
21
Total
4.17
122
TABLE XIII. FOREIGN-BORN IN GERMANY, BY COUNTRY OF BIRTH
(THOUSANDS), 1880-1900.*
Year
Total
Austria-
Hungary
Russia
Italy
All other
countries
1880
419
150
57
8
204
1890
518
206
53
13
246
I9OO
823
362
8 9
62
310
Increase
1880-1900
404
212
32
54
1 06
1 Erganzungsheft zu den Viertelsjahrsheften zur Statistik des Deut-
schen Reichs, 1905. Heft I. Die Deutschen im Auslande und die
Auslander im Deutschen Reich, p. 40.
a Ibid.
546
Appendix
TABLE XIV. FOREIGN-BORN POPULATION FROM THE SCANDINAVIAN COUNTRIES
AND FROM SOUTHERN AND EASTERN EUROPE, BY STATES, 1880, 1890, 1900,
AND I9I0. 1
States
From the Scandinavian Countries
From Southern and Eastern Europe
1880
1890
1900
1910
1880
1890
1900
1910
Minnesota....
107,768
46,046
17,869
16,685
644
1,185
5"
12,755
1,524
1,942
215,215
72,873
65,588
46,341
6,411
3,506
2,382
16.863
21,413
7,333
236,670
72,611
76,051
40,107
9.741
5.621
2,989
18,285
26,254
9,007
243,899
66,586
100,654
39,592
15,513
9,775
4,078
17,826
68,228
20,153
7,577
2,777
6,978
7.006
191
100
78
237
424
991
21,988
3,562
18,787
12,984
2,533
776
1,320
789
4.949
4,005
30,544
6,709
33,735
16,283
6,655
1.280
2,282
1,519
7.657
4,129
110,793
1,603,071
76,833
34,593
65.559
47,177
23,644
7,074
9,607
10,482
44,784
22,503
The Dakotas..
Nebraska
Montana
Idaho
Wyoming
Utah
Washington . .
Total . . ,
206,929
233,333
457,925
475,324
497,336
566,973
586,304
664,196
26,359
152,339
71,693
626,677
342,256
4,466,244
All other
Total, U. S.. .
440,262
933,249
1,064,309
1,250,500
178,698
698,370
1,713,864
4,808,500
TABLE XV. EMIGRATION FROM THE UNITED KINGDOM, BY DESTINA-
TION OF EMIGRANTS, 1840-1909. a
Year
&
I
British South
Africa
Australia and
New Zealand
Other Countries
Tota;
X84O
32.2Q7
40,642
IE SCQ
T QC8
OO 74.7
1841
38,164
45.OI7
72 .62 5
2786
Il8 5Q2
1842
54,123
6*. 8 52
8.574
1.875
128 74.4
1843
23,518
28,77
1.4.78
*"v)O
I.88I
57,212
1844
22 ,924
47,660
2 22Q
I 877
7O 686
1845
31,803
58,578
87O
2 770
O7 5OI
1846
43,439
82,279
2,74.7
I 826
I2O 851
1847
109,680
142,154
4.04.0
I 4.87
258 27O
1848
31,065
188,277
27 QO4
A 887
*T*/**
24.8 089
1849
41 ,367
219,450
12 TOT
6 4.QO
2OQ 4.08
1 Compiled from the United States Census of 1880, vol. i., pp. 492-
495; XIII. Census. Population, vol. i., Table 33, pp. 834-838.
s Compiled from Statistical Abstracts ofthe United Kingdom of Great
Britain. Reprint of the Statistical Abstracts for the United Kingdom for
1840-1854, p. 84; 14, p. 122; 29, p. 161; 42, p. 239; and 57, p. 363.
Appendix
TABLE XV. (Continued).
547
Year
|
1
a
British South
Africa
Australia and
New Zealand
Other Countries
Total
1850
32,961
223,078
I6.O17
8 771
2$O R -in
1851
42,605
267,157
21,5-12
4.472
-l-je r\f)f.
1852
32,873
2 44., 26l
87 881
37/1O
o5oy
ifiR "7fiA
1851
34*522
210,885
61 ,401
>/4y
3I2Q
300,704
I8S4
43,76i
I01,o65
8-1 217
1 166
329,937
1855
17,966
101,414
52.1OQ
3118
o-^O'^y
1 76 8O7
1856
16,378
111,837
44,584
3.755
1 76 ^ 5J A.
1857
21,001
126 QO5
61 248
1 721
1 /",aO'f
212 87 C
1858
9,704
eg, 716
1Q 205
52^7
< 1 2,O75
III Q*72
1850
6,689
7O.1O1
11 .Oil
12 427
i o'y/-
I2O A12
1860
9,786
87.5OO
24.1O2
6,88 1
128 j.6o
1861
12,707
40,764
21,7l8
7.56l
OI 77O
1862
15,522
c8 706
41 84.1
5141
121 21/1
1863
18,083
14.6 811
51 O54
58O8
221 7^8
1864
12,721
I4.7.O42
4O.Q42
8.IQ5
^^O'/O
2O8 900
1865
17,211
147,258
17,28l
"*yo
8 O4Q
209 801
1866
13,255
l6l,OOO
24.O07
6.51O
204 882
1867
12,160
I26,O5I
I4.O21
4.748
I56.O82
1868
12,332
1 08 40O
12 112
5 Oil
1 18 187
1869
20,921
14.6.7-17
14 457
4 185
1 86 300
1870
27,168
ic -i ,4.66
16,526
5.151
202 511
1871
24,954
I 50,788
11,695
5,114
102. 751
1872
I8* 7 !
24,382
29,045;
161,782
166.710
15.248
25 117
9,082
7 411
210,494
228 145
1874.
20,728
1 1 -1,774.
52.581
IO.l8o
IQ7 272
1875
12,306
Sl.IQl
14,7 CQ
12.426
I4O.675
1876
Q,^5
54,554
12,106
Il.l84
IO0.460
1877
7,720
45 48l
1O 1 18
11,856
IO5.IQ5
1878
10,652
54 6Q4
l6 47O
II.O77
1 12 ,9O2
1870
17,052
Ot'^yt
OI.8o6
4O.Q5Q
11,557
164,274
1880
20,902
166 57O
24 184
15.886
227,542
1881
21.012
176 IO4
22 682
20,^04
24.1,002 i
1882
40,4.4,1
181 001
17,280
10,711
270,166
188-;
44,185
101.57"%
71 ,264
11,006
320,118
1884
-ilj-id.
I55.28O
44,255
11,510
242,179
1885
10 818
T -17 68?
1O.1Q5
10,724
207,644
1886
24.745
152 7IO
41.O76
12,169
232,900
1887
12 .02 "5
201,526
14,l8l
13,753
281,487
1888
14.851
105,086
31,127
17,962
279,928
1889
28,269
168,771
28,294
28,461
253,795
Appendix
TABLE XV. (Concluded).
c
o>
3
2
1
11
1
0*
oj"c3
Year
& 3
1
"3
jl
1
Total
2
21,179
22,004
2l8,Il6
1890
'5 g
I ^6*^0 S
^ ' * * / 7
19,547
20,987
218,507
1891
21 26A
T so'mo
* "*\y^/
20,799
210,042
T Qft^
3' 2
I4.8.Q4.Q
1 1 ,203
23,930
208,814
IO 93
T Q.f\A
T*7 A Cfi
^Wff^y
104 ooi
10,017
156,030
1094
1895
J. f jnOy
16,622
126,502
20,234
* **ry * /
10,567
1^256
185,181
1896
15,267
98,921
24.594
io,354
12,789
161,925
1897
15,571
85,324
21,109
12,061
12,395
146,460
1898
17,640
80,494
19.756
10,693
12,061
140,644
1899
16,410
92,482
14.432
",467
11,571
146,362
1900
i8,433
102,797
20,815
14,922
11,848
168,815
1901
15,757
104,195
23,143
15.350
13.270
171,7^5
1902
26,293
108,498
43,206
14,345
13.320
205,662
1903
59,652
123,663
50,206
12,375
14,054
259,950
1904
69,681
146,446
26,818
14.581
27L435
1905
82,437
122,370
26,307
I5',i39
15.824
262,077
1906
II4.859
144,817
22,804
I9,33i
23,326
325.137
1907
151,216
170,264
20,925
24,767
28,508
395.680
1908
81,321
96,869
19.568
33,569
31,872
263,199
1909
85,887
109,700
22,017
37.620
33,537
288,761
TABLE XVI. CONGESTION IN DUBLIN: CLASSIFICATION OF TENE-
MENTS OF FOUR ROOMS OR LESS, BY NUMBER OF ROOMS
AND BY NUMBER OF PERSONS PER TENEMENT, 1901.*
Number of tenements of
i room
2 rooms
3 rooms
4 rooms
i
3.278
702
172
IOI
2
5.544
2,234
779
597
3
4.392
2,231
900
772
4
3.384
2,240
952
816
5
2,302
2,022
825
818
6
1,477
1.575
765
680
7
797
1,205
620
562
8
362
773
433
422
9
US
367
238
320
10
47
1-75
163
201
ii
13
62
74
9 8
12 or more
6
34
50
97
Total
21,747
13,620
5.971
5.484
1 Census of Ireland, 1901. General Report, p. 173, Table 50.
Appendix
549
TABLE XVI. (Continued).
Summary
Total
With 4 rooms or less ,
Number of persons per room:
Not more than one
Not more than two
Not more than three ,
More than three.. ,
Number of tenement*
59.263
46,822
10.351
15.039
9.996
11,436
TABLE XVII. "REPRESENTATIVE" HOUSEHOLD EXPENDITURES FOR
FOOD IN THE IRON DISTRICT OF THE SOUTH, FOR THE PERIOD
OF ONE WEEK IN 1909.*
o
Persons
Expenditure
"3 t
cja
per household
Nutrition
for food
kfl
Nationality
Income
Jfe
Adults
Children
household
For the
week
Per man
per day
2
)
$10.50
2
3
21.7
$6.48
$0.30
3
4
6
( South
r Italian
)
Q.OO
22.OO
10.50
2
3
2
i
2
5
14.7
28.7
28.7
6.1 1
8.16
10.35
0.41
0.28
0.36
7
16.00
3
2
24-5
9.10
0-37
9
ig.OO
3
I
23-8
7.65
0.32
10
ii
American
White
25.00
18.00
2
2
3
3
21.7
21.7
7.88
7.80
0.36
0.36
12
12.00
2
12.6
3-65
O.29
13
23.00
2
I
15.6
9-63
0.62
TABLE XVIII. EARNINGS AND EXPENSES IN MASSACHUSETTS, 1800,
1830, and 1860.'
1800
1830
1860
Expenses of a family of four
&12Q
$4. -II
$587
Earnings:
Master carpenter
^25
455
520
Journeyman carpenter
266
JQO
4.ce
Master mason
soo
soo
too
625
Journeyman mason
Z7C
4^8
5OO
Master painter
^25
455
52O
Journeyman painter
26O
455
Laborer
226
V5
1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 9, pp. 215-221.
3 Third Annual Report of the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of
Labor (1871-1872), pp. 514-517.
550
Appendix
TABLE XIX. AVERAGE INCOME AND EXPENDITURES OF WAGE-
EARNERS IN SPECIFIED OCCUPATIONS, IN NEW JERSEY, 1885.'
Surplus ( -f )
*<
J
1
1
*<
a
or deficit (-)
Occupations
Number c
famlies
Average nun
in famil3
G O
*
l!
'3 o
M
t
i*
M
Expenditure
family
Of head of
family 3
Glass-blowers .
48
4-9
1-3
$941
$1,070
$737
+$333
+$204
Other glass-
workers . . .
34
4.8
1.6
693
813
654
+ 159
+ 58
Blacksmiths. .
ii
5-9
1.6
712
747
674
+ 73
+ 19
Iron- workers.
15
4-8
1-5
493^
573
538
~ 45
Shoemakers. .
32
1.4
542
583
565
4~ 18
- 23
Carpenters. . .
12
5-5
1-5
545
678
661
+ 17
- 16
Machinists. . .
24
4-9
1-5
558
629
619
+ 10
- 61
Flax - mill
workers ....
28
4.9
1-7
374
482
501
-19
- 127
Silk - mill
workers
34
4.2
1-5
322
368
459
-91
- 137
TABLE XX. AVERAGE INCOME AND EXPENDITURES OF UNSKILLED
LABORERS IN NEW JERSEY, CLASSIFIED BY NATIVITY AND
SOURCE OF INCOME, 1885.*
Item
t Breadwinners in the family
Father alone
Father and children
Native
English
Irish
Native
English
Irish
Number of families
20
X
9
13
3
6
Earnings of:
Father
$381
$519
$2 4 6
$368
222
$494
175
$249
246
Children
Total
$381
361
$519
567
$246
272
$590
578
$669
634
$495
531
Expenditures
1 Eighth Annual Report of the New Jersey Bureau of Statistics of Labor
and Ind. (1885), p. 147.
a Income of family less expenditures of family.
3 Earnings of head of family less expenditures of family.
* Eighth Annual Report of the Bureau of Statistics of New Jersey, 1885,
PP- 30-34-
Appendix
TABLE XX. (Concluded).
551
Item
Breadwinners in the family
Father alone
Father and children
Native
English
Irish
Native
English
Irish
Number of families
20
I
9
12
3
6
-$36
-282
Surplus (+) or
deficit ( )
+$20
+20
-48
-$26
-26
+$12
210
+$35
140
Earnings of father
over expenses
Surplus (4-) or
deficit ( ) ..
TABLE XXI. AVERAGE WAGES AND AVERAGE EXPENSES OF WORKING
FAMILIES WITH DEFICITS, IN OHIO, 1885.*
|I
S,
0) >>
Sx
to one
m
if
i
fc
0) g
75
1*1
Occupation
p
2
f
a-2
f
3
<
o<
Stonecutters . .
4
5-
4-5
i.i
$505
$507
$2
3-5
Machinists
27
4-2
5-3
0.8
556
571
15
2.4
Cabinet-
makers
6
4.5
4.3
1.05
481
537
56
3-5 a
Iron workers. .
21
57
5-7
I.O
679
745
66
5-3
Wood carvers . .
5
5-6
3-4
1.6
659
772
113
2.1*
Cigar makers...
Miners . . .
20
cy
4.8
5-8
3-2
4.1
1-5
1.4
394
3<>3
508
422
114
119
4-5
2.9
1 Eleventh Annual Report of the Ohio Bureau of Labor Statistics (1885),
Table 27, p. 117. IX Census, Population Part II., p. 596.
3 Cabinet makers and upholsterers.
* Woodworkers other than cabinetmakers, carpenters, and joiners.
552
Appendix
TABLE XXII. ORGANIZED WORKERS AND MALE WHITE BREAD-
WINNERS, ENGAGED IN NON-AGRICULTURAL PURSUITS, IN
ILLINOIS AND NEW JERSEY, CLASSIFIED BY NATIVITY.*
Illinois, 1886
New Jersey, 1887
Nativity
Breadwinners
Organized
Breadwinners
Organized
Number:
Native
Foreign-bora
423.290
308.595
25.985
57.163
243.093
137.385
24,463
26,704
Total
Per Cent:
Native
Foreign-bora
73L885
57-8
42.2
83,148
31-3
68.7
380,478
63-9
36-1
5LI67
47-8
52.2
Total
1 00.0
1 00.0
1 00.0
100.0
TABLE XXIII. MALE LABOR UNION MEMBERSHIP AND IMMIGRATION,
NEW YORK STATE, 1897-1910.
H
in
it
jl*
Year
Se
Year
i]
n
||*
3|
fz
IJs
33
its
$**
H^'**
1897
1898
1899
162,690
163,562
200,932
55,871
53,310
70,740
1904
1905
1906
378,859
370,971
386,869
193,430
241,689
269,477
I90O
I9OI
233,553
261,523
99,104
106,817
1907
1908
422,561
361,761
297,300
173,022
1902
1903
313,592
380,845
154,872
198,620
1909
1910
360,319
453,8oi
145,036
207,021
1 Fourth Biennial Report of the Bureau of Labor Statistics of Illi-
nois, 1886, pp. 224-226; Population at XI. Census, Part II, pp. 552-553;
ibid., Table 116, p. 586; Tenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Statistics
of Labor and Industries of New Jersey, p. 15.
Annual Report of the Bureau of Labor Statistics of New York State,
1910, vol. II., Table 34, p. xlix.
* Reports of the Commissioner-General ~of Immigration, 1897, p.
38; 1898, p. 26; 1899, p. 17; 1900, p. 20; 1901, p. 17; 1902, p. 29; 1903,
P- 33J 1904, p. 30; 1905, p. 345 1906, p. 37; 1907, p. 35; 1908, p. 39;
1909, P- 575I9IO, p. 55.
Appendix
SS3
TABLE XXIV. URBAN POPULATION, MEMBERSHIP OF LABOR UNIONS
AND PERCENTAGE OF ORGANIZED INDUSTRIAL WAGE-EARNERS
IN NEW YORK AND KANSAS, 1 900-1909. *
Union membership of both sexes
Vr
Urban population
both sexes a
Number
Percentage of indus-
trial wage-earners 3
New York
Kansas
New York
Kansas
New York
Kansas
I9OO
5,293.1"
330,903
245,381
6,341
18.3
57
I9OI
5,486,849
347,191
276,141
8,649
2O.6
7.8
I9O2
5,675,587
363,479
329,101
7,715
24.6
7.0
1903
5,864,225
379,767
395,598
9,657
29.6
8.7
1904
1905
6,052,963
6,241,701
395,953
412,241
391,676
383,226
12,074
12,454
29.3
28.6
10.9
II.2
1906
6,430439
428,529
398,494
12,187
29.8
II.O
1907
6,619,177
444,817
436,792
13.058
32.6
11.8
1908
6,807,915
461 ,005
372,459
23,995
27.8
21.6
1909
6,996,653
477.293
372,729
21,385
27.9
19-3
TABLE XXV. DAILY WAGES IN STEEL COMPANY No. i, 1880-1908.4
Occupations
1880
I88 S
1890
1895
1900
1903
1908
I. Bessemer Depart-
ment:
Laborer
$1.2-?
$I.OO
$I.IO
$I.IO
$I.IO
I.V>
$1.45
I. OS
2.IO
2.2O
Fireman
1.38
.89
I.OO
.70
I.9O
Carpenter
1.22
I. -1C
.75
I.9O
Metal breaker. . .
Skull cracker . . .
2.20
1.32
i-55
i. 60
1-33
1.18
1.38
55
55
1.65
1.64
Ashman .
1.45
.95
I.OO
.50
1-55
1 Annual Report of the New York Bureau of Labor, 1909, p. xxxviii,
Table 7; Annual Reports of the Kansas Bureau of Labor, 1900-1909.
a Census figures for 1900, estimates for subsequent years.
* The number of industrial wage-earners at the XII. Census (1900)
in New York was 1,337,000, and in Kansas, 110,000. The method of
classification and computation is explained in an article by the writer
in the Journal of Political Economy, 1911, March and April: "Social-
Economic Classes of the Population of the United States. "
* Report of the Immigration Commission, vol. 8, pp. 448, 449.
'Only such occupations have been selected for which comparable
data are available.
554 Appendix
TABLE XXV. (Concluded).
Occupation
1880
1885
1800
1805
i poo
1003
1908
1. 08
1.30
I.4O
l.d.5
I.OO
1.30
1.35
I.IO
I.OO
1.30
1-35
.68
75
I.OO
1.30
1.35
II. Blast Furnaces:
z. io
1.04
.00
.00
1.20
1.30
1.^8
Engineer .
i.oo
1.65
.60
.60
2.2O
2.50
2.65
.15
1O
65
2.IO
2.25
Blacksmith
Helper
1.84
....
oy
.26
.IO
45
.15
.60
25
2.00
3
2.10
1.38
1.55
.17
35
3
.84
2.05
Carpenter
Fireman
1.55
1.27
I.OO
50
.17
-45
.30
.60
5
.80
.75
1.90
1.85
Hot-stove tender
.26
.45
.60
.70
,80
.IO
.OO
.20
55
.60
.15
.15
5
.50
.60
Coke fillers
Cinder man
1-55
1.55
1. 15
25
.20
.OO
.26
.40
50
.45
.60
55
Fillers
I.5O
I.I5
.25
35
44
.40
50
.OO
.20
32
.15
45
.00
1. 20
.32
3O
38
III. Mechanical De-
partment:
Brick mason:
Minimum
1.85
1.57
1.05
1. 80
1. 80
2.25
2.47
Maximum
Patternmaker: .
Minimum
Maximum
Blacksmith:
Minimum
Maximum
Boilermaker:
Minimum
2-45
1-55
2.50
1.65
2.70
I 60
3-42
1-54
2-43
i 62
2.50
1-35
2. 2O
I 75
3-00
1.62
2.58
I 65
3-65
2.10
2.70
I 6O
3-24
1.48
3-00
i-43
2.92
i 48
3-60
1-55
3-25
1-57
3-25
1.62
Maximum
Roofer:
Minimum
2-75
I 5O
2.25
i ii
*/>
2.50
I 6O
*-v3
2.47
I "?J.
2.85
I 55
2.67
i 10
2-95
I 45
Maximum
Carpenter:
Minimum
Maximum... . .
Painter:
Minimum
2.OO
1.60
2.50
1. 20
^o 1
2.50
1. 60
1.80
2.70
t "O e t
2.50
2.OO
2. 2O
*OO
2.75
i-55
2.40
*jp*
2.40
1.29
2-37
1.98
2.65
1.41
2.60
2.17
Maximum
2.IO
2 25
2.47
Mason (helper) :
Minimum
Maximum
I.IO
1.30
70
1.48
....
I.I5
1-35
i.iS
1.40
I.IO
1-35
1.20
1.48
Appendix 555
TABLE XXVI. PER CENT OF MACHINE- MINED BITUMINOUS COAL
AND PER CENT RATIO OF FOREIGN-BORN FROM SOUTHERN AND
EASTERN EUROPE FOR EACH OF THE PRINCIPAL COAL-PRODUCING
STATES, 1900 and 1910.*
State
Mined by machinery
Ratio of Southern and
Eastern Europeans to
total population 3
Per cent of min-
ers of S. and .
European par-
entage
1910
1900
1910
1900
1900
Ohio
84.44
64.03
48.87
45-51
45-37
38.63
46.53
43-91
27.36
33-65
15.09
19-73
5-5
0-3
1.8
10.9
1.2
7-9
1-5
O.I
0.5
4-9
0.6
3-0
9.0
0-5
5-5
36.0
9-5
22.0
Kentucky. ..
Indiana
Pennsylvania
West Virginia
Illinois
TABLE XXVII. PER CENT OF MINERS OF SOUTHERN AND EASTERN
EUROPEAN PARENTAGE,* LIVES LOST PER MILLION TONS, AND
PER 1,000 EMPLOYEES, IN BITUMINOUS COAL MINES. *
State
Per cent of miners of
S. and E. European
parentage. 1900
Fatal accidents per
i, ooo employees,
1889-1908
Lives lost per
million tons,
1866-1908
Pennsylvania. . . .
Illinois
36.0S
22 .0
2.71
2.33
3-83
3-94
Oklahoma
West Virginia
Chio
I4.O
9-5
o.o
5.07
4.64
2.14
I3 4l
3-95
6.0
2.15
5.22
5.5
2.32
3.73
2.O
455
7.27
\laryland
IS
1.77
1.96
Tennessee
I.O
4.38
9.04
Kentucky
0.5
1. 60
3-34
1 U. S. Geological Survey, Production of Coal, 1910, p. 51. These six
States produced 90 per cent of the total output of machine-mined coal in
the United States for 1900-1909, and 80 per cent of the total output of
bituminous coal for 1910.
* Advance information issued to the "press by the [Director of the
Census.
J Computed from XII. Census Report on Occupations, Table 41.
* Bureau of Labor Bulletin No. go, Table XXIX, pp. 452, 6/1.
s Includes both bituminous and anthracite mines.
556
Appendix
TABLE XXVIII. NUMBER OF EMPLOYEES AND FATAL ACCIDENT
RATES IN THE ANTHRACITE MINES OF PENNSYLVANIA, 1870-1909.'
b
L
Is
1
w/ 3 >
S&
SB g^
89 1?
0)
m o
s'S
g l
l
8-g
2
'S* > 'S
Years
i
3s
Years
jo gJ
^ a
O o 3
go
I*
g2
aj
||1
W^,
3q
3*
w*^
3
M "
i
i2 M "
I"
1870
36
5-93
14.89
1890
120
3-15
8.4O
1871
37
5-60
13.52
1891
123
3-47
8.61
1872
45
4.98
14.32
1892
130
3-21
8.16
1873
48
5.48
12.57
1893
138
3.30
8.63
1874
53
4.33
11.59
1894
I4O
3-19
8.75
1875
70
3-40
10.17
1895
144
2.93
7-39
1876
70
3-24
9.73
1896
150
3-34
9-32
1877
67
2.90
7.85
I8 97
150
2.83
8.04
1878
64
2.92
8.95
1898
142
2.89
7.78
1879
69
3-81
8.44
1899
141
3.28
7.62
1880
1881
11
2-75
3-59
7.22
7.98
1900
1901
144
148
2.86
3-47
7.16
7-65
1882
82
3-54
8.30
1902
148
2.03
7.26
1883
1884
91
IOI
3-53
3-28
8.56
9.10
1903
1904
152
161
3-41
3.69
6.89
8.08
1885
100
3.31
8.68
1905
168
3.83
8.19
1886
103
2.71
7.16
1906
166
3-35
7.72
1887
107
2.97
7-50
1907
169
4.20
8.23
1888
122
2.98
7.81
1908
175
3-88
8.12
1889
120
3-32
9.09
1909
171
3-31
7.07
Report of the Pennsylvania Department of Mines, 1909, Part I,
Table L., p. 57.
Appendix
557
TABLE XXIX. NUMBER OF FATAL ACCIDENTS AND RATIO PER 1000
EMPLOYEES ON RAILROADS AND IN COAL MINES, 1889-1908.
Number
Ratio per 1000 employees
I
!!
1
is mines,
Canada
S
1
11
1
1
s mines,
Canada
Years
1
H
1
jl
tf
II
1
il
J
<3 <u
id
J
Sgl
J
IN
S
3
&
*
1
1889
1,179
1,972
397
681
8.55
2.80
3-31
245
1890
1891
i,459
,533
2,451
2,660
378
428
852
952
9.61
3.27
3-39
3-15
347
2.8 4
2.92
1892
,503
2,554
418
880
8.85
3.21
2.57
1893
,567
2,727
456
969
8.70
3-13
3-30
2.53
1894
,029
1,823
446
956
6.41
2-33
3-19
2.44
1895
,017
l,8n
421
,053
645
2.31
2-93
2.62
1896
,073
1,861
502
,123
6-59
2.25
3-34
2.74
1897
976
1,693
"423
947
6.08
2.06
2.83
2.32
1898
,141
1,958
411
,049
6.67
2.24
2.89
2.59
1899
,155
2,210
461
,249
645
2.38
3-28
2.97
1900
1,396
2,550
411
,501
7-30
2.51
2.86
3-25
1901
1,537
2,675
513
,579
7-35
2.50
347
3-21
1902
1,670
2,969
300
,837
7.40
249
2.03
347
1903
2,061
3,6o6
518
,815
8.13
2.75
341
3.16
1904
2,115
3,632
595
2,018
8.33
2.80
3-69
3-33
1905
1,993
3,361
644
2,178
7-51
243
3-83
340
1906
2,302
3,929
2,093
8.08
2.58
3-35
3.19
1907
2,542
4,534
708
2,838
8.00
2.71
4.19
4-15
1908
1,845
3405
678
2,723
6.67
2-37
3-89
3-82
1 Figures for 1891-1908 from U. S. Statistical Abstract, 1910, Tables
180 and 181, p. 284, also Table 168, p. 265; U. S. Bureau of Labor Bul-
letin go, Table xxiv., pp. 655-659; Bulletin 32, p. 8.
558
Appendix
TABLE XXX. ARRIVAL AND DEPARTURE OF ALIENS (THOUSANDS),
I9O8-I92O. 1
All Aliens
Excess of
immigra-
Fiscal year
ended June 30.
Admitted
Departed
Net
Increase
Immi-
grants
grants
tion over
emigra-
tion
1008 . ,
925
7 1 5
2IO
783
395
388
IOOO
944
400
544
752
223
529
IQIO. . .
1,198
380
818
1,042
202
840
IQII
1,030
518
512
879
295
584
loia
1,017
615
402
838
333
505
IQM. .
1,427
612
8i5
1,198
308
890
IQI4.
I t43
634
709
1,218
303
915
IQI S
474
384
50
327
204
123
IQl6. . .
367
241
126
299
130
169
1017 .,
362
146
216
295
66
229
IQl8. ..
212
193
19
III
95
16
IQIQ. ..
237
216
21
141
124
17
IQ2O
622
428
1 04
41O
288
142
Total...
10,179
5,483
4,695
8,312
2,970
5,342
1 Annual Report of the Commissioner-General of Immigration, 1920, Table XVI A,
p. 191.
Appendix
559
TABLE XXXI. IMMIGRATION AND EMIGRATION OF BREADWINNERS,*
FISCAL YEARS 1915-1919.'
Year Ended
June 30
Admitted
Departed
Immigrant
aliens
Non-immigrant
aliens
Emigrant
aliens
Non-emigrant
aliens
IQ.I5..
209,760
194,060
190,985
65,655
82,818
72,361
45,671
46,758
81,788
73,388
175,609
112,376
50,353
69,483
101,293
136,221
75,244
53,127
80,967
70,432
I0l6..,
IQI7...
IQl8 .
1919
TABLE XXXII COMPARISON OF PERSONS SEEKING WORK AND
WORKERS CALLED FOR BY EMPLOYERS AT PUBLIC EMPLOYMENT
OFFICES IN THE STATE OF NEW YORK: NUMBER OF WORKERS
REGISTERED FOR EACH ONE HUNDRED PLACES OPEN, 1916-18.'
MONTH
1916
1917
1918
Tanuarv .
1^6 2
88 I
QI O
February
121 .6
84. 4.
84. *
March .
07 I
78 8
68 2
April
7-1 C
81 7
61 o
May
7V4
83.7
5V 8
June
78.5
70 4.
so s
July.
67 I
7C Q
6O 7
August
7C Q
7-1.0
c-i 7
September .
74. ^
75 6
C2 7
October
72.1
80.7
47.1
74. 8
01 "^
CQ -J
December
77.2
85.8
71 .7
1 All aliens, exclusive of "persons without occupation, mostly women
and children."
2 Annual Reports of the Commissioner General of Immigration, 1915-
1919, Table VI.: occupations of aliens admitted and departed.
8 Compiled from The Labor Market Bulletin, published monthly by
the Bureau of Statistics and Information of the New York State
Industrial Commission. Beginning with July, 1018, the reports on
which the above table is based comprise the operations of the Employ-
ment Bureaus of the New York State Industrial Commission and of
the U. S. Employment Service in New York State. Previous to that
date, the reports related only to the Employment Bureaus of the New
York State Industrial Commission.
560
Appendix
TABLE XXXIII. EXPORTS OF PRINCIPAL BREADSTUFFS, OTHER THAN
WHEAT, FROM THE UNITED STATES,
A rtirl*.
July ist to
June 30th
T_ ______
1910-1914
1914-1918
Barley bushels
Thousands
35,166
Thousands
106,895
Percent
2O4
Rye bushels . .
4.O54
52.127
I IQI
Rye flour, barrels
24
I.I4O
4.65O
Corn meal barrels -. .
1,668
1.417
IQC
Oatmeal, pounds
106,061
580,607
447
Rice pounds ....
85.107
574.87Q
571
1 Statistical Abstract of United States t 1918, pp. 477-478 (computed).
INDEX
AGRICULTURAL LABORERS, Dis-
placement: by machinery, 109;
Earnings: compared with earn-
ings in similar non-agricultural
occupations, in; Wages: no
AGRICULTURAL POPULATION, lim-
its to further growth of, 112;
movement to the city, 491, 506,
5<>7
AGRICULTURE, 103-113, (See also:
Rural Depopulation); Centrali-
zation of industry: effect upon
farming, 107; Demand: for
labor in a. and in industry, 7,
104; Differentiation of manu-
facturing: from a., 106, 107;
Irish Immigrants: reluctance
towards a., 66; Machiipry: 108;
Wages: low, no; of agricul-
tural and other unskilled labor-
ers, in
ALIENS, arrival and departure of,
1908-1920, 558
AN'THRACITE COAL, (See: Coal
Mines, Anthracite)
ANTHRACITE COAL STRIKE COM-
MISSION, award of the, 456
APARTMENT HOUSES, increase, 282
ARISTOCRACY OF LABOR, English-
speaking, created by immigra-
tion, 9, 161, 163, 164, 394
ASSIMILATION, English language:
ability to speak, 58 ; Problem of:
42, 75; Recent immigrants: 77
B
BASTABLE, C. P., 218, 219
BERGER, VICTOR L., 394
BEVERIDGE, W. H., 114, 121, 123,
124, 126, 522; (See also: Un-
employment)
BING, ALEXANDER M., 500, 501,
505
BIRDS OF PASSAGE, 74; by race,
75
BIRTH RATE, (See: Race Suicide)
BITUMINOUS COAL, (See: Coal,
Bituminous)
BITUMINOUS COAL MINES, (See:
Coal Mines, Bituminous)
BOARDERS AND LODGERS, Earn-
ings: of head of family, 253;
Old immigration: per cent of
families keeping b. a. 1. among
the races of the, 253; Rent: and
b. a. 1., 254; Statistics: of the
Immigration Commission unre-
liable, 251, 252
BOSTON, 25, 65, 241, 242, 356, 363;
Home ownership: 1845-1900,
277; Housing: number of fami-
lies per house, 1853-1900, 242;
Tenancy: 1790, 1845, 1890, and
1900, 276; Tenement houses:
1855 and 1900, 241; unsanitary
in the '70*8, 241, 242
BREADWINNERS, English: number,
1890 and 1900, 1 66; in selected
occupations, 1 890-1 900, 1 68 ;
German: number, 1890 and
1900, 1 66; in selected occupa-
tions, 170; Increase or decrease:
by sex, nativity, and occupa-
tion, 1890-1900, 141; Irish:
number, 1890 and 1900, 166;
in selected occupations, 169;
Welsh: number, 1890 and 1900,
1 66; in selected occupations,
1 68; (See also: Foreign-born;
Immigration)
BRITISH COLONIES, British immi-
gration to, encouraged by colo-
nial governments, 210
BRITISH EMIGRATION, decline of,
effect of home conditions, 173
BRITISH IMMIGRATION, encouraged
by colonial governments, 210
BUDGETS, (See: Family Budgets)
BURNETT, JOHN L., 43
562
Index
CANADA, (See: Emigration, Amer-
ican farmers)
CAPITAL, emigration of, 491, 492,
510; immigration of, 522-523
CARLTON, FRANK TRACY, 61, 307,
308, 318, 330, 349, 35i
CASTE PREJUDICE, against the
immigrant, outgrowth of occu-
pational stratification, 424
CHAPIN, ROBERT COIT, 240, 258,
260, 261
CHILD LABOR, 107, 318-324; Cot-
ton mills: children under 14 in
Northern and Southern, 321;
children under 14 in principal
States, 321; Decrease: of, con-
temporaneous with the increase
of immigration, 318; in States
with a large immigrant popula-
tion, 26; Defenders: of, in the
South, 321; Foreign-born: per
cent of, and per cent of children
under 16 employed in factories
in leading States, 319; Increase,
during the World War, 508, 509 ;
Parent nativity: of children, 10
to 15 years, in manufactures, by
geographical divisions, 320;
Shoe factories: c. 1. in, of rural
Missouri, 322; South: more
frequent in the, than in States
with large immigrant popula-
tion, 319; Substitute for immi-
gration, 26, 321, 490, 527
CIVIL WAR, cost of living, 307;
labor organizations, 330; wages,
307-308
CLAGHORN, KATE H., 65, 66, 357
CLOTHING INDUSTRY, 265-267 ;
(See also: Family Budgets;
Farmhouse Labor; Garment
Workers); Growth: of, since
1890, 369; Hours of labor: in
middle of nineteenth century,
363; Strikes: compared with
average for all industries, 1887-
!905, 373J Wages, real: of
women in the past lower than
to-day, 364, 365
CLOTHING WORKERS, (See: Gar-
ment Workers)
COAL, Demand: fluctuations in
the, for, 432, 433, 434; Pro-
duction: per capita, 105; by
months, 433; and population,
419; in the U. S., 1880-1910,
416-417
COAL, BITUMINOUS, machine
mined, per cent of, and per-
centage of miners from Southern
and Eastern Europe, by States,
429, 555
COAL MINERS, 414-457; Unem-
ployed: and per cent foreign
white, by States, 538; Westward
movement: caused by the open-
ing of new mining fields, 418
COAL MINERS, BITUMINOUS, Wage
scale: in Pennsylvania, 1895-
1908, 441 ; Wages: by race and
locality, 442
COAL MINES, (See also: Coal; Coal
Miners ; Fatal Accidents ; Strikes ;
Work Accidents) ; Competition:
of unorganized native American
mine workers, 447; Fatal acci-
dents: in the U. S. and foreign
countries, 469; Unemployment:
part-time employment in lieu
of, 434
COAL MINES, ANTHRACITE, (See
also: Anthracite Coal Strike
Commission; Strikes); Fatal
accident rate: 1870-1909, 479,
556; Miners' unions: short
lived prior to the New Immigra-
tion, 455; Pro duction: of, 1870-
1909, 4371 Wage-earners: num-
ber in, 1870-1909, 437
COAL MINES, BITUMINOUS, Days
worked: average number of,
and variation of the number of
immigrant miners and laborers
in Pennsylvania, 140, 141;
Employees: number, 1880-1907,
420; Fatal accident rate: by
nativity and causes, 474; by
nativity and length of experi-
ence, 477; compared with rail-
roads, 485, 557; variation of the
percentage of miners of Slavic
and Italian parentage, 472, 527;
Labor organizations, 445; Un-
employment: ratio of, and per-
centage of foreign-born miners,
134"; Wages, union scale of,
1898-1908, 440
COLLECTIVE BARGAINING, (See :
Labor Organizations, World
War)
Index
563
COMMISSARY STORE, (See: Com-
pany Store)
COMMONS, JOHN R., 62, 114, 289,
291, 298, 302, 307, 362, 454, 518
COMPANY HOUSES, 247, 248
COMPANY STORE, 272; Movement
against: 1849-1897,444; in the
South, 443
COMPETITION, IMMIGRANT, new
immigrants not working for less
pay than natives or older im-
migrants, 401
CONGESTION, (See also: Housing
Conditions; Tenement Houses);
Boston: number of families per
house, 1853-1900, 242; Dublin:
c. in, 520; Effect: upon cost of
living and wages, 240; Failure
of the community: to provide
safeguards against, 239; In-
dustrial causes, 235; Ireland:
c. in, 244; New York City: 229-
241; Old Immigration: 65;
Race: not a factor, 237; Rear
tenements, 233
CONTRACT LABORERS, importa-
tion of, infrequent, 99, 394, 524;
during the World War, 498-499,
530
COST OF LIVING, 240, 521, (See
also: Wages and the Cost of
Living)
COTTON MILLS, 375-383, (See also:
Child Labor); Earnings: of
operatives, by sex and age, by
principal States, 387; Hours of
labor, 31 5; Strikes: much above
the average in duration, 379;
Unemployed: and foreign-born,
136, 540
CRAFT UNIONS, (See: Labor Or-
ganizations)
CRIME, 353, 358-361; Immigrants:
alleged criminal proclivities of
the, 358 ; no more criminal than
native Americans, 359 ; Increase
of immigration: coincident with
decrease of c., 360
DANES, 79, 197, (See also: Scan-
dinavians)
DANGEROUS WORKING CONDI-
TIONS, statistics of strikes
against, 486
DAYS WORKED, Bituminous coal
mines: d. w. collated with
variation of number of immi-
grant miners and laborers in
Pennsylvania, 140, 141; Organ-
ized trades: in the State of New
York, and immigration, 1897-
1909, 144
DEMAND FOR LABOR, (See also:
Agriculture; Labor Market);
A griculture: 1 03-1 1 3 ; Charac-
ter and volume of immigration:
determined by, 102; Immigra-
tion and emigration: regulated
by, 3 ; Population of the United
States : not increasing as fast as,
84
DENMARK, 16, 179, 202, 203-205,
(See also: Northern and Western
Europe) ; Decline of emigration:
from, due to improvement in
condition of people, 205; Eco-
nomic conditions: of the peas-
ants greatly improved since the
'8o's, 203; Emigration: from,
to the United States, 1820-1910,
203; Immigration: to, 204;
Progress of manufacturing; 204
DESMOND, H. J., 73, 77
DISPLACEMENT, denned by the
Oxford Dictionary, 149
DISPLACEMENT, RACIAL, 415
E
EARNINGS, (See: Wages)
EASTMAN, CRYSTAL, 460, 461, 467,
468, 481, 482, 484
EMIGRATION, American farmers:
emigrating to Canada, 112;
Immigration : compared with,
90, 557, 558; Industrial crisis,
1907-8, net e. during, 88;
Monthly average: 1907-1909,
92; World War, net e. during,
498
EMPLOYMENT, Fluctuations of,i2i,
123, 137, 53i
ENGELS, FRIEDRICH, 475-476
ENGLAND, (See: United Kingdom)
ENGLISH AND WELSH, 166, 167,
168, 170, 171, 172, 262, 263,
264, 267, 268, 290, 326, 355,
356, 357, 395, 40i, 4U, 415,
425, 436, 437, 442, 447, 449,
545, 546
564
Index
ENGLISH LANGUAGE, per cent
foreign-born able to speak the,
by years in the U. S., 58
F
FAIRCHILD, HENRY PRATT, iv;
487; 515-517; 519-529
FALKNER, ROLAND P., 68, 69
FAMILY BUDGETS, Clothing: ex-
penditure for, in families of un-
skilled laborers, by income and
nativity, 267; increases with
earnings, 266; prices paid for,
by recent immigrants the same
as by native Americans, 265;
race variations insignificant,
266; Deficit: annual, per work-
ing family, by occupations,
1885,297,551; Food: expendi-
tures for, by nativity and in-
come, 258, 260, 262; in New
York City, 260; Slav laborers,
standards of, 259; Laborers:
unskilled, classified by nativity
and source of income, New
Jersey, 1885, 550; Massachu-
setts: 1800, 1830, and 1860, 549;
Rent: paid by immigrants as
high as, or higher than, that
paid by native wage-earners,
250; by nativity, 254, 255;
per person, in families without
boarders, the same for native,
and foreign-born, 254, 255;
South Italians: food expendi-
tures of, compared with Ameri-
can families, 258; Surplus: of
income over expenditure, by
country of birth of families,
368; Wage-earners: classified
by occupations, New Jersey,
1885, 550
FARMHOUSE LABOR, Competition:
of, in the clothing industry, in
'40*5 and '50*5, 365; Daughters
of American farmers: working
for less than cost of living, 365
FARMING, (See: Agriculture)
FARM LABORERS, (See: Agricul-
tural laborers)
FATAL ACCIDENT RATE, (See also:
Fatal Accidents); Anthracite
coal mines: 1870-1909, 528;
decrease simultaneous with in-
crease of employment of Slavs
and Italians, 478; Bituminous
coal mines: 485; collated with
variation of the per cent of
miners of Italian and Slavic
parentage, 472, 555; compared
with railroads, 557; increase
due to exhaustion of mines, 480;
Coal mines: variation by States,
471; by causes and nativity,
474; by length of experience
and nativity, 477; Foreign
countries: compared with U. S.,
469
FATAL ACCIDENTS, (See also: Fatal
Accident Rate; Work Acci-
dents); Coal mines: negligence
of the miners, 480; Railroads:
485; Steel mills: speeding the
cause of, 481
FITCH, JOHN A., 164, 395, 399~4oi,
405, 411-413, 520, 526, (See
also: Pittsburgh Survey)
FOERSTER, ROBERT F., 515-520,
525-527
FOOD, 256-265, (See also: Family
Budgets) ; Food: Southern iron
district: expenses of typical
households for, 549; Immigra-
tion Commission's data: 256,
257; Slavs: standards of the,
compared with the U. S. Navy
ration, 257
FOREIGN-BORN, Breadwinners: by
grade of occupation and na-
tionality, 172; immigration and
emigration of, 1915-1919, 559;
increase or decrease of, by occu-
pation and nationality, 1890-
1900, Appendix, Table XI; In-
crease: compared with immigra-
tion, 88; from Scandinavian
countries, compared with immi-
grants from Southern and East-
ern Europe, 1880-1910, 199
FRIDAY, DAVID, 497, 503, 504, 511
GARMENT WORKERS, 362-374, (See
also: Clothing Industry) ; Jews:
in the cities underbid by Amer-
ican country workers, 372; La-
bor organizations: affiliations of
Jews and Italians with, in New
York City above the average
for ' the country, 326; more
Index
565
effective than among other in-
dustrial workers, 373
GERMAN IMMIGRANTS, 2, 3, 8, 12,
15, 52-54, 65, 66, 73, 76-78, 149,
162, 170-172, 180-196, 194,
228-233, 252, 253, 263, 275, 328,
357, 368, 369, 370, 374, 385, 395,
401, 414, 436, 442; Colonies: in
the middle of the nineteenth
century, 77 ; Congestion: in the
settlements in old New York
City, 65; Occupations: 1890-
1900, 170; Pennsylvania: in the
colony of, 76; Tenement houses:
unsanitary, in New York City
colonies of, in the '60 's, 232
GERMANY, (See also: German
Immigrants; Northern and
Western Europe); i, 14, 43, 52,
178-180, 180-196, 255, 262, 267,
268, 355, 356, 386, 520, 545; Ad-
vance: in the wages of farm
labor, 189, 190; Agricultural
progress: 189, 190; in 1895-
1910, 190; Coal: production of,
per cent increase of, 1890-1909,
183; Coal miners: increase of
annual earnings, 1890-1910,
1 86; Emigration: from, annual
average, 1875-1910, 192; to
countries outside of the U. S.,
1890-1904, 195; net e. from,
1 80 ; of unskilled laborers to the
U. S., increasing with the in-
creased immigration to the U.
S., from Southern and Eastern
Europe, 192, 193; Foreign-born:
by country of birth, 1880-1900,
545 ; engaged in gainful occupa-
tions, 1900, 545; population of,
1 80; Immigration: to, exceeds
emigration from, 180; to G. from
Southern and Eastern Europe,
181, 520; Industrial expansion:
182, 520; Iron: production of,
1880-1910, 183; Labor: con-
dition of, improved, 185; de-
mand for, increased, 185; Mi-
gration: of workers from Rus-
sian Poland to G., 181; Rail-
road mileage: growth of, and
freight traffic, 1890-1900, 184;
Trade-unions: 189; member-
ship of, 1890-1910, 187
GREAT BRITAIN, i, 14, 17, 52, 179,
385, (See also: British Immi-
gration; English and Welsh;
Northern and Western Europe;
United Kingdom) ; Immigra-
tion: from, rise in 1897-1907,
213; Living conditions: im-
provement of, 214; Real wages:
1850-1900, 215 /
H
HALL, PRESCOTT F., 41, 42
HAYNES, JOHN RANDOLPH, 462,
464, 469, 480, 481
HEBREWS, (See: Jews)
HOFFMAN, P. L., 465, 466, 471,
474, 476, 477
HOLMES, JOSEPH A., 467, 468
HOME OWNERSHIP, 274-283, (See
also: Apartment Houses); Ages:
of home owners, 279-281; Bos-
ton: 1845-1900, 277; Cities:
with population of 50,000 and
over, percentage of native white
in, 278; Decreasing: with the
growth of urban population,
282; with the increase of land
values, 278; Irregularity of em-
ployment: a bar to, 274; New
immigrants: not long enough in
the U. S. to have acquired
homes, 282; Labor disputes:
handicap in, 174; Laboring
classes; not accessible to, 283;
Old immigration: 277; Real
estate: value of, 278-279; Ten-
ancy: in Boston, 1790, 1845,
1890, and 1900, 276; Thrift:
and h. o., 276
HOURS OF LABOR, 3ii~3i7, (See
also: Clothing Industry); Agri-
culture: no; American mill
hands: native, in the ante-
immigration period, 311, 312;
Cotton mills: h. o. 1. reduced in,
315; Massachusetts: 1872-1903,
313; New immigration: 314;
New York City: reduction of,
compared with remainder of
the State, 316, 317; Reduction:
contemporaneous with immi-
gration, 27; Sewing women: in
the middle of the nineteenth
century, 363; Steel industry:
shorter hours for foreigners
than for English-speaking skilled
and semi-skilled .employees, 314
S 66
Index
HOUSING CONDITIONS, 241-256,
(See also: Congestion; Tene-
ment Houses); Cause: of bad
h. c. economic, not racial, 247;
Germans: unsanitary h. c. of,
in the past, 230-232; Immigra-
tion Commission: tendency to
shift the blame to the tenant,
249; Improvements: by Italians
and Jews, 66; Irish: unsanitary
h. c. of, in the past, 230-232;
Italian district: improved h. c.
in the, 66, 234; Jewish districts:
improved h. c. in the, 66, 234;
Landlords: responsibility of,
247; Native white: New Eng-
land working girls in the '40*8,
241; sewing women, squalid
h. c. in the past, 231; unskilled
laborers in Southern mill towns,
246; Old immigration: cellar
population in New York City,
230; Massachusetts towns, h. c.
in, 243 ; rear tenements in New
York City, 233; shanty dwell-
ers in Massachusetts in the
'70*5, 244; unsanitary tene-
ments in Boston, 241, 242
HOWARD, EARL DEAN, 185, 186,
189, 190
HUNGARIANS, (See: Magyars,
Slavs)
HUNGARY, 98, 100
HUNTER, ROBERT, 40, 45
ILLINOIS, 11, 134, 135, 300, 301,
319, 334. 428-431, 433, 447, 44,
453, 471, 472, 473, 484, 534,
T 535, 538, 539, 540, 554, 557
ILLITERACY, immigration from
Bulgaria, Greece, Russia, and
Servia compared with popula-
tion of same countries, 71 ;
Italian: statistics of, 80; Sta-
tistics: 70, 80
IMMIGRANT COLONIES, Irish and
German in middle of nineteenth
century, 77
IMMIGRANTS, Connections: in the
U. S., 94; Farmers: number of,
negligible at all periods, 67;
Imported: myth of, 3, 99;
Occupations: per cent distribu-
tion by, 1861-1910, 67; Old:
majority unskilled, 67; Skilled:
proportion of, same for last half-
century, 67
IMMIGRATION, Annual average: by
occupations, 1 86 1-1910, 503 ;
Assisted: 96; Breadwinners,
immigration and emigration of,
559, net i. of, 1915-1919, 498;
Business conditions: and, 1880-
1910, 87; Compared: with emi-
gration, 88, 546 ; Decline of,
493, 498; Monthly average:
compared with immigration,
1907-1909, 92; Objections: to,
40; Old: compared with New,
6 1 -8 1 ; distribution, before
1840, 63; indentured servants,
immigrants a century ago
mostly, 62; Opposition: to, by
organized labor antedates new,
78; to quantity not quality, 79;
Quality of: European opinion,
.72; Immigration Commission,
conclusion of, 72; intellectu-
ally average immigrant above
average of countrymen at home,
70; standard not lowered, 69;
Restriction of, probable effects
of, 487-492; 511; Tractability:
of old and new, 346; Volume:
how regulated, 93
IMMIGRATION COMMISSION, Con-
clusions: of the, 49, 72 ; contra-
' dieted by its statistics, 325
INDUCED IMMIGRATION, uncon-
firmed tales of, 391
INDUSTRIAL ACTIVITY, Immigra-
tion: and, 86; Population: and,
for the past twenty years, 82
INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS, Commis-
sion on, 493, 494, 500
IRELAND, 2, 14, 17, 43, 65, 178,
179, 210, 215-221, 244, 245,
55.0, 551, (See also: Congestion;
Irish; Northern and _ Western
Europe; United Kingdom);
Emigration: from, 1851-1908,
216; decreasing since 1 860, 2 1 6 ;
by destination, 1876-1908, 217;
Farm laborers: rise in wages of,
219; Housing: in rural areas,
186^-1901, 219; Land reform:
effects of, 217, 218; Recent
progress: 217-219
IRISH, 12-14, 17, 25, 52, 54, 57,
64-67, 69, 73, 77, 149, !6i, 166,
Index
567
169-172, 178, 179, 2IO, 212,
229-232, 244, 247, 252, 253, 255,
260-263, 267, 275, 290, 295, 328,
355, 356, 357, 364, 365, 374, 385,
386, 394, 395, 401, 414, 415, 425,
436, 437, 442, 447, 449, 545, 546,
(See also: Ireland) ; Congestion:
in the settlements of New York
City in the past, 65; Farm
work: reluctance of the early
immigrants toward, 66; Immi-
grant colonies: in the middle of
the nineteenth century, 77; Oc-
cupations: in the U. S., 1890-
1900, 169; Pauperism: in Bos-
ton, 1837-1845, 356; Standard
of living: of early immigrants,
64; Sweatshops: in the 'so's,
364; Tenement houses: unsani-
tary, in the I. colonies of New
York City in the '6o's, 232
IRON AND STEEL INDUSTRY, (See
also: Iron and Steel Workers);
Expansion: of, 158-160; Tech-
nical revolution: in the, 399
IRON AND STEEL WORKERS, 394-
413, (See also: Aristocracy of
Labor; Rolling Mills; Un-
skilled Laborers); Amalga-
mated Association: of, common
laborers barred, 411; decline
due to substitution of ma-
chinery for skill, 412; Birds of
passage: by race, 75; Crowding
out: of English-speaking work-
men by immigrants, none, 395;
Earnings: in the Pittsburgh and
Southern districts. 408; Eight-
hour day: demand of the em-
ployers, in th '8o's resisted, by
the Amalgamated Association,
410, 411; Highly paid men: a
small fraction of the force in the
past, 395; Hours of labor:
shorter for unskilled foreign-
ers than for English-speaking
skilled and semi-skilled, 314;
Machinery: skill displaced by,
399; Months of employment:
native and foreign-born male,
by per cent distribution, 127;
Race: 1880, 1890, and 1900,
159; 1890-1900, in the prin-
cipal cities of the Middle West,
1 60; and skill, 402; Racial
stratification: 402, 403; Skilled:
earnings in Eastern and South-
ern mills, 407; proportion of,
162; Sunday work: general
rule before period of New Im-
migration, 409; Twelve-hour
day: insisted on by piece work-
ers in the '8o's, 410, 411; Un-
skilled: proportion of, 162;
Wages: 403; in 1884, 396; in
1880-1908, 398, 553; by occu-
pations, 1880-1908, 397; of
skilled men higher in Pittsburgh
with, than in the South with-
out, immigrant competition,
405 ; of skilled men in the Pitts-
burgh mills reduced since 1892,
403, 404; vary inversely with
the ratio of recent immigrants,
408
IRREGULARITY OF EMPLOYMENT,
migratory worker the product
of, 435
ITALIANS, 3, 7, 15, 16, 20, 22, 32,
37, 43, 47, 65, 72, 79, 80, 85,
91, 99, 120, 162, 170-172, 193,
200, 201, 209, 234, 237, 238, 240,
253, 255, 258-263, 267-269, 290,
326, 328, 345, 349, 351, 355,
356-359, 368-371, 374, 385, 386,
388, 391, 394, 428, 437, 442, 443,
449, 450, 453, 458, 484, 545,
546, (See also: South Italians) ;
Housing conditions: improved
by, 66; improved in the I.
district, 234; Illiteracy: statis-
tics, 80; Labor organizations:
affiliation of clothing workers
with, above the average for the
country, 326
ITALY, 32, 69, 72, 93, 181, 349, 350,
358, 359, (See also: Italians);
Labor organizations: 349; agri-
cultural, 350; Strikes: of agri-
cultural laborers, 350
JENKS AND LAUCK, 43, 44, 65, 68,
84, 85, 126, 163, 164, 173, 245,
247, 248, 250, 251, 271, 272, 273,
275, 280, 285, 287, 288, 290, 302,
303, 346, 35i, 36o, 371, 458, 460
JENKS, JEREMIAH W., (See: Jenks
and Lauck)
JEWS, 3, 20, 25, 32, 65, 66, 71, 72,
228, 234, 238, 240, 253, 280,
568
Index
326, 328, 351, 356, 362, 363, 368,
369, 370, 371, 372, 374, (See
also: Russians); Housing con-
ditions: improved, in the J.
districts, 66, 234; Labor organi-
zations: affiliation of J. clothing
workers with, in New York
City above the average for the
country, 326; Underbidding: of
J. by American country work-
ers, 372
LABOR, condition of, has not de-
teriorated in the U. S., 23
LABOR AGENTS, before the immi-
gration era, 119
LABOR ARISTOCRACY, (See: Aris-
tocracy of Labor)
LABOR COMPETITION, Immigrants:
do not undercut union wages,
378; Southern white: keeping
down the wages of immigrants
in the North, 381
LABOR MARKET, immigration and
the, 82-102, 498-500; mobility
of labor, 499-5
LABOR ORGANIZATIONS, 325-352,
(See also: Coal Mines; Cotton
Mills; Garment Workers; Iron
and Steel W9rkers; Woolen
Mills); Bituminous coal mines:
445 ; Coal miners: non-English-
speaking, affiliated with, 352,
353 ; union of, recognized by the
Steel Trust, 453 ; Date of organi-
zation: in principal industrial
States, 334; Ephemeral: previous
to 1880, 330; Garment workers:
Jewish and Italian, union affilia-
tions above the average for the
country, 326; Growth: since
1890,333; Immigrants: discrim-
ination against, 347; Immigra-
tion: effects of, on 1. o., 376, 377;
Machinery: effect upon craft
unions, 351; Membership: na-
tivity, 552; and immigration,
New York State, 552; in the
State of New York, and im-
migration to the State of
New York, 1897-1910, 336;
foreign-born predominating in
the '8o's, 330, 331; proportion
of industrial wage-earners or-
ganized, 340, 553; race not a
factor, 327; rising and falling
with rise and fall of immigra-
tion, 30; Native Americans:
aloofness from, 339; New York
City: stronger than in the re-
mainder of the State, 341, 343;
New York State, stronger than
in Kansas, 337, 339; Progress:
greater progress coincident with
the great tide of immigration,
3331 Proportion: organized, na-
tives and immigrants, 327, 328;
Recent immigrants: home train-
ing in organization, 32, 349;
organizing along industrial lines,
413; as strongly organized as
natives and older immigrants,
327; Skilled: interests of, con-
flict with those of the unskilled,
348; Unskilled: not eligible to
membership in craft unions,
346; organization among the,
32, 349
LABOR PROBLEM, immigration not
the cause of, 34
LABOR UNIONS, (See: Labor Or-
ganizations)
LABORERS, (See: Unskilled Lab-
orers)
LAUCK, W. JETT, 49, 265, 384, 388,
494, 495, 496, 501, 511, (See
also: Jenks and Lauck)
LAWRENCE, MASSACHUSETTS, 33,
348, 384-393, (See also: Strikes;
Wages; Woolen and Worsted
Mills; Worsted Mills); strike of
1912, 348; and public opinion,
384
LEISERSON, WILLIAM M., 290,
44, 454
LITHUANIANS, 32, 55, 56, 57, 75,
228, 253, 328, 351, 368, 370,
T 442, 456
LITMAN, SIMON, 502, 503
LIVING EXPENSES, (See: Family
Budgets)
LODGERS, (See: Boarders and
Lodgers)
M
MACHINE MINING, (See also: Min-
ing Machine) ; Bituminous coal:
per cent of, machine mined, and
per cent ratio of miners from
Southern and Eastern Europe,
Index 569
by States, 553; Economies: of,
426, 427
MACHINERY, (See also: Agricul-
ture; Agricultural Laborers;
Iron and Steel Workers); Ef-
fects: in general, 231, 525, 526;
upon craft unions, 351; Immi-
gration: New, and, 289; sub-
stitute for, 492 ; Rate of wages:
introduction determined by, 290
MAGYARS, 162, 257, 442, 443, 449,
450, 458 (See also: Hungary)
MANUFACTURES, wage - earners,
1879-1909, 151
MARX, KARL, 124, 125, 291
MASSACHUSETTS, 27, 138, 139,
174-176, 224, 225, 243, 244, 295,
300, 301, 311, 313, 314, 319, 321,
333, 334, 343, 344, 375, 378-380,
382, 383, 392, 523, 524, 534, 535,
540, 541, 551; Hours of labor:
1872-1903, 313; Immigrant
breadwinners: destined for,
1897-1908, 139; Racial stratifi-
cation: 1900-1905, 173; Strikes:
1830-1905, 344; Textile mills:
percentage of immigrants from
Southern and Eastern Europe
employed in, 1880-1900, 370;
Unemployment: of factory work-
ers, and immigration, 139;
Wages and cost of living: 1800,
1830, and i860, 295, 296, 521;
in the '7o's, 295; Woolen mills:
comparative statistics of strikes
in, 392
MAYO-SMITH, RICHMOND, 46, 69,
89, 292
MIGRATORY WORKERS, created by
irregularity of employment, 435
MINERS, (See also: Fatal Acci-
dents: Labor Organizations;
Unemployment); Native white:
decrease of the number of, by
States, 1890-1900, 158; Racial
displacement: of natives by
immigrants, none, 156, 157
MINING MACHINE, Pick miner:
displaced by the, 425 ; Substitute
for immigration: 425; Unskilled
immigrants: employment of, the
effect not the cause of the intro-
duction of the m. m., 425
MITCHELL, JOHN, 41, 46
MITCHELL, WESLEY C., 308, 507
MONEY SENT ABROAD, by immi-
grants, 269; mercantilist objec-
tion to, 271
N
NATIONALITIES, principal, of male
breadwinners classified by occu-
pation groups, 1900, 171
NATIVE-BORN, decrease of, by
occupations, 1890-1900, 152
NATIVE BREADWINNERS, decrease
ofi by occupations in Mass.,
1900-1905, 175
NATIVE WHITE, of native parent-
age, males, decrease in selected
occupations, compared with loss
by death, 1890-1900, 153
NEARING, SCOTT, 293, 302, 519
NEGROES, migration of, during the
World War, 507, 508
NEW IMMIGRATION, compared with
the Old, 61-81
NEW YORK CITY, 7, 20, 25, 28, 32,
63, 66, 67, 119, 120, 121, 149,
229-241, 260, 316, 317, 326, 335,
337, 340-343, 354-357, 3^3, 365,
367, 369, (See also: Family
Budgets; Congestion); Cellar
population: of the '40*3, 230;
Congestion: in the Irish and
German settlements of the
past, 65 ; Hours of labor: reduc-
tion of, compared with the
remainder of the State, 316,317;
Labor organizations: affiliation
of Jewish and Italian clothing
workers with, above the average
for the country, 326; member-
ship of, compared with New
York State, 341, 343; Pauper-
ism: lodgers at the municipal
lodging nouses, by nativity,
1908, 355; Paupers: nativity,
1854-1860, and 1885-1895, 356;
by nativity and cause, 356, 357
NEW YORK STATE, 27, 31, 140,
143, 144, 146, 300, 301, 315-317,
319, 32i, 335-343, 36o, 383, 534,
535, 540, 554, 555; Hours of
labor: compared with New York
City, 317; Membership of labor
organizations: compared with
Kansas, 339; compared with
New York City, 342, 343; per-
centage of wage-earners organ-
ized, 1900-1909, 553; rising and
570
Index
falling with immigration, 335,
55 2
NEWSHOLME, ARTHUR, 226, 528
NORTHERN AND WESTERN EU-
ROPE, Emigration: from, 177-
220; causes of decrease, 13;
cannot keep pace with demand
for labor in the U. S., 177; Im-
migration: to the United States
could not replace immigration
from Southern and Eastern
Europe, 220
NORWAY, 179, 202-203, (See also:
Northern and Western Europe) ;
Immigration: from, to the U. S.,
202; greatest in 1901-1910, 202;
Recent industrial development:
202
NORWEGIANS, 52, 197, 252, 253,
264, (See also: Norway; Scan-
dinavians)
OCCUPATIONS OF IMMIGRANTS,
(See: Immigrants)
OLD IMMIGRATION, (See: Immigra-
tion)
OPPOSITION TO IMMIGRATION, (See:
Immigration)
PAUPERISM, 353~358; Decrease:
during period of greatest im-
migration, 353; Industrial in-
validism: p. due to, 357; New
immigration: p. less frequent
among the, than among the
Old, 354; New York City:
lodgers at municipal lodging
houses, by nativity, 1908, 355;
Racial displacement: p. not
due to, 355, 356; Unemploy-
ment: a minor cause of p., 357
PAUPERS, English and Irish: 1837-
1845, 356; New York City:
nativity of p., in the past, 356,
357
PEARSON, KARL, 226, 528
PENNSYLVANIA, 6, 9, 11, 33, 100,
119, 134, 135, 140, 141, 151, 249,
300, 301, 319, 321, 343, 344, 371,
372, 383, 414, 415, 419-422,
428-431, 437, 439, 442, 445, 446,
449, 454-456, 461, 462, 466,
471-473, 48o, 481, 534, 535, 538-
549, 555-557; (See also: Coal
Mines, Bituminous; Coal
Mines, Anthracite) ; Bitumi-
nous coal mines: days worked,
and number of immigrant min-
ers and laborers, 141 ; Strikes:
1835-1905, 344
PHILADELPHIA, 25, 363, 372
PITTSBURGH, 24, 306, 394, 401-
410, 439, 454, 460, 484
PITTSBURGH SURVEY, 164, 306,
395, 399-402, 406, 411-413, 454,
460
PLUNKETT, HORACE, 218
POLAND, 56, 100, 181, 182, 190
POLES, 14, 16, 32, 54, 55, 57, 59,
60, 75, 99, 162, 170, 171, 172,
181, 182, 190, 228, 238, 251, 253,
269, 328, 368, 369, 370, 378, 380,
385, 386, 442, 456, 471; Eng-
lish-speaking, by years in the
U. S., 78
PRATT, EDWARD EWING, 235-239,
276, 341
PREJUDICE, against immigrants in
the past, 73
PRICES, control of, 306, 510, 511
8UAINTANCE, H. W., IO3, IO9, IIO
UALITY OF IMMIGRATION, (See
Immigration)
RACE CLASSIFICATION, fallacy of
the, adopted by the Immigra-
tion Commission, 250
RACE DISTINCTION, dominant'idea
of the investigation of the Im-
migration Commission, 55
RACE PREJUDICE, motive of oppo-
sition to recent immigrants, 457
RACE SUICIDE, 221-227; Birth
rate: Commission of Inquiry
into the Declining, report of,
226-227; decline of, among the
better- to-do, 226; among the
English aristocracy, 528; de-
cline of, begins in 1810-1830,
2237 native, decreasing with
rural population, 224; rise in
social condition cause of decline
of, 226; varies inversely with
income, 226; Walker's theory
Index
of the decline in the native, 221,
528; Immigration: unrelated
to, 18; Universal: among social
classes not affected by immi-
grant competition, 226; Wat-
son's forecast: of the population
of the U. S., 222, 223; World-
wide: 224
RACIAL DISPLACEMENT, (See also:
Racial Stratification); Laborers:
none, of native, by immi-
grants, 156, 157; Miners: none,
of native, by immigrants, 156,
157; Native Americans: em-
ployed in increased numbers
with increasing immigration
from Southern and Eastern
Europe, 158, 1 60; Negligible:
151, 152, 176
RACIAL STRATIFICATION, 148-176,
150, 151; Massachusetts: 1900-
f905 J 73J Occupations: read-
justment on the scale of, 170;
Shifting: of English and Welsh,
Irish and Germans, from lower
paid to more remunerative
occupations, 165
RAILROAD EMPLOYEES, wages of,
1891-1909, 304
REAL WAGES, (See: Wages)
RENT, of native American wage-
earners in small towns lower
than that of immigrant workers
in large cities, 255; increase of,
502, (See also: Family Budgets)
RIPLEY, WILLIAM Z., 224
ROBERTS, PETER, 259, 444, 445,
455, 456, 481
ROLLING MILLS, (See also: Iron
and Steel Industry, Iron and
Steel Workers), Laborers: wages
of, 1884-1902, 398; Rates of
wages: classification of em-
ployees by, 1884, 396
Ross, EDWARD A., 140
RURAL DEPOPULATION, 103-104;
migration of native American
stock to city, 104; relative and
absolute, 103
RURAL TERRITORY, decrease of the
population of, 1900-1910, 104
RUSSIA, 32, 69, 71, 146, 1 81, 349-
351; strikes in, 349; unem-
ployment insurance, 146
RUSSIANS, 32, 71, 75, 190, 228,
238, 255, 260, 262, 263, 264, 267,
268, 351, 354, 355, 357, 369, 370,
385, 386, 388, (See also: Jews)
SABATH, A. J., 347
SAVINGS, Of immigrants: disposi-
tion of, does not affect American
wage-earners, 271; investments
in their home countries, 270;
Of wage-earners: small margin
of .income left for, 267
SCANDINAVIANS, i, 16, 178, 196-
201, 355, 386, 548; (See also:
Danes, Norwegians, Swedes) ;
Competing with new immigrants:
200, 20 1 ; Immigration to the
United States: of breadwinners
highest in 1901-1910, 196;
1881-1910, 196; course of,
turned eastward, 197, 198; In-
crease: of, in the U. S., by
geographic division, 1880-1910,
198, 199; In the United States:
compared with Southern and
Eastern Europeans by States,
1880, 1890, 1900, and 1910,
545; Occupations: 1881-1910,
20 1 ; Recent immigrants: mostly
not of the family type, 197
Scisco, Louis Dow, 73, 77
SCOTCH, 12, 52, 75, 161, 171, 172,
252, 253, 264, 355, 356, 414, 415,
442, 447, 545, 546; immigra-
tion not decreased, 173
SCOTLAND, (See: United Kingdom)
SIMONS, A. M., 62, 63, 115
SLAVS, Food: standards of, com-
pared with United States navy
rations, 257; Organization: ca-
pacity for, 455, 456; Wages: of
unskilled laborers increased,
453, 454
SOUTH ITALIANS, 75, 247, 249,
251, (See also: Italians); Food
expenditures: compared with
Americans generally, 258; with
native white workers in the
South, 258
STANDARD OF LIVING, 228-273,
(See also: Boarders and Lodgers;
Congestion; Family Budgets);
Children's earnings: source of
higher s. o. 1., maintained by
Americans and Americanized
families, 22, 285; Old immigra-
572
Index
tion: standard low, 64; Race
standard: existence of, not
proved, 264; Recent immigrants:
standard of, not inferior to that
of their predecessors, 19
STEAMSHIP AGENTS, effect of so-
licitation by, negligible, 97
STEEL MILLS, (See: Iron and Steel
Workers; Rolling Mills)
STEEL WORKERS, fatal accidents,
speeding the cause of, 481, (See
also: Iron and Steel Workers;
Rolling Mills)
STEERAGE RATES, effect of recent
increase upon quality of im-
migration, 69
STRATIFICATION, OCCUPATIONAL,
caste prejudice against the
immigrant, the outgrowth of,
424
STREIGHTOFF, F. N., 246, 248, 255,
276, 294
STRIKE BREAKERS, native Ameri-
cans as, 345; recent immi-
grants as, 346
STRIKES, (See also: Clothing In-
dustry; Cotton Mills; Strike
Breakers; Woolen Mills); An-
thracite coal mines: 1902, 456;
Coal mines: Southern and East-
ern Europeans identified with
every strike in, 447, 448;
Immigrants: have stood by the
unions, 378; Immigration: and,
1886-1905, 345 ; increasing with,
344; Lawrence, Massachusetts:
392; Massachusetts: 1830-1905,
344; More numerous: since 1881,
343, 344; Pennsylvania: 1835-
I9<>5 344; Russia: 349; Woolen
and worsted mills: comparative
statistics of s. in, 392; World
War, s. during, 505
SUMNER, HELEN L., 115, 120, 230,
241, 363, 364, 365, (See also:
Women in Industry)
SUNDAY WORK, (See: Iron and
Steel Workers)
SUNDBARG, GUSTAV, 2OI, 2O6, 2O7
SUTHERLAND, HUGH, 217, 218, 220
SWEATSHOPS, Irish, in the 'sp's,
364; older than immigration,
362
SWEDEN, 16, 179, 205-209, (See
also: Northern and Western
Europe) ; Emigration: from cities
and rural districts, 1881-1907,
206; by destination, 1861-1908,
205; Immigration: to, 206; 1881-
1908, 207; Recent industrial
development: 207; Rural emi-
gration: decline of, due to small
demand for farm help in the
U. S., 205, 206
SWEDES, 52, 75, 79, 161, 170-172,
197, 255, 262, 267, 268, 328,
(See also: Scandinavians; North-
ern and Western Europe)
TENEMENT HOUSES, (See also:
Congestion; Home Ownership;
Housing Conditions); One-fam-
ily residence: made over into,
229; Past and present: in Bos-
ton, 241 ; Unsanitary conditions:
in the old Irish and German col-
onies of New York City, 232
TEXTILE MILLS, percentage of
immigrants from Southern and
Eastern Europe employed,
1880-1900, 379
TRACTABILITY, of old and new
immigrants, 346
TRADE-UNIONS, (See also: Labor
Organizations) ; mostly confined
to skilled occupations, 346, 377
TRZCINSKI, J., 181, 191
TWELVE-HOUR DAY, (See: Iron and
Steel Workers)
UNDESIRABLE IMMIGRATION, defi-
nitions of, 41
UNEMPLOYMENT, 114-147; Aus-
tralia: 145; Bituminous coal
miners: 132; collated with vari-
ation of the percentage of for-
eign-born miners, 134; Causes:
4, 114-125; Coal mines: part
time employment in lieu of u.,
434; Cotton mills: 132; Cyclical
variations: 1888-1908, in Mas-
sachusetts, 138; Factory workers:
u^_ among, and immigration,
Massachusetts, 139; Foreign-
born: variation of the percentage
of, collated with u., by areas,
130,131; by geographical divi-
sions, 128; in inverse ratio to u.,
Index
573
129; Immigration: and u., 125-
147, 432, 433, 434; not a con-
tributory cause of, 145; varies
inversely with, 5; Labor reserve:
123, 125; Manufactures: aver-
age number of male wage-
earners employed, by months,
118; variations by States, 129;
Measure: of, 121, 125; Monthly
variations: in the State of New
York, 1902-1909, 125; 1916-
1918, 558: Native: and foreign-
born workmen equally affected
by, 126; Occupational varia-
tions: 131; collated with per
cent of foreign-born, 133, 508;
Restriction of immigration: no
relief for u., 35, 488, 489;
Remedy: 146; Seasonal varia-
tions: 115; Unskilled laborers:
132; Working days: number of,
in New York, 1897-1908, 142,
143 ; in Pennsylvania coal mines,
1901-1909, 140
UNITED KINGDOM, 178, 209-215,
520-522, (See also: Ireland;
Northern and Western Europe) ;
Emigration by destination: gross,
1840-1909, 212, 546; net, 1895-
1909, 213, 214; Immigration:
to the U. S., from, 1890-1909,
not below normal, 213
UNITED MINE WORKERS, (See also:
Coal Miners; Labor Organiza-
tions); growth of, 447; wage
conferences with mine operators
in the bituminous coal fields,
T 439, 450
UNSKILLED LABORERS, (See also:
Agriculture; Family Budgets;
Hours of Labor; Housing Con-
ditions; Illiteracy; Iron and
Steel Workers; Labor Organiza-
tions; Occupations of Immi-
grants; Racial Displacement;
Rolling Mills; Slavs; Unem-
ployment; Woolen and Worsted
Mills); Craft unions: barred
from, 346; interests conflicting
with, 348; Displacement: of
native, by immigrants, none,
J 5 6 J 57; Increase: of the
number of, by race and nativity,
1890-1900, 156; Iron and steel
mills: wages rising, 397; Pre-
dominant among the immigrants:
68; economic reason for, 19;
Rolling mills: wages in 1884-
1902, 398 ; Slav: food standards,
259; Unemployed: and per cent
foreign-born, 136, 538; Wages:
in agriculture and other pur-
suits, in; in the past, 295
UNSKILLED WORKERS, (See: Un-
skilled Laborers)
W
WAGE-EARNERS, in manufactures,
1879-1909, 151
WAGES, 284-310, (See also: Coal
Miners; Coal Mines; Conges-
tion; Cotton Mills; Iron and
Steel Workers; Wages and the
Cost of Living; Woolen and
Worsted Mills) ', Advancing: more
slowly than the cost of living,
26; with the employment of
large numbers of immigrants,
24; Agricultural laborers: com-
pared with other unskilled, no,
in; Building trades, 521; Cler-
ical help: w. of, low, 304; Coal
mines: 305; Cotton mills: 1875-
1908, 375, 376; upward move-
ment of w. since period of New
Immigration, 375; Country com-
petition: daughters of American
farmers working for less than
the cost of living, 365; native
Americans undercut wages of
immigrants, 298; Difference: in,
due to grade of service not to
country of birth, 284; not de-
termined by distinction of race,
288, 289; Earnings: annual, of
male and female employees in
manufactures, and proportion
of foreign-born, in principal
States, 300, 301; variation by
States, 299; Immigrants: do not
undercut w., 23, 378; female,
earnings of, higher than those of
native Americans, 370; re-
cently landed, not engaged at
less than the prevailing rates,
285; Increase: actual, result of
industrial expansion, 302; hy-
pothetical, without immigration
from Southern and Eastern
Europe, 306; Laborers: in the
'40*5, 295 ; in rolling mills, 1 884-
574
Index
1902, 398; Large and small
cities: comparative w. in, 299;
Older employees: w. of, kept up
by immigration from Southern
and Eastern Europe, 309; Past:
real w. of sewing-women lower
than to-day, 364, 365; Purchas-
ing power, of, during the war,
500-504; Railroad employees:
303; Relation of rent: to, 250;
Scarcity of labor: effect of, 489,
521; Southern white competition:
tends to keep down the w. of
immigrants in the North, 383;
Statistics: defects of w., 293;
Steel mills: 305; in 1880-1908,
553; Urban and rural manufac-
tures: 298; Worsted mills: at
Lawrence, w. of skilled and
unskilled operatives in, 1889-
1909, 389
WAGES AND THE COST OF LIVING,
in Massachusetts, 1800, 1830
and 1860, 295, 296; during the
Civil War, 307, 308; in the
'jo's, 295; in the '8o's, 297;
during the World War, 500-
504
WALES, (See: United Kingdom)
WALKER, FRANCIS A., 18, 61, 64,
65, 221-223, 251
WARNE, FRANK JULIAN, 447, 453
WATSON, ELKANAH, 222, 223
WELSH, 12, 13, 52, 75, 161, 252,
(See also: English and Welsh)
WEYL, WALTER E., 46
WILLCOX, WALTER F., 223, 224
WILLIAMS, WILLIAM, 69
WILLIS, H. PARKER, 51
WOMEN IN INDUSTRY, 107, 115,
120, 230, 241, 312, 313, 345, 363,
508, (See also: Sweatshops;
Wages)
WOOLEN AND WORSTED MILLS,
384-393; Americans of native
stock: coming back to, since
arrival of new immigrants, 387;
not forced out by recent im-
migrants, 385; number of,
employed at Lawrence, 1900-
387; Recent immigrants:
strike record of, 392; Strikes:
comparative statistics of, 392;
Wages: at Lawrence, 1889-1909,
389; stationary prior to the
New Immigration, increasing
since, 388 ; of unskilled laborers
increased at higher rate than
those of skilled operatives, 388,
389
WORK ACCIDENTS, 458-486, (See
also: Fatal Accident Rate;
Fatal Accidents); Coal mines:
Americans, compared with Irish,
57; carelessness of mine man-
agers, 465; cause of, competi-
tion among coal operators, 29,
467, 468; increasing with prog-
ress in engineering, 466; Irish,
compared with Americans, 57;
Lithuanians, compared with
Poles, 55; opinions of experts
on the causes of, 462; Poles,
compared with Lithuanians, 55;
preventable by legislation and
efficient inspection, 468, 469;
prevention of, expensive, 464;
Railroads: compared with coal
mines, 484; Responsibility: for,
shifted to recent immigrants,
458, 459
WORKING DAYS, average number,
per man increased with recent
immigration, 436, 437
WORLD WAR, lessons of, 493-511;
Child labor: increase of, 508, 509;
Collective bargaining: 505; Con-
trpct laborers: 498-499, 530;
Emigration: net, 498; Immigra-
tion and emigration: 558 ; Strikes:
505; Wages and the cost of liv-
ing: 500-504; Women in indus-
try: 508
WORSTED MILLS, (See: Woolen
and Worsted Mills)
ZAHN, FRIEDRICH, 180, 183, 185,
186, 189-191
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