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, 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 conditions of the daughters of American farmers in the mill towns of New England. They lived in company houses, half a dozen in one attic room, without tables or chairs, or even washstands. The typical tenement house in the Jewish and Italian section of New York today is a decided improvement upon the dwellings of the other immigrant races in the same sections a generation or two ago. On the other hand, in the South, where many of the coal mines are operated without immigrant labor and native white Americans are employed, their homes are primitive and unsanitary. The cause of bad housing conditions is not racial, but economic. Congestion in the cities is produced by industrial factors, over which the immigrants have no control. The fundamental cause is the necessity for the wage-worker to live within an accessible distance from his place of work. 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 inferior to those of native Americans with the same income. Meat is consumed by the Slav in larger quantities than by native Americans. Rent and food claim by far the greater part of the 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 the great industrial centres. It is therefore not the recent immigrant that is able to underbid the native American workman, but it is, on the contrary, the latter that is in a position to accept a cheaper wage.

Of course the expenses of single man are necessarily lower than those of a man with a family, and a large proportion of recent

immigrants either are 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. So when a 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 subsistence. The Italian sectionhand who lives on vegetables does not save money for the railroad company. The economic 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. Even if he merely sends his money home, his wants are as urgent as those of the American laborer who spends his all, and he must demand a wage that will enable him to satisfy them.

Even if the standard of living of the native wage-earners be higher, it is often maintained with the earnings of children, whereas the Southern and Eastern European immigrants are mostly young people whose children have not yet reached working age.

236. Immigration and Wages27

BY I. A. HOURWICH

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 by 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.

27 Adapted from Immigration and Labor, 23-26. Copyright by G. P. Putnam's Sons (1912).

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 immigrants. 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 that 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 labor of the wife and the children.

If the tendency of the new immigration were to lower the rates 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 country 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, and in the coal mines.

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 higher percentage of foreign-born workers.

The conditions in some of the leading industries employing 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 wages of the aristocrats 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 of whom are immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe, have been going up.

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 remained 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 movements 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, 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 labor market.

237. The Elevation of the Native Laborer28

BY WILLIAM S. ROSSITER

It must not be overlooked that society in the United States has been so constructed as to depend upon the continued arrival of large numbers of foreigners. In consequence, labor conditions prevailing in this nation differ radically from those which prevail in most of the countries of Europe, where all economic requirements are met by natives. In England, in France, or in Germany. for example, the man who sweeps the streets, the laborer upon public works or in mines, and the woman who cooks or performs other domestic duties, are as truly native as the ruler of the nation or the statesmen who guide its destinies. In the United States, the man who sweeps the streets, who labors upon public works, in mines or on railroads, and the woman engaged in domestic service, if white, are almost all of foreign birth. The native stock has learned to regard such callings as menial and hence as lowering to selfrespect. Having accepted the education and opportunity which the Republic offers them, native Americans appear to consider that they

28 Adapted from "A Common-Sense View of the Immigration Problem," in the North American Review, CLXXXVIII, 368-371. Copyright (1908).

are untrue to themselves if they do not avoid humble occupations and seek those regarded as an advance in the social scale. There is, therefore, a constant movement away from the lower callings toward the higher; and occupants for the places thus vacated are recruited from foreigners. They in their turn become imbued with the American idea, acquire confidence and develop ambition, and their children abandon to newer arrivals the callings which supported their parents. Evidence of this continued movement upward is seen in the unwillingness, not only of the native stock but of the children of the foreign element, to continue in the servant or socalled menial classes, and in the determination on the part of young women to become shop girls, telephone-operators, typewriters and shop and factory operatives, oftentimes at the penalty of severe privation, rather than to go out to service.

This tendency creates the problem of a constant shortage of workers in the humbler callings. These callings in themselves are as necessary in a republic as in an empire. Therefore workers in such occupations must in the future, as in the past, continue to be recruited from abroad, or else a large number of native Americans, and children of foreign parents, must be contented to labor uncomplainingly in the lower walks of life. It is possible that the former condition may continue indefinitely, but it unquestionably tends toward instability, for a nation which permanently meets by importation its demand for workers is, in a sense, artificially constructed.

When the young United States started upon a career of independence, the inhabitants concentrated their efforts upon the development of national resources. They prayed for wealth, and Providence gave them the immigrant as the means of securing it. After the lapse of a century, our success surpasses the wildest dreams of our ancestors; the United States has grown marvelously in numbers, and has obtained a prosperity unprecedented in the history of the world.

It is unlikely that our portals, thus far ever open to the aliens of all Europe, will be closed to them until it has been conclusively shown that the existence of the nation is imperiled by their coming, or until large numbers of worthy and industrious American citizens are obviously deprived of their means of livelihood by the arriving throngs of foreigners. At the present time there is nothing which points to the realization of these conditions; and, until there is, discussion concerning the restriction is in reality idle. Therefore let us be practical, nursing no delusions, and face conditions as