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races, such as the Croatians and the Servians, such moderate drinking at meals does not tell the whole story. Holidays and Sundays become the occasion for prolonged drinking bouts, immense quantities of beer in kegs being consumed. The ease with which the attention of the ignorant foreigner is centered upon intoxicating liquors as the sole means of relaxation, due in part to the barrenness of his life and the absence of wholesome tastes and the opportunities for their grati fication, constitutes the most serious moral problem of the community. The Croatians, and to a less extent the Servians and Italians, are beginning to patronize the saloons or bars convenient to their quarters. The large consumption of beer among the Croatians and their expenditures for this purpose to the exclusion of the outlay of an equivalent amount of their income for more elevating objects, is in a large measure responsible for the fact that they have not risen to a higher standard of living after long residence in the community. Many of the Crostians do not save anything and their low standard of living is not, therefore, due to a degrading economy but to the use of a part of their income for liquors.

All nationalities use tobacco in the form of pipe or cigarette smoking, the use of Turkish or hand-made cigarettes being more common than the pipe among the races from the extreme southeast of Europe.

PREFERENCE OF THE EMPLOYERS FOR THE DIFFERENT RACES.

The industrial efficiency and hence the logical basis for preference of members of one immigrant race over another have already been discussed. With regard to reasons for employing immigrants at all, the following considerations may be stated: (1) Because business was expanding and other labor was scarce and difficult to secure; and (2) because races which had before been employed were, through education and experience, moving upward in the industrial scale, and leaving the positions at the bottom vacant and impossible to fill. They assert that they do not consider the immigrant more reliable or steady than former workmen. As a matter of fact, they believe the alien is harder to work (has to be driven), is of low intelligence, and that the present races will never rise to more skilled occupations because of their lack of knowledge of the English language, and because they expect to be only temporarily in this country and are not striving to learn, nor are they marrying and educating children in this country who would be qualified to go into higher skilled work. The employers also state that they have never used aliens as strikebreakers, for the reason that there has not been a strike at Community C for seventeen years, and, at the time of the last strike the steel plant was shut down and work was not resumed until the points at issue were adjusted. The employers claim, in short, that the present races were engaged because of the scarcity of a better class of labor growing out of the expansion of the steel and other industries.

On the other hand, the assertion is made by old residents and representative men that the nationalities at present employed were hired because they were willing to work for a lower rate of wages than the races which preceded them. At the same time the foreigner now in the works complains that he is at present given a lower rate of wages for doing the same kind of work as the American who works

beside him. He asserts that when an alien and an American are given the same kind of work to do that the American is paid 15 cents per hour and the foreigner 12 cents.

The assertions of the employer referred to above appear to overlook one or two facts of some importance. In the first place 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 passing years and the growth of inevitable ties, whether domestic, financial, or political, binding the immigrant to his new abode, these hopes decline and finally disappear. In view of this fact, it is highly probable that within a score of years a large English-speaking population of southern European parentage will be found in this community ready to enter many of the better paid positions in the mills.

That alien laborers are paid a lower wage per hour than Americans receive for the same work or nearly the same work is very probable, but as pointed out above, it is beyond question that the American laborer, when he can be secured, is regarded as the superior in every respect of the immigrant from southeastern Europe. His knowledge of English, and consequently the greater ease with which he can be handled, as well as his greater intelligence, alertness, and manual dexterity, qualify him for increased compensation whatever the piece of work upon which he may be employed.

CHANGES IN INDUSTRIAL METHODS AND ORGANIZATION.

Aside from the highly skilled English steel workers who were employed some thirty-five or forty years ago when the several departments were first established, no influence upon industrial organization or methods has been exerted by the employment of immigrants. The latter have in every case conformed to conditions and processes as they existed. To a body of peasants, unfamiliar with machinery and ignorant of the English language, this has meant assuming a risk whose magnitude may be appreciated from the number of accidents of which they have been the victims.

With regard to the expansion of industrial enterprise throughout the eastern States it may be pointed out that the immigration of numerous laborers from the Old World has been an important contributing cause of growth. The exploitation of raw materials and the fashioning of these materials into manufactured goods could not have proceeded so rapidly in the absence of immigrants. It is highly improbable that the native stock would have gone to the industrial centers and there multiplied at a rate high enough to produce the present population of the country.

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Native born of native born parents.

Native born of favign born parents. Mixed immigrant races.

Slavish races.

Italians.

Macedonians.

3

C

NT

Compiled by LeR.M. Apt 1910

WEG AND PRINTED BY THE USAPOLONICA SUNT* -

633; 61st Cong., 2d Sess.

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