advancement in wages since the arrival in considerable numbers of southern and eastern European wageearners. As a general proposition, it may be said that all improvements in conditions and increases in rates of pay have been secured in spite of their presence. The recent immigrant, in other words, has not actively opposed the movements toward better conditions of employment and higher wages, but his availability and his general characteristics and attitude have constituted a passive opposition which has been most effective.

General Conclusions

If the entire situation be reviewed, and the effects of recent immigration be considered in all its industrial aspects, there are several significant conclusions which, altho subject to some unimportant restrictions, may be set forth as indicating the general effects of the extensive employment in the mines and industrial establishments of the United States of southern and eastern European immigrants. These general conclusions may be briefly summarized as follows:

(1) The influx of recent immigrants has, by affording an adequate labor supply, made possible the remarkable expansion in mining and manufacturing in the United States during the past thirty years.

(2) The extensive employment of southern and eastern Europeans has seriously affected the native American and older immigrant employees from Great Britain and northern Europe by causing displacements and by retarding advancement in rates of pay and improvements in conditions of employment.

(3) Industrial efficiency among the recent immigrant wage-earners has been very slowly developed, owing to their illiteracy and inability to speak English.

(4) For. these same reasons the general progress toward assimilation and the attainment of American standards of work and living has also been very slow.

(5) The conclusion of greatest significance developed by the general industrial investigation of the United States Immigration Commission is that the point of complete saturation has already been reached in the employment of recent immigrants in mining and manufacturing establishments. Owing to the rapid expansion in industry which has taken place during the past thirty years, and the constantly increasing employment of southern and eastern Europeans, it has been impossible to assimilate the newcomers, politically or socially, or to educate them to American standards of compensation, efficiency of conditions of employment.

(6) Too exclusive emphasis in the discussion of immigration, within recent years, has been placed upon the social and political results of recent immigration, altho no one questions that in the long run these social results may be of chief import. But that side of the question has been kept well in mind in previous legislation. Now the emphasis should be shifted. The main problem at present is really fundamentally an industrial one, and should be principally considered in its economic aspects.

XII

EUROPEAN AND MEXICAN IMMIGRANTS ON THE PACIFIC COAST

Assimilation

In the discussion of European immigration into the United States, as already pointed out, the chief factor to be taken into account is economic. What is the normal effect of the immigration upon the wages and living conditions of the American? Inasmuch as the races, particularly those of northern Europe, are similar to those of the inhabitants of the United States, the question of assimilation is not especially difficult. Ordinarily, even if the members of the first generation can not be easily assimilated, those of the second, under the influence of our public schools and the social circumstances which surround them, are readily assimilated.

RACE PREJUDICE

On the other hand, when the immigrants are members of races widely different from Americans, as are the Chinese, the Japanese, the Hindus, the question of race and race prejudice becomes an extremely important problem.

The untrained man is likely to assume that those people who differ widely from himself in appearance, in habits of living or of working, are members of a lower and not merely of a different race. He is accustomed to speak of the Italian, for example, with contempt, as a "dago." Still more emphatic is he in his denounce

ment of the Chinese, the Japanese, and the Hindus as members of an inferior race. Of course, the cultivated man, especially one who has traveled widely, knows better. As Professor Steiner has so well reminded us, the first immigrant to America was a dago named Columbus, a man of learning and of the highest cultivation. Moreover, when at the present day Americans go to Europe to study art and architecture they are very likely to go to the land of the great dagoes, Michelangelo, Giotto, Raffael, Leonardo da Vinci, and others of similar rank. Nowhere in the world have we been able to find in centuries past, or do we find in the world to-day, people of higher cultivation than the Italians. Moreover, if instead of turning our eyes to Europe, we go to the Far East, and visit the Chinese and Japanese, we are equally imprest, as we meet members of the wealthier and more cultivated classes in society, with their high degree of intelligence, with their intellectual training, and especially, perhaps, with the personal qualities which have made them the world over models of courtesy and of manners that characterize the gentleman.

ARE OTHER RACES INFERIOR?

It is hardly to be expected, however, that people who have not traveled and who have not read widely should recognize that the ordinary workingmen from the Orient with whom they come into keen competition, and who often underbid them in wages, especially in doing work of the most arduous type, belong to races of cultivation; and it is natural that they should look upon them as inferior people. Moreover, whether they recognize this fact or not, whether or

not we ourselves believe that race prejudice is something to be heartily condemned, we must still recognize the actual existence of this feeling as an important political fact.

RACE FEELING ELSEWHERE

The feeling against the negroes has forced us to recognize that race feeling is an extremely important political question, and may well become a social question.

Moreover, we should recognize the fact that the feeling on the Pacific Coast against the Chinese, the Japanese and the Hindus is not in itself exceptional. A similar feeling against these same races is found in Canada, in Australia, in South Africa, in every place where these oriental races have come into immediate contact with the white race, and especially when they have come into active competition with it in ordinary labor. We must recognize this feeling, then, as a natural one and one that must be counted upon when it comes to political action.

ORIENTALS NOT EASILY ASSIMILATED

Altho these races may not be considered in any way inferior to ourselves, it is a fact that they are materially different: that they are not so easily assimilated as are the members of the European races; that they do not readily marry with our people nor our people with them.