the great sculptors and artists who have given Italy her proud place in the world of arts are the sons of men who earned their bread in the sweat of their brows. Ah, genius knows no nationality, and is not the result of birth or location. D. IMMIGRATION AND INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT 232. Our Industrial Debt to Immigrants23 BY PETER ROBERTS The new immigration in one respect differs very markedly from the old; the percentage of farmers and farm laborers in this new stream is sixfold what it was in the old. In the last decade, the countries of southeastern Europe have sent us two and a half million men, who, in the old country, were tillers of the soil; but it is safe to say that the number following that occupation in the new world is insignificant. They are employed in industrial plants, in which their labor brings quick returns, and if dissatisfied with wages and conditions they can, in a day, pull up stakes and go elsewhere. The new immigration consequently contains more unskilled workers than the old. America, two generations ago, was an agricultural nation; today it stands in the van of the industrial nations of the earth. This marvelous development, the astonishment of the civilized world, could never have taken place, if Europe and Asia had not supplied the labor force. From 1880 to 1905 the total capital in manufacturing plants increased nearly fivefold, the value of the products increased more than two and a half times, and the labor force about doubled. America could never have finished its transcontinental railroads, developed its coal and ore deposits, operated its furnaces and factories, had it not drawn upon Europe for its labor force; for it was impossible to secure "white men" to do this work. American industry had a place for the stolid, strong, submissive and patient Slav and Finn; it needed the mercurial Italian and Roumanian; there was much coarse, rough, and heavy work to do in mining and construction camps; in tunnel and railroad building; around smelters and furnaces, etc., and nowhere in the world could employers get laborers so well adapted to their need, as in the countries of southeastern Europe. Louis N. Hammerling, President of the American Association of Foreign Newspapers, appearing before the Federal Commission 23 Adapted from The New Immigration, 49-62. Copyright by The Macmillan Company (1912). on Immigration, said: (1) Sixty-five per cent of the farmers owning farms and working as farm laborers are people who came from Europe during the last thirty years. (2) Of the 890,000 miners, mining the coal to operate the great industries, 630,000 are our people. (3) Of the 580,000 steel and iron workers employed in the different plants throughout the United States,-69 per cent, according to the latest statistics of the steel and iron industries, are our people. (4) Ninety per cent of the labor employed for the last thirty years in building the railways has been furnished by our immigrant people, who are now keeping the same in repair. The census of 1900 showed that 75 per cent of the tailors of the country were foreign-born. The investigation of the Immigration Commission showed 72.2 per cent of the workers in the clothing trades foreign-born, and another 22.4 per cent was made up of the children of foreign-born parents; thus 94.6 per cent of the men and women who manufacture ready-made garments are of foreign parentage. Wherever unskilled work is needed, the foreigner is the one who does it. He is the toiler, the drudge, the "choreman." In the slaughtering and meat-packing industry, the foreign-born comprise about 60 per cent of the labor force, but if you want to locate the sons of the new immigration in a plant of this character, you must descend to the pits where the hides are cured, generally located in dark and damp basements. Go to the fertilizing plant where the refuse of the slaughter house is assembled, and amid the malodorous smells which combine into one rank stench tabooed by all English-speaking men, you find the foreigner. Go to the soap department, where the fats are reduced and the alkalis are mixed-a place you smell from afar and wish to escape from as soon as possible, and there the foreigner is found. These disagreeable occupations "white people" have forsaken, and the sons of the new immigration do the work uncomplainingly for $1.50 a day. Wherever digging, excavating, constructing, machine molding, and mining go on, there we find the foreign-born. The patient, willing, and constant labor of the Italians made possible the subways of the great metropolis of the nation; the Bronx Sewer was dug by Italians, Austrians, and Russians. These are the workers who enlarge the Barge Canal and build the Aqueduct to carry an adequate supply of water to the millions of New York City. In lumber camps, in mine patches, in railroad construction work, the foreigner is found. He displaces colored labor in construction camps in the South; and, in the West, he does the unskilled labor unless a legal barrier has been erected to keep him out. The labor force in the woods of Michigan and Minnesota, of Maine and Vermont, is preponderatingly made up of foreigners. The aliens are the backbone of the mining industry. Calumet, in the northern peninsula of Michigan, is a foreign city of 45,000 souls. There are sixteen different nationalities represented on the public school teaching force, and the pupils in the high school represent twenty different races. It is difficult to find an American in the place. If you want to find the native-born, you must go to Houghton, the capital of the county, where the doctors and lawyers, engineers and professors, retired capitalists and the leisure class live. And it is the same in the mining camps all through this upper peninsula of Michigan. The men who dig the ore, load it and clean it, who burn the powder and remove the rock, who crawl through dog holes and climb numberless ladders, are foreigners. The only crowd met with in the territory not of foreign parentage are the young college graduates, incipient civil engineers, who put into practice the theories they were taught in college. The same is true, generally speaking, of the coal mining industry. The United States owes much to the man of the new immigration. No true American will withhold the meed of praise due this man. The consensus of opinion of superintendents and foremen who have used these men is that they have played their part with a devotion, amiability, and steadiness not excelled by men of the old immigration. 233. The Manna of Cheap Labor24 BY EDWARD ALSWORTH ROSS It is not as cargo that the immigrant yields his biggest dividends. But for him we could not have laid low the many forests, dug up so much mineral, set going so many factories, or built up such an export trade as we have. In most of our basic industries the new immigrants constitute at least half the labor force. Although millions have come in there is no sign of supersaturation, no progressive growth of lack of employment. Somehow new mines have been opened and new mills started fast enough to swallow them up. Virtually all of them are at work and, what is more, at work in an efficient system, under intelligent direction. Janko produces more than he did at home, consumes more, and, above all, makes more profit for his employer than the American he displaces. Thanks to him "Adapted from "The Old World in the New," in The Century Magazine, LXXXVII, 29. Copyright (1913). we have bigger outputs, tonnages, trade balances, fortunes, tips, and alimonies; also bigger slums, red-light districts, breweries, hospitals, and death rates. To the employer of unskilled labor this flow of aliens, many of them used to dirt floors, a vegetable diet, and child labor, and ignor ant of underclothing, newspapers, and trade unions, is like a rain of manna. For, as regards foreign competition, his own position is a Gibraltar. Our tariff has been designed to protect him. Thus as long as he stays in his home market, the American mill owner is shielded from foreign competition, while the common labor he requires is cheapened for him by the endless inflow of the neediest, meekest laborers to be found within the white race. If in time they become ambitious and demanding, there are plenty of "greenies" he can use to teach them a lesson. The "Hunkies" pay their "bit” to the foremen for the job, are driven through the twelve-hour day, and in time are scrapped with as little concern as one throws away a thread-worn bolt. A plate mill which had experienced no technical improvement in ten years doubled its production per man by driving the workers. No wonder then that in the forty years the American capitalist has had Aladdin's lamp to rub, his profits from mill and steel works, from packing-house and glass factory, have created a sensational "prosperity" of which a constantly diminishing part leaks down to the wage-earners. Nevertheless, the system which allows the manufacturer to buy at a semi-European wage much of the labor that he converts into goods to sell at an American price has been maintained as "the protection of American labor!" E. IMMIGRATION AND LABOR CONDITIONS 234. Living Conditions among Home Laborers25 BY CHARLES DICKENS These girls were all well dressed; and that phrase necessarily includes extreme cleanliness. They had serviceable bonnets, good warm cloaks and shawls, and were not above clogs and pattern. Moreover, there were places in the mill where they could deposit. these things without injury; and there were conveniences for washing. They were healthy in appearance, and had the manners and deportment of young women; not of degraded brutes of burden. The rooms in which they worked were as well ordered as themselves. In the windows of some there were green plants which 25 Adapted from American Notes, 56–57 (1841). were trained to shade the glass; in all, there was very much fresh air, cleanliness, and comfort as the nature of the occupation would possibly admit of. Out of so large a number of females, it may reasonably be supposed that some were delicate and fragile in appearance; no doubt there were. But I solemnly declare that, from all the crowd I saw in the different factories that day, I cannot recall one young face that gave me a painful impression; not one young girl, assuming it to be a matter of necessity that she should gain her daily bread by the labor of her hands, I would have removed from those works if I had had the power. They reside in various boarding-houses near at hand. The owners of the mills are particularly careful to allow no persons to enter upon the possession of these houses whose characters have not undergone the most searching and thorough inquiry. Any complaint that is made against them is fully investigated, and if good ground for complaint be shown, their occupation is handed over to some more deserving person. There are a few children employed in these factories, but not many. The laws of the state forbid their working more than nine months in the year, and require that they be educated during the other three. For this purpose there are schools in Lowell, and there are churches and chapels of various persuasions, in which the young women may observe that form of worship in which they have been educated. I am now going to state three facts which will startle a large class of readers on this side of the Atlantic very much. Firstly, there is a joint stock piano in a great many of the boarding-houses. Secondly, nearly all of these young ladies subscribe to circulating libraries. Thirdly, they have got up among themselves a periodical. 235. The Standard of Living of the New Immigrants20 BY I. A. HOURWICH The objection to the unskilled immigrant is based upon the belief that because of his lower standard of living he is satisfied with lower wages than the American or the older 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 rising. The fallacy of this reasoning is due to an attempt to compare the standard of living of the unskilled laborer with that of the skilled mechanic. To prove that the newer 26 Adapted from Immigration and Labor, 19–22. Copyright by G. P. Putnam's Sons (1912). |