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), 1900.1

To throw the social gradation among the various nationalities more into relief, all specified occupations of the preceding table are combined in Table 40 under two heads: (1) higher grade, comprising skilled mechanics, business and professional men and farmers, and (2) lower grade, comprising 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, professional and business men; less than one fourth are employed in the coarser grades of labor. Among the races of the old immigration the proportion is reversed.

'Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 1, 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.

Include: Building trades; blacksmiths; machinists; printers, lithographers, 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.

TABLE 40.

PER CENT DISTRIBUTION OF FOREIGN-BORN MALE BREAD-WINNERS ACCORDING TO NATIONALITY AND GRADE OF OCCUPATION, 1900

Nationality (as determined by country of birth) Higher-grade

Lower-grade

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. Increased numbers in the principal occupations are the rule among the Scotch during that decade, decreases the exception. Even common laborers show an increase.1

'See Appendix, Table XI.

But

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 percentages were respectively 23.4 per cent and 8.8 per cent. The number of tailors decreased from 1100 to 1000, which approximately corresponds to the death-rate among tailors.

these decreases were amply compensated by increases in other occupations. These facts command attention. The Scotchman's "progress toward assimilation" is not questioned. It is not claimed that his standard of living is lower than the Irish, or the English; nor has "ready acceptance of a low wage," or "willingness to accept indefinitely without protest certain conditions of employment," been discovered among his "general characteristics." 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 foreignborn 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-born workers were displaced by native-born.

'Jenks and Lauck, loc. cit., pp. 195–196.

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 classification as much as by real economic changes. The comparative 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), 1900-1905.1

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 ff., and Table 41, pp. 300-305. Census of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 1905, vol. ii., Occupations, Table I., pp. 9-117.

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 NUMBER OF NATIVE BREADWINNERS, CLASSIFIED BY SEX AND NATIVITY,

Includes bakers, blacksmiths, brick and tile makers, confectioners,

coopers, gunsmiths, locksmiths and bell hangers, harness and saddle