As appears from the preceding table, the only possible "displacement" of native- by foreign-born did not exceed 2800 breadwinners in five years, which was less than 3 per cent of the increase of native-born in all occupations exclusive of business and professional service. The total number of immigrant breadwinners who gave Massachusetts as their destination in 1901-1905 reached 220,000 persons of both sexes. Assuming that 2800 native hucksters and peddlers, boatmen, and sailors, etc., were virtually displaced by the immigrants, we find that the measure of "displacement” was equal to one native for every seventyeight immigrants.

I

These results disclose no material change in the racial make-up of the industrial forces during the first five years of the present century; what was true in 1900 remained so as late as 1905. The immigrants did not "crowd" the native wage-earners, but were absorbed in those occupations where native workers found employment in increasing numbers. Actual "displacement" was a negligible quantity.

makers and repairers, hostlers, marble and stone cutters, masons (brick and stone), meat and fruit canners, packers, etc., millers, shirt, collar and cuff makers, stewards, and wheelwrights.

Includes brassworkers, cabinet makers, candle, soap, and tallow makers, copper workers, engravers, paper hangers, rope and cordage factory operatives, sail, awning, and tent makers, tobacco and cigar operatives, and upholsterers.

I

1 Annual Reports of the Commissioner-General of Immigration: 1901, p. 17, Table VIII.; 1902, p. 29, Table IX.; 1903, p. 32, Table IX.; 1904, p. 30, Table IX.; 1905, p. 34, Table IX.

CHAPTER VIII

EMIGRATION FROM NORTHERN AND WESTERN EUROPE

THE

A. Introductory

'HE great influx of Italian, Slav, and Jewish immigrants since 1890 coincides with a decrease of immigration from Northern and Western Europe. This coincidence has been generally accepted as proof that immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe has checked the current of "more desirable" immigration from Northern and Western Europe. This assertion has been clothed in the scientific garb of "the Gresham law of immigration"; bad immigration, it is said, tends to drive out good immigration. The cum hoc, ergo propter hoc method of reasoning has scarcely ever appeared so undisguised as in this newly discovered "law." No attempt has been made to inquire into the conditions of the countries from which the "old immigration" was drawn, with a view to ascertaining, if possible, whether there were any causes tending to check emigration from those countries.

It has been shown in Chapter IV. that in the long run immigration bears an almost constant relation to the population of the United States. Inasmuch, however, as the latter increases faster than the population of Europe, especially that of the emigration countries, the rate of emigration from those countries must increase much faster than their population in order to supply the industries of the United States with the number of immigrants they can employ. Yet the sources of emigration are not unlimited.

We may speak, metaphorically, of a Slav "invasion," but such figures of speech merely obscure the real nature of present-day phenomena. The Norman invaders of a thousand years ago financed their expeditions by robbing the peaceable population on their way. All they needed was the spirit of adventure. To-day that spirit alone will not carry their descendants across the ocean. The funds for emigration must be raised by the emigrants themselves, or by their relatives and friends. The volume of emigration from a given country can, therefore, not increase beyond a certain limit set by the size of its population. When that point is reached, further industrial expansion in the United States must draw upon the labor supply of other countries.

I

During the ten-year period 1881-1890 the countries of Northern and Western Europe furnished 72 per cent of the total immigration to the United States. This period included the years of the maximum immigration from Germany and the Scandinavian countries and of the greatest immigration from the United Kingdom since the Irish famine of the '40's of the past century. To maintain the same ratio to the total immigration of the past decade, 1901-1910, the countries of Northern and Western Europe should have furnished six and one third million immigrants, i. e., two thirds more than in 1881-1890. In order to replace the immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe that were absorbed by the industrial expansion of the past decade, immigration from Northern and Western Europe should have risen 117 per cent above the highest water-mark reached in 1881-1890.

During the same period the population of Ireland decreased 14 per cent, and the population of the other countries of Northern and Western Europe increased from 12.5 to 25.2 per cent.2 Unless we allow ourselves to be

I Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 1, Table 6, pp. 61-63. The rates of increase for each of the principal countries were as follows:

carried away by imagination, does past experience warrant the assumption that the volume of immigration from those countries could have so far outrun the increase of their population?

The total immigration from Ireland to the United States for 1891-1900 was equal to 655,000 persons. An increase of 117 per cent would have brought up this figure to 1,400,000 (in round numbers), i. e., to 31 per cent of the population of Ireland at the census of 1901. Such a rate of depopulation was not reached even in the years of the Irish famine. 3

It is needless to repeat this calculation for Great Britain and the Scandinavian countries. It could be shown by a simple computation that, in order to replace the "new immigration" emigration from those countries should have risen to the Irish level. Their recent economic development, on the contrary, as will next be shown, has had a decided tendency to check emigration.

(Computed from Statesman's Year Book, 1910, pp. 13, 17; and British Statistical Abstract of the Principal and Other Foreign Countries, No. 16, p. 8; No. 35, pp. 8, 10.)

1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 1, Table 9, pp. 89-92. Statistical Abstract for the United Kingdom, Table 114, p. 361.

The lowest numerical and relative decrease was in 1871-1881, viz., 237,541 persons, equivalent to 4.4 per cent. The total emigration during the same period was 618,650. The natural increase of popula tion through the excess of births over deaths was accordingly 381,109 persons, i. e., 7 per cent of the population at the census of 1878. Allowing the same rate for the natural increase of the population of Ireland in 1901-1910, we obtain 24 per cent as the rate of decrease in our hypothetical case, as against 19.8 per cent for the decade 1841-1851 comprising the years of the great Irish famine. (The figures are taken from the Statistical Abstract for the United Kingdom, No. 56, p. 361, Table 114.)

B. Germany

In the closing years of the nineteenth century Germany ceased to be a country of emigration, and became a country of immigration. This transformation is seen from the following table:

TABLE 43.

FOREIGN-BORN POPULATION OF GERMANY, NET EMIGRATION AND NET IMMIGRATION (THOUSANDS).1

The increase of the foreign-born population of Germany during the years 1900-1907 averaged 79,000 annually." The annual increase of the foreign-born population of the United States in 1870-1880 averaged 107,000, and in 1890-1900, 109,000. It can be readily seen by comparison that immigration to Germany is growing to respectable proportions. Two thirds of the foreign-born male breadwinners are engaged in industrial pursuits. This fact alone would furnish a sufficient explanation of the decline of German immigration to the United States; when there is a call for large masses of immigrant labor, native wage-earners will find a good market at home. 3

It is worthy of note, on the other hand, that Germany

I Die Statistik in Deutschland nach ihrem heutigen Stand, I Band (1911), Dr. Herrmann Losch, "Wanderungsstatistik," p. 485. Dr. Friedrich Zahn, "Deutschlands wirtschaftliche Entwickelung," Annalen des Deutschen Reichs, 1910, p. 405.

2

a Ibid.

› See Appendix, Table XII.