native population. The rearing of children on a farm requires less of the mother's time and attention than in the city. Moreover, the child on a farm begins to work at an earlier age than in the city. A numerous family on a farm has the advantages of a co-operative group, whereas every addition to the family of the wage-earner, or of the salaried employee with a fixed income, tends to lower the family's standard of living.

On the other hand, the decline of the birth-rate is universal among those classes which are scarcely, if at all, affected by immigrant competition. A noted Canadian physician holds, from his own experience, that on the American continent race suicide "is most prevalent among the highly educated classes," because "after having had one or at the most two children, the woman objects to having any more." Unfortunately the published results of the United States censuses contain no data on the comparative size of families classified by occupation of father. Some statistical information on this subject can be gained from British sources. From a comparison of the number of births to one hundred fertile couples selected from the peerage and baronetcy lists for each decade from 1831 to 1890, it appears that the average number of births to each family has gradually declined from 7.1 in 1831-1840 to 3.1 in 1881-1890.2 The unequal distribution of the decline in the birth-rate among various classes of the population of England has led Prof. Karl Pearson to the following conclusions:

The mentally better stock in the nation is not reproducing itself at the same rate as of old. . . . For the last forty years the intellectual classes of the nation, enervated by wealth or by love of pleasure, or following an erroneous standard of life, have ceased to give in due proportion the men wanted to carry on the ever-growing work of the Empire.3

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A. Lapthorn Smith: "Higher Education of Women and Race Suicide," Popular Science Monthly, March, 1905, pp. 468, 470.

2 Arthur Newsholme: The Declining Birth-Rate, p. 32.

3 Ibid., pp. 42-43.

It is clear that this "volitional limitation of the family" has no relation to the variations in the rate of wages.

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In the United States, as observed by Dr. Billings nearly twenty years ago, it is the desire of "the lower middle classes" to maintain "social position," along with "the great increase in the use of things which were formerly considered as luxuries, but which now have become almost necessities" that accounts in part for "the deliberate and voluntary avoidance or prevention of child-bearing.' Still the "lower middle classes" are scarcely affected by immigration. Their standard of living is higher than that of the wage-earner. Yet it is precisely this higher standard that is productive of a "desire to have fewer children. All speculation to the effect that an increase in the rate of wages "might have been attended" in the past, or is likely to be attended in the future, "by a larger natural increase among the native-born portion of the population," has accordingly no foundation of fact.

Per cent ratio of native white children under 5 years of age, born of native mothers, to native white females 15 to 44 years of age in

cities of less than 25,000 inhabitants and rural territory, 1900.

CHAPTER X

THE STANDARD OF LIVING.

A. Introductory

N so far as immigration is an economic movement, it is obvious that the immigrant's standard of living in his home country must have been below the American standard. This is as true of the old as of the new immigration. Those immigrants only are an exception to this rule who seek to escape from political or religious oppression. Its victims are not confined to the poorer classes, but include people of means and of standing in the community, whose standard of living is often superior to that of the native American mechanic. Since 1890, however, of all the races which have come to this country, the Jews, the Poles, the Lithuanians, the Russians, the Finns, and the Armenians, have furnished the only immigrants of this class. As to all others, it was just the higher standard of living of the American wage-earner that induced them, like most races that preceded them, to emigrate to the United States. If the lower standard of living to which the immigrant has been accustomed at home tends to reduce the American standard of living, then these effects of immigration must have manifested themselves in the days of the Irish and German immigration as much as to-day. At most there may be only a difference of degree. That the standard of living of the recent immigrant employed as an unskilled laborer is lower than that of the native American mechanic or of the older immigrant engaged in skilled work, is no new

discovery. To prove, however, that the new immigrants have introduced a lower standard of living, it is necessary to show that the standard of living of the recent immigrants employed as unskilled laborers is lower than that of the Irish and German immigrants of past generations who were doing the same grade of work, or of the native American unskilled workers of the time before the Irish and German immigration. The experts of the Immigration Commission, however, have simply taken for granted that the standard of living of the present-day American or Americanized skilled mechanic is identical with that of the unskilled laborer of the same racial stocks in the days before the new immigration. This assumption is not borne out by American economic history.

The housing conditions of the foreign-born population have been most dwelt upon in the discussion of the standard of living of the immigrant, because they strike the eye of the outsider. On this subject there are ample comparative data. New York has always had more than its proportionate share of newly arrived immigrants; its housing problem, as affected by immigration, therefore, calls for separate treatment.

B. Congestion in New York City

Overcrowding was recognized as a serious evil in New York City as far back as 1834. A city inspector for that year attributed the high rate of mortality to "the crowded and filthy state" in which the population of New York lived. As the city was growing, the well-to-do residents were moving northward and their old dwellings were let to the poor. The traditional American one-family house was adapted to the requirements of a population of independent artisans and small shopkeepers, many of whom were home-owners. With the growth of great cities and the rise of land values, and with the development of a 1 Report of the Industrial Commission, vol. xv., p. 452.

wage-earning class, the one-family house became the cause of congestion in its worst form. The rental of such a house was beyond the reach of the wage-earner. Each room was let out to a separate family. Naturally, such improvised dwellings lacked the most necessary accommodations. The basement of the one-family house of the old type, formerly used as a dining-room and kitchen, developed into a separate cellar apartment.

Towards the middle of the '40's there had grown up in New York a great "cellar population." A pen picture of the condition of the cellars is given in a report on the Sanitary Condition of the Laboring Population, which was published in 1845:

The most offensive of all places of residence are the cellars. It is almost impossible, when contemplating the circumstances and conditions of the poor beings who inhabit these holes, to maintain the proper degree of calmness requisite for a thorough inspection of their miseries and sound judgment respecting them. You must descend to them; you must feel the blast of foul air, as it meets your face on opening the door; you must grope in the dark or hesitate until your eye becomes accustomed to the gloomy place, to enable you to find your way through the entry over the broken floor, the boards of which are protected from your tread by a half inch of hard dirt; you must inhale the suffocating vapor of the heated rooms; and in the dark, dim recesses endeavor to find the inmates by the sound of their voices, or chance to see their figures moving between you and the flickering light of a window, coated with dirt and festooned with cobwebs--or, if in search of an invalid, take care that you do not fall full length upon the bed with her, by stumbling against the rags and straw dignified by that name, lying upon the floor, under the window, if window there is.'

The occupants of these tenements were "principally Irish and German" whose habits were described in 1837 as "more or less filthy." An account of one of these houses, in the rear of No. 49 Elizabeth Street, is given in an official report of a city physician:

The front building, a small two-story frame house, was partly occu

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1 Report of the Industrial Commission, vol. xv., p. 453.