ern and Western Europe, the overwhelming majority of the immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe had not been long enough in the United States to have raised sufficient funds for buying real estate. The inference drawn from the statistics of home ownership in 1890 by the authors of the census report "is that home tenancy is increasing in the whole country as the urban population becomes numerically a more important element of the population. The old American standard which found its expression in the one-family residence retreats before the apartment house. This tendency asserts itself even among the well-to-do who could afford to buy a home for the rental they pay for a fashionable apartment. The rate of the change can be observed in a city like Washington, which has but a small foreign population. A count of the houses and apartments advertised in the Washington Star on the last Saturday in July, 1900 and 1910, for rent to white tenants brought the following results: TABLE 86. NUMBER OF HOUSES AND APARTMENTS ADVERTISED FOR RENT TO The number of apartment houses which advertised apartments for rent increased ninefold within ten years, while the number of one-family houses increased only by one third. 1 Farms and Homes, XI. Census, p. 54. 2 The ratio of the foreign-born and their children to the population of Washington, D. C., in 1900 was only 21 per cent. XII. Census. Population, Part I, pp. clxxix and clxxxvii. It is clear from this example that the tendency toward the apartment house or tenement house has no connection with immigration. It is in line with the general tendency toward concentration characteristic of modern times. CHAPTER XII THAT EFFECT OF IMMIGRATION ON WAGES HAT wages in many occupations are barely sufficient to provide for the necessities of life, has been established by all investigations of the cost of living. That unskilled labor receives a lower wage than skilled labor, is a truism. That the standard of living of unskilled laborers must be lower than that of skilled mechanics, is the necessary consequence of the difference in the rates of their compensation. Inasmuch, however, as the skilled mechanics are mostly native Americans and older immigrants, whereas the unskilled laborers are mostly new immigrants, the average man with a prejudice against the foreigner overlooks the difference in the grade of the service rendered, and jumps to the conclusion that the American mechanic commands higher wages because he insists upon maintaining an American standard of living, whereas the foreign unskilled laborer is willing to accept lower wages, because he is satisfied with a lower standard of living. It has been shown, however, that the standard of living of the new immigrants is not lower than that of their predecessors in the same grades of employment, or than that of the present generation of native Americans engaged in unskilled labor in the South, where there is practically no competition of immigrant labor. Granting that the standard of living determines the rate of wages, there is no escape from the conclusion that the wages of the new immigrants can not be lower than those of the past generation of immigrants who in their day were engaged in un skilled labor. In other words the logical deduction from the premises is, that the new immigration could not have depressed the rate of wages. On the other hand, though the standard of living of the native or Americanized foreign-born wage-earners be higher than that of the new immigrants, this difference is not necessarily indicative of a higher rate of wages: the higher standard may be maintained on the earnings of several members of the family. As a matter of fact, present-day industrial families in the United States find it necessary to add to the earnings of the husband through the employment of wives and children outside the home and the keeping of boarders and lodgers within the home. The native American and older immigrant employees maintain an independent form of family life, but the earnings of the heads are supplemented by the wages of the wives and children. On the other hand, the Southern and Eastern European families have recourse to the keeping of boarders and lodgers as a supplementary source of family income. . . . That contributions of children are less general in the latter class of families is probably due to the fact that children of these households have not in any considerable proportions reached working age.1 It is argued that the newly-arrived immigrant must have work at once and is therefore eager to accept any terms: Another salient fact in connection with the recent immigrant labor supply has been the necessitous condition of the newcomers upon their arrival in America's industrial communities. Immigrants from the South and East of Europe have usually had but a few dollars in their possession when their final destination in this country has been reached. Consequently, finding it absolutely imperative to engage in work at once, they have not been in a position to take exception to wages or working conditions, but must obtain employment on the terms offered or suffer from actual want. Still, the investigations of the United States Bureau of Labor have shown that only one half of the families of native American wage-earners (51.25 per cent) are able to save, whereas one third (32.2 per cent) are barely able to Jenks and Lauck, loc. cit., pp. 157-158, 161. |