enough to support a family of four, but the earnings of a journeyman carpenter were still insufficient to provide for a family of the same size. The wages of a laborer were estimated at $226 a year, which was equivalent to a little over one half of the estimated expenses of an average family of four persons. In 1860 neither a master carpenter, nor a master painter earned enough to support a family; no journeyman in the building trades was able to support a family solely on his own earnings. The earnings of a common laborer remained, as thirty years before, at a little over one half of the estimated cost of supporting a family."

The Bureau of Statistics of New Jersey in its early days published a number of workmen's budgets. A compilation of the data for 1885 will be found in the Appendix, Tables XIX. and XX. The workmen were either native, or immigrants from Northern and Western Europe. Immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe was still too insignificant to affect the labor situation. It appears that of all wage-earners in specified occupations only glass-workers and blacksmiths earned enough to support on their wages an average family of about five persons. Other skilled mechanics, such as machinists and carpenters, needed the assistance of members of their households to support a family of the same size, while workers in textile mills could not meet expenses even with the assistance of members of their families. Among unskilled laborers there were some whose earnings were sufficient to support their families, but their expenses averaged only $1 a day. Those families whose expenses averaged about $1.50 a day or more were barely able to keep above water with the aid of the children's earnings. None of the Irish laborers could make both ends meet, although their expenses were somewhat below those of the other English-speaking laborers.

There are similar budget data in the report of the Ohio Bureau of Labor Statistics for 1885. In a few trades, the

Third Annual Report of the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor, (1871-1872), pp. 514–517. See Appendix, Table XVIII.

average earnings were insufficient to provide for the support of the wage-earner and his family. The average deficit per family for each occupation is shown in Table 87:

TABLE 87.

AVERAGE ANNUAL DEFICIT PER WORKING FAMILY IN OHIO, BY OCCUPATIONS, 1885.1

Among the skilled mechanics the stone-cutters and the machinists were on the border line between surplus and deficit; the cabinet-makers, wood-carvers and cigar-makers depended upon outside sources, in addition to their wages; likewise the iron-workers and the miners. The proportion of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe in those occupations five years later varied in Ohio between 2.1 and 5.3 per cent.

One fact may be taken as firmly established by the preceding statistics, fragmentary and insufficient as they are for other purposes, viz., that in the days of "the old immigration" the wages of unskilled laborers, and even of some of the skilled mechanics, did not fully provide for the support of the wage-earner and his family in accordance with their usual standards of living. The shortage had to be made up by the wife and children.

If the tendency of the new immigration be to lower the rate of wages or to retard the advance of wages, it should be expected that wages would be lower in great cities where the recent immigrants are concentrated, than in rural districts where the population is mostly of native birth. All I See Appendix, Table XXI.!

wage statistics concur, however, in the opposite conclusion. Though the census reports have since 1900 repeatedly warned against the use of census returns for the computation of average earnings, yet the defects of the census statistics of wages do not preclude a fair comparison between the earnings of urban and rural factory operatives. The average number of wage-earners in either case has been computed on a uniform basis of 300 working days per wageearner. While individual returns may be mere estimates of questionable accuracy, yet these defects are insufficient to obscure a pronounced tendency, such as shown in Table 88.

TABLE 88.

AVERAGE EARNINGS OF FACTORY WORKERS, FOR A YEAR OF 300 WORKING DAYS, 1904.1

An examination of previous census reports on manufactures as far back as 1870 proves that since the United States has become a manufacturing country average earnings per worker have been higher in the cities than in the country." The effect of this difference is "that the country competition of native Americans where the cost of living is low often acts as a depressing effect on wages in the same occupation in cities."3 Prof. Commons gives the following explanation

I

Computed from the Report of the Census of Manufactures, 1905, Part I., United States by Industries, Table I., p. xxxv.

2 See XII. Census Reports. Manufactures, Part I., pp. ccxx., ccxxi., Tables IV.-VI.; p. cclix., Tables XXVII. and XXVIII. This difference might be accounted for in part by the employment of relatively greater numbers of women and children in smaller cities and rural settlements. The effect upon the wage situation, however, is the same, whether the better paid workman of the city is underbid by a man, woman, or child employed in a country town.

3 Reports of the Industrial Commission, vol. xv., p. xxiv.

of "the pressure to reduce wages" which "proceeds from the cheaper labor of country districts employed in the same line of production":

Wages are necessarily higher in cities than in the country for the corresponding standard of living. In the city there are such additional demands as car fare, the food costs more and must be paid for in cash, because the laborer does not have his patch of ground from which, by the help of wife and children and by his own extra work mornings and evenings and idle days, he can secure a large share of his necessary food supplies.1

In other words, the American wage-earner in a country district gives more of his time to making a living than the city worker.

The same difference exists within the same trades between The Industrial the large cities and the smaller cities. Commission, in its volume on immigration, quotes the following from the reports of the New York Bureau of Labor:

Wages at the present time (in 1898) are good throughout the large cities, where it must be borne in mind the men employed in the building trades have themselves been immigrants. In the smaller cities, where the wages are much less than in the larger cities, it is the older American labor which controls the field."

Another way to trace the connection, if any, between immigration and wages, is to compare the average earnings by States with reference to the percentage of foreign-born; if immigration tends to depress wages, this tendency will manifest itself in lower average earnings for States with a No such tendlarge immigrant population, and vice versa. ency is disclosed by wage statistics. In Tables 89 and 90 the average earnings of male and female wage-workers above the age of sixteen in the principal manufacturing States are collated with the percentages of all foreign-born and of Southern and Eastern Europeans of the same sex engaged in manufactures and mechanical pursuits. Southern States

Reports of the Industrial Commission, vol. xv., p. 316.

where the negroes constitute more than 10 per cent of all persons of both sexes engaged in manufactures have been excluded from this table, in order to eliminate the influence of negro competition upon the average earnings.1

TABLE 89.

AVERAGE ANNUAL EARNINGS OF MALE EMPLOYEES IN MANUFACTURES, COLLATED WITH THE PERCENTAGES OF FOREIGN-BORN, IN

No definite relation between wages and immigration can be deduced from the preceding tables. States with widely differing percentages of foreign-born male operatives have the same average earnings, e. g., Illinois, Connecticut, and New Mexico, while States with the same percentages of foreign-born male wage-earners widely differ with respect to rates of wages, e. g., Colorado and New Jersey. Higher

1 XII. Census. Manufactures, Part I., p. cxv., Table XXXIX.; Population, Part I., pp. cii.-civ., Table XLVI.; p. cvi., Table XLVIII., also p. cxiv., Table LIII.