factory inspection, comprising 60 per cent of all wageearners.'

The strikes in the Russian Empire drew together wageearners of all those nationalities which make up the bulk of our immigration from Russia: Hebrews, Poles, Lithuanians, Russians, and Ruthenians (South Russians).

It is evident that a good many of the immigrants from Russia, Poland, and Italy bring with them an understanding of the aims of organized labor. These immigrants serve as a nucleus of organization among their countrymen. This fact has been brought to the attention of the American public in the recent strikes of the garment workers and textile mill operatives.

From all available data it is clear that if organized labor in the United States has not succeeded in welding together a majority of the wage-earners and in securing for them a greater share of the prosperity of the country, the fault is not with immigration in general, nor with immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe in particular. Race prejudice, which the coming of the immigrant has increased among the English-speaking workers is considered by some writers among the contributory causes which have retarded the development of unionism in this country. The primary cause, however, is the substitution of machinery for human skill, which is taking the ground from the craft union. Since the unskilled labor which has superseded the labor of the skilled mechanic is performed by recent immigrants, the breakdown of the old organization is conceived by the tradeunionist as the effect of recent immigration. This view is given expression in the following statement:

In the occupations and industries in which the pressure of the competition of the recent immigrant has been directly felt, either because the nature of the work was such as to permit of the immediate employment of the immigrant or through the invention of improved machinery his employment was made possible in occupations which

* Bulletin of the Bureau of Labor, No. 86, pp. 271–272.

2 Carlton, loc. cit., p. 63.

formerly required training and apprenticeship, the labor organizations have been, in a great many cases, completely overwhelmed and disrupted.'

Where the invention of improved machinery has dispensed with the necessity of training and apprenticeship, it is plain that labor organizations which were built upon special training and apprenticeship were doomed to die a natural death for want of supporters. Could a union of blacksmiths be maintained in a modern foundry where steam hammers are used? With the occupation of the blacksmith gone, his union must inevitably have been "disrupted" even in a purely American community without a single immigrant from Southern and Eastern Europe.

Another obstacle to the progress of trade-unionism is that the principal industries to-day are controlled by combinations, which have reduced competition among employers of labor to a minimum. A trust can afford to hold out in a strike as long as it chooses, since it can shift its losses to the consumers. The workmen, on the contrary, cannot strike without end. As a result, "the unions have practically disappeared from the trusts, and are disappearing from the large corporations."2

'Jenks and Lauck, loc. cit., p. 192.

Prof. Commons in the American Journal of Sociology, vol. xiii., (1908), p. 759.

CHAPTER XVI

THE

PAUPERISM AND CRIME

A. Introductory

HE preceding review of comparative statistics and descriptive history of labor conditions in the past and present has disclosed no evidence in support of the view that the economic interests of the wage-earner have suffered in consequence of immigration. But it is claimed that the evil effects of immigration show themselves in an alarming increase of pauperism and crime. The statistics of dependency and delinquency, however, give no occasion for alarm. According to an investigation made by the Bureau of Immigration, the total number of inmates of penal institutions, insane asylums, and almshouses in 1908 was 610,477, which included native and naturalized citizens and aliens. The enumeration of the same classes by the Bureau of the Census in 1904 gave their number as 634,877.2 A comparison of these figures clearly shows that the large immigration of the five-year period 1903-1908 was accompanied by an actual decrease of pauperism and crime.

Whether or not the number of paupers in charitable institutions can "serve as a general index of prevailing distress,"3 is beside the question: the contention is that pauperism is

I

1 Report of the Commissioner-General of Immigration, 1908, p. 96. Benevolent Institutions, p. 12. Paupers in Almshouses, p. 6. Insane and Feeble-minded in Hospitals and Institutions, pp. 6, 107. Prisoners and Juvenile Delinquents, pp. 14, 228.

3 Paupers in Almhouses, p. 8.

on the increase, whereas the latest statistics show that the millions of recent immigrants imposed no new burdens upon the charitable and penal institutions of the country.

B. Pauperism

The Immigration Commission, in its conclusions, notes a decrease of pauperism among immigrants of the present day, compared with the past.

The number of those admitted who receive assistance from organized charity in cities is relatively small. In the Commission's investigation which covered the activities of the associated charities in 43 cities, including practically all the larger immigrant centers except New York, it was found that a small percentage of the cases represented immigrants who had been in the United States three years or under, while nearly half of all the foreign-born cases were those who had been in the United States twenty years or more. This investigation was conducted during the winter of 1908-09 before industrial activities had been fully resumed following the financial depression of 1907-8, and this inquiry showed that the recent immigrants, even in cities in times of relative industrial inactivity, did not seek charitable assistance in any considerable

numbers.

The records of the charitable institutions of New York City also show that the recent immigrant races furnish a much smaller relative number of applicants for charity than the old immigrant races. Table 106 gives the nativity of lodgers who were sheltered in the Municipal Lodging House in New York City during the first quarter of the year 1908, when the recent crisis was in its acutest stage.

The immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe furnished less than their proportion of homeless men even in a period of industrial depression. Were the XIII. Census figures available for the adult male population in 1910, the ratio of pauperism relative to population would appear still more favorable to the races of Southern and Eastern Europe than shown in Table 106. According to the Census, the increase of the Russian population of New York

I

Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 1, p. 36.

TABLE 106.

PER CENT DISTRIBUTION, BY NATIVITY, OF LODGERS AT MUNICIPAL LODGING HOUSE IN NEW YORK CITY DURING JANUARY, FEBRUARY, AND MARCH, 1908, AND OF THE MALE POPULATION 21 YEARS OF AGE AND OVER AT THE XII. CENSUS.1

City since 1900 was as high as 268 per cent, which raised it to 10.1 per cent of the total population of the city; the proportion of adult males in a national group comprising many recent immigrants must necessarily have increased at a greater rate. The increase of the Italians amounted to 234 per cent, and that of the Austrians to 213 per cent.2 It might be argued that the higher ratio of dependency Report of the Commission of Immigration of the State of New York, p. 201. XII. Census. Population, Part I., Table 83, pp. 938-945; Table 80, pp. 930-931.

2 Computed from advance information issued to the press by the Director of the Census, May 13, 1912.