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week, while the majority of American women of native parentage (57.2 per cent) earned less than that amount. The same is true of girls between the ages of 14 and 18. Russian Hebrew girls earned on an average $6.13 per week, other Hebrew girls $6.24, South Italian girls $5.56, Polish girls $5.25, whereas native American girls of native parentage made only $5.02 per week. Nearly one half (45.9 per cent) of the latter earned less than $5 while only a little over one fourth (27.4 per cent) of the Russian Hebrew girls earned less than that amount.2

Confronted with these facts, Professors Jenks and Lauck seek to explain them by the assumption that "the lower earnings of the American women" are due "to their inability and disinclination to work such long hours as the foreign-born females in the case of certain piece-rate occupations, as, for example, the clothing industry." This explanation, however, is purely a matter of conjecture, since the Immigration Commission has made no inquiries regarding hours of labor in the clothing industry. As shown above, the hours were long in the factories and sweatshops when the women workers were all Americans, and were reduced with the coming of immigrants. The inquiry of the Industrial Commission concerning the hours of labor in the clothing industry in Pennsylvania brought out the fact that the working hours averaged ten per day alike in the city shops where the employees were Jews and Italians, and in country shops, where none but Americans were employed.♦

The investigations of the Industrial Commission also disclosed the fact that in the beginning of the twentieth century, as half a century before, the American country workers were willing to work for lower wages than the immigrants in the cities.

In the country districts of Pennsylvania the garment workers are Americans, some of whom can be further distinguished as "Pennsyl

1 Reports of the Immigration Commission. vol. 11, p. 293, Table 26. * Ibid., p. 298, Table 32. 'Jenks and Lauck, loc. cit., p. 143.

4 Report of the Industrial Commission, vol. xv., p. 725.

vania Dutch." In New Jersey they are Americans and GermanAmericans. . . but there is no evidence of a lower standard of living than among their American neighbors. In spite of this, it is these people and their American co-workers who are accepting a lower rate of wages than the Jews in the city.

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The most striking difference between the country and town shops is that the operators in the town shops are invariably men and in the country shops they are women. . . . The women coat operators in the country who get the highest wages paid women receive $5.34, and the city women basters on vests are receiving $6.59. Here we find women in the city engaged in a lower class of work and receiving higher pay than the women in the country who are doing the highest grade of work.'

The same difference existed between the wages of men in city and country shops: Jewish pressers in the city averaged $11.38 per week, whereas American pressers in the country earned only $7.62 per week.3

Because the native American country workers were willing to accept lower wages than the recent immigrants in the cities, the contractors found it profitable to give more steady employment to country than to city workers. While the latter averaged but twenty-eight working weeks in the year, the former were given forty-four weeks, with the result that their annual earnings at lower rates of wages exceeded the earnings of city workers at higher rates.4

What enables the American country workers of Pennsylvania to underbid the Jewish garment workers of Philadelphia is the fact that

the country home workers are usually simply supplementing other earnings. They are farmers' wives and daughters and those of farm laborers. They make clothing in the intervals of housework and farm work, for most of them help in the haying and harvesting. . . . Where the shop replaces the farming-out system, the employees are drawn from these same farmers' families, and a low standard of wages, influenced by the home earnings, prevails throughout.s

Another-no less important-cause of the "low standard of wages" of native American country workers is their

Report of the Industrial Commission, vol. xv., p. 730.

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3 Ibid., p. 726. s Ibid., pp. 727-728.

isolation, in consequence of which "they must accept his [the contractor's] rate of payment offered through the driver who delivers the goods."' The Southern and Eastern European clothing workers in the cities, on the contrary, are comparatively well organized. As shown in Chapter XV the percentage of organized workers among them is above the average for the country. Their capacity for concerted action finds full expression only in strikes which rally around the unions many workers not regularly affiliated with them. The highest per cent of employees joining in strikes in 1887-1905 was found among clothing workers, as shown in Table 112:

TABLE 112.

PER CENT OF STRIKING EMPLOYEES IN THE CLOTHING INDUSTRY AND IN ALL INDUSTRIES IN THE UNITED STATES, 1887-1905.2

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The strikes were, as a rule, led by organizations. Of the 20,559 establishments involved in strikes during the twentyfive year period from 1881 to 1905, in only 355 were the strikes not ordered by labor organizations, the annual averages being 835 and 13 establishments, respectively. The proportion of unorganized strikes among workers on men's clothing was 10 per cent; among workers on women's clothing 16 per cent, whereas the average for all industries was 31 per cent.3

The percentage of thoroughly successful strikes of clothing workers for the period 1881-1905 was much above the average, viz.: the percentage in establishments manufacturing men's

1 Report of the Industrial Commission, vol. xv., p. 728.

2

Twenty-first Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor, pp. 90–91.
Ibid., pp. 35-36.

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clothing, 75.51, and in establishments manufacturing women's clothing 66.37, whereas the average for all industries in the United States was only 47.94. These figures will enable the student to appraise at its true value the conclusion of the Immigration Commission that "as a general proposition it may be said that all improvement in conditions and increases in rates of pay have been secured in spite of the presence of the recent immigrant.

The strike statistics published by the United States Bureau of Labor permit of a comparison between the recent period beginning with the fiscal year 1895, when the immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe for the first time outnumbered all others, and the earlier period from January 1, 1881, to June 30, 1894. During the 80's the principal nationalities employed in the clothing shops were the Germans and the Irish:3 since 1895 the Jews and the Italians have become the predominating element among the workers. It appears that during the thirteen and a half years previous to the fiscal year 1895 the average annual number of strikers in the clothing industry was 9,094, and during the eleven and a half years following it rose to 38,683.4

This is the unbiased testimony of figures in answer to the sweeping generalizations of the Immigration CommisIsion about the reluctance of the Southern and Eastern Europeans "to enter labor disputes involving loss of time," their "ready acceptance of a low wage and existing working. conditions" and "willingness seemingly to accept indefinitely without protest certain wages and conditions of employment."5

Twenty-first Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor, pp. 81-82. 2 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 1, p. 540.

3 Ibid., vol. I, pp. 516–517.

* Computed from Annual Reports of the Commissioner of Labor:

X., p. 1567; XVI., pp. 15, 34, 355; XXI., p. 16.

5 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. I, pp. 530-540.

THE

CHAPTER XVIII

THE COTTON MILLS

HE cotton mills furnish a good field for the study of the effects of immigration upon the condition of labor in the United States. According to the investigation of the Immigration Commission, 68.7 per cent of the operatives in the New England States were of foreign birth. The races of the "old immigration" were represented by 37.8 per cent, and those of the "new immigration" by 30.9 per cent. The latter are mostly recent arrivals. In 1900 the proportion of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe and their American-born children varied from 3.1 per cent in New Hampshire to 13.2 per cent in Massachusetts. 2

The Immigration Commission has obtained from one of the largest and oldest mill corporations figures showing the movement of wages since 1875.3 The movement may be divided into two periods: (1) from 1875 to 1898 and (2) from 1899 to 1908. The first period, when the cotton-mill operatives were practically all English-speaking, was one of intermittent advances and reductions; on the whole wages remained stationary. The second period, which is marked by the advent of the Southern and Eastern Europeans into the cotton mills, is conspicuous by an uninterrupted upward movement of wages, which was checked only by the crisis of 1908. Still, even after the reduction 1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 10, Table 7, pp. 14–15. Ibid., Table 19, p. 36. 3 Ibid., p. 291.

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