made on March 30, 1908, wages remained 15 per cent above the level of 1898. To be sure, the first period was one of falling prices, which enabled the cotton-mill operatives to maintain their usual standard of living notwithstanding the reductions in wages, whereas, on the other hand, the second period was one of rapidly rising prices which offset the increase in wages. It is therefore possible that the operatives were not better off during the later period of rising wages than during the earlier period. Still, assuming that every cut in wages merely restored the previous relation between earnings and the cost of living, it is plain that these reductions must have caused dissatisfaction among the wage-earners. However, the operatives of the New England cotton mills, all of them of Teutonic and Celtic stock, acquiesced in these reductions. On the other hand, though the advances in 1899-1907 may have been nullified by the rising cost of living, each increase in wages was nevertheless the outcome of successful bargaining by the operatives for better terms of employment.

Still the question is whether the industrial expansion of the period from 1899 to 1907 might not have enabled the operatives to win more substantial advances had there been no immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe. The only method by which such results could have been accomplished was organization.

The more recent immigrant employees from Southern and Eastern Europe and Asia, however, [says the Immigration Commission in its summary volume], have been a constant menace to the labor organizations, and have been directly and indirectly instrumental in weakening the unions and threatening their disruption. The divergence in language and the high degree of illiteracy and ignorance among the recent operatives have made their work of organization among them very difficult and expensive.'

This conclusion is at variance with the facts recited in the special report of the Commission on Cotton goods manufacturing in the North Atlantic States":

I

Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 1, p. 537

"Fall River, Mass., is the only distinctly trade-union locality in New England," yet there, as elsewhere, the unions are confined to the skilled occupations, whereas the recent immigrants upon entering the cotton mills "take up unskilled work. . . . Many of them never advance beyond the unskilled work. These occupations are not organized, and the coming of the foreigner there does not concern the textile unions." In Cohoes, N. Y., likewise, "the unions manifest little interest in the immigrant employees until they have advanced to the occupations controlled by the labor organizations."2 It is evident that "their work of organization" among the unskilled immigrants could have been neither "difficult" nor "expensive."

With regard to skilled occupations the Immigration Commission has reached two diametrically opposite conclusions. In the abstract of the reports on immigrants in manufacturing and mining it maintains that

the advancement in large numbers of the Southern and Eastern Europeans to weaving, spinning, beaming, and similar occupations has tended to bring them into more direct competition with the Americans and older immigrant employees, and to destroy the advantage which the latter class, who control and direct the unions, formerly possessed.3

In the special report on cotton goods manufacturing the Commission says, on the contrary, that

at no time has there been a sharp competition between unionized laborers on the one hand, and unorganized immigrant laborers in large numbers on the other.4

The latter conclusion is supported by the following

statements:

The textile occupations themselves, which are unionized, are protected, by the long time required to attain proficiency, from any sudden or immediate competition of unorganized foreigners. . . . Automatic or improved machinery might change this situation, and the coming of

Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 10, pp. 123, 124. Ibid., p. 123. 3 Ibid., vol. I, p. 538. 4 Ibid., vol. 10, p. 124.

the immigrant might then be a more serious matter for the unions and might subject them to a disastrous competition from unorganized workers accustomed to a lower standard of living, ... but that is not the condition at present. . . . . As regards the attitude of the immigrants toward the unions, when they advance to the skilled, organized occupations, even if they do not join the unions, they do not oppose the organization or cut under the unions' wages. . . . At the time of strikes the recent immigrants come into the unions in large numbers. . . . In times of strikes these foreigners have stood by the unions, even though previously they may not have been members.'

The recent immigrants have not been used as strike-breakers."

The only specific strike described in the report of the Commission took place in Lowell, Mass., 3 in 1903. It is characterized as "the only serious controversy between the cotton manufacturers and the operatives" of that city. The history of that controversy is briefly as follows. The mill owners having refused an increase in wages, the unions declared a strike. The mill owners on the same day responded by a lockout. While the mills remained closed, pro-union meetings were held among the Greeks, the Poles, and the Portuguese, and organizations were formed among them. "At the commencement of the agitation for a ten per cent increase in wages, the membership of the unions constituted but a small fraction of the employees in the mills; gradually, however, this membership increased as the strike sentiment grew." The unions were defeated, however, by an unexpected turn in the cotton market.

The price of raw cotton began to rise to such an extent that the manufacturers who had provided themselves with the necessary supply in advance were able to sell at a considerable profit. One mill actually declared a 4 per cent dividend, on the basis of raw cotton sold at a good advance, due to the high prices during the strike. In this way it would have been possible for them to minimize, or even neutralize entirely

1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 10, pp. 124, 125. 2 Ibid., vol. I, p. 538.

3 For some unknown reasons, the name of the city is hidden under the designation of "Community A." The disguise is betrayed, however, in Table 125 on p. 232, which is a reproduction of Table 24 on p. 45, where Lowell, Mass., is named.

the loss occasioned by the idleness of their plants caused by the strike. It thus became a matter of indifference to them whether work was resumed or not. When this situation generally became known the strike was doomed.1

After a suspension of work lasting nine weeks the manufacturers reopened the mills. From one third to two thirds of the locked-out operatives returned to the mills on the first day. The ranks of the strikers began to weaken, and after staying out for three weeks the unions unanimously voted to call the strike off.2

To form a fair judgment of the endurance shown by the Lowell strikers, the length of time they stayed out must be compared with the average duration of strikes in the cotton mills of Massachusetts. The races of Southern and Eastern Europe in 1909 supplied 34 per cent of the total number of operatives in the Lowell cotton mills. 3 In the State at large the proportion of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe and Asia among the mill operatives of the State varied as follows:

TABLE 113.

PERCENTAGE OF IMMIGRANTS FROM SOUTHERN AND EASTERN EUROPE AMONG THE TEXTILE MILL OPERATIVES OF MASSACHUSETTS, 1880

The average duration of strikes in the cotton mills of Massachusetts for the twenty-year period from 1881 to 1900 was only thirty-six days. Thus the length of time

I Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 1, pp. 292, 293.
Ibid.

4 Ibid., Tables 14, 17, and 19.

Ibid., Table 130, p. 237.

s Sixteenth Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor, Table 3, p. 216.

the Lowell strikers stayed out in 1903 was three quarters in excess of the average for the period when nearly all the operatives were of the English-speaking races. Going over the annals of the strikes in the cotton mills of Massachusetts from 1881-1890, when there were scarcely any immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe and Asia among the operatives, we find only one strike that can compare in extent with the Lowell strike of 1903; it was in 1889, when 9000 weavers in thirty-four mills at Fall River struck for a 10 per cent increase in wages. After staying out only seventeen days they returned to work on the old terms.1

Thus when the Greek, Portuguese, and Polish strikers in 1903 surrendered after nine weeks of idleness, during which they received no aid from the unions, they gave an exhibition in endurance and adherence to a common purpose, that was far above the average for any race of cotton-mill operatives. Moreover, since the proportion of the strikers who returned to the mills on the first day varied from one third to two thirds, whereas the proportion of Southern and Eastern Europeans among the operatives was less than one third, it is evident that a good many of the English-speaking operatives must have surrendered simultaneously with the Southern and Eastern Europeans. The history of this strike is prefaced by the Commission with the following remark:

It is not thought that the presence of immigrants in such large numbers in Community A has exerted a decisive influence upon the success of tradeunionism in the community. The weakness of the unions in Community A is to be traced to less general causes of a local character.3

The reader is at a loss to reconcile this conclusion, and the facts leading up to it, with the general statement,

Tenth Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor, vol. I, Table 1, pp. 364-414.

2 In 1909 the proportion was 34 per cent, but in 1900 only 13.2 per cent; the proportion in 1903 must have been somewhere between these two figures. 3 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 10, p. 291.