Immigration and Labor

PART I

SUMMARY REVIEW

T is the purpose of this review to state briefly for the benefit of the busy reader the results of our inquiry into the various phases of the immigration question. Such a summary must necessarily be dogmatic in form. Every proposition is advanced here, however, merely as a theorem, whose demonstration is presented in its proper place, in another part of the book.

It is recognized on all sides that the present movement for restriction of immigration has a purely economic object: the restriction of competition in the labor market. Organized labor demands the extension of the protectionist policy to the home market in which "hands"-the laborer's only commodity are offered for sale. The advocates of restriction believe that every immigrant admitted to this country takes the place of some American workingman. At the inception of the restrictionist movement, in the 80's and the early 90's, they were avowedly opposed to immigration in general. The subsequent decline of immigration from the British Isles, Germany, and the Scandinavian countries and the increase of immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe have diverted the attack from immigration in general to "the new immigration" from Southern and Eastern

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Europe and the Asiatic provinces of Turkey. Yet while the root of all evil is now sought in the racial makeup of the new inimigration, as contrasted with the old, every objection to the immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe is but an echo of the complaints which were made at an earlier day against the then new immigration from Ireland, Germany, and even from England. Three quarters of a century ago, as to-day, the only good immigrants were the dead immigrants.

There is no real ground for the popular opinion that the immigrants of the present generation are drawn from a poorer class than their predecessors. It is a historical fact that prior to 1820 the great majority of the immigrants were too poor to prepay their passage, which never cost as much as $50 per steerage passenger; the usual way for a poor man to secure transportation for himself and family was to contract to be sold into servitude after arrival. The next generation of immigrants was not much better off. According to contemporary testimony, the millions of Irish and Germans who came in the middle of the nineteenth century were ignorant and accustomed to a very low standard of living. Since the races of Southern and Eastern Europe have become predominant among immigrants to the United States, the steerage rates have been doubled, the increase being equivalent to a heavy head tax. The higher cost of transportation must have raised the financial standard of the new immigration, as compared with the immigrants of the 70's and the early 80's. This inference is borne out by the fact that the percentage of illiteracy is much lower among the immigrants than among their countrymen who remain at home. Illiteracy is generally the effect of poverty. The higher literacy of the immigrant may be accepted as evidence that economically the immigrant must be above the average of his mother country.

The complaint that the new immigrants do not easily "assimilate" is also as old as immigration itself. To-day the Germans are reckoned by courtesy among the "English

speaking races." But as late as the middle of the nineteenth century the growth of German colonies in all large cities caused the same apprehension in the minds of their American contemporaries as the Jewish, the Italian, and the Slav colonies of our day. Statistics show, however, that the new immigrant races number among them as large a percentage of English-speaking persons as the Germans who have lived in the United States the same length of time.

The only real difference between the old immigration and the new is that of numbers. To the workman who complains that he has been crowded out of his job by another, it would afford little comfort to feel that the man who had taken his place was of Teuton or Celtic, rather than of Latin or Slav stock. The true reason why the "old immigration" is preferred is that there is very much less of it.

As stated, the demand for restriction proceeds from the assumption that the American labor market is overstocked by immigration. Comparative statistics of industry and population in the United States show, however, that immigration merely follows opportunities for employment. In times of business expansion immigrants enter in increasing numbers; in times of business depression their numbers decline. The immigration movement is further balanced by emigration from the United States. As a rule, the causes which retard immigration also accelerate the return movement from this country. It is customary to condemn the "bird of passage," but so long as there are variations in business activity from season to season and from year to year, the American wage-earner has no cause to complain of the immigrants who choose to leave this country temporarily while there is no demand for their services, thereby reducing unemployment in its acutest stage.

It is broadly asserted by restriction advocates that the hundreds of thousands of Slav, Italian, Greek, Syrian, and other immigrant mine and mill workers have been "imported" by capitalists-in other words, that they are all contract laborers. This belief offers to the student of folk-lore

a typical example of twentieth century myth-building. None of the official investigations of immigration has disclosed any evidence of importation of laborers under contract on a large scale, although prior to the enactment of the law of 1885 excluding contract laborers there was no reason to conceal the fact. It is quite conceivable that in the case of a strike a great corporation might have resorted to the importation of a large force of strikebreakers regardless of cost. As a general rule, however, with hundreds of thousands of immigrants coming to this country annually, it would be a waste of money to "induce" immigration. The few actual violations of the contract labor law that elude the vigilance of the immigration authorities cannot affect the labor market.

The real agents who regulate the immigration movement are the millions of earlier immigrants already in the United States. It is they that advance the cost of passage of a large proportion of the new immigrants. When the outlook for employment is good, they send for their relatives, or encourage their friends to come. When the demand for labor is slack, the foreign-born workman must hold his savings in reserve, to provide for possible loss of employment. At such times no wage-earner will assume the burden of providing for a relative or friend, who might for a long time be unable to secure employment. It is in this way that the business situation in the United States reacts upon the volume of immigration. The fluctuating supply of immigrant labor, like that of any other commodity, may sometimes outrun the demand and at other times lag behind it, yet, if we compare the totals for industrial cycles, comprising years of panic, of depression, and of prosperity, within the past sixty years, we find that the ratio of immigration to population has been well-nigh constant. In the long run immigration adjusts itself to the demand for labor.

This proposition seems to be inconsistent with the presence at all times of a vast number of unemployed. Apparently, there are already more men than jobs in the

United States; every new immigrant, in order to live, must take away the job from some one else who has been here before. On closer study, however, it is found that unemployment is not the effect of an absolute surplus population. It arises, notwithstanding a growing demand for labor, from the fluctuations in the distribution of the demand. The most generally recognized cause of unemployment is seasonal variation of business activity. There are trades dependent largely upon climatic conditions and partly upon social customs. In the period of maximum activity the demand for labor in such trades may often so far exceed the supply as to necessitate overtime work; yet this shortage of labor will not save a portion of the force from idleness at other times of the year. The only class of labor which is capable of shifting from one industry to another in response to variations in demand is unskilled labor. But the localization of industries sets a limit to the mobility of unskilled labor. In order to eliminate unemployment it would be necessary to dovetail the busy and the slack seasons in the various industries upon such a plan as would produce an even distribution of the work of the nation over all seasons of the year. This might be possible if all mines, mills, and transportation lines were operated by one nation-wide trust. So long, however, as production is controlled by many competing employers, each subject to his own vicissitudes of business, insecurity of employment is inevitable. The normal state of every industry is to have a larger force than can ever find employment in it at any one time. The labor reserve is as much a part of the industrial system as the regular force.

Still, the labor market being normally overstocked, it sounds plausible that the immigrant, who is accustomed to a lower standard of living at home than the American workman, will be able to underbid and displace his American competitor. If this view were correct, we should find, in the first place, a higher percentage of unemployment among the native than among the foreign-born breadwinners.