would be necessary to run all industries upon a common time schedule, like railway trains are run on connecting lines. No plan of such a readjustment has as yet been worked out that would appeal to practical people, nor are the advocates of immigration restriction ready to incorporate Edward Bellamy's scheme into the pending immigration bill. Certainly an adjustment of the busy and slack seasons of a quarter of a million factories will not spring up spontaneously from an act of Congress closing the gates against immigrants.

As a theoretical proposition, it seems quite plausible that if restriction of immigration resulted in a scarcity of labor, employers would be forced to pay scarcity rates of wages. It is needless, however, to indulge in abstract speculation on the possible effects of a reduced supply of unskilled immigrant labor, when such a condition actually exists in the United States throughout the agricultural sections. Few immigrants seek employment on the farms. The number of Southern and Eastern European farm laborers in the United States is negligible. Moreover, there is a constant stream of native labor from the farms to the cities, which has led to an actual decrease of the rural population in many agricultural counties. Farmers generally complain of scarcity of farm labor during the agricultural season. Nevertheless, the wages of farm laborers are lower than the wages of unskilled laborers in mines and mills, where the proportion of recent immigrants is rapidly increasing. Scarcity of labor has not forced the farmer to pay scarcity wages, but has merely retarded the growth of farming. The shutting-out of unskilled immigrants would have similar effects in manufacturing and mining.

Scarcity of unskilled labor would hasten the general introduction of mining machinery. The labor that would thus be displaced would form one substitute for immigration.

The mines and mills of the southern States which have failed to attract immigrants utilize the labor of farmers and their sons. The two million tenant-farmers offer great

possibilities as an industrial reserve available during the winter months. The farm being their main source of subsistence, they are able and willing to offer their labor during the idle winter months more cheaply than freshly-landed immigrants. The efforts of trade-union organizers among this class of English-speaking workers have met with scant success. The substitution of the cheap labor of the American farmer for the labor of the Slav or Italian immigrant would tend to weaken the unions and to keep down wages.

The discontinuance of fresh supplies of immigrant labor for the mills and factories of New England would give a new impetus to the establishment of factories in the South, where there is an abundant supply of child labor, and in the rural districts of agricultural States with an available supply of cheap labor.

The employment of all these substitutes for regular wageearners certainly has its limitations. But there is in the United States, as in all industrial countries, a steady flow of labor from rural to urban districts. In the absence of immigration of unskilled laborers the depopulation of the rural districts would be accelerated. A stimulated movement of labor from the farm to the factory would check the growth of farming; the prices of foodstuffs would rise in consequence, which would tend to offset the advantages to the wage-earners from a possible rise of wages.

Still, should all the substitutes for immigration prove inadequate, it does not necessarily follow that scarcity prices would rule in the American labor market. It must be borne in mind that capital is international. Parallel with the immigration and emigration of labor to and from the United States, there has been going on an immigration of European capital to the United States and an emigration of American capital abroad. It is estimated that the total amount of European capital invested in the United States is approximately $6,500,000,000. In other words European capital came together with European labor to assist in the development of American industry. Should there

arise a scarcity of labor in the United States, new investments of European capital will seek other fields. On the other hand, billions of American capital are already invested in foreign enterprises. At present these investments cannot compare with the profits of American industries annually reinvested at home. If, however, a scarcity of labor were created in the United States, more American capital would seek investment abroad.

The increased investment of American capital in the industrial development of foreign countries with cheap labor must eventually react upon labor conditions in the United States. Certain of the most important American industries depend in part upon the export trade. A scarcity of labor in the United States would induce many American manufacturers to follow the example of their English, French, Belgian, and German competitors who have found it more profitable to establish factories in foreign countries than to export their products to those countries. Such an emigration of American capital would materially affect the export trade of the United States and eventually throw out of employment a number of American wage-earners dependent upon that trade.

It is evident that while restriction of immigration can limit the supply of labor, it is powerless to prevent a corresponding limitation of the demand for labor.

A suggestion of the probable effects of a reduced demand for labor can be gained from the experience of the recent crisis. When the operations of the steel mills were reduced, a great many men were laid off. The skilled men, however, were offered positions as laborers. Notwithstanding their high American standard of living, their efficiency, and their high standard of wages, they were glad to turn to unskilled occupations at 15 cents, and even at 12 cents, an hour. The distribution of the steel workers into skilled and unskilled would obviously have been the same, if, as a result of restriction of immigration, the operating force had never grown beyond the number employed during

the last crisis. The skilled men who were forced down the scale of occupations by the crisis would never have risen above the grade of unskilled labor.

It must be borne in mind that for eight months during the crisis emigration from the United States exceeded immigration, the effect being the same as if all immigration had been prohibited. No scheme of restriction could be so farreaching. And yet even the net emigration of over one hundred thousand aliens within eight months reduced the number of industrial wage-earners only about one per cent. The literacy test passed by the United States Senate would still let in the vast majority of unskilled laborers, while the exclusion of the rest would eventually be made up for by a corresponding falling-off in the number of returning immigrants. The net result would still be far in excess of the average immigration for the decade 1891-1900. Yet the complaint against "oversupply" of labor was then as strong as to-day, and restriction of immigration was urged as a remedy. It is evident that the literacy test for immigrants, if adopted, will leave the labor situation unchanged.

PART II.

A

TOPICAL ANALYSIS

CHAPTER I

STATEMENT OF THE QUESTION

STUDY of the immigration question involves an ex

amination of every important phase of American economic, political, and social life. There is scarcely an ailment of our body politic that is not diagnosed-in prose and in verse as the effect of unrestricted immigration. The immigrants are blamed for unemployment, female and child labor, the introduction of machinery, unsafe coal mines, lack of organization among wage-earners, congestion in great cities, industrial crises, inability to gain a controlling interest in stock corporations, pauperism, crime, insanity, race suicide, gambling, the continental Sunday, parochial schools, atheism, political corruption, municipal misrule. The latest count in this long indictment is the McNamara conspiracy, which a noted sociologist has somehow connected with unrestricted immigration. Not only has "recent immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe" lowered the American standard of living, but it threatens to lower "the average stature of the American." 3

2

1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 16, p. 655. Prof. E. A. Ross, in The Survey, December 30, 1911, p. 1425. Robert Hunter: Poverty, p. 269.