ratio of illiteracy is lower, in some higher than among South Italian immigrants. Even if the marriage group furnished a proper standard for comparison the variations of the illiteracy rate by administrative divisions would make the results uncertain. In two districts the ratio of illiteracy would be below and in two others above the percentage of illiteracy among the North Italian immigrants. In Southern Italy two districts show a higher percentage of illiteracy among males than the average among South Italian immigrants of both sexes, and the percentage of illiterates among women is in all but three districts higher than among the immigrants of both sexes. The Commission would have been on safer ground, had it adhered to its original conclusion, instead of specu lating on the basis of such incommensurable figures. 6 CHAPTER IV THE IMMIGRATION AND THE LABOR MARKET THE main question in all present discussion of immigration is: Does immigration injure the economic interests of the American wage-earner? The demand for restriction of immigration proceeds from the assumption that immigration overcrowds the American labor market, hordes of willing workers being driven by fear of starvation to compete for one job. To remedy this evil foreign immigration must be restricted: keep the "undesirable" immigrants out, and the American workingmen will be kept busy. The more consistent advocates of this view, as previously stated, regard all immigrants as undesirable. It is an echo of the Malthusian theory, that population increases faster than the means of subsistence, with this modification, however, that the cause of the disproportion is found, not in the natural propagation of the human species, but in immigration, which is believed to outrun the opportunities of employment. In order to test the accuracy of this assumption, let us first take an inventory of the industrial progress of the United States compared with the growth of population for the last twenty years. The population of the continental United States increased between 1890 and 1910 from 63,000,000 to 92,000,000, i. e., 46 per cent. During the same period, the production of coal in the United States more than trebled, the increase being from 140,000,000 to 448,000,000 long tons.' As the exports of coal from the United States are insig 1 Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1911, Table 335. I nificant, these figures indicate that to-day three times as much coal is consumed in this country as twenty years ago. Coal is the foundation of modern industry. The increased consumption of coal indicates that the consumption of steam has increased threefold, i. e., that the whole American industry has grown in proportion. The production of steel, another basic article of modern industry, increased during the twenty-year period 1889-1909 seven-fold, from 3,400,000 to 24,000,000 long tons. The production of copper more than quadrupled, viz., from 101,000 to 488,000 tons. The number of ton-miles of freight carried over American railways nearly trebled from 1890 to 1909, the increase being from seventy-seven billions to two hundred and nineteen billions. The total amount of bank clearings in the United States likewise nearly trebled in the twentyyear period between 1890 and 1910, having grown from $58,000,000,000 to $169,000,000,000. The increase in the amount of bank clearings may be accepted as a fair index of the aggregate industrial expansion.3 Thus, while the economic activities of the people of the United States have trebled during the last twenty years, population has increased by less than one half. The introduction of labor-saving machinery has lessened the potential demand for new laborers, yet the pace of industrial development has been faster than the progress of invention. The growing demand for bituminous coal necessitated an increase of the working force from 192,000 in 1890 to 556,000 in 1910.4 The number of railway employees increased from 749,301 in 1890 to 1,502,823 in 1909, The exports of bituminous coal from the United States in 1891-1910 fluctuated between 1.5 and 3.1 per cent of the annual production. -Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1910, p. 541. 2 Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1910, Table No. 335. 3 Professor Irving Fisher estimates that the total trade of the United States increased from $191,000,000,000 to $387,000,000,000 in the thirteen years 1896-1909.-The Purchasing Power of Money, p. 304. 4 Mineral Resources of the United States, 1908, pp. 25, 41. United States Geological Survey. The Production of Coal in 1910, p. 41. i. e., exactly 100 per cent.1 The average number of wageearners employed in manufactures increased between 1889 and 1909 from 4,200,000 to 6,600,000,2 i. e., 57 per cent. The unbiased testimony of figures shows that the demand for labor within the last twenty years has outrun the growth of population, both through natural increase and through immigration. The investigators of the Immigration Commission sought to ascertain from employers of labor the "reason for employing immigrants," and were told that "they found it necessary either to employ immigrant labor or delay industrial advancement."3 A number of specific instances are quoted in the Commission's reports. In the Birmingham iron and steel district, Alabama, where the number of immigrants is insignificant, "the largest employers of labor ... state that under normal conditions, at the present stage of the industrial development of the district, the ordinary labor supply which may be relied upon continuously affords about 50 per cent of the total necessary to operate all plants and mines at their full capacity. In the centers of immigration, on the other hand, the clothing manufacturers likewise claim "that the industry has developed faster than the number of clothing workers has increased." With the revival of business after the depression of 1908 they found it "almost impossible to keep their pay-rolls full."s According to an investigation made by the United States Bureau of Labor, the demand for laborers of all kinds in all lines of industry greatly exceeded the supply during the year 1906. One of the great lines of railroad reported an increase in its construction and track gangs of 41 per cent in 1906 over 1905. The men employed were all I 1 Interstate Commerce Commission, Twelfth Annual Report on the Statistics of Railways, p. 40, and Twenty-second Annual Report, p. 34. * Bureau of the Census, Manufactures, 1905, Part I., p. xxxvi. Census Bureau's Preliminary Summary for 1909. Advance Statement to the Press of October 18, 1911. 3 Jenks and Lauck, loc. cit., p. 140. 4 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 9, p. 151. s Ibid., vol. II, p. 411. Italian immigrants. . . . Another large railway system reported an increase of 44 per cent in this class of workers in 1906 over 1905. The increase of one company was 24 per cent in this class of common labor. An iron and steel company with a total of 147,343 employees in 1904 increased it to 180,158 employees in 1905 and to 217,109 in 1906. Conditions are perhaps best summed up in this extract from a letter received from the President of one of the largest railroads: Our work was delayed in both years-1905 and 1906-by the inability to get workmen. This is true not only of railroads but of the industries along our lines. Our patrons were constantly giving as the excuse for not promptly unloading cars that they are unable to get the laborers to do the work. There was not only a scarcity of common laborers in the country, but we found it impossible, under existing conditions, to get an adequate number of workmen for our shops.1 Statements of employers of labor, however, are discounted; what is meant by "a scant labor supply" is simply, it is thought, "the inability of the manufacturers and mine operators to secure labor at the same wages in the face of the growing labor needs of the country. "2 Aside from the admission implied in this interpretation, that the demand for labor is growing faster than the supply, there is unimpeachable evidence to the same effect in the report of the Bureau of Labor, to which reference has been made above. The Bureau's investigator examined the books of a number of employment agencies for 1906 and found that they had been unable to supply more than a fraction of their orders for help.3 'Frank J. Sheridan: "Italian, Slavic, and Hungarian Unskilled Immigrant Laborers in the United States." Bulletin of the Bureau of Labor, No. 72, pp. 424-425. 2 * Jenks and Lauck, loc. cit., pp. 17, 140. "A personal examination of the books of record of another agency, covering a period of eight months, from April 1 to November 30, 1906, showed that 165 employers in the States of New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and Virginia made application for 8668 Italian laborers from this one agency. The agency supplied fewer than 1500. Another agency, where no fees were charged, had applications |