low ratio of unemployment and vice versa; there are others with high percentages both of foreign-born and of unemployment and vice versa. The ratio of unemployment seems sometimes to rise and sometimes to fall with the percentages of foreign-born. But a significant correlation between the two ratios is disclosed if all States are combined into two areas according to the ratio of foreign-born engaged in manufactures and mechanical pursuits: I. Those States where the ratio of foreign-born in manufactures is below the average for the United States; II. Those States where that ratio is above the average for the United States. The statistics relating to each area are summarized separately for male and female wage-earners in Tables 19 and 20. TABLE 19. GREATEST AND LEAST NUMBER OF MALE WAGE-EARNERS EMPLOYED IN MANUFACTURES DURING ANY ONE MONTH OF THE YEAR 1899, GREATEST NUMBER OF UNEMPLOYED, AND PERCENTAGE OF FOREIGNBORN MALES ENGAGED IN MANUFACTURES AND MECHANICAL PURSUITS IN 1900, BY GROUPS OF STATES. TABLE 20. GREATEST AND LEAST NUMBER OF FEMALE WAGE-EARNERS EMPLOYED IN MANUFACTURES DURING ANY ONE MONTH OF THE YEAR 1899, GREATEST NUMBER OF UNEMPLOYED, AND PERCENTAGE OF FOREIGN-BORN FEMALES ENGAGED IN MANUFACTURES AND MECHANICAL PURSUITS, IN 1900, BY GROUPS OF STATES. Combining all the States where the immigrants furnish from one third to more than one half of all males engaged in manufactures and mechanical pursuits, we find that the ratio of unemployment in that area as a whole is lower than in the other area, where the immigrants are few in numbers, rising in no State to one third of all males employed in manufacturing industries and falling as low as 1 per cent. The same rule holds true with regard to female wage-earners employed in manufactures. On the whole, unemployment is in inverse ratio to the relative number of foreign-born. The underlying cause of this relation will be apparent, if we remember that the number of foreign-born wageearners is regulated by immigration and emigration and that both movements promptly respond to changes in the business situation. (See Chapter IV.) Still the variation of the ratio of unemployment by States may be affected by the localization of industries; certain industries concentrated in a State with a small foreign-born population may through climatic or other causes be more subject to ebb and flow than other industries located in a State with a large immigrant population. The ratio of unemployment must therefore be compared for different occupations with a varying percentage of foreign-born breadwinners. Diagram VII furnishes the data for a comparative study of fifty leading occupations which gave employment, in 1900, to seven and a half million male breadwinners,1 If it be true that unemployment is intensified by immigration, the aggregations of solid black bars representing unemployment and striped bars representing the percentage of foreign-born male breadwinners in each occupation should be expected to display some similarity in outline. No such tendency is suggested by the diagram; the variation of the ratio of unemployment for different occupations shows no effects of immigration. Although the number of occupations selected for comparison, as well as the number of persons engaged in them, is very large and well distributed over all sections of the country, yet, in order to eliminate the possible effect of localization of industries, we shall next compare the variations of the ratios of unemployment and of the percentage of foreign-born within the same occupations by States. Space forbids an exhaustive treatment of all the leading occupations shown in Diagram VII. Our study will be confined to three occupation groups: bituminous coal-miners, common laborers, and cotton-mill operatives. The first two have been selected in view of the popular belief, accepted by the Immigration Commission, that they are suffering from an oversupply of unskilled immigrant labor. The cotton-mill operatives, on the other hand, afford the opportunity to contrast the New England mills, where the majority of the workers are of foreign birth, with the Southern mills dependent almost exclusively upon native labor. Diagram VIII presents in graphic form the ratio of un 'The comparative figures for these occupations, as well as for the leading occupations of female breadwinners are given in the Appendix, Table IV. |