chapter, the arrivals of immigrants in the United States at any given time are the result of preparations made some months before their embarkation on the other side. Viewed as a whole, however, the diagram strongly contradicts the assumption that immigration results in the curtailment of the days of employment. During the ten normal years 1897-1906, which preceded the crisis of 1907, the number of working days increased with the increase of immigration. It could not have been a fortuitous coincidence. No one claims that the arrival of the immigrants was the cause of the increase of the per capita share of work. By the method of exclusion there is room for no other inference than that immigration has merely responded to the increased demand for labor.

The preceding analysis may be summed up in the following proposition:

Unemployment and immigration are the effects of economic forces working in opposite directions; that which produces business expansion reduces unemployment and attracts immigration; that which produces business depression increases unemployment and reduces immigration.

Yet it may be said that while immigration is not a contributory cause of unemployment, restriction of immigration would nevertheless reduce unemployment. An answer to this argument is furnished by the example of Australia, where immigration does not keep up with emigration, and yet unemployment is an ever-present problem, precisely as in the United States. Australia is a new country with abundant natural resources. Its area is as great as that of the continental United States (exclusive of Alaska), while its population at the census of 1906 was a million short of the United States figure for 1800. The Australian statistics of unemployment essentially differ from ours. The XII. Census counted all breadwinners who were idle at any time during the twelve months preceding the date of enumeration. The statistics of the New York Bureau of Labor comprise all wage-earners who were unemployed during

the first or the third quarter of the year. The Australian statistics, on the other hand, give the number unemployed on the date of enumeration. A comparison of the Australian ratio of unemployment with the New York ratio must therefore be favorable to Australia and unfavorable to New York. Still the comparison is highly instructive. The Australian ratio in 1901 varied from 3.96 per cent for South Australia to 6.73 per cent for New South Wales.1 In the State of New York the total amount of unemployment for the three summer months, July, August, and September, fluctuated during the years 1897-1907 between 1.9 per cent and 6.5 per cent. It thus appears that Australia with an excess of emigration over immigration is suffering from unemployment at least as much as the State of New York, which is teeming with immigrants. It is evident that unemployment is created by the modern organization of industry even in the absence of all immigration.

Unemployment not being the result of overpopulation, it necessarily follows that limitation of the number of wageearners can promise no relief against unemployment. To be effective, any proposed remedy must attack the problem of unemployment, not collaterally, through restriction of immigration, but directly.

A radical remedy for the evils of unemployment is offered by the Code of Labor Laws of the Russian Soviet Government. The law assures to every able-bodied citizen "the right to employment" at his trade or vocation at the standard wage fixed for such class of work. The Government, through its employment service, undertakes to find a job for every unemployed worker. Every person who is out of work may register at the local office of the Division of Distribution of Labor Power. All establishments in need of workers may

1 Victor S. Clark: "Labor Conditions in Australia," Bulletin of the Bureau of Labor, No. 56 p. 180.

Annual Report of the New York Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1909, vol. ii., p. xvii., Table 5.

likewise register with the local government employment office their demand for labor, stating the qualifications of workers and the kind of work required, as well as the terms of employment. The local office assigns the applicants in the order of their registration. In case the local supply of workers is insufficient to meet the demand for a certain class of workers, the local employment office communicates with other offices within the same region. If the supply of labor of a certain class is in excess of the demand, the applicant for work may be temporarily offered a job outside of his trade. An applicant for whom no employment can be found is entitled to draw a benefit, equal to his standard wages, out of an unemployment insurance fund levied on all employers of labor, including government institutions. Whenever a worker is directed to a position below his grade of work, he is entitled to draw upon the unemployment insurance fund for the difference between his standard rate of wages and that actually offered to him.1

1 Code of Labor Laws. Compilation of the Statutes and Orders of the Labor and Farmer Government, December 10, 1918, Sections 10, 20-23, 26, 28-30, and Supp. to Sec. 79, §§6, 7, 14, 15. A summary of that Code appears in the Monthly Labor Review of the U. S. Dept. of Labor, April, 1920, pp. 210-214.

CHAPTER VII

IND

RACIAL STRATIFICATION

NDUSTRIAL evolution has broken down the stable organization of ancient and medieval societies, in which every individual had a fixed place and the son followed the occupation of the father. Modern industrial society tends to revert to the nomadic type. People come and go, and others settle in their places. There were, in 1900, thirteen and a half million persons born in the United States who were living outside of their native States. There is no record of migration within State limits. Assuming that the number of native citizens migrating within their State of birth is equal to the number migrating to contiguous States, six millions more may be added to the migratory population, making in all about 30 per cent of the total native population. Yet when it is learned that of the 2,653,000 native Missourians who were living in the United States, 618,000 resided outside of their native State, while 855,000 natives of other States settled in Missouri, no one takes it that the Missourians were "displaced" by the "invasion" of a host nearly a million strong from Southern and Eastern States. It is only when the new-comers are of foreign birth that the impression of "racial displacement" is created.

I

There was one great racial displacement in America: the Indian was displaced from his land by the European in. vasion. The invasion and the displacement in that instance

I

1 XII. Census, Supplementary Analysis, p. 281.

were physical acts, not metaphors. When the term "racial displacement" is applied to immigration, it suggests the idea of a virtual crowding out of the native American by the alien invader. No doubt, in the shifting of population from East to West, from country to city, the racial composition of many settlements has changed. Within the memory of the present generation the Irish and German colonies of New York City gradually moved out of the sections they had occupied in the 80's and early 90's of the past century and in their places Jewish and Italian colonies grew up. Still the old Irish or German settler of ten or twenty years ago can be located in another section of the great city, and the public is conscious of the fact that he has simply moved from one neighborhood to another which seemed to him more attractive. The population of New York City, however, is large enough to fill several States. Were the same population spread over a hundred cities of about forty thousand inhabitants each and had the German residents of one city gradually moved out of it to others within a radius of twenty-five miles, their places being filled by a new race, the change would be keenly felt by many. The grocer, the butcher, the hotelkeeper, the physician, the lawyer, would be losing patronage. In their minds the change would be reflected as the "displacement" of the old

The definition of the word "displacement" given by the Oxford English Dictionary is as follows:

Displacement: The act of displacing or fact of being displaced. Removal of a thing by substitution of something else in its place.-1880, Library Universal Knowledge: "The displacement of human labor through machinery."

Hydrostatics: The displacing of a liquid by a body immersed in or floating on it.

Displace:

1. To remove or shift from its place; to put out of the usual place. 2. To remove from a position, dignity, or office.

3. To oust (something) from its place and occupy it instead. . . . (b) to take the place of, supplant, replace.-A. R. Wallace, Darwinism"; "This weed . . . absolutely displaced every other plant on the ground."

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