While the wave of emigration from Great Britain and Ireland to the United States has receded from the highwater mark reached in 1880-1889, yet, eliminating that exceptional decade, we find that during the 20-year period 1890-1909, marked by the influx of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe, the United States received more immigrants from Great Britain and Ireland than during the 20-year period 1860-1879. Another fact that must not be lost sight of is the recent development of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, which has naturally drawn a part of the emigration from Great Britain and Ireland. The policy of restriction adopted in Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa has conferred a special privilege upon immigrants of British nationality. On the other hand, the governments of Canada and Australia are making systematic efforts to induce and assist immigration from the mother country. That the financial assistance offered to immigrants from the United Kingdom has diverted a part of them from the United States is but natural.

The decline of Irish immigration began as far back as 1861. It rose again in the 80's, in the turbulent years of the Irish Land League agitation, and once more during the past decade. That the "new immigration" to the United States was not the cause of the decline of Irish immigration is clear from the fact that the emigration movement from Ireland to other countries has also declined, while, on the other hand, of those Irish who did emigrate the proportion destined to the United States was higher during the period of the great influx of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe than in 1876-1890, when immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe was negligible. There have been forces at work to reduce the number of Irish seeking to better their condition away from home. The great Irish unrest of the 80's forced the British Parliament to enact remedial legislation, which gave to the tenant-at-will a legal title to his holding, besides reducing his rent, and converted about one third of the tenants into land proprietors. These

far-reaching reforms in a country with a predominantly peasant population sufficiently account for the decline of emigration from Ireland.

It can be seen from this brief survey that immigration from Northern and Western Europe has declined, not because the condition of labor has deteriorated in the United States, but because those countries have become better homes for their citizens.

Another popular fallacy is the theory originated by General Walker, that the immigrants have displaced unborn generations of native Americans. It rests on no other foundation than a computation made in 1815 from the increase of the population of the United States between 1790 and 1810. During the century that has elapsed, the declining birthrate has become a world-wide social phenomenon. In the Australian Commonwealth, with her vast continent as yet unsettled, with a purely Anglo-Saxon population and practically no immigration, the decline of the birth-rate has been as rapid as among Americans of native stock. Prof. Wilcox has proved by an analysis of population statistics that the decrease in the proportion of children began in the United States as early as 1810. The native birth-rate has declined with the increase of the urban population and the relative decrease of the number of farmers. The rearing of children on a farm requires less of the mother's time and attention than in the city. Moreover, the child on a farm begins to work at an earlier age than in the city. A numerous family on a farm has the advantages of a co-operative group, whereas every addition to the family of the wage-earner or of the salaried man with a fixed income tends to lower the family's standard of living. It is significant that the decline of the birth-rate is universal among those classes which are scarcely, if at all, affected by immigrant competition. Their standard of living is higher than that of the wage-earner. Yet it is precisely the desire to preserve this higher standard that accounts for the practice of race suicide. Granting, for the sake of argument, that the absence of immigration in the

past would have raised the native wage-earner's standard of living to that of the middle class, it does not follow that the natural increase among the native-born would have sufficed to supply the needs of the rapidly expanding industries of the United States.

There was clearly no other source from which American industry could have drawn its labor supply than immigration from the countries of Southern and Eastern Europe. Without the immigrants from those countries the recent development of American industry would have been impossible.

An invidious distinction is drawn between the old and the new immigrants by reason of the fact that the bulk of the latter are incapable of any but unskilled work. A comparative statistical study of immigration shows that the old immigrants, like those of the present generation, were mostly unskilled laborers and farm hands. The proportion of skilled mechanics has at no time within the past fifty years been as high as one fourth of all immigrant breadwinners, for the very obvious reason that the demand in the American labor market has been mainly for unskilled laborers. Invention of machinery has had the tendency to reduce the demand for mechanical skill, and most of that demand has been supplied by native Americans. In the industrial army the commissioned and non-commissioned officers are outnumbered by the privates. It is a misconception of modern industrial organization to confuse lack of "skill," i. e., ignorance of a trade, with "low efficiency." If every immigrant were a skilled mechanic, most of them would nevertheless have to accept employment as unskilled laborers. The special skill of the engineer would give him no superiority at loading coal over a common laborer, nor would the ability to read Shakespeare in the vernacular assure higher wages to a mule-driver.

The objection to the unskilled immigrant is based upon the belief that because of his lower standard of living he is satisfied with lower wages than the American or the older

immigrant. It is therefore taken for granted that the effect of the great tide of immigration in recent years has been to reduce the rate of wages or to prevent it from advancing. The fallacy of this reasoning is due to the attempt to compare the wages and standard of living of the unskilled laborer with those of the skilled mechanic. In order to prove that the new immigrants have introduced a lower standard of living, the latter ought to be compared with the standard of living of unskilled laborers in the past. Housing conditions have been most dwelt upon in the discussion of the standard of living of the immigrant, because they strike the eye of the outsider. Historical studies of housing conditions show, however, that congestion was recognized as a serious evil in New York City as far back as the first half of the nineteenth century. The evil was not confined to the foreign-born population. American-born working-women lived on filthy streets in poorly ventilated houses, crowding in one or two rooms which were used both as dwelling and workshop. No better were the living conditions of the daughters of American farmers in the small mill towns of New England. They lived in company houses, half a dozen in one attic room, without tables, or chairs, or even washstands. Comparative statistics of house tenancy in Boston show that in the middle of the nineteenth century the tenement-house population was as numerous, in proportion, as in our day. The conversion of the old single-family residence into a tenement house, where a whole family was jammed in every room, was productive of filth. The inconvenience suffered by the people of New York City during the recent strike of the street cleaners was but a faint reminder of the normal conditions of the immigrant sections of New York or Boston half a century ago. These conditions are a thing of the past. The typical tenement house in the Jewish and Italian sections of New York to-day is a decided improvement upon the dwellings of the older immigrant races in the same sections a generation or two ago. On the other hand, in the South, where many of

the coal mines are operated without immigrant labor, and native white Americans are employed as unskilled laborers, their homes are primitive and insanitary.

It is evident that the cause of bad housing conditions is not racial, but economic. Congestion in great cities is produced by industrial factors over which the immigrants have no control. The fundamental cause of congestion with all its attendant evils is the necessity for the wageworker to live within an accessible distance from his place of work. In mining towns the mine company is usually the landlord, and the mine worker has no choice in the matter of housing accommodations. In so far, however, as housing conditions might affect the rates of wages of native and immigrant workmen, it is the amount of rent, not the equivalent in domestic comfort, that has to be considered. And here it is found that immigrants have to pay the same rent as, and often a higher rent than, native American wageearners. A certain proportion among the immigrants seek to reduce their rent by taking in boarders, but the practice is not universal, and the wages of the others must therefore provide for the payment of normal rent. Moreover, the recent immigrants are mostly concentrated in great cities, where rent is high, while the native American workmen live mostly in small towns with low rents.

Nor are the food standards of the recent immigrant inferior to those of native Americans with the same income. Meat, the most expensive article of food, is consumed by the Slav in larger quantities than by native Americans. Rent and food claim by far the greater part of a workman's wages. It is thus apparent that whatever may have been the immigrant's standard of living in his home country, his expenditure in the United States is determined by the prices ruling in the United States. Contrary to common assertion, the living expenses of the native American workman in small cities and rural districts are lower than those of the recent immigrants in the great industrial centers. It is therefore not the recent immigrant that is able to underbid