TABLE 81. SURPLUS OF INCOME OVER EXPENDITURE OF NORMAL FAMILIES; I. Cost of preparation at his home in Europe for the journey. 2. Cost of transportation from his home to the European seaport. 3. Cost of emigrant head tax to his Government. 4. Cost of immigrant head tax to the United States Government. 5. Cost of steamship transportation, European port to the United States. 6. Cost of labor agency for securing employment at port of entry, if used. 7. Cost of transportation, United States port of entry to place of employment. 8. Cost of living from port of entry to place of destination."'2 The cost of items 3-5 and 7 is further on estimated at $40.00 for a single Italian, Slav, or Hungarian immigrant. If the immigrant has left wife and children in his native country, he must save money to pay their passage. In order to meet these demands the immigrant must curtail his expenses for the necessities of life. This is accomplished Eighteenth Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor, p. 581, Tables V, J and K. 2 Bulletin of the Bureau of Labor, No. 72, pp. 411-412. in various ways. Living in crowded tenements is one of them. Co-operative boarding, which has been given the odious name of "the boarding boss system," enables the Slav laborer to reduce his board bill much below the price the individualistic Anglo-Saxon has to pay in a boarding house, though, as has been shown, the fare under the cooperative system is at least as wholesome and abundant as in an average boarding house. The fact, however, that the immigrant who has no family in the United States is at first content to deny himself many comforts does not warrant the apprehension that he will be satisfied with a wage just sufficient to provide the bare necessities of life. The Italian railroad laborer who subsists on vegetables does not work for the mere price of his vegetables, but saves about 80 per cent of his wages. "Ninety-five per cent of the Italian laborers save from $25.00 to $30.00 of their wages per month. For eight months' work this would amount to over $200 per man."'* It is a matter of general knowledge that large sums of money are annually sent home by the immigrants. A member of the Immigration Commission who visited a Greek mountain village from which two hundred immigrants had gone to the United States was told that each of the men sent back about $200 annually. It was learned from the records of a post-office in a township of Russian Poland that thirty-seven workmen who had immigrated from that township to the United States sent home in 1903 the sum of 47,862 roubles, i. e., an average of $665 per emigrant. That these are not isolated cases is indicated by the number of international money orders sent from the United States to Europe, which averaged, in 1907-1909, about three millions a year.4 Moreover, hundreds of • Bulletin of the Bureau of Labor, No. 72, pp. 469–470, 477, 481. * Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 4 (in press). 3 3 Reports of the Warsaw Statistical Committee, Bulletin XXII. K. B. Vobly: General Analysis of the Statistics of Migration of Workers for Temporary Employment and of the Statistics of Emigration, p. 29. • Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 37, p. 280. thousands of immigrants annually return home, and their passage must be paid out of their savings. The total amount sent abroad by immigrants in the year 1907 is estimated by the Immigration Commission at $275,000,000. This estimate "does not take into account the large sums carried abroad by returning immigrants." A better idea of the average amount an immigrant manages to save from his wages can be gained from the economic effects produced by the flow of American money into the rural districts of Southern and Eastern Europe. In Greece much of the money sent home by emigrants is for the payment of old debts and cancellation of mortgages, a considerable part... for deposits, loans, the purchases of real estate or the improvement of property already owned. . . . Many houses were . . . built by money sent back by emigrants. . . . Usury is receding, fleeing from the glitter of abundant gold which has inundated towns and villages. . . . Nor is it surprising that the rate of interest should have fallen from 20, 15, and 10 per cent to 6 and 5 per cent. In Southern Italy, those who return from America purchase a house with a small estate. In Austria-Hungary, the enormous influx of money goes partly to pay old debts and to bring over families, but most of it to support relatives at home, to invest in land, to build homes, to make improvements, and to buy agricultural machinery. "The desire of the returning emigrant to invest in land has led to a considerable increase in its value, particularly in Croatia, Galicia, and the Slovak district of Hungary. ... In Galicia the buying of large estates by associations of emigrants has become a common practice. Very often from 50,000 to 90,000 acres a year are thus bought up and subdivided among the peasant purchasers. The money is either contributed from the savings of the associated peasants or borrowed from friends who are still in America." Reports from all emigration countries concur in the statement that the standard of living of the peasants who have * Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 37, p. 277. • Ibid., vol. 4, P. 413. returned from the United States is above that of their neighbors. The roomy cottages built by them with money earned in the United States are in striking contrast with the surrounding poverty and dirt. In short, according to the Immigration Commission, the savings of the immigrants are an important factor in promoting the general economic welfare of several European countries." It is evident that the wages of the immigrants must needs be sufficient to enable them to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in the uplifting of the economic conditions of their native countries, after paying American prices for all necessities of life. Viewed solely with an eye to the economic interests of the American wage-earner, the efforts of the average immigrant from Southern and Eastern Europe "to live upon the basis of minimum cheapness, and to save as much as possible," at the sacrifice of comfort,1 is a matter of no concern to his competitors in the labor market. Whether he spends his wages on rent, food, and clothing, or saves his money to buy steamship tickets for his family, whether he deposits his savings in a local bank, or sends them to his parents for improving the home farm, his wants in one case are as great and as imperative as in the other, and he must demand a wage which will enable him to satisfy them. Furthermore, contrary to learned opinion, a wageearner who is able to save four fifths of his earnings need not accept "employment on the terms offered or suffer from actual want," for he can live four months on the savings of one, and is therefore "in a position to take exception to wages or working conditions" a great deal more readily than the native wage-earner who lives to the limit of his income. This fact has been proved more than once in recent years by the long drawn out strikes of Southern and Eastern European mine and factory operatives. There is a tendency to view with disapproval "the sending back to the old country of the savings of the immigrant," upon the old Mercantilist theory that every dollar invested Jenks and Lauck, loc. cit., pp. 183-184.. a Ibid. by him in his home country is a loss to the United States: "America should have the productive influence of not only the labor but also of the capital made from the savings."1 The same objection certainly applies with far greater force to the investment of American capital in foreign industrial enterprises. One important fact is overlooked in this objection, viz., that the money which is invested in the home farm provides for the relatives of the immigrant who stay in the old country. Were that money invested in the United States they would have to be brought over to the United States. While the capital invested in the United States would be increased, the supply of labor would likewise be increased. Money being dearer in Europe than in the United States, the savings that are ample to provide employment for the immigrants' relatives at home, would be insufficient, if invested in American industries, to keep an equal number of persons employed in the United States. Their immigration would accordingly tend to increase the supply of labor out of proportion to the demand. The only economic interests affected in a real, not in an imaginary way, by the thrifty habits ("the low standard of living") of the recent immigrant, is the mercantile business which seeks the trade of the wage-earner as a consumer. With many manufacturing and mining concerns the commissary is an important part of the industry. In fact, [says the Immigration Commission] according to the statements of some of the small operators, commissaries as a rule return not only a 20 per cent net profit in normal times to the company, but the system goes so far as to largely determine the race of employees. In certain cases it was stated that negroes were preferred because their improvident habits prevented them from being able to live on a cash income, paid monthly, and thus forced them to draw their wages weekly, and even daily, in the form of commissary checks or store credits. Currency payments were made monthly partly for this purpose. As a result, the negroes are always a little in debt to the commissaries. . . Their wants are confined to the supply of goods furnished by the commissaries, with the exception of whiskey, and they have no funds for 'Jenks and Lauck, loc. cit., p. 16. |