wage statistics concur, however, in the opposite conclusion. Though the census reports have since 1900 repeatedly warned against the use of census returns for the computation of average earnings, yet the defects of the census statistics of wages do not preclude a fair comparison between the earnings of urban and rural factory operatives. The average number of wage-earners in either case has been computed on a uniform basis of 300 working days per wageearner. While individual returns may be mere estimates of questionable accuracy, yet these defects are insufficient to obscure a pronounced tendency, such as shown in Table 88.

TABLE 88.

AVERAGE EARNINGS OF FACTORY WORKERS, FOR A YEAR OF 300 WORKING DAYS, 1904.1

An examination of previous census reports on manufactures as far back as 1870 proves that since the United States has become a manufacturing country average earnings per worker have been higher in the cities than in the country.2 The effect of this difference is "that the country competition of native Americans where the cost of living is low often acts as a depressing effect on wages in the same occupation in cities."3 Prof. Commons gives the following explanation

Computed from the Report of the Census of Manufactures, 1905, Part I., United States by Industries, Table I., p. xxxv.

2 See XII. Census Reports. Manufactures, Part I., pp. ccxx., ccxxi., Tables IV.-VI.; p. cclix., Tables XXVII. and XXVIII. This difference might be accounted for in part by the employment of relatively greater numbers of women and children in smaller cities and rural settlements. The effect upon the wage situation, however, is the same, whether the better paid workman of the city is underbid by a man, woman, or child employed in a country town.

3 Reports of the Industrial Commission, vol. xv., p. xxiv.

of "the pressure to reduce wages" which "proceeds from the cheaper labor of country districts employed in the same line of production":

Wages are necessarily higher in cities than in the country for the corresponding standard of living. In the city there are such additional demands as car fare, the food costs more and must be paid for in cash, because the laborer does not have his patch of ground from which, by the help of wife and children and by his own extra work mornings and evenings and idle days, he can secure a large share of his necessary food supplies.1

In other words, the American wage-earner in a country district gives more of his time to making a living than the city worker.

The same difference exists within the same trades between the large cities and the smaller cities. The Industrial Commission, in its volume on immigration, quotes the following from the reports of the New York Bureau of Labor:

Wages at the present time (in 1898) are good throughout the large cities, where it must be borne in mind the men employed in the building trades have themselves been immigrants. In the smaller cities, where the wages are much less than in the larger cities, it is the older American labor which controls the field.2

Another way to trace the connection, if any, between immigration and wages, is to compare the average earnings by States with reference to the percentage of foreign-born; if immigration tends to depress wages, this tendency will manifest itself in lower average earnings for States with a large immigrant population, and vice versa. No such tendency is disclosed by wage statistics. In Tables 89 and 90 the average earnings of male and female wage-workers above the age of sixteen in the principal manufacturing States are collated with the percentages of all foreign-born and of Southern and Eastern Europeans of the same sex engaged in manufactures and mechanical pursuits. Southern States

* Reports of the Industrial Commission, vol. xv., p. 316.

• Ibid., p. 426.

where the negroes constitute more than 10 per cent of all persons of both sexes engaged in manufactures have been excluded from this table, in order to eliminate the influence of negro competition upon the average earnings.'

TABLE 89.

AVERAGE ANNUAL EARNINGS OF MALE EMPLOYEES IN MANUFACTURES, COLLATED WITH THE PERCENTAGES OF FOREIGN-BORN, IN

No definite relation between wages and immigration can be deduced from the preceding tables. States with widely differing percentages of foreign-born male operatives have the same average earnings, e. g., Illinois, Connecticut, and New Mexico, while States with the same percentages of foreign-born male wage-earners widely differ with respect to rates of wages, e. g., Colorado and New Jersey. Higher

XII. Census. Manufactures, Part I., p. cxv., Table XXXIX.; Population, Part I., pp. cii.-civ., Table XLVI.; p. cvi., Table XLVIII., also p. cxiv., Table LIII.

percentages of foreign-born go together with higher average earnings, e. g., Rhode Island has more than twice as many foreign-born in proportion as Texas, and the rate of wages in Rhode Island is higher than in Texas. And, on the con

TABLE 90.

AVERAGE ANNUAL EARNINGS OF FEMALE EMPLOYEES IN MANUFACTURES, COLLATED WITH THE PERCENTAGES OF FOREIGN-BORN, IN

trary, lower percentages of foreign-born go together with higher average wages, e. g., Kansas and Rhode Island. Neither does immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe appear to affect the average earnings. New York with the highest percentage of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe has a higher average than Oregon with the lowest percentage of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe. The average earnings of women likewise bear no definite relation to the per cent of foreignborn breadwinners. In Massachusetts, which has the maximum per cent (40.6) of foreign-born breadwinners in

manufacturing and mechanical pursuits, the average earnings are $319, whereas in New Mexico, which has the minimum per cent of foreign-born breadwinners (3.9), the average earnings are $255. The lowest average earnings, $211 annually, are found in Delaware, with 6.7 per cent of foreign-born women employed in manufactures, while in Massachusetts, with six times as many foreign-born, the average annual earnings were 52 per cent above the Delaware average. The preponderance of evidence, to use a legal term, supports the conclusion that, as a rule, the annual earnings are higher in States with a higher percentage of foreign-born factory workers. But making allowance for the few exceptions to this rule, the least that can be said is that there is no proof of a tendency of immigration, old or new, to depress the rate of wages.

The preceding conclusions based upon an examination of census statistics of average earnings are corroborated by the results of Prof. Nearing's study of wage statistics published by State labor bureaus. He finds "that average wages are rather constant for a given industry from State to State, and from city to city within a State." As the percentage of immigrants among the wage-earners employed in each industry greatly varies from State to State and from city to city, it is evident that immigration does not affect the rate of wages.

"The opportunities for the new hands depend upon the expansion of industry and the resources of the country," says Professor Commons. "Provided this expansion occurs, there is no overcrowding of the labor market. The new resources and new investments demand new labor; and, if the expansion is strong enough, the new labor as well as the existing labor may secure advances in wages.'

It is broadly asserted by Professors Jenks and Lauck that the large supply of Southern and Eastern European labor "has seriously retarded the advance of wages in those occu

2

Nearing, loc. cit., pp. 145-146.

Report of the Industrial Commission, vol. xv., p. 305.