Lapas attēli
PDF
ePub

ment. Custom tailoring requires a higher grade of skill than the manufacturing of ready-made clothing. If a clothing worker vacates his place in the factory to accept a better position with a custom tailor and the vacancy is filled by a new immigrant, no one in the trade will conceive the change as "displacement" of the older employee by a new hand. There remain only the undefined "other lines of work," into which the incoming thousands are said to have crowded those of their predecessors whom they could not "force" to move up. A sidelight upon this residue is thrown by the narrative of the history of the clothing industry in Baltimore. The first people employed in the clothing shops of that city were

the Germans, who entered the country in large numbers immediately after the Civil War. Since that time the Russian Hebrews, Lithuanians, Poles, Italians, and Bohemians have settled in the city and found employment in the clothing shops, displacing the Germans in the unskilled occupations, and forcing them up into higher work. It is also noticed that, as the Russian Hebrews and Poles work up into the skilled occupations, the Germans leave the industry and enter new fields. This displacement seems to be self-displacement, as there is work for all—more work than there are laborers—but the Germans are progressive, and as the new races have engaged in the clothing industry they have risen in the scale of occupations, and in many instances have left the industry and found employment in other skilled trades.1

Thus we learn that, at least in Baltimore, those who have left the industry have "found employment in other skilled trades," and that the "displacement" is therefore "selfdisplacement"; in other words, no displacement at all. Expressed in more exact language, the report of the Commission shows that the clothing industry of Baltimore has grown more rapidly than the supply of labor. The expansion of the industry created new positions for skilled workers; these positions were filled first by Germans, next by Russian Hebrews and Poles. This expansion not being confined to the manufacturing of clothing, other indus

* Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 11, p. 411.

tries offered opportunities of which the Germans availed themselves.

It is reasonable to assume that if there is "more work than there are laborers" in Baltimore, the clothing manufacturers of that city would have sufficient enterprise to import some of the thousands who "crowd the shops" of New York City. The fact is that the expansion of the clothing industry in New York has been a great deal faster than in Baltimore, as appears from Table 110 below. It is therefore quite probable that the relation between the demand for, and supply of, labor in the shops of New York is the same as in Baltimore.

TABLE 110.

COMPARATIVE GROWTH OF THE VALUE OF THE PRODUCTS OF THE CLOTHING INDUSTRY IN NEW YORK AND BALTIMORE, 1890-1905.1

[blocks in formation]

The statistics of the Immigration Commission do not disclose any tendency on the part of the new immigrant races to accept lower wages than the immigrants of older races. (See Table III on page 370.) The percentage of recent German immigrants earning $15 a week or over is much less than the percentage of Hebrews and Russians and about the same as the percentage of Italians with the same average earnings. On the opposite end, the percentage of Germans earning less than $10 a week within the first five years of their residence in the United States is somewhat greater than that of Hebrews, Russians, Poles, and

1 Census Reports, Manufactures, 1905, Part I, Table CLXVIII., p. ccxxxiii.

Bohemians. These figures show that the "new immigration" does not underbid the immigrants of the older races. On the other hand, the variation in the earnings of representatives of each race indicates that the rate of wages is not determined by racial factors, but depends upon the personal qualifications and opportunities of individual workers.

TABLE 111.

PER CENT DISTRIBUTION OF FOREIGN-BORN ADULT MALE CLOTHING WORKERS, 18 years of age and over, RESIDING IN THE UNITED STATES LESS THAN FIVE YEARS, BY RACE AND WEEKLY EARNINGS.'

[blocks in formation]

The Immigration Commission speaks in general terms of the "availability of cheap woman and child labor of the immigrant households" for locating "men's and women's clothing manufacturing establishments" in certain districts "developed in connection with some of the principal industries of the country." But the statistics of the Commission show that the earnings of recent immigrant women and children in the clothing industry are higher than those of native Americans. Thus, adult Russian Hebrew women averaged $8.09 per week, Polish women, $8.07, North Italian women, $7.54, whereas native women of native American parentage earned only $7.41 per week. The majority of Polish women (55.4 per cent) earned more than $7.50 per

[ocr errors]

1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 11, p. 301, Table 35. • Ibid., vol. I, p. 541.

week, while the majority of American women of native parentage (57.2 per cent) earned less than that amount.1 The same is true of girls between the ages of 14 and 18. Russian Hebrew girls earned on an average $6.13 per week, other Hebrew girls $6.24, South Italian girls $5.56, Polish girls $5.25, whereas native American girls of native parentage made only $5.02 per week. Nearly one half (45.9 per cent) of the latter earned less than $5 while only a little over one fourth (27.4 per cent) of the Russian Hebrew girls earned less than that amount.2

Confronted with these facts, Professors Jenks and Lauck seek to explain them by the assumption that "the lower earnings of the American women" are due "to their inability and disinclination to work such long hours as the foreign-born females in the case of certain piece-rate occupations, as, for example, the clothing industry."3 This explanation, however, is purely a matter of conjecture, since the Immigration Commission has made no inquiries regarding hours of labor in the clothing industry. As shown above, the hours were long in the factories and sweatshops when the women workers were all Americans, and were reduced with the coming of immigrants. The inquiry of the Industrial Commission concerning the hours of labor in the clothing industry in Pennsylvania brought out the fact that the working hours averaged ten per day alike in the city shops where the employees were Jews and Italians, and in country shops, where none but Americans were employed.

The investigations of the Industrial Commission also disclosed the fact that in the beginning of the twentieth century, as half a century before, the American country workers were willing to work for lower wages than the immigrants in the cities.

In the country districts of Pennsylvania the garment workers are Americans, some of whom can be further distinguished as "Pennsyl

1 Reports of the Immigration Commission. vol. 11, p. 293, Table 26. Ibid., p. 298, Table 32. 3 Jenks and Lauck, loc. cit., p. 143. Report of the Industrial Commission, vol. xv., p. 725.

[ocr errors]

vania Dutch." In New Jersey they are Americans and GermanAmericans. but there is no evidence of a lower standard of living than among their American neighbors. In spite of this, it is these people and their American co-workers who are accepting a lower rate of wages than the Jews in the city.'

The most striking difference between the country and town shops is that the operators in the town shops are invariably men and in the country shops they are women. . . . The women coat operators in the country who get the highest wages paid women receive $5.34, and the city women basters on vests are receiving $6.59. Here we find women in the city engaged in a lower class of work and receiving higher pay than the women in the country who are doing the highest grade of work.'

The same difference existed between the wages of men in city and country shops: Jewish pressers in the city averaged $11.38 per week, whereas American pressers in the country earned only $7.62 per week.3

Because the native American country workers were willing to accept lower wages than the recent immigrants in the cities, the contractors found it profitable to give more steady employment to country than to city workers. While the latter averaged but twenty-eight working weeks in the year, the former were given forty-four weeks, with the result that their annual earnings at lower rates of wages exceeded the earnings of city workers at higher rates.4

What enables the American country workers of Pennsylvania to underbid the Jewish garment workers of Philadelphia is the fact that

the country home workers are usually simply supplementing other earnings. They are farmers' wives and daughters and those of farm laborers. They make clothing in the intervals of housework and farm work, for most of them help in the haying and harvesting. . . . Where the shop replaces the farming-out system, the employees are drawn from these same farmers' families, and a low standard of wages, influenced by the home earnings, prevails throughout.s

...

Another—no less important—cause of the "low standard of wages" of native American country workers is their • Report of the Industrial Commission, vol. xv., p. 730.

2 Ibid., pp. 727-729.

• Ibid., p. 725.

3 Ibid., p. 726. s Ibid., pp. 727-728.

« iepriekšējāTurpināt »