isolation, in consequence of which "they must accept his [the contractor's] rate of payment offered through the driver who delivers the goods." The Southern and Eastern European clothing workers in the cities, on the contrary, are comparatively well organized. As shown in Chapter XV the percentage of organized workers among them is above the average for the country. Their capacity for concerted action finds full expression only in strikes which rally around the unions many workers not regularly affiliated with them. The highest per cent of employees joining in strikes in 1887-1905 was found among clothing workers, as shown in Table 112: TABLE 112. PER CENT OF STRIKING EMPLOYEES IN THE CLOTHING INDUSTRY AND IN ALL INDUSTRIES IN THE UNITED STATES, 1887-1905.❜ The strikes were, as a rule, led by organizations. Of the 20,559 establishments involved in strikes during the twentyfive year period from 1881 to 1905, in only 355 were the strikes not ordered by labor organizations, the annual averages being 835 and 13 establishments, respectively. The proportion of unorganized strikes among workers on men's clothing was 10 per cent; among workers on women's clothing 16 per cent, whereas the average for all industries was 31 per cent.3 The percentage of thoroughly successful strikes of clothing workers for the period 1881-1905 was much above the average, viz.: the percentage in establishments manufacturing men's 2 Report of the Industrial Commission, vol. xv., p. 728. Twenty-first Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor, pp. 90–91. clothing, 75.51, and in establishments manufacturing women's clothing 66.37, whereas the average for all industries in the United States was only 47.94.' These figures will enable the student to appraise at its true value the conclusion of the Immigration Commission that "as a general proposition it may be said that all improvement in conditions and increases in rates of pay have been secured in spite of the presence of the recent immigrant."2 The strike statistics published by the United States Bureau of Labor permit of a comparison between the recent period beginning with the fiscal year 1895, when the immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe for the first time outnumbered all others, and the earlier period from January 1, 1881, to June 30, 1894. During the 80's the principal nationalities employed in the clothing shops were the Germans and the Irish:3 since 1895 the Jews and the Italians have become the predominating element among the workers. It appears that during the thirteen and a half years previous to the fiscal year 1895 the average annual number of strikers in the clothing industry was 9,094, and during the eleven and a half years following it rose to 38,683.4 This is the unbiased testimony of figures in answer to the sweeping generalizations of the Immigration Commission about the reluctance of the Southern and Eastern Europeans "to enter labor disputes involving loss of time," their "ready acceptance of a low wage and existing working conditions" and "willingness seemingly to accept indefinitely without protest certain wages and conditions of employment."5 1 Twenty-first Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor, pp. 81-82. 2 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. I, p. 540. 3 Ibid., vol. I, pp. 516-517. • Computed from Annual Reports of the Commissioner of Labor: X., p. 1567; XVI., pp. 15, 34, 355; XXI., p. 16. $ Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 1, pp. 530-540. CHAPTER XVIII THE THE COTTON MILLS HE cotton mills furnish a good field for the study of the effects of immigration upon the condition of labor in the United States. According to the investigation of the Immigration Commission, 68.7 per cent of the operatives in the New England States were of foreign birth. The races of the "old immigration" were represented by 37.8 per cent, and those of the "new immigration" by 30.9 per cent. The latter are mostly recent arrivals. In 1900 the proportion of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe and their American-born children varied from 3.1 per cent in New Hampshire to 13.2 per cent in Massachusetts.2 I The Immigration Commission has obtained from one of the largest and oldest mill corporations figures showing the movement of wages since 1875.3 The movement may be divided into two periods: (1) from 1875 to 1898 and (2) from 1899 to 1908. The first period, when the cotton-mill operatives were practically all English-speaking, was one of intermittent advances and reductions; on the whole wages remained stationary. The second period, which is marked by the advent of the Southern and Eastern Europeans into the cotton mills, is conspicuous by an uninterrupted upward movement of wages, which was checked only by the crisis of 1908. Still, even after the reduction * Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 10, Table 7, pp. 14-15. Ibid., Table 19, p. 36. 3 Ibid., p. 291. made on March 30, 1908, wages remained 15 per cent above the level of 1898. To be sure, the first period was one of falling prices, which enabled the cotton-mill operatives to maintain their usual standard of living notwithstanding the reductions in wages, whereas, on the other hand, the second period was one of rapidly rising prices which offset the increase in wages. It is therefore possible that the operatives were not better off during the later period of rising wages than during the earlier period. Still, assuming that every cut in wages merely restored the previous relation between earnings and the cost of living, it is plain that these reductions must have caused dissatisfaction among the wage-earners. However, the operatives of the New England cotton mills, all of them of Teutonic and Celtic stock, acquiesced in these reductions. On the other hand, though the advances in 1899-1907 may have been nullified by the rising cost of living, each increase in wages was nevertheless the outcome of successful bargaining by the operatives for better terms of employment. Still the question is whether the industrial expansion of the period from 1899 to 1907 might not have enabled the operatives to win more substantial advances had there been no immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe. The only method by which such results could have been accomplished was organization. The more recent immigrant employees from Southern and Eastern Europe and Asia, however, [says the Immigration Commission in its summary volume], have been a constant menace to the labor organizations, and have been directly and indirectly instrumental in weakening the unions and threatening their disruption. The divergence in language and the high degree of illiteracy and ignorance among the recent operatives have made their work of organization among them very difficult and expensive.1 This conclusion is at variance with the facts recited in the special report of the Commission on "Cotton goods manufacturing in the North Atlantic States": • Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 1, p. 537. "Fall River, Mass., is the only distinctly trade-union locality in New England," yet there, as elsewhere, the unions are confined to the skilled occupations, whereas the recent immigrants upon entering the cotton mills "take up unskilled work. . . . Many of them never advance beyond the unskilled work. These occupations are not organized, and the coming of the foreigner there does not concern the textile unions." In Cohoes, N. Y., likewise, "the unions manifest little interest in the immigrant employees until they have advanced to the occupations controlled by the labor organizations." It is evident that "their work of organization" among the unskilled immigrants could have been neither "difficult" nor "expensive." With regard to skilled occupations the Immigration Commission has reached two diametrically opposite conclusions. In the abstract of the reports on immigrants in manufacturing and mining it maintains that the advancement in large numbers of the Southern and Eastern Europeans to weaving, spinning, beaming, and similar occupations has tended to bring them into more direct competition with the Americans and older immigrant employees, and to destroy the advantage which the latter class, who control and direct the unions, formerly possessed.3 In the special report on cotton goods manufacturing the Commission says, on the contrary, that at no time has there been a sharp competition between unionized laborers on the one hand, and unorganized immigrant laborers in large numbers on the other.4 The latter conclusion is supported by the following statements: The textile occupations themselves, which are unionized, are protected, by the long time required to attain proficiency, from any sudden or immediate competition of unorganized foreigners. . . . Automatic or improved machinery might change this situation, and the coming of * Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 10, pp. 123, 124. 2 • Ibid., p. 123. Ibid., vol. I, p. 538. ▲ Ibid., vol. 10, p. 124. |