vidual objections, however, scarcely amount to a "protest." If the English-speaking miners had shown a disposition to "protest" against dangerous working conditions, it certainly must have found some expression in their strikes. We learn that during the twenty-year period from 1881 to 1900, there occurred 2515 strikes in the coal and coke industry, involving 14,575 establishments. Of the latter number there were nine (9) in which strikes were declared against dangerous working conditions. These figures conclusively prove that the American miners made no concerted protest against dangerous working conditions even in the early '80's, when the Southern and Eastern Europeans employed in the mines were but a handful.

To what extent, if at all, individual objections of the "older employees" would have been effective in advancing the introduction of better working conditions, in the absence of Southern and Eastern European immigrant employees, can be judged by a comparison with another extra-hazardous industry, viz., steam railroads, in which the proportion of non-English-speaking employees is very small.2

1 Sixteenth Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor, pp. 352-353, 480-481.—The objects for which these strikes were ordered were as follows:

'According to the census of 1900, the ratio of non-English-speaking workmen employed on the railroads was only 7.5 per cent.—Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. I, pp. 821-829.

There is a marked distinction in this respect between different classes of railroad employees. The trainmen are as a rule, English-speaking, the Slavs, Hungarians, and Italians being employed mainly on construction work. In Diagram XXVIII. are plotted the accident rates per 1000 employees in bituminous and anthracite coal mines and on railroads, for the twenty-year period from 1889 to 1908.1 The accident rate for all railway employees is not much lower than the rate for coal miners. But the fatal accident rate among trainmen is a great deal higher and has been steadily increasing since 1894.

The number of accidents resulting in personal injuries to railroad employees is still greater. In 1891-1909 it varied from one in every thirty-three, to one in every seventeen employees. The ratio of injured trainmen varied during the same period from one in every twelve, to one in eight. It stood at the last figure in 1906-1908 and declined to one in nine during the year 1909. This means that in nine years' service every trainman has a probability of one hundred per cent to sustain personal injuries.

The ratio of native Americans to all railroad employees killed in work accidents, according to available information, was 72 per cent in the Pittsburgh district, and 62.8 per cent in Illinois; the proportion of those who suffered personal injuries in Illinois was 66.6 per cent. The trainmen who run the greatest risk of death, or personal injury, are all English-speaking and cannot be replaced by non-English-speaking immigrants. Strike statistics show that the employees in all industries combined under the head of "transportation" struck for 212 different causes

The figures on which this diagram is based are given in the Appendix, Table XXIX.

2 Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1910, Table 181, p. 284. Eastman, loc. cit., p. 14, Table 3; number of native Americans— 89, out of a total of 123 killed in accidents.

4 Fifteenth Biennial Report of the Bureau of Labor Statistics of Illinois, pp. 161, 251.

in 3436 establishments, but the number of establishments in which strikes were declared against unsafe machinery and other dangers incident to employment was only seven.1

This comparison may be extended to all classes of employment, loss of life and limb being an incident rather than an accident of modern industry. The Sixteenth Annual Report of the United States Commissioner of Labor enumerates 1422 different causes of strikes for the twentyyear period 1891-1900. The total number of establishments which were affected by strikes during that period was 117,509. The number among them where strikes were declared against unsafe machinery and other dangers incident to employment was only eighty-three.

These figures testify that "acquiescence in dangerous and unsanitary working conditions" is the general attitude of organized and unorganized workers in labor disputes. This apparent indifference cannot be explained by the obstruction of the Southern and Eastern Europeans because the majority of the wage-earners as late as 1900 were of native birth.3 It may reasonably be assumed that organized labor does not feel strong enough to enforce demands which would involve large outlays by employers for safe equipment and other improvements. The individual workman realizes that it would be quixotic on his part to "protest" singly against evils which organized labor is powerless to remedy.

2

1 Sixteenth Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor, Table X. pp. 510-513. Ibid., Table XI, pp. 519-541. 3Hourwich, loc. cit.. p. 327, Table VIII.

IT

PART IV

CONCLUSION

CHAPTER XXIII

PROBABLE EFFECTS OF RESTRICTION—A FORECAST

T was recognized by the Immigration Commission that the industrial expansion of the preceding twenty years would have been impossible without "the new immigration." But the Commission held "a slow expansion of industry" preferable to "immigration of laborers of low standards." The Commission accordingly recommended that "a sufficient number be debarred to produce a marked effect upon the present supply of unskilled labor."2

What is "a sufficient number"? A learned advocate of restriction, Prof. Fairchild, referring to the period from December, 1907, to August, 1908, when emigration exceeded immigration by 124,124, finds that "this figure is almost infinitesimal compared to the total mass of the American working people or to the amount of unemployment at a normal time." The net result of the emigration movement of those nine months was tantamount to a prohibition of immigration, yet it had "a very trifling palliative effect." 3

The slowing down of the pace of industrial development must necessarily curtail the opportunities for advancement of the wage-earners who are already here.*

Ibid., p. 47.

1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. I, p. 45. 'Henry Pratt Fairchild: "Immigration and Crises," The American Economic Review, December, 1911, p. 758.

'The skilled crafts whose organizations were urging the adoption of the recommendation of the Commission for the exclusion of unskilled immigrants were apparently willing to swallow the recommendation in favor of legislation that would facilitate the importation of skilled labor under contract. (Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol, i, p. 47.)