Another substitute for immigrant labor was found in the employment of women. The statistics on the subject are scattered in government publications. An illustration is furnished by the Annual Report of the Director-General of Railroads for 1919, from which we learn that in October, 1918, the number of women employed on the railroads had increased, from the entrance of the United States into the war, by about 70,000, which represented an addition of 225 per cent.1

The increased employment of children in industry during the war emergency was still another substitute for immigrant labor. The subject is dealt with in a report of the Children's Bureau, from which the following is condensed:

By the latter part of 1915 the effect of foreign orders for war goods was beginning to make itself felt in the increased employment of children. Beginning with the autumn of 1915 an unprecedented rise began in the number of children entering gainful employment, and heavy increases were practically everywhere recorded for 1916 and 1917, even before the United States entered the war. After the entrance of the United States into the war the number of children taking out employment certificates continued to rise. The forces at work pushing children into industry included the growing cost of the necessities of life combined, in many cases, with the absence on military duty of members of the family who had previously contributed to its support. High wages offered by employers hard pressed for help proved a powerful magnet, drawing into business and industry many children under sixteen who in normal times would have remained in school. In several cities the increase in 1918 was so striking as to arrest attention even in that year of generally large increases. In Washington, D. C., there was an increase of more than 163 per cent in 1917-18 (July ist to June 30th) over 1916-17. In Louisville, Kentucky, there was an increase in 1918 of 52 per cent, following an increase in 1917 of 174 per cent, so that the

cade, 69 per cent took place in the North, although its Negro population in 1920 was only 14 per cent of the total for the United States. In several of the Northern states the rates were extraordinarily large, e.g., in Pennsylvania, 46.7 per cent; in Ohio, 67.1 per cent; in Michigan, 251 per cent; in Illinois, 67.1 per cent.

1 Monthly Labor Review, March, 1920, p. 156

number of children receiving employment certificates was in 1918 over four times as great as in 1916. In Philadelphia an increase of 82 per cent in 1917 was followed by a still further increase of 15 per cent in 1918. It should be kept in mind that the figures here given relate only to children legally certificated, and give no indication of the numbers going to work without complying with the law. Reports from labor commissioners and factory inspectors indicated the difficulty experienced during the war years in adequately administering child-labor laws. Parents and children, tempted by the high wages offered the children at a time when the excessive cost of living presented a serious problem, would connive at evasions of the law in order to have the children work in factories and munitions plants. In Philadelphia violations of the child-labor law were four times as great in 1917 as in 1916. In inspections made by the Children's Bureau of sixty-three shipyards where steel ships were being built, approximately 60 per cent of the children found at work who claimed to be sixteen and were without certificates were actually only fourteen or fifteen years of age. The reply of the Assistant Secretary of the Industrial Commission of Wisconsin to an inquiry sent out in 1918 by the Children's Bureau in regard to this subject pointed out the fact that "The general effect of the war upon the enforcement of the child-labor law has been to increase the difficulty of enforcing the law. The scarcity of adult labor has made the employer more ready to take minors into his employ. Many employers now employ children who have never done so before to any extent."

"1

What is the lesson that can be drawn from the experience gained in the late war? Amidst the present industrial crisis one must not lose sight of the fact that this is but one of the cyclical disturbances of the capitalistic system which will be followed by resumption of "business as usual." There will be profits which will seek investment in new fields. Prior to the war most of that surplus was applied to the expansion of American industry, which created a demand for immigrant labor. If restriction of immigration is to become the permanent policy of the United States, our recent war experience does not warrant the assumption that the resulting scarcity of labor will inure to the benefit of the American wage worker.

1 "Trend of Child Labor in the United States, 1913-1920," by Nettie McGill. Monthly Labor Review, April, 1921, pp. 6–10.

It seems likely that the restriction of immigration of labor from Europe will lead to emigration of American capital to Europe.

That this is not mere speculation, appears from an official report of the Commercial Secretary of the British Embassy in Berlin, who states that arrangements have been in progress between American capitalists and German corporations, looking toward the investment of American capital in German industry. The electrical and textile industries and shipping are mentioned.1

The decline of real wages during the late war is merely a repetition of the story of the Civil War; the cause of it has been stated in a previous chapter. The bargaining power of the wage earner does not extend to the market in which he appears as a consumer. Advances in wages come as a result of the slow process of collective bargaining, involving the use of the cumbersome machinery of arbitration, with occasional resort to industrial warfare, whereas the prices of commodities consumed by the wage earner are controlled by monopolistic combinations, which promptly add every ad

1 General Report on the Industrial and Economic Situation in Germany in December, 1920, p. 6. Presented to Parliament by Command of His Majesty. London, 1921.—In a press dispatch cabled from Paris under date of September 11, 1921, it was reported that an agreement was signed between representatives of a big American syndicate and the Archduke Frederick of Austria and his family, by which the syndicate took over the whole of the Archduke's estates in the dismembered Austrian Empire. These estates include the rich steel works and mines at Teschen, vast forest lands stretching across many miles of several new Central European republics, farms, factories, etc. The value of the property is conservatively estimated at $200,000,000. In the syndicate which is taking the control of this property are mentioned names prominent in American financial circles. The negotiations began in the summer of 1919. An arrangement was made in October, 1919, whereby the Archduke was to transfer his various properties and interests to a corporation which was then organized in Switzerland. The deal involves litigation in the courts of the new republics, and expremier Viviani of France is reported to have been retained as counsel to represent the claims of the Austrian Archduke before the League of Nations.

2 See p. 306.

vance in wages to the market price of the finished product.1 Thus the raise of wages of one group of workers is in effect charged up to the working class as a whole.

The leak is in the control of prices. The government, during the war, assumed the authority to regulate prices, but it delegated this authority to representatives of the interests which were to be regulated. The profiteering which resulted from the methods of price control adopted by the various war agencies, was exposed in a report submitted by the Federal Trade Commission to the Senate in the summer of 1918. The profits assured to the big interests were "enormous . . . far beyond anything that was necessary to keep men in industry and to stimulate their initiative and enterprise." ." What is wanted in order to secure to the worker a real advance in wages, is regulation of profits in the interest of the consumers, of whom the wage earners constitute the most numerous single group.

Restriction of the supply of labor does not touch the problem of price control. Immigration laws can prevent the American capitalist from employing foreign labor in the United States. But with the present rates of exchange he may find it as profitable to employ the same labor in Europe in the manufacture of goods for the world market. The reduction of the supply of labor will be met by a reduction of the demand for labor. Restriction of immigration will merely speed the advance of financial imperialism.

1 "Wage earners, as soon as they could make their economic demands felt, thereupon received wage increases so that they might in a measure cope with the advance in the cost of living. This meant increased labor costs to the producers and middlemen, and they instantly advanced prices again. Almost without exception, these price advances were out of all proportion to the increase in labor costs. This necessitated further wage increases to labor, and we find the vicious circle established, with the profiteers invariably in command of the situation."—"Profiteers," by W. Jett Lauck: The Socialist Review, July, 1920, p. 52.

"Most of the important positions in the Food Administration were entrusted to successful organizers and administrators of private business enterprises."—Litman: loc. tit,, p. 211.

Friday: loc. tit., p. 155.