Obviously he thinks that that question can be answered by intuition, without a comparative study of the actual rates of wages. Economists have not agreed, however, upon the premises from which the legislators could readily deduce an answer satisfactory to Dr. Foerster. Prof. Commons, who made a study of immigration for President McKinley's Industrial Commission, reached the conclusion that immigrants come in response to demand for labor, which is dependent upon industrial expansion, and that when the expansion of industry is strong, "there is no overcrowding of the labor market" and "the new labor as well as the existing labor may secure advances in wages" (see pp. 114, 302). In order to answer Dr. Foerster's hypothetical question, the legislators must therefore first ascertain the following facts:

(1) Is American industry expanding fast enough to create a demand for immigrant labor or, on the contrary, is there an overcrowding of the labor market?

(2) Has immigrant labor, as well as native labor, actually secured advances in wages, or has immigration retarded the advance of wages?

Answers to these questions imply that very "historical comparison" which is spurned by Dr. Foerster (p. 657). He claims that the Immigration Commission attempted to study the movement of wages in connection with immigration, and indulges in the following speculation:

If wages declined as immigrants entered a field and underbid the workers, that would presumably prove that immigration lowers wages" (p. 658).

This hypothesis merely proves that Dr. Foerster speaks of the reports of the Immigration Commission without having familiarized himself with them. The Commission never attempted a historical study of wages, nor has it proved Dr. Foerster's hypothesis. The burden of proof is obviously on the restrictionist, who contends that contemporary immigration is responsible for low wages. The author's task has been purely negative, to show the lack of evidence to support

the contentions of the restrictionists. How was he to go about it? We are taught by Dr. Foerster that "wherever wages change we must note what else characteristically changes" (p. 670). In conformity with this rule, the author compared the wages of immigrant and native railway men for a number of years. Census statistics of wages in manufactures were compared by states in parallel columns with percentages of foreign-born. If wages declined as immigrants entered a field, states with a large percentage of immigrants would show lower average earnings than those with a smaller percentage of immigrants. Likewise, the movement of wages of railway employees for a period of years would show a greater advance in those occupations in which native Americans predominate than in those in which immigrants are employed. This is, however, not the

case.

Both reviewers find fault with the author for making comparisons of money wages "without reference to the relative cost of living." That the author is fully aware of this factor the reader can see from the following sentence, appearing on p. 294: "A rise or a fall in money wages is no indication of an increase or decrease of the resources of the wage-earners, unless coupled with comparative statistics of the cost of living." But when the movement of wages is compared by occupations for a number of years, the change in the cost of living affects all workers alike and may, therefore, be eliminated. The defects of our statistics of the cost of living do not permit of a thoroughgoing comparison of real wages over different sections of the country. But, relying upon Dr. Nearing's conclusion in his Wages in the United States, "that average wages are rather constant for a given industry from state to state," we may properly infer that the cost of living must likewise vary but little from state to state. From such data as are available, it does not appear that immigration has had a depressing effect upon real wages. In the woolen mills, "since the immigrants from southern and Eastern Europe and Asiatic Turkey have begun to enter

the unskilled occupations in large numbers, the percentage of increase in the wages of unskilled operatives has been greater than the percentage of increase in the rates of skilled workers, who are practically all of the English-speaking races" (p. 390). Mr. Fitch, in his study of the steel workers for the Pittsburgh Survey, has brought out the fact that the wages of the unskilled immigrants have kept pace with the cost of living, whereas the wages of the skilled native workers have been reduced (see pp. 404-409). Comparisons of the standard of living of the workers at different periods beginning with 1800 show a decided improvement of the condition of labor, going parallel with immigration (see pp. 295-297). This was, of course, due to the industrial progress of the country, in which the workers had a share. Fairchild thinks that, with the wonderful development of industry in the United States, the share of the workers should have been larger if it had not been for the influx of immigrants. But this is begging the question.

Prof.

He cites the example of Germany, where the expansion of industry improved the condition of labor, and asks why it has not had the same effect in the United States, the inference being that in the United States the advancement of labor was retarded by immigration. He overlooks, however, the fact that the period of German industrial expansion was also a period of immigration of Polish and Italian workers to Germany. Thus improvement of the condition of labor came along with immigration.

But, cleverly interjects Dr. Foerster, if statistics "really prove that heavy immigration does not hurt the terms of employment of labor, then they also prove that such immigration betters the terms of employment" (p. 662). He assumes that because a certain proposition is true, the converse proposition, too, must be true. Perhaps, however, one must not expect from an economic scholar a familiarity with Euclid's rules of deductive reasoning.

From an economic point of view immigration is merely a movement of labor to the market where there is a demand

for it, precisely as the movement from the country to the city. Immigration to the United States supplied the unskilled labor which was wanted by the rapidly expanding American industries. The expansion of industry created a lively demand for skilled workers, as well as many positions of a supervisory character—these positions were filled by native workers and older immigrants. To this extent immigration indirectly did better their terms of employment. This tendency has been recognized by the experts of the Immigration Commission (see p. 163).

On the other hand, reduction of the supply of labor, instead of raising wages, may react upon the demand for labor. A demonstration was furnished by the "non-essential" industries during the late war. The supply of foreign labor was cut off, shortage of labor necessitated the suspension of building activities, with the result that whereas from 1897 to 1917 relative full-time weekly earnings in the building trades had grown faster than the average for ten leading industries, in 1918 they fell behind the average.1 The aftereffect of the suspension of building operations has been the present housing crisis, which has raised the cost of shelter 58 per cent since the armistice. This is tantamount to a reduction of the real wages of the working class, as a whole, for the benefit of the landlord class.

Deductive reasoning proves as fallacious in relation to the problem of unemployment. Prof. Fairchild rules out all the evidence disproving the hypothesis that immigration is responsible for unemployment. It is wrong to assume, he thinks, that the effects of immigration upon the labor market must manifest themselves immediately; they may be cumulative, and will tell a few years later, during a period of industrial depression. Indeed, inasmuch as over five million immigrants were admitted to the United States within the

1 Douglas and Lamberson, loc. cit., Table IV.

Changes in Cost of Living and Prices. Bureau of Applied Economics. Bulletin No. 6, Addendum, September 25, 1920. (Estimate of the National Industrial Conference Board.)

past ten years, and there are to-day over five million unemployed in this country, is it not self-evident that had those five million aliens been kept out, there would be a job for everybody in this country to-day? Yet on the other hand, Australia, with a total population of five millions to a continent as large as the United States, and without immigration, has also known unemployment on a scale as large in proportion as the state of New York. Prof. Fairchild dismisses this argument "without opinion," to use a legal phrase. The fallacy of his interpretation of cyclical unemployment lies in the ready assumption that unemployment is the result of an excessive supply of labor, whereas, to quote Mr. Beveridge, "it depends upon the nature of the demand for labor, not upon the volume of the whole supply" (see Chapter VI). The advocates of restriction of immigration overlook the fact that parallel with the immigration of labor to the United States prior to the war there was going on an immigration of European capital to the United States. It was estimated that the total amount of European capital invested in permanent securities and loans in the United States was approximately $6,500,000,000. This was equal to about 14 per cent of the total capital invested in American industries (exclusive of agriculture). The foreign-born nonagricultural population constituted about the same percentage of the total non-agricultural population of the United States. In other words, European capital came together

1 George Paish, The Trade Balance of the United States, pp. 174, 175. (Senate Document 579, Sixty-first Congress, 2d Session.)

The wealth invested in mines and quarries, factory land and improvements, manufacturing machinery, products of mining and manufacturing in stock, steam railroads, canals and shipping, telegraphs, telephones, street railways, central electric light and power stations, private waterworks, and other business property, was estimated for 1904 at $46,900,000,000.—Wealth, Debt, and Taxation (Bureau of Census), pp. is, 17, 23, 37.

The proportion of foreign-born among the farmers in the United States was 13.2 per cent in 1900 (Occupations at the XII. Census, Table XXXVI., p. cxiii.), i.e., approximately the same as among the population at large.