That a "characteristic of the new immigrants is the impossibility of successfully organizing them into labor unions. Several attempts at organization were made, but the constant influx of immigrants to whom prevailing conditions seemed unusually favorable contributed to the failure to organize."

That "the competition of these immigrants . . . has kept conditions in the semi-skilled and unskilled occupations from advancing."

Every one of the preceding conclusions involved a comparison of the present conditions with the past. Still it is only as a rare exception that fragments of statistical information relating to the earlier period of American industrial history can be found in the numerous volumes of the reports of the Immigration Commission. No attempt has been made to utilize the vast statistical material collected by the State bureaus of labor statistics since the establishment of the Massachusetts Bureau in 1869. This is very much to be regretted. There is no other nation in the world that expends so much for the collection of statistical data and so little for their analysis as the United States. An index prepared by the United States Bureau of Labor to the publications of the State labor bureaus up to 1902 fills a volume. The data contained in these publications were collected at great cost during a period of years, but were for the most part published in an undigested form. This defect is the result of the prevailing policy of official statistical institutions to eliminate as far as practicable all interpretations of their statistics in order to escape the suspicion of partisanship. A Congressional commission, however, is free from such limitations, its very purpose being to draw conclusions and make recommendations which are of necessity open to controversy. A perusal of the single volume devoted to immigration in the report of President McKinley's Industrial Commission shows what a storehouse of original data is available at small cost in the files of official publications Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 1, pp. 38, 39.

of States and municipalities. The Immigration Commission with its vastly greater resources had the opportunity to make a contribution of inestimable value to the study of the economic and social conditions of the American people at the period of the greatest migration in the history of the world. Unfortunately the Commission expended all its efforts in search for new material, with the result, as candidly admitted by Prof. H. Parker Willis, "the editorial adviser" in the final preparation of its report, that the thirty-one volumes have added a fresh stock of ill-digested statistics to that previously accumulated.

I

Of what value are the tables showing the rate of unemployment of a limited number of selected families when the censuses of 1890 and 1900 have collected and published such data for all bread-winners in the United States?

The fact that the wage-earners in some industries were unemployed some part of the year covered by the Commission is alone insufficient to support the conclusion that the number of working days has been "curtailed," without a comparison of the number of working days in the same industries for a series of years. "Racial displacement" prominently figures in the tables of contents of every volume and in the subheads of every chapter dealing with the condition in the manufacturing and mining industries, but an inspection of the statistical tables discloses no evidence of actual "displacement.

One example may serve as an illustration. The changes in the population of Birmingham, Alabama, have been the subject of the following commentary:

"With so much actually collected in the way of detailed data, and with but scant time in which to summarize these data, lacking, moreover, a sufficient number of trained writers and statisticians to study the information acquired and to set it down with a due proportion of properly guarded inferences, it is a fact that much of the Commission's information is still undigested, and is presented in a form which affords no more than a foundation for the work of future inquirers."—H. Parker Willis in The Survey of January 7, 1911, p. 571.

It is even more significant, however, that with the exception of the Welsh and Norwegians there was a falling off in numbers from the countries of Great Britain and Northern Europe in 1900 as contrasted with 1890, the increase in the foreign-born population during the ten years 1890-1900 practically all arising from the arrival of races from Southern and Eastern Europe.1

The numbers which have given occasion to the preceding remarks were as follows:

It will be observed that the total "falling off in numbers" amounted to 33 Swedes, 27 Irish, 25 English, 4 Germans, and 1 Scotch—in all, 90 persons in ten years. At the same time the native-born population increased by as many as 12,113 persons, while the total increase "from the arrival of races from Southern and Eastern Europe" was less than 214 persons. Why should the loss of the 90 natives of Great Britain and Northern Europe be interpreted as their displacement by arrivals from Southern and Eastern Europe rather than by native Americans? Moreover, the rate of mortality among those nationalities, except the Swedes, must have reduced their numbers by at least one sixth in ten years, which is more than twice their actual falling-off and suggests that there must have been some increase by immigration from the same sources. So the actual falling-off was confined to the Swedes, who—if all alive—were leaving Birmingham at the rate of three individuals per year. Was the annual loss of three Swedes "significant" enough for a city whose population increased 50 per cent from 1890 to 1900 to be noted as evidence of "racial displacement"?

"The impossibility of successfully organizing" the new immigrants "into labor unions" cannot be proved without * Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 9, p. 159.

statistics of union membership. The Commission has compiled no statistical table showing the growth of labor unions in various trades during the period of recent immigration. The data collected by the Commission as a part of its study of households are too meager and fragmentary to be of any value.

The following table and commentary are a fair specimen of the Commission's trade-union statistics:"

TABLE 233.

AFFILIATION WITH TRADE-UNIONS OF MALES 21 YEARS OF AGE OR OVER WHO ARE WORKING FOR WAGES, BY GENERAL NATIVITY AND RACE

(a) Not computed, owing to small number involved.

The above table discloses the significant fact that an exceedingly small proportion of employees in Kansas City of foreign birth, and none of native birth, are affiliated with labor organizations.

Ibid., vol. 13, p. 300.

The fact that the field agents of the Commission—in a study of households, not of trade-unions—happened to come across three trade-unionists in a city of the size of Kansas City, is considered sufficient to justify the conclusion that "an exceedingly small proportion of employees in Kansas City . . . are affiliated with trade-unions"! Another table brings out the "affiliation with trade-unions" of one South Italian wage-earner among 668 householders duly "classified by nativity and race of individual."

I

When a single trade-unionist in an unorganized mill town is enlarged into an "exhibit by general nativity and race of individual," one cannot help wondering that the economic data of the Commission have been compressed within the small compass of thirty-one volumes.

Coming to the standard of living, it is clearly insufficient to compare the sections inhabited by English-speaking skilled mechanics and their families with the settlements of the unskilled Slav laborers, with a view to showing that the former present a better appearance than the latter. The housing conditions of the new immigrants should be compared with those of the Irish and German unskilled laborers a generation ago, in order to support the conclusion that the former have "introduced a lower standard."

The statistics of earnings classified by race and nativity are spread over hundreds of tables, yet they are vitiated by the absence of a classification by occupations. The only conclusion that can be drawn from these statistics is that the weekly or annual earnings of the new immigrants are, as a rule, lower than those of the native wage-earners or the older immigrants. But when this information is collated with the fact that the new immigrants are mostly employed in unskilled occupations, while the native Americans and foreign-born employees of the older class have risen on the scale

1 Ibid., vol. 8, p. 390, Table 286. A similar table comprising two Polish trade-unionists among 441 heads of households will be found in the same volume on p. 765, Table 515, and another in vol. 11, p. 701, Table 38.