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Both were partly affected by the crisis. On the other hand, the year 1910 shows an addition of 274,000, i. e. 47 per cent, to the number of immigrants coming to join their relatives, while the number of persons who came in 1908-1910 to join friends, and the number of those who seemingly had neither relatives nor friends in the United States, exhibit only slight fluctuations from year to year. This means that, as soon as conditions improved, the first thought of the older immigrants was of their kin whom they had left behind; friends came next.

The correctness of this interpretation is supported by Table 11, which shows the fluctuations in the number of immigrants whose passage was paid by their American relatives, compared with the number of dependents admitted—in official terminology, "no occupation (including women and children) "— and also the fluctuations in the number of persons whose passage was paid by persons "other than self or relative," i. e. by friends. The fiscal year ending June 30, 1908, included four prosperous months from July to October, 1907. Moreover, many of those who reached the United States later in the year had been provided with steamship tickets before the crisis. Their American relatives and friends must have been saving the money with which their passage was paid, for some months previous to their landing. Steamship tickets are quite commonly sold on small weekly payments. The full effect of the crisis therefore manifested itself during the next fiscal year (beginning July I, 1908), when the number of immigrants who arrived on tickets prepaid by their American relatives dropped twenty per cent. In 1910 their number again came up to the level of 1908. In 1908 the number of such immigrants exceeded by 32,000 the number of dependents coming to join their relatives who had preceded them. Evidently some of the resident aliens had raised the means to send for their brothers, sisters, and

Report of the Commissioner-General of Immigration, 1908, pp. 15, 35; 1909, pp. 23, 46; 1910, pp. 21, 57.

other self-supporting relatives, in addition to the members of their immediate households. In 1909 the number of immigrants assisted by their American relatives was barely equal to the total number of dependents who came to join their husbands and fathers. Apparently while employment was scarce the foreign-born workman could spare no money to send for his more distant relatives. In 1910 improved business conditions again brought to this country quite a number of breadwinners (14,000) whose passage was paid by their American relatives. The number of immigrants assisted by their American friends showed similar fluctuations.

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Another potent agency which regulates immigration is the great number of returning immigrants. As a rule, says the Immigration Commission, they are those who have succeeded. "The money they can show makes a vivid impression. They are dispensers of information and inspiration, and are often willing to follow up the inspiration by loans to prospective emigrants." During the ten-year period 1900-1909, three million people returned to Europe from the United States. (See Table 8 above.)

1

Compared with this army of promoters of immigration,

Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 4, p. 58.

the much blamed steamship agent fades into insignificance. A simple calculation will show that the number of steamship agents is grossly exaggerated by popular imagination. In order to make something by "stimulating immigration," an agent must sell at least one ticket a week; his commission on $37, which is the average cost of passage from Europe, could not be too great at that. A good many tickets are prepaid on this side; yet if every steamship ticket were sold through an agent, the annual emigration of a million persons could barely support twenty thousand agents. This scarcely equals one per cent of the volunteer force of immigration promoters who have returned from America within the past ten years,—with every allowance made for duplications. It is clearly against all sense of proportion to magnify the "propaganda" of a few thousand ticket agents into a contributing cause of this modern Völkenvanderung." The facts brought to light by the investigation of the Immigration Commission in Europe will tend to dissipate this popular delusion. The Commission found that in Greece, which "according to its population furnishes more immigrants to the United States than any other country . . . solicitation by steamship companies probably plays relatively a small part even as a contributory cause of the movement." In Austria "government officials and others interested in the emigration situation expressed the belief that the solicitations of agents had little effect on the emigration movement, which was influenced almost entirely by economic conditions." Unquestionably, steamship agents in all parts of Europe solicit business in competition with one another, but they do it, as Mr. T. V. Powderly has found, "much as insurance agents do. . . . One method adopted is to translate editorials and articles from American newspapers relative to the prosperity of the United States, which articles are distributed among pros

There are some people who similarly believe that the trade-union movement of our days is "stimulated" by the "labor agitators," walking delegates, and business agents of the unions.

pective emigrants." The Immigration Commission learned in Hungary that steamship agents addressed "personal letters to prospective emigrants advising how to leave Hungary without the consent of the government. Letters of this nature were presented to the Commission. Some of them are accompanied by crudely drawn maps indicating the location of all the Hungarian control stations on the Austrian border, and the routes of travel by which such stations can be avoided." It is clear that such letters can appeal only to those who have already made up their minds to emigrate. The immigrant is not as simple-mindea and credulous as he is popularly represented to be. "Several American States have attempted to attract immigrants by the distribution in Europe of literature advertising the attractions of such States. A few States have sent commissioners to various countries for the purpose of inducing immigration, but although some measure of success has attended such efforts, the propaganda has had little effect on the immigration movement as a whole." There appears to be no sound reason why the "editorials and articles from American newspapers relative to the prosperity of the United States," circulated by a steamship agent, should have a greater effect with the European peasant than the literature distributed by an official representative of an American State. The conclusion reached by the Immigration Commission is that "immigration from Europe proceeds according to well-defined individual plans rather than in a haphazard way."3 The Commission qualifies this conclusion by the statement that since "selling steerage tickets to America is the sole or chief occupation of large numbers of persons in Southern and Eastern Europe," and since "these local agents, as a rule, solicit business," they "consequently encourage emigration."4 This argument might be made broader by substituting the principal for the agent: it is the steamship companies that encourage emigration by Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 4, p. 63. 2 Ibid., vol. I, p. 192. 3 Ibid., p. 188.

1

Ibid., vol. 4, p. 62.

making it their business to sell steerage tickets to America, for it is a self-evident truth that should the steamship companies discontinue the sale of steerage tickets, emigration would be discouraged. Inasmuch, however, as the Immigration Commission recognizes the difficulty for the ordinary laborer in Southern and Eastern Europe to raise the price of a steerage ticket, "no matter how strong the desire to emigrate may be," the question is, by what means the local agents encourage the emigration of impecunious laborers who have no relatives or friends in America willing to advance them the price of a ticket. The popular answer is that the "new immigration" is largely "stimulated" by employers of labor masquerading as "friends" of the immigrants. It is believed that "the ends of the earth have been ransacked in the search for the low standards of living combined with patient industriousness."

Representatives of labor speak indiscriminately of all Slav and Italian immigration as "imported," in other words as contract labor. The truth is that the frequency of the practice in recent times has been greatly exaggerated by popular imagination. The investigations of the Immigration Commission, both in the United States and in Europe, failed to disclose any evidence of systematic importation of contract laborers. In the Connellsville coke region of Pennsylvania, old inhabitants remember that as far back as 1882 "some companies had agents in Europe soliciting and encouraging the immigration of Slovaks, Poles, and Bohemians . . . and some immigrants may have been imported as contract laborers."3 Of what little consequence these importations could have been, is clear from the fact that eight years later, at the census of 1890, there were 'John R. Commons: Races and Immigrants in America, p. 152. 'The inquiries made by the Commission in Europe "did not disclose that actual contracts involving promises of employment between employers in the United States and laborers in Europe were responsible for any considerable part of the present emigration movement." Reports, vol. 4 p. 60. No figures or specific cases are cited. See also, further, Chapter XIX. 3 Ibid., vol. 6, p. 257.

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