While the wave of emigration from Great Britain and Ireland to the United States has receded from the highwater mark reached in 1880-1889, yet, eliminating that exceptional decade, we find that during the 20-year period 1890-1909, marked by the influx of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe, the United States received more immigrants from Great Britain and Ireland than during the 20-year period 1860-1879. Another fact that must not be lost sight of is the recent development of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, which has naturally drawn a part of the emigration from Great Britain and Ireland. The policy of restriction adopted in Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa has conferred a special privilege upon immigrants of British nationality. On the other hand, the governments of Canada and Australia are making systematic efforts to induce and assist immigration from the mother country. That the financial assistance offered to immigrants from the United Kingdom has diverted a part of them from the United States is but natural. The decline of Irish immigration began as far back as 1861. It rose again in the 80's, in the turbulent years of the Irish Land League agitation, and once more during the past decade. That the "new immigration" to the United States was not the cause of the decline of Irish immigration is clear from the fact that the emigration movement from Ireland to other countries has also declined, while, on the other hand, of those Irish who did emigrate the proportion destined to the United States was higher during the period of the great influx of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe than in 1876-1890, when immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe was negligible. There have been forces at work to reduce the number of Irish seeking to better their condition away from home. The great Irish unrest of the 80's forced the British Parliament to enact remedial legislation, which gave to the tenant-at-will a legal title to his holding, besides reducing his rent, and converted about one third of the tenants into land proprietors. These The effect of immigration upon the occupational distribution of the industrial wage-earners has been the elevation of the English-speaking workmen to the status of an aristocracy of labor, while the immigrants have been employed to perform the rough work of all industries. Though the introduction of machinery has had the tendency to reduce the relative number of skilled mechanics, yet the rapid pace of industrial expansion has increased the number of skilled and supervisory positions so fast that practically all the Englishspeaking employees have had the opportunity to rise on the scale of occupations. This opportunity, however, was conditioned upon a corresponding increase of the total operating force. It is only because the new immigration has furnished the class of unskilled laborers that the native workmen and older immigrants have been raised to the plane of an aristocracy of labor. Yet, while the number of native American workmen in all industries has increased, it is true that in some occupations there has been an actual decrease of the number of English, Welsh, Irish, and German workers, which has been con-, strued as "displacement" of Americanized workers by immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe with a lower standard of living. This interpretation overlooks the fact that native workers of native parentage, presumably with as high a standard of living as the Irish, are found in the same occupations in larger numbers than formerly. Another fact that contradicts the popular view is the increase of the number of Scotch immigrants in those very occupations which show a decline in the number of English and Irish. Judged by any standard, the Scotch are not inferior to other immigrants from the United Kingdom. The increased employment of the Scotch in the principal occupations, including even common laborers, warrants the conclusion that the decline in the numbers of English and Irish must have been due to other causes than the competition of recent immigrants with lower standards of living. A further fact that must be considered in this connection is that the English, Welsh, and Irish farmers exhibit a greater decrease, both absolute and relative, than any other occupational group among the same nationalities. Evidently no new farmers came to fill the places of their countrymen who were carried off by death, although the aliens from Southern and Eastern Europe kept away from the farming sections and left the field open for English, Welsh, and Irish immigrants. The real explanation of the decrease in the number of immigrants from Northern and Western Europe in the occupations which rank lowest in the social scale is that the earlier immigrants have worked their way upward. Among the breadwinners born in Northern and Western Europe, farmers, business men, professional men, and skilled mechanics outnumber those who are employed in the coarser grades of labor. The latter have been left to immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe. There has been a great deal of speculation to the effect that had immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe been kept out of the United States, the immigrants from Northern and Western Europe would, as of old, have supplied the demand of American industry for unskilled labor. The fallacy of this assumption is apparent from a consideration of the comparative growth of population in the United States and in the countries of Northern and Western Europe, as well as of the economic conditions in those countries. As stated before, immigration in the long run bears a constant relation to the population of the United States. Inasmuch, however, as the latter increases faster than the population of Europe, especially that of the emigration countries, the rate of emigration from those countries must increase much faster than their population in order to supply the American industries with the number of immigrants they can employ. Yet the volume of emigration from any country can not increase beyond a certain limit set b size of its population When that point is reached,! industrial expansion in the United States must dra the labor supply of other countries. In order to replace the immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe that were absorbed by the industrial expansion of the past decade, immigration from Great Britain Germany, and the Scandinavian countries should have risen to the Irish level, whereas Ireland ought to have been depopulated at a greater rate than in the years of the Irish famine. The recent development of these countries, however, has had a doc:dod tendency to check emTINE In the dosing years of the nineteenth century Germany ocused to be a county of enigman and became a country of immigration landstrany naws her immigrant why from the sure sus is the Tited States, it is evsient that the German rigeuner does not stay away from the Chital Stus = rir to escape the competition the get on Southern and Eastern Europe. The Brandyman of Germany from an emigrant-furnishing PATÁR TO JOEP dress the firect result of her ཅན ། ཎ ཎནྟི 1:|:ཀ ནཱ བུཎྞན དུས་སྐོ་ཕྱ་པ་ Te dhe me of the #wan syntipally an agricultural GEEture reached the Art #Are cand and rates made the tradirond se het redable and necessiwala pa 2 FC qs of cultivation. Key #axy V loud de reguste capital for a hd nas freed a spe of his land and to *****retz of Stutes In Prussian Poland the early do's and drove large Cited States But the wing uring the last natural increase of Les man V of farmers and farm laborers to the United States. The increased demand for labor has resulted in a substantial increase of the rates of wages, simultaneously with a marked reduction of the working day. These gains are in no small way due to the progress of organization among German wage-earners, which was practically prohibited prior to 1891. Since that time the membership of labor organizations has advanced by leaps and bounds, leaving behind the older British and American trade-unions. The growth of the labor movement in Germany has directly and indirectly stimulated labor legislation, which has conferred material benefits upon the German wage-earner. Whereas industrial progress in modern times has generally led to the elimination of the independent artisan who has been pushed into the ranks of wage-earners, in Germany this process has been checked by the development of co-operation. The general improvement of the economic conditions of all classes of the working people necessarily affected the rate of emigration for the past twenty years. Yet it is worthy of note that while immigration from Germany to the United States has in recent years been much below the level of the early 80's, the average annual immigration from Germany was much higher during the past decade than during the last decade of the nineteenth century. In other words, German immigration increased with the increase of Italian and Slav immigration to the United States. Coming next to Scandinavian immigration we find that the number of breadwinners coming to compete in the American labor market virtually reached its maximum during the past decade. The only change is that, whereas the earlier Scandinavian immigration was mostly of a family type, among the recent Scandinavian immigrants single persons vastly predominate. This change is due to the fact that the old Scandinavian immigrants came largely to settle on farms, where a family was a help, while the new Scandinavian immigrants, like the new immigration from Southern |