of whom are immigrants from Southern and Eastern | Europe, have been going up.

Another typical immigrant industry is the manufacture of clothing. The clothing industry has become associated in the public mind with the sweating system, and since the employees are, with few exceptions, immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe, the conclusion is readily reached that the root of the sweating system is in the character of the new immigration. Yet the origin of the sweating system preceded the Jewish clothing workers by more than half a century. Throughout the second quarter of the past century native American and Irish women worked in the sweat shops of New York, Boston, and Philadelphia for only board and lodging, or even for board alone, depending upon their families for other necessities, whereas the Jewish factory girls of the present day are at least self-supporting.

In the cotton mills of New England the last quarter of the nineteenth century, when the operatives were practically all of the English-speaking races, was a period of intermittent advances and reductions in wages; on the whole, wages remained stationary. The first years of the present century, up to the crisis of 1908, were marked by the advent of the Southern and Eastern Europeans into the cotton mills, and by an uninterrupted upward movement of wages. The competition of the cheap American labor of the Southern cotton mills, however, tends to keep down the wages of the Southern and Eastern European, Armenian, and Syrian immigrants employed in the New England mills.

As a general rule, the employment of large numbers of recent immigrants has gone together with substantial advances in wages. This correlation between the movements of wages and immigration is not the manifestation of some mysterious racial trait, but the plain working of the law of supply and demand. The employment of a high percentage of immigrants in any section, industry, or occupation, is an indication of an active demand for labor in excess

of the native supply. Absence of immigrants is a sign of a dull labor market.

To be sure, the rise in wages is paralleled by a similar movement of prices. The employer of labor seeks to recoup the advance in wages by advancing the price of his product to the consumer. When the advance in the price of manufactured products becomes general, the wage-earner as a consumer is forced in effect to give up a part or all of his gain in the money rate of wages. The increased cost of living then stimulates further demands for advances in wages. Since combinations of capital in all fields of industry have reduced competition among employers of labor to a minimum, the wage-earners have been at a disadvantage in this continuous bargaining. In general it has been observed by economists that wages, as a rule, do not rise as fast as prices. That this rule holds true irrespective of immigration, is illustrated by the movement of wages and prices during the Civil War. With the exception of the first year, the period was one of prosperity in every branch of industry. The wage-earners were apparently in a favorable situation. The army drew hundreds of thousands of workers from industrial pursuits, while immigration declined. There were at that time no immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe, nor was there any oversupply of unskilled labor. Yet while the depreciation of the currency caused a rapid increase in the cost of living, money wages did not keep pace with prices. In other words, real wages decreased. It must be noted that during the war a lively labor agitation was going on; strikes were usually successful. Withal, labor was unable to win increases in wages commensurate with the increased cost of living.

Among the factors tending to depress the rate of wages child labor holds a prominent place. The most significant fact to be noted concerning the relation between child labor and immigration is the large proportion of children employed in factories in States where there is practically no immigrant population, whereas the lowest per cent is found

in New York, which is overrun by immigrants. The growth of manufacturing industries in the South being restricted by the natural increase of her native population, the manufacturers, in order to extend their operations, must resort to the employment of children, as did their predecessors in New England a century ago, before immigration came to supply the needs of American industry. This situation is by no means confined to the South. Absence of foreign immigration has created a demand for the labor of native American children in the canneries and shoe factories of rural and semi-rural Missouri. The principal inducement for locating new shoe factories in rural sections of Missouri appears to be the availability of the cheap labor of native American women and children, who can underbid the male immigrants employed in the shoe factories of Massachusetts. On the other hand, taking the United States as a whole, we find that during the ten-year period from 1899 to 1909, with its unprecedented immigration, the average number of children employed in factories did not increase, while their relative number decreased.

An unerring measure of the effects of immigration on labor conditions is furnished by the length of the working day. Aside from the benefits of shorter hours for the physical and mental well-being of the wage-earner, every reduction of the hours of labor, even when not accompanied by an increase of the daily or weekly wage, is equivalent to an increase of the hourly wage. Going back to the beginnings of the factory system in the United States, when the operatives were sons and daughters of American farmers, we find that the hours of labor in the factories were from sunrise to sunset, the same as on the farms to-day. The retirement of the native element and their replacement by Irish immigrants was followed by a reduction of the hours of labor in the textile mills. In recent years the mills have been run with a polyglot help made up of representatives of all the races of Southern and Eastern Europe and Asiatic Turkey. Compared with the time when the operatives were mostly.

Irish, the factory workers have again won a reduction of an hour and a quarter a day. One need not take an optimistic view of labor conditions in the Massachusetts textile mills to recognize that fifty-four hours a week is a great stride in advance since the time when the regular working day was from sunrise to sunset.

The effects of the recent immigration upon the length of the working day can be best observed in the State of New York, which is affected by immigration more than any other State in the Union. The first decade of the present century has witnessed the greatest volume of immigration known in the history of the United States, and the bulk of that immigration has come from the countries of Southern and Eastern Europe. And yet the reports of the factory inspectors of the State of New York, covering an average of nearly a million factory employees annually, show for that decade a gradual reduction of the hours of labor in the State of New York. Comparing the city of New York with the remainder of the State, we find that the population of Southern and Eastern European birth in the great city increased during the same period from one sixth to about one fourth of the total population, whereas in the State outside the city of New York the immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe constituted in 1910 only one sixteenth of the total population; yet after a decade of "undesirable immigration" more than two thirds of all factory operatives in New York City work ten hours or less on week days with a half holiday on Saturday, whereas in the remainder of the State, with a working population predominantly native, the majority still work longer hours. The lower wages of the native American wage-earners in small cities and country towns might be explained by the lower cost of living, which permits the native country worker to enjoy a greater measure of comfort than the more highly paid recent immigrant living in a large city. But the longer hours of the native American wage-earner in the country admit of no such explanation.

Among the many charges against the recent immigrants not the least important one is that their ignorant acquiescence in dangerous and unsanitary working conditions is a menace to the safety of the older employees. The Immigration Commission has accepted without criticism the employers' defense in work accidents, viz., that the majority of accidents arise from the negligence, the ignorance, and inexperience of the employees. There is, however, another side to the question. Many experts hold that most of the risks are humanly preventable, and their continuance is due to economic conditions beyond the control of the employee. Effective prevention of accidents in mines presupposes a carefully planned equipment involving considerable expense. But competition forces the mine operator to follow unsafe mining methods, which inevitably result in unneces sary sacrifice of human life. It is not the carelessness of the mine workers, but the carelessness of mine operators and their representatives that is, according to expert opinion, the cause of the high fatality rate in American mines. Similar dangerous conditions once existed in France and Belgium, but they were removed by stringent legislation and by an effective enforcement of the law. The theory which shifts the blame for accidents from the mine operator to the Slav miner tends to prevent the enactment of such legislation in the United States.

In the iron and steel mills there is the same popular disposition to shift the responsibility for accidents to "the ignorant foreigner," whereas expert opinion views the tre mendous speed at which the plants are run as the real cause of danger. The greatest risk of death and personal injury is assumed by railway trainmen, who are all either Americans or natives of Northern and Western Europe. They have strong organizations and could not be replaced by nonEnglish-speaking immigrants. Yet "acquiescence in dangerous and unsanitary working conditions" appears to be the general attitude of organized and unorganized workers alike, irrespective of nationality. Obviously, organized