T From Northern and Western Poop The Australian government fur so the land = the mited ionality is States, but the net immigration to the United States also increased. The drop in 1908 affected the net immigration to Canada as much as that to the United States. In 1909 the net immigration to the United States exhibited a greater increase, both absolute and relative, than the net immigra XVI. Net emigration from the United Kingdom by destination, 1895-1909. tion to all British possessions. Obviously, conditions in the United States, notwithstanding immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe, compared favorably with those in other immigration countries. Another factor determining the volume of emigration, that must not be lost sight of, is the improvement of living conditions in Great Britain. In the first place, there has been a decrease in the cost of living. Measuring the cost of living by wholesale prices and taking the Board of Trade index number for 1900 as 100, official estimates put the cost of living in 1878-1887 at 119.5 and in 1898-1907 at 97.8. At the same time the rates of wages have increased.1 An estimate of the course of average real wages in the second half of the nineteenth century is reproduced in the following table: During the decade 1850-1859, when immigration from the British Isles to the United States reached its maximum, relative to population, and the decade 1880-1889, when it reached its numerical maximum, the real wages averaged from 50 to 55 per cent and from 70 to 84 per cent, respectively, of the wages of 1900. The improvement is sufficient to account for the reduction in the rate of emigration from the United Kingdom. H. Ireland Emigration from Ireland to all countries reached its maximum during the decade ended March 31, 1861, and has since declined. The tide rose again during the '80's, in the turbulent years of the Irish Land League agitation, and once more during the past decade, but not as high as the water-mark reached in 1852-1861. The figures are given in Table 67 below. Beveridge, loc. cit., p. 9. 2 Ibid., quoting: A. L. Bowley, National Progress in Wealth and Trade, p. 33. I The number of wage-earners in Swedish factories increased from 202,000 in 1896 to 303,000 in 1907, i. e., at the rate of 50 per cent in eleven years. The growth of Swedish industries far outran the increase of her population. The factories offered employment to an average of 9000 new hands annually, which was approximately equal to the decrease in the annual average emigration from 1881-1890 to 1901-1908. To what extent the wage-earners of Sweden have improved the opportunities of the industrial situation, is shown by the rapid progress of organization of labor and the spread of collective bargaining. The total membership of labor organizations increased from 50,000 in 1900 to 260,000 in 1908. The proportion of organized workers to the total number of industrial wage-earners was estimated at 45 per cent. A highly instructive account of the progress of collective bargaining is given in a Swedish government report, from which the following is condensed.3 2 About one half of the total number of wage-earners were employed in establishments which had adopted the system of collective bargaining. In the coal mines, sugar factories, and potteries collective bargaining was practically the general rule. In trade and transportation nearly all the employees of private telephone companies, about 90 per cent of all employees of electric street railways, and 66 per cent of the employees on private steam railways were working under collective trade agreements. In the building trades about three fourths of the total number and in the factories and hand trades about one half were employed under the same system. The principal industries where collective bargaining has been adopted and the percentage of the total number of wage-earners affected in each of them are given in the following table: 1 Sveriges Officiella Statistik. Fabriker och Handtverk, 1907, p. xxviii. There are no comparable figures prior to 1896. 2 Handwörterbuch der Staatswissenschaften, vol. iv, p. 1211. 3 Kollektivaftal Angåenda Arbets-och-Löneförhållenden i Sverige (Stock. holm, 1910), pp. 246-249. TABLE 63. PER CENT OF WAGE-EARNERS EMPLOYED UNDER THE SYSTEM OF COL. LECTIVE BARGAINING IN THE PRINCIPAL INDUSTRIES OF SWEDEN. In all of these industries [says the official report] it is chiefly the large-scale establishments that have adopted collective bargaining, whereas those establishments, where it is absent, generally belong to the small-scale industry. Whenever a trust or a combine is organized in an industry, collective labor agreements generally comprise a greater number of factories within, than without the combination. A noteworthy feature of these trade agreements is the provision for compensation in cases of work accidents which are not within the law of 1901. Provisions of this character are found in 1313 agreements affecting 67 per cent of the total number of wage-earners coming under the operation of this system. It will not be disputed that the Slav and Italian immigrants to the United States are not responsible for the utilization of the water power supply of the Scandinavian mountain range, with the resulting industrial upheaval which created a lively demand for labor in Sweden. That nevertheless the immigration of unskilled laborers from Sweden to the United States continues and grows, is the best evidence that many of them consider the opportunities in the United States superior to those which are open to them at home. G. The United Kingdom Emigrants from the British Isles enjoy a great advantage |