To imagine that the opposition of the English-speaking miners could have forced the mine operators to waive these savings, is to assume that without Slav and Italian immigration the laws of modern industrial evolution would have been suspended in the United States. Statistics show that machine mining has made great progress in States with a small percentage of Southern and Eastern European coal miners and has been lagging behind in States with a large percentage of Southern and Eastern European coal miners. This fact stands out conspicuously in Diagram XXIII. In 1900, the greatest progress of machine mining was reported from Ohio, while West Virginia was the most backward State, though the proportion of Southern and Eastern European miners in both States was the same. More than four fifths of the machine product of Ohio must have been mined by English-speaking men. The second rank in the order of the percentages of machine-mined coal was held by Kentucky, where the proportion of Southern and Eastern European miners was negligible. In Indiana likewise more than four fifths of all machine-mined coal was produced by English-speaking mine workers. On the other hand, Pennsylvania had four times as many Slavs, Italians, etc., working in coal mines as Ohio, yet machine mining was less advanced in Pennsylvania than in Ohio. In Pennsylvania and Illinois the percentage of machine-mined coal was greater than the percentage of Southern and Eastern European miners. Bearing in mind the greater average production per man where mining is done by machines, it can be clearly seen that a great deal of pick mining in those two States must have been done by Southern and Eastern Europeans. The occupation statistics of the census of 1910 have as yet not See Appendix, Table XXVI. The production of bituminous coal in the States shown in the diagram amounted in 1910 to 80 per cent of the total for the United States, and their aggregate production of machinemined coal for the ten-year period 1900-1909 to 90 per cent of the total output of machine-mined coal in the United States. XXIII. Per cent of bituminous coal mined by machine, 1900 and been published. Still for the purposes of the present comparison a fairly accurate index of the employment of Southern and Eastern Europeans in the mines is furnished by the ratio of each nationality to the total population of the State for 1910. The order of the States, according to the proportion of machine-mined coal, has changed since 1900: Pennsylvania has been outranked by Indiana and Illinois by West Virginia. (It will be observed that in each of these changes the State with the lower proportion of Southern and Eastern Europeans exhibits greater progress of machine mining.) Again, we find Ohio in the lead, while Pennsylvania with twice as many Southern and Eastern Europeans reports a little over one half as much machinemined coal. The second rank according to the progress of machine mining is held by Kentucky, where the proportion of Southern and Eastern Europeans is negligible, whereas Illinois with almost as many Southern and Eastern Europeans in proportion as Pennsylvania is at the bottom of the scale. West Virginia, which had been far behind Pennsylvania in 1900 with regard to the introduction of machinery, in 1910 stood even with Pennsylvania. For these two States we find in the report of the Immigration Commission the percentage of Southern and Eastern Europeans employed in the coal mines in 1908, viz., in Pennsylvania, 64.3 per cent; in West Virginia, 28.9 per cent. The proportion of machine-mined coal was 45 per cent in each State. If the introduction of machinery were stimulated by immigration, it might be expected that the percentage of machine-mined coal in Pennsylvania would be twice as high as in West Virginia. Assuming that in West Virginia all unskilled labor connected with machine mining was done by recent immigrants and negroes, it can be seen at a glance that in the mines of Pennsylvania where the Southern and Eastern This can be clearly seen from a comparison of the three series of percentages of Southern and Eastern Europeans in Table XXVI of the Appendix. Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 6, Tables 140 and 143. Europeans predominate, a large proportion of them must have been employed at pick mining.' There are many factors of a local character, such as railway freights, market conditions, the nature of the coal deposit, etc., which may produce variations in the percentage of machine-mined coal for individual States. A definite tendency, however, becomes apparent if the six States are combined into two groups: (1) Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana, and (2) Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Illinois. In the first group the percentage of machinemined coal for 1910 was higher than in the second group. In 1900, Ohio was in advance of Pennsylvania, while Kentucky and Indiana were in advance of Illinois and West Virginia; taken as a whole, the first group had a larger percentage of machine-mined coal than the second. At the same time the proportion of Southern and Eastern Europeans was larger in the second group, taken as a whole, than in the first. In 1900, as well as in 1910, Pennsylvania had a higher percentage than Ohio, West Virginia, and Illinois. On the whole, then, it seems, the percentage of machinemined coal is higher in that group which has the lower percentage of recent immigrants. This conclusion is in accord with economic conditions: where the supply of labor grows slowly, resort must be had to machinery to satisfy the rapidly growing demand for coal. The proportion of Southern and Eastern European miners employed at machine and pick mining can be calculated as follows: An allowance of 30 per cent must be made for the saving of labor by machinery. Of a team of nine working at a mining machine, one, the runner, is an Englishspeaking miner. Exclusive of the runners, the mining of 45 per cent of the output required the services of (8) 45 (0.70) = 28 per cent of all mine workers. The proportion of Southern and Eastern Europeans being 65 per cent of the total employed, there was a surplus of 37 per cent equal to 37 ÷ 65 = 57 per cent of all Southern and Eastern Europeans, for whom there was no place at machine mining. In this calculation no account is taken of the English-speaking semi-skilled men employed at machine mining. If an allowance be made for them, the percentage of Southern and Eastern Europeans who could not have been utilized at machine mining would be still larger. The Immigration Commission states that in every section of the country a period in the development of the coalmining industry was reached when the supply of labor, first, of native Americans, and later of English-speaking immigrants, became inadequate "to satisfy the demand and recourse was necessarily had by the mining operators to immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe. Without the employment of mine workers drawn from this class of immigrants, the growth in the bituminous mining industry would have been impossible." At the same time the Immigration Commission believes that one of the effects of recent immigration, "which seems to be well established, is the decrease of the average number of working days annually available to the older employee." The inconsistency of the two statements has apparently escaped the attention of the Commission. The evidence by which the last-quoted statement is "established" is not given in the report of the Commission, beyond the bare "allegation" of "the older miners" of Illinois that "even under normal industrial conditions there are two miners for every place that offers steady work for one miner."‡ The fact is, as noted by the Commission, that coal mining is a seasonal trade. The demand is greatest in the fall and winter, and declines with warm weather. The mine operators run their mines in accordance with market conditions, as can be seen from Diagram XXIV.4 In this 1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 6, p. 423. See also pp. 23, 24, 260, 661; vol. 7. pp. 216-217; in the South "the demand for labor has outgrown the supply"; vol. 16, pp. 592, 655. 3 Ibid., vol. 6, pp. 97, 668. 2 Ibid., vol. 6, p. 668. 4 Based on Thirteenth Annual Coal Report, Illinois, 1911, pp. 54-55. The Commission quotes, in the same connection (vol vi., p. 669), "the conviction on the part of natives that a preference is shown for the immigrants in the distribution of work." If the statistics of the Immigration Commission may be trusted, they disprove this conviction on the part of the natives. The figures which are given in Table 343 (p. 649) of the same volume, relate to the Middle West, where that "conviction" is said to prevail. The native and Southern and Eastern |