placed the native workmen or the older immigrants. On closer scrutiny, however, this superficial conclusion may prove wholly unwarranted. To take but one illustration, the presence of a few thousand unemployed sailors in Buffalo during the winter months is no proof of an oversupply of sailors during the navigation season or of an overstocked labor market in general. The emigration of all Slav and Italian surface laborers employed during the summer in the iron mines of the Lake Superior region would not create a single job for the unemployed sailors in the winter. On the contrary, the reduction of the working force in the mines during the season which is most favorable for their operation would have the effect of reducing the volume of iron ore carried on the lakes, in consequence of which a number of sailors could be dispensed with in the summer. It is quite obvious that the effects, if any, of immigration upon unemployment cannot be determined by deductive reasoning. The same is true of the standard of living, etc.

In order to bring to light all the facts respecting immigration, a commission was created in 1907 by an act of Congress. The results of the Commission's investigations will next be considered.

CHAPTER II

THE

THE REPORT OF THE IMMIGRATION COMMISSION

HE most valuable contribution of the Immigration Commission to the discussion of immigration is the conclusion that it should be considered "primarily as an economic problem." This statement of the question takes it out of the domain of conflicting, more or less speculative, social theories and permits of its consideration on the solid basis of measurable economic realities.

Of the forty-two volumes of the Commission's report, thirty-one contain primary facts directly or indirectly related to the economic aspects of immigration.2

The Commission has unanimously recommended restriction of immigration, the only dissenting opinion being confined to methods of restriction. There are few people who will go beyond the conclusions of the Commission and undertake the task of examining the evidence, presumably stored up in its voluminous report. The lay public will assume that the unanimous conclusions were reached after mature deliberation over the evidence collected by the Commission. An illuminating sidelight upon the supposed connection between its recommendations and its statistics is thrown by ex-Congressman William S. Bennet's dissenting opinion, which contains the statement that the report of the Commission was finally adopted "within a half hour of the

• Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. I, p. 25.

2 Volumes 3, 4, 6-28, 34, 35, 37, and 40. The remaining portion of the report deals with ethnography, education, legislation, etc., and two of the volumes are summaries of the whole.

time" when, under the law, it had to be filed, which left "no time for the preparation of an elaborate dissent." It is legitimate to question under the circumstances whether the members of the Commission had the opportunity, amidst their manifold duties, to examine the manuscript of the forty volumes, which did not leave the printing office until more than a year after the Commission had ceased to exist. Apparently, they had before them merely the summary submitted for the Commission's approval by its experts. The unanimity of the Commission thus invests its conclusions with no other authority than the scientific weight of the statistical and descriptive reports of its experts. The most important part of the reports, viz. Immigrants in Industries" (vols. 6-25), "was prepared under the direction of the Commission" by one expert, Prof. W. Jett Lauck (of course, with the assistance of a staff of field agents and clerks). The student is, therefore, free to judge the reports of the Commission by the same canons as other official statistical publications. The Commission finds:

That the numbers of recent immigrants "are so great and the influx is so continuous that even with the remarkable expansion of industry during the past few years there has been created an oversupply of unskilled labor, and in some of the industries this is reflected in a curtailed number of working days and a consequent yearly income among the unskilled workers which is very much less than is indicated by the daily wage rates paid."

That the standard of living of "the majority of the employees . . . is so far below that of the native American or older immigrant workman that it is impossible for the latter to successfully compete with them." That "they are content to accept wages and conditions which the native American and immigrants of the older class had come to regard as unsatisfactory . . . and as a result that class of employees was gradually replaced."

That the new immigrants have in some degree "lowered the American standard of living."

American institutions, it will readily occur to the student that one of the standard works on the constitutional history of the United States was written in German by von Holst, an alumnus of a Russian university, and another standard book on the organization of American political parties was written in French by Ostrogorsky, a Russian Jew. The politician who comes in closest personal contact with the mass of citizenship has long since adjusted himself to the conditions created by immigration and finds no difficulty in presenting the issues and the candidates of his party to a mixed constituency in a variety of languages. Moreover, a deeper insight into the social life of the immigrant will discover powerful forces making for social assimilation, in those very institutions which are popularly frowned upon as tending to perpetuate the isolation of the foreigner from American influences. The newspaper printed in a foreign language is virtually a sign of Americanization; the Lithuanian peasant at home had no newspaper in his own language; the demand for a newspaper has grown on American soil. That it apparently serves its purpose, is conceded by prominent advocates of restriction. The theater where the immigrant sees a play produced in his mother tongue is likewise the outgrowth of the democratic spirit of American social life; the theater in Eastern Europe caters only to the upper classes. The numerous foreignspeaking organizations owe their existence to the political freedom of the United States. It is through all these social agencies using his native tongue as a medium of communication, that the immigrant who is not a scholar is enabled to partake of the advantages of American civilization.

I

It is realized by the clear-sighted advocates of restriction that "too much emphasis, in the discussion of immigration, within recent years, has been placed upon the social and political results of recent immigration. The problem at

"So large a number of periodicals are published in various foreign tongues that it is by no means essential that the immigrant read English."-Jenks and Lauck, loc. cit., p. 32.

The

present is really fundamentally an industrial one." reason the appeals for restriction to-day find a more favorable hearing than in the days of the Know-Nothing agita-`` tion, is the growth of organized labor, which demands restriction of immigration as an extension of the protective principle to the home market in which "hands"-the laborer's only commodity-are offered for sale. All doctrinaire theories of a civic character are accepted by organized labor in so far as they may be helpful in its campaign for restriction of immigration. The real attitude of organized labor, however, is candidly stated in the testimony of Mr. Roe, representing the railroad brotherhoods, before the House Committee on Immigration and Naturalization: "Every foreign workman who comes into this country takes the place of some American workingman who wants higher wages and a higher standard of living than the foreigner."2

All opposition to restriction of immigration is viewed with suspicion by organized labor, as emanating from the employing class or from the steamship companies, which are hiding selfish interests under a cloak of humanitarianism. This view overlooks the millions of foreign-born wage-earners who are bound by family ties with millions of workers across the sea and want them to share in the opportunities which this country holds out to the immigrant for bettering his economic and social conditions. Their appeal from the present-day policy of restriction to old American traditions springs from personal affection and friendship.

It must be understood, however, that the United States no longer recognizes the Kantian "ideal demand of the new

1 Ibid., p. 197.

2 H. R. 61st. Congress. Hearings before Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, p. 254.

The claim of the pessimists, that the condition of the immigrant workman in the United States is to-day no better than in his native country (Robert Hunter: Poverty, p. 280), is refuted by the millions, of European workers who come to this country to stay and send for their relatives.