The foregoing table shows what percentage of the first and second generations of male breadwinners in each nationality were engaged in agriculture.

Naturally the proportions vary widely in different nationalities. More than half the Norwegians are engaged in agriculture; more than two-fifths of the Danes; a little less than two-fifths of the Swiss; more than one-third of the Bohemians, and almost one-third of the Swedes. For the Austrians, Hungarians, Italians, Poles, and Russians the proportions are much smaller, being less than one-tenth in each case.

In all nationalities, however, the proportion engaged in agriculture is larger in the second generation of workers than in the first. The difference is least marked in the case of the Germans, for whom the percentage shows hardly any change, advancing from 27.3 to only 28.6. For the Irish also the gain is not very great, the percentage being 13.6 in the first generation and 16.5 in the second. These two nationalities include more than one-half of the total number of breadwinners of foreign parentage, and therefore, to a large extent, determine the percentages shown by aggregates. If from the totals for foreign-born white and for native white of foreign parentage we subtract the figures for the first and the second generations of Germans and Irish, the remainders will represent approximately the first and second generations of the other foreign races. The result of this segregation is shown in the following tabular statement:

The percentage engaged in agricultural pursuits for foreign races, exclusive of the German and Irish, advances from 20.3 in the first generation to 29.8 in the second. The comparison suggests a rather marked trend toward agriculture on the part of the second generation of foreigners not of Irish or German extraction. But the significance of these figures may easily be misunderstood. The agricultural occupation group is made up mainly of two rather distinct classes the farmer and the farm laborer. Very few farmers are under 25 years of age. But most of the farm laborers are below that age, many of them being hardly more than boys, and not a few being farmers' sons working on the home farm. Some of them, doubtless, will become farmers in later life, but others will adopt other occupations and seek the city.

The following table has been prepared to show how the percentage of farmers or of farm laborers in a given age period in one generation compares with the corresponding percentage for the other generation in the same age period:

TABLE 13.-White male breadwinners of foreign parentage, classified by general nativity and by age periods: Total number, and number and per cent employed as farmers.

In each age period the percentage of farmers is larger in the second generation than in the first. Thus of the male breadwinners between 25 and 34 years in the first generation 8.3 per cent are farmers, but in the same age period of the second generation the percentage of farmers is 14.1. Similarly, in every other age period the percentage of farmers is higher in the second generation than in the first.

As regards the percentage of agricultural laborers, the comparison between the first and second generation, by age periods, is as follows:

TABLE 14.-White male breadwinners of foreign parentage, classified by general nativity and by age periods: Total number, and number and per cent employed as agricultural laborers.

In each age period up to 45 the percentage of agricultural laborers is larger in the second generation than in the first. In the two youngest age periods the difference is very marked. Among boys 10 to 15 years, the percentage is 17.4 for the first generation as compared with 35.6 for the second; among young men 16 to 24 years of age, the percentage in the first generation is 13 and in the second 21.6. Between 45 and 54 the percentage of agricultural laborers is the same in both generations. Above 54 the percentages are higher in the first generation than in the second.

Doubtless many of the boys and young men in the second generation reported as agricultural laborers were the sons of farmers in the first generation, and probably many of them were employed on the home farm, for in the census the older children of farmers working on the home farm were included as agricultural laborers.

It is not possible to analyze the figures for each nationality by age periods so as to determine what the effect of differences in age composition may be as applied to the first and second generation of each nationality. But in considering the total percentages it should be borne in mind that a decrease in the percentage of farmers in the second generation, as compared with the first, may simply be indicative of the comparative youthfulness of the second generation, and that, on the other hand, an increase in the percentage of agricultural aborers is likely to be due in part to the same cause.

FEMALE BREADWINNERS.

The number of female breadwinners in the first generation of foreigners (foreign-born white) in 1900 was 880,415; in the second generation the number was 1,184,046. The distribution of these two generations by nationality is shown by the following table:

TABLE 15.—White female breadwinners of foreign parentage, classified by nationality and general nativity: Number and per cent distribution.

The occupational classification of the first and second generations of female breadwinners in each of seventeen foreign nationality classes is presented for the entire United States in Table B (pp. 830–838).

In the text which follows, the statistics regarding the employment of women and girls of each generation are presented and discussed with reference to the following occupation or occupational groups: Servants and waitresses; the needle trades; textile-mill operatives; clerical pursuits; saleswomen; teachers.

SERVANTS AND WAITRESSES.

Notwithstanding the great increase in the employment of women in commercial and industrial pursuits, domestic service still represents numerically the leading occupation for this sex, as is indicated by the fact that at the census of 1900 the number of women and girls reported as servants far exceeded the number reported in any other occupation and comprised, in fact, nearly one-fourth (24.1 per cent) of the total number reported in all occupations.

Of the immigrant women who were breadwinners, 37.8 per cent, or more than one-third, were servants or waitresses. In the second generation, as represented by the native white women whose parents, one or both, were immigrants, the percentage declines to 21.5 and is not much larger than it is for the native white women whose parents also were natives (18.2).

In the cities of over 50,000 population the percentage of servants and waitresses declines from 38.7 in the first generation of foreigners to 15.2 in the second; and while the total number of female breadwinners in the second generation is about one-fifth larger than it is in the first, the number of servants is less than half as large. In smaller cities and country districts the percentage of servants in the second generation is very much higher, being 28, as compared with a percentage of 36.6 for the first generation. Probably this reflects the fact that the opportunities for employment of women in those industrial and commercial pursuits which divert the second generation from domestic service, are greater in the cities than in the country.

TABLE 16.-Female breadwinners, classified by nationality and general nativity: Total number, and number and per cent employed as servants and waitresses.

• Includes also the few foreign-born white whose parents were natives of the United States.

TABLE 16.-Female breadwinners, classified by nationality and general nativity: Total number, and number and per cent employed as servants and waitresses-Continued.