I were physical acts, not metaphors. When the term "racial displacement" is applied to immigration, it suggests the idea of a virtual crowding out of the native American by the alien invader. No doubt, in the shifting of population from East to West, from country to city, the racial composition of many settlements has changed. Within the memory of the present generation the Irish and German colonies of New York City gradually moved out of the sections they had occupied in the 80's and early 90's of the past century and in their places Jewish and Italian colonies grew up. Still the old Irish or German settler of ten or twenty years ago can be located in another section of the great city, and the public is conscious of the fact that he has simply moved from one neighborhood to another which seemed to him more attractive. The population of New York City, however, is large enough to fill several States. Were the same population spread over a hundred cities of about forty thousand inhabitants each and had the German residents of one city gradually moved out of it to others within a radius of twenty-five miles, their places being filled by a new race, the change would be keenly felt by many. The grocer, the butcher, the hotelkeeper, the physician, the lawyer, would be losing patronage. In their minds the change would be reflected as the "displacement" of the old The definition of the word "displacement" given by the Oxford English Dictionary is as follows: Displacement: The act of displacing or fact of being displaced. Removal of a thing by substitution of something else in its place.-1880, Library Universal Knowledge: "The displacement of human labor through machinery." Hydrostatics: The displacing of a liquid by a body immersed in or floating on it. Displace: I. To remove or shift from its place; to put out of the usual place. 2. 3. To oust (something) from its place and occupy it instead. . . settlers by the new-comers. And yet the element of crowding out, even in a metaphorical sense, might be wholly absent. The abandonment of the New England farms may serve as an illustration. No one "displaced" the New England farmer; the population of many a town fell off, but few new settlers, native or foreign-born, came to take the places of those who had gone. The old homesteads were left to decay and their proprietors went West, where they found better opportunities. And now we witness the same movement in Iowa, whose population has decreased since 1900, the farmers being attracted by cheaper lands in Western Canada. Is it not possible that a similar process has been going on in manufacturing, in mining, in railroading? Where there was a wilderness thirty years ago, several new States with a substantial population have grown up. The railroads of the West needed employees, who had to come from the East. From 1879 to 1909, the manufactures of New England and the Middle Atlantic States added one and a half million wage-earners to their personnel, whereas the industrial development of the rest of the country created opportunities for two and one third million new hands, as shown in Table 25 next below. The manufactures in the West and South grew much faster than in the East and drew some of the native workers and earlier immigrants from the older manufacturing States. Still the demand for labor in those States also grew. The places left vacant by the old employees who had gone westward had to be filled by new immigrants. The term "displacement" would be misapplied to such a migration of wage-earners, as much as in the case of the migration of the New England farmer. Let us see what light can be thrown upon this question by the statistics of occupations. The results of the census of 1910 have as yet not been published. According to the latest available figures covering the whole area of the United States, the economic stratification within the principal elements of the white population in 1900 exhibited very characteristic differences, as appears from Table 26. PER CENT DISTRIBUTION OF MALE BREADWINNERS 21 YEARS OF AGE AND OVER, BY NATIVITY AND CLASS OF OCCUPATIONS, 1900.2 The majority of Americans of native parentage, in 1900, were engaged in farming, in business, in the professions, and in all sorts of commercial and clerical pursuits. The majority of the immigrants, on the other hand, were industrial wage-earners. 4 The question is, was this adjustment of native and foreign elements on the scale of occupations attended by actual “racial displacement"? Comparing the numbers 'XII. Census, vol. vii., pp. clxxii-clxxiii.—Manufactures: United States. XIII. Census Bulletin, p. 19. 2 Isaac A. Hourwich, "The Social-Economic Classes of the Population of the United States." The Journal of Political Economy, April, 1911, p. 327. 3 Including farming. 4 Speaking of the immigrants in a "representative" coal-mining community (Shenandoah, Pa.), the Immigration Commission states of persons engaged in each occupation at the censuses of 1900 and 1890, we find a decrease of native breadwinners in the following occupations: TABLE 27. OCCUPATIONS IN WHICH THE NUMBER OF NATIVE-BORN DECREASED, Male: 1890-1900.1 Native-born of native parentage. Decrease (Thousands) Carpenters and joiners... Boot- and shoe-makers and repairers Woodworkers, including cabinet makers and coopers.. Masons.... Boatmen, canalmen, pilots, and sailors. Dairymen... Brick and tile makers. Tailors.. All others. Female: Seamstresses. Tailoresses... Textile mill operatives. Dairywomen. that they "have done practically nothing in the way of initiating new industries. . . . A few small candy and cigar factories and blacksmith shops have been established by foreigners, but these are insignificant in number and size." (Reports, vol. 16, p. 655.) All schools of political economy agree that "initiating new industries" is the function of capital. But the majority of the foreigners are wage-earners. 1 See Appendix, Table X. In all, from 1890 to 1900, 94,000 native breadwinners dropped out of the occupations enumerated in the preceding table. If we were to assume that this figure represents actual displacement (which it does not, as will presently be shown), it would amount to only 2.5 per cent of the total immigration for the decade 1890-1900. At the same time the increase of native white of native parentage in all occupations, exclusive of farming, exceeded two and a half millions. It means that there were twenty-five other opportunities for every position given up by the native breadwinners of the above enumerated classes. The figure 94,000 must not be mistaken, however, for the number of individuals discharged from their former positions. In the first place, an allowance must be made for decrease by death. Taking those occupations which are specified in the statistics of mortality at the XII. Census, we obtain the following comparative ratios: TABLE 28. DECREASE FROM ALL CAUSES, COMPARED WITH LOSS BY DEATH AMONG NATIVE WHITE MALES OF NATIVE PARENTAGE, IN SELECTED 1 XII. Census, Vital Statistics, vol. i., p. ccix. Occupations at the XII. Census, Table 2. Compendium of the XI. Census, Part III: Population, Table 78. |