1 past would have raised the native wage-earner's standard of living to that of the middle class, it does not follow that the natural increase among the native-born would have sufficed to supply the needs of the rapidly expanding industries of the United States. There was clearly no other source from which American industry could have drawn its labor supply than immigration from the countries of Southern and Eastern Europe. Without the immigrants from those countries the recent development of American industry would have been impossible. An invidious distinction is drawn between the old and: the new immigrants by reason of the fact that the bulk of the latter are incapable of any but unskilled work. A comparative statistical study of immigration shows that the old immigrants, like those of the present generation, were mostly unskilled laborers and farm hands. The proportion of skilled mechanics has at no time within the past fifty years been as high as one fourth of all immigrant breadwinners, for the very obvious reason that the demand in the American labor market has been mainly for unskilled laborers. Invention of machinery has had the tendency to reduce the demand for mechanical skill, and most of that demand has been supplied by native Americans. In the industrial army the commissioned and non-commissioned officers are outnumbered by the privates. It is a misconception of modern industrial organization to confuse lack of "skill," i. e., ignorance of a trade, with "low efficiency." If every immigrant were a skilled mechanic, most of them would nevertheless have to accept employment as unskilled laborers. The special skill of the engineer would give him no superiority at loading coal over a common laborer, nor would the ability to read Shakespeare in the vernacular assure higher wages to a mule-driver. The objection to the unskilled immigrant is based upon the belief that because of his lower standard of living he is satisfied with lower wages than the American or the older immigrant. It is therefore taken for granted that the effect of the great tide of immigration in recent years has been to reduce the rate of wages or to prevent it from advancing. The fallacy of this reasoning is due to the attempt to compare the wages and standard of living of the unskilled laborer with those of the skilled mechanic. In order to prove that the new immigrants have introduced a lower standard of living, the latter ought to be compared with the standard of living of unskilled laborers in the past. Housing conditions have been most dwelt upon in the discussion of the standard of living of the immigrant, because they strike the eye of the outsider. Historical studies of housing conditions show, however, that congestion was recognized as a serious evil in New York City as far back as the first half of the nineteenth century. The evil was not confined to the foreign-born population. American-born working-women lived on filthy streets in poorly ventilated houses, crowding in one or two rooms which were used both as dwelling and workshop. No better were the living conditions of the daughters of American farmers in the small mill towns of New England. They lived in company houses, half a dozen in one attic room, without tables, or chairs, or even washstands. Comparative statistics of house tenancy in Boston show that in the middle of the nineteenth century the tenement-house population was as numerous, in proportion, as in our day. The conversion of the old single-family residence into a tenement house, where a whole family was jammed in every room, was productive of filth. The inconvenience suffered by the people of New York City during the recent strike of the street cleaners was but a faint reminder of the normal conditions of the immigrant sections of New York or Boston half a century ago. These conditions are a thing of the past. The typical tene ment house in the Jewish and Italian sections of New York to-day is a decided improvement upon the dwellings of the older immigrant races in the same sections a generation or two ago. On the other hand, in the South, where many of the coal mines are operated without immigrant labor, and native white Americans are employed as unskilled laborers, their homes are primitive and insanitary. It is evident that the cause of bad housing conditions is not racial, but economic. Congestion in great cities is produced by industrial factors over which the immigrants have no control. The fundamental cause of congestion with all its attendant evils is the necessity for the wageworker to live within an accessible distance from his place of work. In mining towns the mine company is usually the landlord, and the mine worker has no choice in the matter of housing accommodations. In so far, however, as housing conditions might affect the rates of wages of native and immigrant workmen, it is the amount of rent, not the equivalent in domestic comfort, that has to be considered. And here it is found that immigrants have to pay the same rent as, and often a higher rent than, native American wageearners. A certain proportion among the immigrants seek to reduce their rent by taking in boarders, but the practice is not universal, and the wages of the others must therefore provide for the payment of normal rent. Moreover, the recent immigrants are mostly concentrated in great cities, where rent is high, while the native American workmen live mostly in small towns with low rents. Nor are the food standards of the recent immigrant inferior to those of native Americans with the same income. Meat, the most expensive article of food, is consumed by the Slav in larger quantities than by native Americans. Rent and food claim by far the greater part of a workman's wages. It is thus apparent that whatever may have been the immigrant's standard of living in his home country, his expenditure in the United States is determined by the prices ruling in the United States. Contrary to common assertion, the living expenses of the native American workman in small cities and rural districts are lower than those of the recent immigrants in the great industrial centers. It is therefore not the recent immigrant that is able to underbid 1 the native American workman, but it is, on the contrary, the latter that is in a position to accept a cheaper wage. There is, of course, a difference between the expenses of a single and of a married workman. The necessary expenses of a single man are lower than those of one who has a family to support, and a large proportion of the recent immigrants are either single or have left their families abroad. But, while an unmarried American workman may either save or spend the difference, the recent immigrant is obliged to save a part of his earnings. He must repay the cost of his own passage; if he has left a family at home, he must save up money to pay for their passage, besides supporting them in the meantime. So when the recent immigrant is seen to deny himself every comfort in order to reduce his personal expenses to a minimum, it is a mistake to assume that he will accept a wage just sufficient to provide for his own subsistence. The Italian section hand who lives on vegetables does not save money for the railroad company. The economic interests of the American wage-earner are therefore not affected by the tendency of the recent immigrant to live as cheaply as possible and to save as much as possible. Whether he spends his wages for rent and dress, or saves his money to buy steamship tickets for his family; whether he invests his savings in a home in the United States or sends them to his parents for improving the home farm, his wants in one case are as urgent as in the other, and he must demand a wage which will enable him to satisfy them. On the other hand, though the standard of living of the native or Americanized wage-earners be higher than that of the new immigrants, this difference is not necessarily indicative of a higher rate of wages: the higher standard is very often maintained with the carnings of the children, whereas the Southern and Eastern European immigrants are mostly young people whose children have not reached working age. The supposed difference in the standard of living can therefore have no effect upon the comparative rates of wages of English-speaking workmen and of recent immigrants. But it is argued that the newly arrived immigrant must have work at once and is therefore glad to accept any terms. The Immigration Commission after a study of the earnings of more than half a million employees in mines and manufactures, has discovered no evidence that immigrants have been hired for less than the prevailing rates of wages. The primary cause which has determined the movement of wages in the United States during the past thirty years has been the introduction of labor-saving machinery. The effect of the substitution of mechanical devices for human skill is the displacement of the skilled mechanic by the unskilled laborer. This tendency has been counteracted in the United States by the expansion of industry: while the ratio of skilled mechanics to the total operating force was decreasing, the increasing scale of operations prevented an actual reduction in numbers. Of course this adjustment did not proceed without friction. While, in the long run, there has been no displacement of skilled mechanics by unskilled laborers in the industrial field as a whole, yet at certain times and places individual skilled mechanics were doubtless dispensed with and had to seek new employment. The unskilled laborers who replaced them were naturally engaged at lower wages. The fact that most of these unskilled laborers were immigrants disguised the substance of the change the substitution of unskilled for skilled labor-and made it appear as the displacement of highlypaid native by cheap immigrant labor. In To prove that immigration has virtually lowered the rates of wages, would require a comparative study of wages paid for the same class of labor in various occupations before and after the great influx of immigration. This, however, has never been attempted by the advocates of restriction. fact, the chaotic state of our wage statistics precludes any but a fragmentary comparison for different periods. In a general way, however, all available data for the period of "the old immigration" agree in that the wages of unskilled laborers, and even of some of the skilled mechanics, did not |