The same effect is produced by differences in rent. Among iron and steel workers "both the native and foreign households exhibit the smallest proportion having boarders or lodgers in the South." The reason is that rents are considerably lower in the South than in other sections of the country. Of the South Italian iron workers in the Pittsburgh district 70.6 per cent keep boarders and lodgers, whereas in the Birmingham district there are only 3 per cent with boarders and lodgers. Among the Slovaks the percentages are respectively 43.9 and 15.0.2

I

The United States Bureau of Labor has made a comparison of the expenditures for rent per person in 3908 foreign and 7248 native "normal" families, which have no children of working age, nor any boarders or lodgers. The results for the North Atlantic and North Central States compare as follows:

TABLE 75.

AVERAGE ANNUAL RENT PER FAMILY AND PER INDIVIDUAL IN NORMAL FAMILIES, BY NATIVITY, IN NORTHERN STATES. 3

small proportion of married women working for wages who were found in only 5 per cent of all foreign-born households studied by the Immigration Commission.

I

Cottages very similar to, but not so good as those for which the southern mill operatives pay a rent of $3.00 to $3.50 per month, rent in Southwestern Illinois at from $14.00 to $16.00 per month. (Ibid., vol. 9, p. 93.)

a Ibid., vol. 8, p. 105.

H.

3 Eighteenth Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor, Table V., and O., pp. 578, 589, 590. Other sections are omitted from this com

The difference in the amount of rent paid by native and foreign-born wage-earners amounts to fourteen cents a week per family or eight cents a week per person in the North Atlantic States and to eleven cents a week per family or five cents a week per person in the North Central States. This is the extent to which the scrimping on rent enables the average immigrant to underbid the native wage-earner in the labor market. In Table 75 all foreign-born are combined in one group. In Table 76 the foreign-born are distinguished by nationality for the country as a whole.

TABLE 76.

ANNUAL RENT PER FAMILY AND PER INDIVIDUAL IN NORMAL FAMILIES, BY NATIVITY OF HEAD OF FAMILY.'

233

25

Another fundamental fact which has been noted by all students of the housing problem is that the wage-earner must expend more for rent in proportion to his income in a large city than in a small town. 'Whereas the average outlay for rent in the income group $400-$500 in the city is $120 or $125, that in the country as a whole is $86.54." The significance of this difference lies in the fact

parison because the averages for natives in the South may be reduced by the inclusion of negroes.

1 Eighteenth Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor, Table V., J. and P., pp. 581 and 591 respectively.

2 Streightoff: The Standard of Living, p. 12.

that the recent immigrants are mostly concentrated in great cities, where rent is high, while the native American workmen predominate in small towns with low rents. So when the article produced by immigrant labor in a large city must compete in the market with the article produced by native American labor in a small country town, it is not the recent immigrant that is able to underbid the native American workman, but on the contrary the latter is in a position to accept a cheaper wage.'

D. Food

The Immigration Commission has expressed the opinion that "while it [the new immigration] may not have lowered in a marked degree the American standard of living it has introduced a lower standard which has become prevalent in the unskilled industry at large. This conclusion rests solely on the meagre statistics which were collected by the Commission on the subject of housing. The inconclusiveness of these statistics has been shown in the preceding section. The food expenditure which absorbs about two fifths of the workman's income, 3 was not included by the Commission in the regular program of its statistical investigation. Its reports contain but a few budgets picked up here and there in a casual way. It notes, however, “that, generally speaking, the expenditures for meat are considerably higher in the case of the more recent immigrants than in the case of the older immigrant races and the whites native-born of native father."4 By way of illustration

The Industrial Commission found that the average rent paid by a family of a garment worker in the city was $8.95 per month for three rooms, whereas the country garment workers who did not own their houses paid on an average $4.59 for a whole house. (Report of the Industrial Commission, vol. xv., p. 730.) The difference in rent amounted to $4.37 per month, i. e., to $1.00 per week.

2

Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 1, p. 39.

3 Eighteenth Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor, p. 96.

4 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 6, p. 356.

the following items are quoted from some of the published budgets.

A butcher

The Magyar is a great consumer of meat. states that a group of eight Magyar men on an average eat 4 pounds of beef, 5 pounds of pork, 3 pounds of Polish sausage, and 4 pounds of veal, and often in addition, bacon and ham and other cured meats, each day. (Thus on an average, each man eats 2 pounds of meat each day.)

The Bulgarians. Among them bread is the staple article of diet. Each man will consume a three-pound loaf of bread per day. They also use a small quantity of meat each day, usually about a pound per man. (The experts of the Commission consider one pound a day per man "a small quantity." Few boarding houses patronized by university professors serve meat in greater quantities.) The kind of food consumed daily by a Bulgarian couple was about as follows::

Breakfast: Tea, cream, cheese, bread.

Dinner: Bread, some kind of meat or stew.

Supper: Bread, meat stew, or eggs.

Presumably these budgets were published by the Immigration Commission, because they were regarded as representative.

How do these food standards compare with the standard of the native American workingman? We may accept as the official definition of the American food standard the ration fixed by act of Congress for enlisted men on the warships of the American navy. A specimen bill of fare prepared in accordance with the Navy ration prescribed by Congress, is as follows2:

Breakfast: Baked beans, tomato catsup, bread, butter, coffee.

1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 9, pp. 82–96. } 'Frank J. Sheridan: "Italian, Slavic, and Hungarian Unskilled Immigrant Laborers in the United States." Bulletin of the Bureau of Labor, No. 72, p. 466.

Dinner: Roast beef, brown gravy, string beans, sweet potatoes, cottage pudding, vanilla sauce, bread, coffee.

Supper: Cold boiled ham, canned peaches, bread, butter,

tea.

Judged by this official standard, the Hungarian and Bulgarian workmen, with their daily fare of one or two pounds of meat per man, do not appear to have "introduced a lower standard."

Concerning the Italians, material for a comparison of their food expenditure with that of native white Americans is furnished in the Report of the Immigration Commission on iron and steel manufacturing in the South. The Italians whose budgets were reported were all unskilled, earning from $7.50 to $12.50 per week, with the exception of one foreman of unskilled laborers, who was earning $15.00 and had an 18-year-old boy who contributed $7.00 a week to the family income. The Americans were all skilled mechanics with a weekly income of from $18.00 to $25.00, except one carpenter whose wages were $12.00 a week. In Table 77 the food expenditures of these families have been reduced to nutrition units per man per day according to the scale adopted by the United States Department of Agriculture.

Although the budgets secured by the investigation of

TABLE 77.

AVERAGE EXPENDITURE PER MAN PER DAY OF SELECTED FAMILIES OF SOUTH ITALIAN AND NATIVE WHITE WORKERS IN THE IRON

AND STEEL DISTRICT OF THE SOUTH. 2

For an explanation of the method used, see Robert Coit Chapin: The Standard of Living among Workingmen's Families in New York City, pp. 125–126. For details see Appendix, Table XVII.