favored kinsmen, the Bohemians and Moravians. Considering that the native Americans and the members of the races which contributed most largely to the earlier immigration are, as a rule, engaged in higher occupations, where they are for the most part segregated from the recent immigrants, it is clear that the latter could not be an obstacle in the way of organization among the skilled men; and that they' have not been an obstacle is shown by the fact that the recent immigrants themselves furnish a higher percentage of organized workmen.

As usual, when the facts do not fit its theory, the Commission seeks to qualify the plain language of the figures:

These figures must not, however, be taken as representative of racial tendencies except in a few cases, for the reason that the information shown for one race may be for but one or two industries in which the race is employed and which are so controlled by labor organizations that membership in the labor unions is necessary to secure employment. On the other hand, a race or several races may be employed in an industry or industries in which no labor unions exist. . . . The fact that certain races are most extensively employed in highly unionized localities and industries is indicative of comparatively greater assimilation and progressiveness on the part of the members of such races.'

The Commission thus assumes that affiliation of immi- 1 grants with labor organizations is a sign of their "assimilation," which implies that organization of labor is a native growth, and that the foreigner merely imitates the ways of the native. This view has no foundation in the history of organized labor in the United States. The fact is that the membership of most of the labor organizations has from their inception been very largely foreign-born.

Historians have traced the embryo of labor organization in America to the colonial period. Labor organizations sprang up here and there during the first quarter of the nineteenth century. Between 1825 and 1850 a number of labor conventions were held. But all labor organizations

I

1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 1, p. 419.

1

before the Civil War were ephemeral and soon disintegrated. Their effect upon economic conditions was negligible.1

The depreciation of the currency and the consequent rise of the cost of living during the Civil War stimulated organization among workmen. Still the figures made accessible by the research of Dr. Fite "plainly caution the present generation against exaggerating the importance of the war-time unions; they were numerous and bold in leadership, but they were small in membership and embraced only a small part of the labor world."2

The plan of the X. Census comprised an inquiry into the subject of trade unions in the United States. The statistical data collected were fragmentary. The development of labor organizations up to 1880 is summed up as follows:

"But very few of the unions reported upon, so far as their age could be learned, have had a long existence. The history of unionism in most cases is that an organization is effected under the stress of some difficulty, flourishes for a while, and then dies out, to be brought to life again in case of urgent need."3

Five years later, Col. Richard J. Hinton, a strong labor sympathizer, contrasting the British with the American labor organizations, noted with regret that "in the United States the whole movement has hardly reached the stage of toleration."4

Official inquiries made about the same time in Illinois (1886) and New Jersey (1887) established the fact that the majority of the trade-unionists and Knights of Labor were

'Mass. Report on Statistics of Labor, 1906, "The Incorporation of Trade Unions, Part. III., pp. 131-134. Frank Tracy Carlton. The History and Problems of Organized Labor, p. 41.

Emerson David Fite: Social and Industrial Conditions during the Civil War, pp. 204-205.

3 X. Census, vol. xx. Report on Trade Societies in the United States, p. 3. 4 Richard J. Hinton, "American Labor Organizations, The North American Review, January, 1885, p. 49. An official report for the same year states that "trade unions in America are in their infancy yet." Ninth Annual Report of the Ohio Bureau of Labor Statistics (1885, p. 20).

of foreign birth, whereas the native Americans contributed less than their quota to the membership of labor organizations. This fact had been generally known before from common observation. In the report of the New Jersey Bureau of Statistics of Labor for 1884, immigration was held directly responsible for the organization of labor unions. The writer of an article on "Immigration and the Labor Problem," after stating that native Americans are displaced by laborers "coming from countries in which wages are lower than our standard" and where the standard of living is therefore lower, goes on to say that

to the American laborer of twenty-five or thirty years since, such an occurrence would have been an inconvenience but not altogether a disaster. Failing to obtain the work he wanted at one place or in one trade, he would turn to another and yet another, until he had found something by which he could live. But the foreign-born operative has but little of this cat-like facility of falling upon his feet. He knows but a single trade; often, in the subdivision of mechanical employments, which is almost uniformily prevalent and becoming still more so, only a small fraction of that. Thrown out of his place, he must find another almost precisely similar, or acquire a new training by a slow and painful process, during which he earns little or nothing, and he has in far the greater number of cases nothing laid up. That men should grow desperate and wicked under such circumstances is not surprising. That they should combine in leagues of various kinds; limit the hours of labor, or the amount of work to be done in a given time; refuse to work with apprentices, or men outside of their own associations; strike, and agree not only to remain idle themselves, but to prevent others from working; is the most natural thing in the world."

Thus, as late as 1884, the organization of labor unions was decried in a State report as un-American, the work of foreigners grown "desperate and wicked." Ten years later the Minnesota Bureau of Labor undertook an investigation to disprove that view. It is instructive to contrast the state of public opinion in the early 90's as reflected in the report

'The results of those inquiries are given in the Appendix, Table XXIII. 2 Seventh Annual Report of the New Jersey Bureau of Statistics of Labor and Industries (1884), pp. 289–290.

of the Minnesota Labor Bureau,' with the sentiment of our own day, when a Congressional commission regards unionism as a manifestation of Americanism:

It has been repeatedly charged by a certain class of writers that American trade unions are conspiracies to prevent American boys from acquiring skilled crafts. This charge has been most clearly stated by the Century Magazine, May, 1893. It says: "Under the present conditions of trade instruction and employment in this country the American boy has no rights which organized labor is bound to respect. He is denied instruction as an apprentice, and if he be taught his trade in a trade school he is refused admission to nearly all trade unions and is boycotted if he attempts to work as a non-union man. The questions of his character and skill enter into the matter only to discriminate against him. All the trade unions of the country are controlled by foreigners, who comprise the great body of their members; while they refuse admission to the trained American boy, they admit all foreign applicants with little or no regard to their training or skill. In fact the doors of organized labor in America, which are closed and barred against American boys, swing open wide and free to all foreign-comers. Labor in free America is free to all save sons of Americans." The same magazine, in its issue of July, 1893, says: "They (the trade unions) are afraid of America's independent ideas in their unions, knowing, as they do, that American workmen are not so servile and not so easily led as the more ignorant foreign workmen.

The report of the Minnesota Bureau of Labor then proceeds to disprove, by figures relative to Minnesota labor unions, the statements made in the Century articles. It shows that in the three large cities of the State 62 per cent of males of voting age at the census of 1890 were foreignI born, whereas of the total number of trade unionists who replied to the inquiries of the Bureau, 58.54 per cent were

Fourth Biennial Report of the Minnesota Bureau of Labor (1893-94), p. 175.

The author of a doctor's dissertation, submitted to the University of Chicago at the same time, strongly advocated restriction of immigration, to ward off a "peril" which threatened American labor in “the fact that our trade unions are almost exclusively controlled by foreigners . . . incapable by long oppression in the industrial slavery of Europe to understand or appreciate the true dignity or interests of American labor."-Rena M. Atchison: Un-American Immigration, p. 105.

born in the United States and 41.46 per cent were foreignborn. But a table in the report shows II of the unions with more than 62 per cent of foreign-born members. Those trades were the granite cutters with 70.09, bricklayers with 72.10, tailors with 100, bakers with 100, carpenters with 75.75, stonecutters with 72.75, blacksmiths with 100 per cent of foreign-born members.

The change of public sentiment from 1894, when the "ignorant foreign workmen" were accused of organizing labor unions, to 1910, when the ignorant foreigners were accused of keeping away from labor unions, is symptomatic of the progress of organized labor during the intervening period. In 1894, when the "ignorant foreigners" com-j prised mainly the races of "the old immigration," trade unionism was still weak; after eighteen years of "undesirable immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe, organized labor has gained in numbers and won public recognition.

An idea of the comparative strength of labor organizations in the days of the old and the new immigration can be gained from the distribution of the number of existing unions by the period of their organizations, as shown in Table 98.

Very few of the existing unions were organized prior to 1880. The work of organization has since been proceeding at an increasing rate of speed. During the first decade of the new immigration, 1880-1890, more unions were organized and survived than throughout the whole previous history of the United States. In the next decade, 1890-1900, when immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe first outran "the old immigration," the number of new unions organized in five of the six States (all but Illinois) exceeded the total number of unions which had survived from previous times. But the greatest success rewarded the efforts of union organizers during the first decade of the present century. In Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Minnesota more new unions were organized since 1900 than during the whole ninteenth century. It must be borne in mind that

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