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scrutiny. Indeed, if the fact that the older immigrants "demand a higher wage" be sufficient to secure to them an actual increase in weekly earnings, then there is nothing to prevent them from demanding and securing a higher wage, notwithstanding the competition of the recent immigrants. If, on the contrary, the older employees are unable to meet the competition of the recent immigrants, then the increased period of residence could not help them to a "general increase in weekly earnings." The fallacy of the Commission's reasoning is due to the fact that it mistakes cause for effect: higher earnings are not the effect, but the cause, of a higher standard of living. Wages in the labor market are not determined by the amount the worker desires to spend, but by the services he is able to render. It is plain that competition would not permit the clothing manufacturer to pay higher wages to an older employee merely as a reward for long residence, if recent immigrants could be hired to do the same work more cheaply. If the older employees are able to command, not merely to "demand," a higher wage, it is evidently because their services are worth more than the "inexperienced labor" of the newcomers. And it is equally evident that the immigrants who "must have work on landing in New York, and . . find their way to the clothing manufactories," do not compete with the older employees for the higher positions requiring experience.

But it is said that the new immigrants "annually crowd the shops of the city (of New York) in thousands, forcing workers who have preceded them to move up in the scale of occupation or to enter other employment. . . . Some of the displaced workers have opened tailoring or repair shops of their own, others have gone into the shops of custom tailors, and many have entered other lines of work."2 In every-day language, the opening of a shop by a former wage-worker is not called "displacement," but advance

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Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 11, p. 370.

2 Ibid.

ment. Custom tailoring requires a higher grade of skill than the manufacturing of ready-made clothing. If a clothing worker vacates his place in the factory to accept a better position with a custom tailor and the vacancy is filled by a new immigrant, no one in the trade will conceive the change as "displacement" of the older employee by a new hand. There remain only the undefined "other lines of work," into which the incoming thousands are said to have crowded those of their predecessors whom they could not "force" to move up. A sidelight upon this residue is thrown by the narrative of the history of the clothing industry in Baltimore. The first people employed in the clothing shops of that city were

the Germans, who entered the country in large numbers immediately after the Civil War. Since that time the Russian Hebrews, Lithuanians, Poles, Italians, and Bohemians have settled in the city and found employment in the clothing shops, displacing the Germans in the unskilled occupations, and forcing them up into higher work. It is also noticed that, as the Russian Hebrews and Poles work up into the skilled occupations, the Germans leave the industry and enter new fields. This displacement seems to be self-displacement, as there is work for all-more work than there are laborers-but the Germans are progressive, and as the new races have engaged in the clothing industry they have risen in the scale of occupations, and in many instances have left the industry and found employment in other skilled trades.'

Thus we learn that, at least in Baltimore, those who have left the industry have "found employment in other skilled trades," and that the "displacement" is therefore "selfdisplacement"; in other words, no displacement at all. Expressed in more exact language, the report of the Commission shows that the clothing industry of Baltimore has grown more rapidly than the supply of labor. The expansion of the industry created new positions for skilled workers; these positions were filled first by Germans, next by Russian Hebrews and Poles. This expansion not being confined to the manufacturing of clothing, other indus

I

Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. II, p. 411.

tries offered opportunities of which the Germans availed themselves.

It is reasonable to assume that if there is "more work than there are laborers" in Baltimore, the clothing manufacturers of that city would have sufficient enterprise to import some of the thousands who "crowd the shops" of New York City. The fact is that the expansion of the clothing industry in New York has been a great deal faster than in Baltimore, as appears from Table 110 below. It is therefore quite probable that the relation between the demand for, and supply of, labor in the shops of New York is the same as in Baltimore.

TABLE 110.

COMPARATIVE GROWTH OF THE VALUE OF THE PRODUCTS OF THE CLOTHING INDUSTRY IN NEW YORK AND BALTIMORE, 1890-1905.1

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The statistics of the Immigration Commission do not disclose any tendency on the part of the new immigrant races to accept lower wages than the immigrants of older races. (See Table III on page 370.) The percentage of recent German immigrants earning $15 a week or over is much less than the percentage of Hebrews and Russians and about the same as the percentage of Italians with the same average earnings. On the opposite end, the percentage of Germans earning less than $10 a week within the first five years of their residence in the United States is somewhat greater than that of Hebrews, Russians, Poles, and

' Census Reports, Manufactures, 1905, Part I, Table CLXVIII., p. ccxxxiii.

Bohemians. These figures show that the "new immigration" does not underbid the immigrants of the older races. On the other hand, the variation in the earnings of representatives of each race indicates that the rate of wages is not determined by racial factors, but depends upon the personal qualifications and opportunities of individual workers.

TABLE III.

CLOTHING

PER CENT DISTRIBUTION OF FOREIGN-BORN ADULT MALE WORKERS, 18 YEARS OF AGE AND OVER, RESIDING IN THE UNITED STATES LESS THAN FIVE YEARS, BY RACE AND WEEKLY EARNINGS.'

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The Immigration Commission speaks in general terms of the "availability of cheap woman and child labor of the immigrant households" for locating "men's and women's clothing manufacturing establishments" in certain districts "developed in connection with some of the principal industries of the country." But the statistics of the Commission show that the earnings of recent immigrant women and children in the clothing industry are higher than those of native Americans. Thus, adult Russian Hebrew women averaged $8.09 per week, Polish women, $8.07, North Italian women, $7.54, whereas native women of native American parentage earned only $7.41 per week. The majority of Polish women (55.4 per cent) earned more than $7.50 per

• Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 11, p. 301, Table 35. 2 Ibid., vol. 1, p. 541.

week, while the majority of American women of native parentage (57.2 per cent) earned less than that amount. The same is true of girls between the ages of 14 and 18. Russian Hebrew girls earned on an average $6.13 per week, other Hebrew girls $6.24, South Italian girls $5.56, Polish girls $5.25, whereas native American girls of native parentage made only $5.02 per week. Nearly one half (45.9 per cent) of the latter earned less than $5 while only a little over one fourth (27.4 per cent) of the Russian Hebrew girls earned less than that amount.2

This

Confronted with these facts, Professors Jenks and Lauck seek to explain them by the assumption that "the lower earnings of the American women" are due "to their inability and disinclination to work such long hours as the foreign-born females in the case of certain piece-rate occupations, as, for example, the clothing industry." explanation, however, is purely a matter of conjecture, since the Immigration Commission has made no inquiries regarding hours of labor in the clothing industry. As shown above, the hours were long in the factories and sweatshops when the women workers were all Americans, and were reduced with the coming of immigrants. The inquiry of the Industrial Commission concerning the hours of labor in the clothing industry in Pennsylvania brought out the fact that the working hours averaged ten per day alike in the city shops where the employees were Jews and Italians, and in country shops, where none but Americans were employed. 4

The investigations of the Industrial Commission also disclosed the fact that in the beginning of the twentieth century, as half a century before, the American country workers were willing to work for lower wages than the immigrants in the cities.

In the country districts of Pennsylvania the garment workers are Americans, some of whom can be further distinguished as "Pennsyl

1 Reports of the Immigration Commission. vol. 11, p. 293, Table 26. 2 Ibid., p. 298, Table 32. 3 Jenks and Lauck, loc. cit., p. 143.

4 Report of the Industrial Commission, vol. xv., p. 725.

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