The period of development in coal mining and coke manufacturing was also a period of great expansion in manufacturing industries . . . so that for the intelligent and ambitious American, German, English, Irish, or Scotch employee there were abundant opportunities to secure more pleasant or better paid work in shops and factories near home.' Moreover, the growth of mining communities has created business opportunities for alert Americans and Englishspeaking immigrants. An illustration is furnished by the Borough of South Fork, Cambria County, Pennsylvania, alias "Representative Community B," where "the Englishspeaking races scem to leave the mines as soon as they accumulate earnings and to enter mercantile pursuits or seek more remunerative or more pleasant work of other kinds. The greater number of the business and professional men in the town were formerly mine workers."3 The Immigration Commission believes that this advancement is "probably without direct connection with recent immigration." This is, however, a mistaken view. "Bituminous coal is practically the only product of the locality." It is owing only to "the opening of the new mines and the extension of the old ones" that the popu lation of the "representative community" has grown from 1295 in 1890 to 2635 in 1900 and to 4592 in 1910. Two thirds of this increase were due to immigration, not counting the native-born children of immigrants. And it is ob I Reports of the Immigration Commission, p. 335. The quotation relates to Pennsylvania, but the same is true of the United States in general. 2 The description of that community contains nothing of a confidential nature that would warrant the withholding of its name from the public in an official report. Moreover, the disguise is too thin to be effective: there is only one incorporated place in the State of Pennsylvania that had a population of 2635 in 1900 (XIII. Census: Population by Countries and Minor Civil Divisions, 1910, 1900, 1890, p. 471). 3 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 6, p. 563. See also P. 426. s Ibid., p. 532. + Ibid., p. 563. 6 Ibid., p. 563. 7 In 1900 the total number of foreign-born in the borough was 587; in 1908 it was estimated at 1900.-Ibid., p. 533. viously the increase of the population of the borough that has made room for more professional and business men. Speaking generally, the "employees displaced as miners" could not "have gone into manufacturing plants and shops into street railways and trolley service, or into business for themselves,"1 had not the recent immigrants furnished the labor to do the disagreeable and dangerous work in the manufacturing plants and mines and the passengers to ride on the trolley cars. "The displaced employees did not better their economic condition," however, in the Middle West-says the Immigration Commission. The "subsequent history of the old employees" in that section is recited as follows: No extensive data are available as to the subsequent history of the pioneer miners in the Middle West who were displaced by the recent immigrant. It is well known, and has already been pointed out, that many of them advanced in the industrial scale, becoming foremen and attaining other responsible positions. It has also been mentioned that a large number abandoned the occupation of miner for positions as day or shift men. Many also migrated and located in other sections of the Middle West where hand mining continued to be followed, and many also moved to other coal-fields, principally to Kansas and Oklahoma, in the Southwest. The reports from several communities also show that many of the former miners who left the industry entirely . . . entered mercantile, clerical, mechanical, and other lines of work. The reports further unite in the statement, however, that the displaced employees did not better their economic condition." There are irreconcilable contradictions in this “history." It seems inconceivable that those of the "displaced" pick miners who "advanced in the industrial scale, becoming foremen and attaining other responsible positions" (there are alleged to have been "many of them"), "did not better their economic condition." It is contrary to common experience that the “displaced" miners "who left the industry" to enter mercantile or mechanical lines of work should not be earning more as business men or mechanics I Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 6, p. 426, than they had been earning with pick and shovel inside of a coal mine. The "data . . as to the subsequent history of the pioneer miners" are admittedly scarce. The loose "statement" of the anonymous "reports" is clearly sheer hearsay, which deserves no place in an official report. The Immigration Commission attaches undue importance to the social prejudice against "a Hunkey's job," which it considers "one of the strongest forces toward the displacement of the older employees either from the industry or from certain occupations within the industry." The Commission mistakes here cause for effect. The contempt for "a Hunkey's job" did not exist so long as the bulk of the English-speaking operatives were employed on that grade of work. Yet, then as now, the "tendency" on the part of the native American "to abandon the occupation of coal digging and to enter the better class of positions about the mines" must have been "decidedly marked," whenever an opportunity presented itself. We further learn that "the exodus of former operatives from the industry" was stimulated by "the fact that there were opportunities to secure work which paid as well or better than mining, that this work was often more agreeable and less dangerous. "3 It was only after their elevation (or "displacement," the Commission would have it) from the ranks of coal diggers to the more exalted station of mine bosses and street car conductors that they began to look down upon those who had succeeded them. This caste feeling is far too general in all climes and conditions of life to be classed among the effects of "recent immigration." Still more strained is the argument that the recent immigration "is preventing them [the English-speaking miners] from allowing their children to enter the industry. The prosperous miner educates his children for softerhanded work and they have to move away from Community 2 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 6, p. 426. 3 Ibid., vol. 6, p. 335 A [Shenandoah, Pa.] to find it. The well-to-do storekeeper and the professional man moves away to find a more suitable environment for his growing children." This statement implies that but for the recent immigrant, a prosperous American father, who has the means to educate his son for "softer-handed work," would allow him to do the disagreeable and dangerous work of a coal miner. Could a "well-to-do storekeeper" or a professional man find better opportunities for his son in a coal-mining town like Shenandoah with a population of 25,000, were all the coal miners men of pure Anglo-Saxon blood? The increasing consumption of coal by the expanding American industries which has drawn to our coal mines the great masses of Southern and Eastern European immigrants, has also stimulated the introduction of mining machinery. The tendency of machinery is to replace the skilled miner by the unskilled laborer. The old American, English, Welsh, and Irish miners were pick miners. The introduction of mining machines, though gradual, must have displaced many of them and forced them to seek employment elsewhere. To be sure, the expansion of the coal-mining industry has been so rapid that the displaced pick miners soon found more remunerative employment as machine runners or in supervisory capacities. But this industrial transformation did not proceed without social waste and friction. When a new labor-saving machine is introduced, no provision is made for the men whose labor is to be dispensed with. The time, however short, spent in search of other employment may cause them hardship and anxiety. Meanwhile, they see their places taken by aliens speaking a foreign tongue. The impression is created that it is these unskilled foreigners who have displaced the English-speaking miners. The pick miners, like labor in general, opposed 1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 16, p. 661. Community A is situated in Schuylkill County, Pa., and can be identified by the number of its inhabitants given on p. 663 (XIII. Census: Bulletin on the Population of the United States by Counties and Minor Civil Divisions, p. 462). the introduction of machinery.' It naturally appeared to them that without the recent immigrants who were willing to work at the machines the introduction of mining machinery would have been impossible. These views of the English-speaking miners have found their way into the reports of the Industrial Commission and of the Immigration Commission.3 Mine operators who certainly know the economic advantage of the use of machinery have assumed an apologetic attitude by throwing the blame upon the immigrant, whose lack of "skill" makes the use of machinery imperative.4 The truth is that a team of inexperienced, unskilled Slavs working under one machine runner are more efficient than an equal number of skilled and experienced English-speaking pick miners. The comparative efficiency of pick and machine mining appears from the following calculation based on the report of the Ohio Chief Inspector of Mines for 1909. To every 1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 6, p. 662. 2 Reports of the Industrial Commission, vol. xv., p. xxxiv. 3 "To some extent, the employment of the recent immigrant may have stimulated the use of mining machinery, inasmuch as this machinery renders it possible to employ in large numbers inexperienced and untrained men."-Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 6, pp. 423, 424. Elsewhere, under the significant caption "Deterioration of working conditions and methods caused by employment of recent immigrants," the Commission quotes the opinions of "the miners and union officials," who criticize the operators, "who, to fill abnormal demands for coal, employed inexperienced immigrants in such large numbers that it was impossible to teach them to mine by approved methods. . . . The statement is then made by the old employee that this state of affairs. . . leads to the introduction of machines. "Ibid., p. 670. 4 "The operators claim that, owing to the large percentage of immigrants at work in the mines who are unskilled, they are forced to use machines in order to maintain a good quality of coal, because where no machines are used the recent immigrants 'shoot the coal off the solid' instead of properly undercutting it, and, with excessive charges of powder, they thus produce a much larger percentage of slack coal than is produced when undercutting is done with the machine or by hand,” -Ibid., p. 650. |