in the number of employees. As a result the average tonnage per employee declined 28 per cent. It rose again during the first half of the '80's still remaining 20 per cent

TABLE 126.

NUMBER OF WAGE-EARNERS EMPLOYED IN ANTHRACITE COAL MINES, AND PRODUCTION OF COAL BY FIVE-YEAR PERIODS, 1870-1909.

below the average of 1870-1874. It declined again during the second half of the '80's and remained stationary until 1900. Since that time a marked improvement is noticeable. The annual average per employee in 1900-1904 was higher than in 1880-1884, and in 1905-1909 it came within 7 per cent of the average of 1870-1874. If the comparison is carried back to the first half of the '80's, when the Englishspeaking mine workers were given more days per man than ever since the defeat of the strike of 1875 up to 1900, it appears that in 1905-1909, during the height of Southern and Eastern European immigration, the average mine worker was given 15.5 per cent more work than at the time when the Slav and Italian employees in the anthracite mines were a negligible quantity. This means that the

See Appendix, Table XXVIII.

* Computed from the Report of the United States Geological Survey: The Production of Coal, 1910, pp. 189–190.

recent immigrant labor supply has been smaller in proportion to the demand for labor in coal mines than the supply of mine workers from Northern and Western Europe thirty years ago.

As stated above, the reports of the Immigration Commission for every district concur in that the native labor supply was inadequate for the operation of the mines from the very beginning, that the supply of immigrants from the British Isles and Germany soon also proved insufficient, and that the mine operators from remoter districts were bidding in the Eastern labor market for immigrants of every nationality willing to work in the Western mines. If it is true that the demand for labor exceeded the available supply, it necessarily follows that wages must have risen. That such has been the fact is not denied by the Immigration Commission. It seeks, however, to qualify it in accordance with its preconceived ideas about the immigrant. We are told that in Pennsylvania "the companies were not compelled as a result of agitation or protest to increase wages . . . in order to hold the native and former workmen, since they were able to fill their places . . . with recent immigrants who were content with the wages. . . which prevailed in the bituminous regions. It is true that wages have risen in the industry, but as a rule only to meet the competition of other industries which use unskilled labor."

Thus "the companies were not compelled. . . to increase wages," because the recent immigrants "were content" with the prevailing wages, and yet somehow "wages have risen." It might be inferred that the companies voluntarily increased wages though the recent immigrants did not ask for it, were it not for the concluding statement that the raise was made "to meet the competition of other industries which use unskilled labor." Apparently then in those "other industries" wages were also raised, and the recent immigrants, though "content" with lower

I

Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 8, p. 424.

wages in coal mines, were equally content to quit the mines and accept higher wages in other industries. The most important of those industries in Pennsylvania is the iron and steel industry, in which most of the unskilled laborers are also recent immigrants. So it would seem that in order to hold these new employees the iron and steel companies were compelled to increase wages, and the coal companies in order to hold their own recent immigrants had to follow suit.

An index of the increase in the earnings of the Pennsylvania coal miners since the beginning of the "new immigration" is furnished by the average annual wages per employee in the anthracite coal mines at the XI. and XIII. Censuses; the annual wage expenditures of the mine operators per wage-earner increased from $310 in 1889 to $547 in 1909, i. e., 76 per cent.

I

In the unionized bituminous coal mines of the Pittsburgh district the scale is agreed upon at joint conferences held biennially since 1898 between the operators and the United Mine Workers. This is the period of the great influx of Southern and Eastern Europeans into the coal mines of the Pittsburgh district. Table 127 shows substantial increases in the scale for undercutting by machine and day-occupations, in which English-speaking mine workers are employed, as well as for loading which is the work of Southern and Eastern Europeans, and for pick mining, at which men of all races are employed. In other words, the Southern and Eastern Europeans have had the same measure of success in bargaining for wages as the English-speaking employees.

While wages have increased, the hours of labor have been reduced from ten to eight. Moreover, "many kinds of work, such as entry cutting, room turning, removing clay, etc., for which formerly nothing was paid, now have a regular scale. This 'dead work,' in a mine employing

Advance information issued by the Director of the Census to the Press, Dec. 1, 1911.

one hundred and fifty men, would add about $1.50 per week to the wages of each of them. It means an addition of about ten per cent to a miner's pay.'

TABLE 127.

UNION SCALE OF WAGES IN BITUMINOUS COAL MINES, 1898-1908.2

The advances in the scale of wages paid to various classes of employees in non-unionized mines of Pennsylvania3 are shown in Table 128, condensed from the report of the Immigration Commission.

Wages for all grades of employment have increased since 1895. The rate of increase for common laborers, who are practically all Southern and Eastern Europeans, is higher than for machine bosses, who are Americans or English-speaking foreigners.

The report of the Immigration Commission contains statistics of average daily earnings for 79,575 mine workers classified by race and nativity. As there is no classification of each racial group by occupation, the elaborate averages 2 Ibid., p. 320.

Leiserson, loc. cit., p. 319.

3 That the mines are non-unionized appears from the fact that they are running on a ten-hour basis.

TABLE 128.

WAGE SCALE OF EMPLOYEES IN THE COAL MINES OF ONE STEEL COMPANY IN PENNSYLVANIA, 1895–1908.1

and per 1000 ratios computed from "80 or more males reporting," are of no value for comparative purposes. The fact that the Mexican earns $2.44 per day, whereas the American of native parentage earns only $2.31,2 does not mean that the Mexican has a higher standard of living and therefore "insists" upon a higher wage, whereas the American, with his lower standard of living, is "content" to accept a lower wage. The higher average of the Mexican is simply the result of a different distribution of the Mexicans by locality and grade of work. A selection of race groups graded according to percentage earning each specified amount per day is presented in Table 129. It clearly

1

1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 8, Table 322. 2 Ibid., vol. 6, p. 50.