a typical example of twentieth century myth-building. None of the official investigations of immigration has disclosed any evidence of importation of laborers under contract on a large scale, although prior to the enactment of the law of 1885 excluding contract laborers there was no reason to conceal the fact. It is quite conceivable that in the case of a strike a great corporation might have resorted to the importation of a large force of strikebreakers regardless of cost. As a general rule, however, with hundreds of thousands of immigrants coming to this country annually, it would be a waste of money to "induce” immigration. The few actual violations of the contract labor law that elude the vigilance of the immigration authorities cannot affect the labor market.

The real agents who regulate the immigration movement are the millions of earlier immigrants already in the United States. It is they that advance the cost of passage of a large proportion of the new immigrants. When the outlook for employment is good, they send for their relatives, or encourage their friends to come. When the demand for labor is slack, the foreign-born workman must hold his savings in reserve, to provide for possible loss of employment. At such times no wage-earner will assume the burden of providing for a relative or friend, who might for a long time be unable to secure employment. It is in this way that the business situation in the United States reacts upon the volume of immigration. The fluctuating supply of immigrant labor, like that of any other commodity, may sometimes outrun the demand and at other times lag behind it, yet, if we compare the totals for industrial cycles, comprising years of panic, of depression, and of prosperity, within the past sixty years, we find that the ratio of immigration to population has been well-nigh constant. In the long run immigration adjusts itself to the demand for labor.

This proposition seems to be inconsistent with the presence at all times of a vast number of unemployed. Apparently, there are already more men than jobs in the

United States; every new immigrant, in order to live, must take away the job from some one else who has been here before. On closer study, however, it is found that unemployment is not the effect of an absolute surplus population. It arises, notwithstanding a growing demand for labor, from the fluctuations in the distribution of the demand. The most generally recognized cause of unemployment is seasonal variation of business activity. There are trades dependent largely upon climatic conditions and partly upon social customs. In the period of maximum activity the demand for labor in such trades may often so far exceed the supply as to necessitate overtime work; yet this shortage of labor will not save a portion of the force from idleness at other times of the year. The only class of labor which is capable of shifting from one industry to another in response to variations in demand is unskilled labor. But the localization of industries sets a limit to the mobility of unskilled labor. In order to eliminate unemployment it would be necessary to dovetail the busy and the slack seasons in the various industries upon such a plan as would produce an even distribution of the work of the nation over all seasons of the year. This might be possible if all mines, mills, and transportation lines were operated by one nation-wide trust. So long, however, as production is controlled by many competing employers, each subject to his own vicissitudes of business, insecurity of employment is inevitable. The normal state of every industry is to have a larger force than can ever find employment in it at any one time. The labor reserve is as much a part of the industrial system as the regular force.

Still, the labor market being normally overstocked, it sounds plausible that the immigrant, who is accustomed to a lower standard of living at home than the American workman, will be able to underbid and displace his American competitor. If this view were correct, we should find, in the first place, a higher percentage of unemployment among the native than among the foreign-born breadwinners.

Statistics, however, show that the proportion of unemployment is the same for native and foreign-born wage-earners. The immigrant has no advantage over the native American in securing or retaining employment. In the next place, we should find more unemployment in those sections of the United States where the immigrants are most numerous. In fact, however, the ratio of unemployment in manufactures is the same in the North Atlantic States with a large immigrant population as in the South Atlantic States where the percentage of foreign-born is negligible. Coal miners are thought to have suffered most from immigration. Yet it appears that Pennsylvania, which is among the States with the highest percentages of foreign-born miners, has the second lowest percentage of unemployment. The highest ratio of unemployment, according to the latest published census data, was found in West Virginia, where the percentage of foreignborn miners was next to the lowest. A similar relation between unemployment and the proportion of immigrants is observed among cotton-mill operatives and common laborers: immigrants are not attracted to those States where opportunities for regular employment are less favorable.

Furthermore, if there existed a causal connection between immigration and unemployment, there should have been more unemployment in those years when immigration was greater, and vice versa. The figures show, on the contrary, that there was less unemployment during the first seven years of the present century with immigration at a high tide than during the preceding decade when immigration was at a low ebb.

Still an oversupply of labor may produce a latent form of unemployment which could be described as underemployment: all employees may be kept on the rolls, and yet be idle a part of every week. Again, however, we find that the average number of days of employment per wage-earner increases as immigration increases, and declines as immigration declines.

The relation between immigration and unemployment may thus be summed up in the following propositions: Unemployment and immigration are the effects of economic forces working in opposite directions: those which produce business expansion reduce unemployment and attract immigration; those which produce business depression increase unemployment and reduce immigration.

Yet it may be said that while immigration is not a contributory cause of unemployment, restriction of immigration might nevertheless reduce unemployment. This supposition is negatived by the experience of Australia, where emigration exceeds immigration. Australia is a new country with an area as great as that of the United States, while its population at the census of 1906 was half a million short of the population of New York City at the census of 1910. Yet Australia has as much unemployment as the State of New York, which is teeming with immigrants. It is evident that unemployment is produced by the modern organization of industry even in the absence of immigration.

There is a widespread belief that, although on the whole the United States is in need of immigrant labor, "the new immigration" has a tendency to stagnate in the overpopulated cities, while there is a keen demand for hands in agricultural sections. A retrospective view of the history of immigration shows that this tendency is not peculiar to "the new immigration." For the past ninety years public men and social theorists have sought to relieve unemployment in the cities by directing the current of immigration to the farm, but the immigrants have always preferred to seek employment in the cities. The popular mind which accounts for individual conduct by the "free will" of the individual applies the same criterion to social phenomena: the Italians and the Slavs concentrate in the cities because they have a "racial tendency" to concentrate in the cities. That most of the immigrants of those nationalities have grown up in agricultural communities and that many of them after working a few years in a great American city return

home and go back to the soil, argues against the assumption of a "racial" dislike for agriculture. The real cause of the concentration of immigrants in the cities is economic. Even the "desirable" immigrant from Northern and Western Europe who lands with a capital of fifty and odd dollars lacks the funds to rent a farm. At best he can obtain employment only as a farm hand. Since the early days of Irish and German immigration, however, the growing industries of the cities have offered a better market for labor than agriculture.

The industrial development of the United States has manifested itself in a relative, and in some sections an absolute, depopulation of rural territory. There is a large migration of native Americans of native stock from country to city. This movement is the result of the revolution in American farming conditions and methods, which has tended to reduce the demand for labor on the farm. The American farm of the first half of the nineteenth century was the seat of a highly diversified industry. The members of a farm household made their own tools and part of the furniture; they were spinners and weavers; they made their own clothes, and soap and candles for their own use. With such a variety of occupations there was work for a hired man at all seasons of the year. But industrial differentiation has removed from the farm one industry after another. The time during which a hired man can be kept employed on the farm has been reduced in consequence to a few months in the year. Still until the middle of the nineteenth century the mills were quite commonly run by water power, which made for decentralization of manufactures. The small country towns accordingly offered to the farm laborer a prospect of employment when work was scarce on the farm. But the general substitution of steam for water power led to the removal of factories from small towns to great commercial centers. The opportunity to earn a full year's wages in a rural community was gone.

While in manufacturing the invention of labor-saving