CHAPTER II.

RACIAL DISPLACEMENTS.

Present population of the community-Industrial distribution of the populationHistory of immigration to the community-Period of residence in the United States of foreign-born employees and members of their households-Racial classification of employees at the present time-The industrial depression of 1907 and 1908-Race substitution in the steel works-Methods employed to secure immigrant labor-[Text Tables 413 to 415 and General Tables 217 and 218].

PRESENT POPULATION OF THE COMMUNITY.

The population of Community C, as given by the last three censuses, was as follows:

The following figures for 1890 and 1900 show the number of immigrants at those dates:

To show the number and racial composition of the population both before and since the recent industrial depression, the following figures are submitted. They are the result of estimates by a number of persons familiar with the situation, but at the best must be regarded as only approximate.

INDUSTRIAL DISTRIBUTION OF THE POPULATION.

As stated before, the steel industry in Community C gives employment in normal times to 8,000 men. While a considerable number of these reside outside the limits of the community in adjoining villages or in the neighboring city, still there is no doubt that the greater portion of its population is connected with the steel works. Data regarding wages and hours of employment will be found in a later chapter.

The local traction company has occasion to employ a considerable number of unskilled laborers in the vicinity of Community C. It pays approximately the same as the steel company and maintains a sixty-hour week. A number of Macedonians have found employment during the summer with this company. A stone quarry on the outskirts of the community employs about 80 recent immigrants at contract prices, which yield a daily wage of $1.25 and $1.50, depending upon the nature of the work. The hours, as in contract work generally, vary with the pressure of business and the inclination of the laborer. A few foreign-born men are also employed at a small flour mill, at the local brewery (as drivers), and at the brickyards and other minor establishments, but the number of all of these combined is insignificant.

One other industry has recently been established near the foreign section of Community C, which already gives employment to about 800 working people. This is the cigar factory. It is one of three establishments under the same management, the other two being located in neighboring cities. It is an example of a typical "complementary" industry, making use of the labor of women and girls whose presence in the community is due to the employment of their husbands and fathers at the steel works. During the past months cases have frequently occurred where the wife was able to secure work in a cigar factory and thus pull the family through the period of forced idleness of the head, who remained at home doing the housework and caring for the children. The greater part of the work is paid for on the piece plan. Learners are paid $3 a week at the start and after a certain amount of practice gradually increase their earnings, many making $7 in a sixty-hour week. A few men are employed at wages varying according to the nature of their work. There is no question that a certain number of foreign girls and boys employed in this establishment are at work because of false affidavits sworn to by parents, in which the age of the child is stated to be 14 (the legal minimum) when in reality it is only 12 or 13.

In general, the immigrant population has fitted into the industrial situation, scarcely modifying it in any way. No industries are conducted by immigrants except a small Macedonian bakery, which occupies the rear of a frame building on the West Side.

Immigrant consumers, however, constitute an important factor in the demand for one commodity in particular-beer. This business is carried on among them by a brewing company which owns the brewery referred to above, and a bottling concern which bottles and distributes beer brewed in a neighboring city.

HISTORY OF IMMIGRATION TO THE COMMUNITY.

Immigration to Community C dates only from the year 1866, which marks the establishment both of the steel company's plant and the town itself. The building of the plant went on for several years, and the labor force was gradually drawn from many directions to carry on the work of steel production. A considerable number of highly skilled steel makers were brought from Sheffield, Birmingham, and Manchester, England, and these formed the nucleus of the new industry. Irish laborers came in the early seventies, but the main portion of the labor force consisted of men of Pennsylvania Dutch extraction, who entered the works and gradually developed into skilled steel workers.

A number of Welsh entered the works during the first decade of its history and a smaller number of Scotch. These races never constituted more than 2 and 1 per cent, respectively, of the working force. German immigrants were employed in large numbers during the early years. The Germans and Irish who arrived first came from other communities as well as from their native countries. The Irish employees, indeed, seemed to be here as the result of waves of immigration previous to the founding of Community C rather than to a continuous arrival since that time. At the present time the number of second generation Irish in the steel works is considerably greater than that of the first generation. The number of first generation Germans employed in the steel works, on the other hand, stands approximately two-thirds greater than the number of the second generation. The second generation of Germans is in general descended from natives of Germany, while a larger number of the recently arrived foreign-born Germans came not from Germany, but from Teutonic settlements in Hungary. They are known locally as "Hunkie Dutch" and live in the same section as do the Magyars, who have come from the same general region in Hungary. The older German immigrants and their descendants are hardly to be distinguished from the American population of the town, while the Hungarian Germans approximate the standard of living of the Magyars. The British immigrants and their descendants are well mingled with the Americans. Negroes also constituted an important part of the unskilled labor forces during the eighties and throughout the early history of the works.

In the middle and late eighties the first representatives of the races of southern and eastern Europe began to appear. These were Poles, Slovenians from the Province of Carniola, and Italians. During the early nineties a number of Magyar names appear upon the pay roll, but they do not seem to have been permanent accessions, for at present only 7 Magyars are found among the employees who have been over fifteen years in the country. The number of Italians in the employment of the company in 1890 was probably not over 25. If the history of immigration be considered by decades, the arrival of races is as follows:

1870-1880......

.English.
Irish.
German.
Welsh.

The last four races are the most recent arrivals, and have come approximately in the order indicated. A large number of all four, as well as of Croatians and Hungarian-Germans, have come within the past two or three years. The Macedonians in particular had been here only a short time before the industrial depression of 1907 and 1908. Some of the Macedonians now in Community C are political refugees who became obnoxious to the Turkish Government for taking part in the revolution of 1903 or inciting rebellion in their home country. Several are well educated, being men of college training who have taught at private schools in Turkey. The majority, however, are unlettered peasants. Some of the more intelligent organized and conducted a Macedonian revolutionary organization which was affiliated with similar organizations in other parts of the United States, and the general direction of which centered at New York. The object of this organization was to secure publicity for the atrocities committed by the Turkish administration in Macedonia, and thus create sympathy and possibly lead to intervention. At the same time they collected funds and sent them, together with recruits, to keep up the fight against Turkey. The executive committee of the organization, composed of 25 men, lived in a house of its own which, as compared with the general run of alien houses, was well kept and furnished. This organization passed out of existence during the recent industrial depression.

The approximate number of members of different immigrant races and the order and period of their arrival having been indicated, it remains to trace in outline the process by which this migration has taken place. It should first be observed that the terms applied to the various groups of immigrants arriving in Community C are often misleading. For example, the so-called Servians, the most numerous of the Slavic subgroups, are with the exception of two individuals Hungarian-Servians whose former homes were in Croatia and Slavonia, or in southern Hungary, and not in Servia. They are racially identical with the Croatians, from whom they differ mainly in professing the Servian orthodox (Greek Catholic) religion and in the use of the Russian alphabet. The Bulgarians afford another example of a people whose racial and political affiliations are to be carefully distinguished. They have come not from Bulgaria, but from Macedonia in Turkey, for which reason it is convenient usually to refer to them as Macedonians. The bulk of the more recent German immigration likewise, as already pointed out, has come not from Germany, nor even from the Austrian

Provinces, but from the vicinity of Weisskirchen on the Servian frontier in southern Hungary. Finally the class of immigrants designated locally as Krainers-that is, inhabitants of the Austrian Province of Krain, or Carniola-are by race Slovenians. The Roumanians likewise have come from Transylvania and other parts of Hungary and not from Roumania. Many of the Croatians were born not in Croatia, but in numerous Slavic settlements scattered over southern Hungary. These facts make it evident that a considerable part of the foreign population consists of persons to whom emigration has become a family tradition. The grandparents of the immigrants whom the steel industry has drawn to Community C were impelled by similar economic motives to go from Servia, Wurttemberg, Saxony, Roumania, Croatia, or Austria, to the then sparsely settled regions of central and southern Hungary.

The circumstances which have governed immigration to this vicinity vary somewhat among the races. The Italians were attracted by the high wages to be earned in this country. Those who came first sent back intelligence of the economic opportunities here offered, and family after family was added to the little colony in process of gradual formation. One village alone, Cataleone Posentina, in Calabria, from which some of the earlier of the immigrants came to Community C, is now represented by 20 families or upward of 100 individuals. The Italian immigration has been almost exclusively from the southern Provinces. The Slovenians have come from a larger number of villages scattered over the whole area of Carniola. Some twenty are present from the village of two of the oldest and most influential Slovenians in Community C. The streams of Teutonic immigration from southern Hungary commenced with the arrival of an immigrant from the town of Weisskirchen, to which reference has been made. He wrote letters to fellow-townsmen, thereby starting a movement which attained large proportions. The majority of the Hungarian-Germans of Community C are from the environs of this Teutonic settlement on the Servian frontier. Of late Germans have also come from the Hungarian Province of Slavonia. One more instance of the way in which immigrants have advertised their new-found prosperity and its effect produced upon future immigration is seen in the case of the Macedonians. The insurrection of 1903 was the final cause making necessary the immediate departure from the country of many Macedonians implicated in it, but the glowing reports of a Macedonian candy maker in Philadelphia are said to have been a decided stimulus to immigration to America. The second Macedonian to arrive married an Austrian woman, and together they managed a store and boarding house, and soon he was writing accounts of his prosperity to friends in the village of Prilip, from whose environs almost the entire Macedonian population has since come. Thus villages in the Old World have gradually been disintegrated and as gradually reassembled in the polyglot foreign section of Community C.

As may easily be understood from the foregoing facts, many difficulties are met with in the attempt to classify immigrants from such a district as the Province of Banst, in Hungary. People are met with who speak German, Magyar, and Slavic, and claim racial affiliation as suits their convenience. It is quickly perceived by