CHAPTER V

INDUSTRY

In preceding chapters we have seen the conditions in their foreign homes which spurred the emigrants to seek America. We have seen religious persecution, race oppression, political revolution, militarism, taxation, famine, and poverty conspiring to press upon the unprivileged masses and to drive the more adventurous across the water. But it would be a mistake should we stop at that point and look upon the migration of these dissatisfied elements as only a voluntary movement to better their condition. In fact, had it been left to the initiative of the emigrants the flow of immigration to America could scarcely ever have reached one-half its actual dimensions. While various motives and inducements have always worked together, and it would be rash to assert dogmatically the relative weight of each, yet to one who has carefully noted all the circumstances it is scarcely an exaggeration to say that even more important than the initiative of immigrants have been the efforts of Americans and ship-owners to bring and attract them. Throughout our history these efforts have been inspired by one grand, effective motive,--that of making a profit upon the immigrants. The desire to get cheap labor, to take in passenger fares, and to sell land have probably brought more immigrants than the hard conditions of Europe, Asia, and Africa have sent. Induced immigration has been as potent as voluntary immigration. And it is to this mercenary motive that we owe our manifold variety of races, and especially our influx of backward races. One entire race, the negro, came solely for the profit of ship-owners and landowners. Working people of the colonial period were hoodwinked and kidnapped by shippers and speculators who reimbursed themselves by indenturing them to planters and farmers. The beginners of other races have come through similar but less coercive inducements, initiated, however, by the demand of those who held American property for speculation or investment. William Penn and his lessees, John Law, the Dutch East India Company, and many of the grantees of lands in the colonies, sent their agents through Western Europe and the British Isles with glowing advertisements, advanced transportation, and contracts for indentured service by way of reimbursement. In the nineteenth century new forms of induced migration appeared. Victims of the Irish famine were assisted to emigrate by local and general governments and by philanthropic societies, and both the Irish and the Germans, whose migration began towards the middle of the century, were, in a measure, exceptions to the general rule of induced immigration for profit. Several Western states created immigration bureaus which advertised their own advantages for intending immigrants, and Wisconsin, especially, in this way settled her lands with a wide variety of races. After the Civil War, induced migration entered upon a vigorous revival. The system of indenturing had long since disappeared, because legislatures and courts declined to recognize and enforce contracts for service. Consequently a new form of importation appeared under the direction of middlemen of the same nativity as that of the immigrant. Chinese coolies came under contract with the Six Companies, who advanced their expenses and looked to their own secret agents and tribunals to enforce repayment with profit.[62] Japanese coolies, much later, came under contract with immigration companies chartered by the Japanese government.[63] Italians were recruited by the _padroni_, and the bulk of the new Slav immigration from Southeastern Europe is in charge of their own countrymen acting as drummers and middlemen.

INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS OF IMMIGRANTS--1906[64]

===============+========+=========+==================+========================== | | SEXES | AGES | OCCUPATIONS[65] | +----+----+-----+-----+-----+-------+----+----+----+---- | TOTAL, | | | | | | TOTAL,|Professional RACE OR PEOPLE | 100 | | |Under|14-45|Over | 100 | |Commercial |PER CENT| M | F | 14 |years| 45 | PER | | |Skilled | | | |years| |years| CENT | | | |Unskilled ---------------+--------+----+----+-----+-----+-----+-------+----+----+----+---- African (black)| 3,786|62.2|37.8| 9.1| 86.8| 4.1| 2,921| 3.0| 2.6|45.6|48.8 Armenian | 1,895|75.1|24.9| 11.8| 84.3| 3.9| 1,390| 3.4| 5.1|38.5|53.0 Bohemian and | | | | | | | | | | | Moravian | 12,958|57.3|42.8| 20.7| 73.9| 5.4| 7,985| 1.3| 1.2|43.6|53.9 Bulgarian, | | | | | | | | | | | Servian, and | | | | | | | | | | | Montenegrin | 11,548|96.2| 3.8| 1.9| 96.2| 1.9| 11,025| 0.1| 0.3| 3.7|95.9 Chinese | 1,485|94.1| 5.9| 4.5| 81.5| 14.0| 1,261| 6.9|66.0| 1.5|25.6 Croatian and | | | | | | | | | | | Slovenian | 44,272|86.5|13.5| 3.8| 94.1| 2.1| 40,125| 0.1| 0.1| 3.7|96.1 Cuban | 5,591|67.4|32.6| 17.2| 73.2| 9.6| 2,842|10.3|19.1|55.9|14.7 Dalmatian, | | | | | | | | | | | Bosnian, and | | | | | | | | | | | Herzegovinian| 4,568|95.1| 4.9| 1.7| 96.3| 2.0| 4,373| 0.1| 0.3| 7.7|91.9 Dutch and | | | | | | | | | | | Flemish | 9,735|67.0|33.0| 17.6| 76.4| 6.0| 5,849| 5.2| 7.9|30.1|56.8 East Indian | 271|93.0| 7.0| 5.5| 90.5| 4.0| 222| 9.9|52.7| 5.4|32.0 English | 45,079|62.1|37.9| 13.5| 75.3| 11.2| 28,249|10.8|13.5|51.3|24.4 Finnish | 14,136|67.4|32.6| 7.1| 90.8| 2.1| 11,959| 0.4| 0.3| 7.2|92.1 French | 10,379|57.1|42.9| 8.6| 81.7| 9.7| 6,823|16.5|12.9|31.3|39.3 German | 86,813|59.2|40.8| 15.1| 78.6| 6.3| 55,095| 4.3| 6.7|29.7|59.3 Greek | 23,127|96.3| 3.7| 3.1| 95.9| 1.0| 21,615| 0.5| 2.6| 9.4|87.5 Hebrew | 153,748|52.1|47.9| 28.3| 66.3| 5.4| 76,605| 1.4| 5.6|66.7|26.3 Irish | 40,959|50.9|49.1| 4.6| 90.9| 4.5| 35,387| 1.7| 2.9|15.1|80.3 Italian (North)| 46,286|78.9|21.1| 8.6| 87.9| 3.5| 36,980| 1.4| 2.3|19.4|76.9 Italian (South)| 240,528|79.4|20.6| 11.1| 84.3| 4.6|190,105| 0.4| 1.3|16.0|82.3 Japanese | 14,243|89.6|10.4| 1.0| 97.1| 1.9| 11,797| 2.2|10.3| 2.8|84.7 Korean | 127|81.1|18.9| 16.5| 81.1| 2.4| 80| 6.3|15.0| 2.5|76.2 Lithuanian | 14,257|66.1|33.9| 8.9| 89.5| 1.6| 11,568| 0.2| 0.2| 9.2|90.4 Magyar | 44,261|71.8|28.2| 9.0| 87.5| 3.5| 34,559| 0.6| 0.5| 9.3|89.6 Mexican | 141|66.0|34.0| 14.9| 74.5| 10.6| 65|23.1|35.4|24.6|16.9 Pacific | | | | | | | | | | | Islander | 13|76.9|23.1| 7.7| 76.9| 15.4| 9|33.3| 0.0|66.7| 0.0 Polish | 95,835|69.3|30.7| 9.3| 88.5| 2.2| 77,437| 0.2| 0.2| 7.7|91.9 Portuguese | 8,729|58.4|41.6| 20.9| 70.7| 8.4| 5,815| 0.5| 1.1| 4.8|93.6 Roumanian | 11,425|92.5| 7.5| 2.0| 94.0| 4.0| 10,759| 0.2| 0.2| 2.5|97.1 Russian | 5,814|81.7|18.3| 10.0| 86.8| 3.2| 4,591| 3.2| 2.4|10.8|83.6 Ruthenian | 16,257|75.7|24.3| 3.6| 93.9| 2.5| 14,899| 0.1|[66]| 2.7|97.2 Scandinavian | 58,141|62.1|37.9| 9.1| 86.4| 4.5| 47,352| 1.8| 1.6|23.5|73.1 Scotch | 16,463|66.1|33.9| 12.9| 78.8| 8.3| 11,207| 5.7| 9.9|62.8|21.6 Slovak | 38,221|69.6|30.4| 8.9| 88.4| 2.7| 29,817|[66]| 0.1| 4.9|95.0 Spanish | 5,332|83.6|16.4| 7.1| 84.6| 8.3| 4,211| 5.7|19.2|44.4|30.7 Spanish | | | | | | | | | | | American | 1,585|69.7|30.3| 17.0| 74.4| 8.6| 790|23.7|37.1|21.1|18.1 Syrian | 5,824|70.4|29.6| 15.2| 80.9| 3.9| 4,023| 1.1|11.1|19.9|67.9 Turkish | 2,033|95.7| 4.3| 1.9| 96.0| 2.1| 1,914| 1.5| 4.4| 8.3|85.8 Welsh | 2,367| 7.1|29.9| 12.5| 78.2| 9.3| 1,639| 4.9| 6.7|62.4|26.0 West Indian | | | | | | | | | | | (except | | | | | | | | | | | Cuban) | 1,476|58.9|41.1| 14.8| 76.1| 9.1| 900| 7.6|15.0|49.4|28.0 Other Peoples | 1,027|94.5| 5.5| 2.6| 96.0| 1.4| 932| 1.2| 4.1|18.0|76.7 ---------+----+----+-----+-----+-----+-------+----+----+----+---- Total 1,100,735|69.5|30.5| 12.4| 83.0| 4.6|815,275| 1.8| 3.1|21.7|73.4 ===============+========+====+====+=====+=====+=====+=======+====+====+====+====

These labor speculators have perfected a system of inducements and through billing as effective as that by which horse and cattle buyers in Kentucky or Iowa collect and forward their living freight to the markets of Europe. A Croatian of the earlier immigration, for example, sets up a saloon in South Chicago and becomes an employment bureau for his "greener" countrymen, and also ticket agent on commission for the steamship companies. His confederates are stationed along the entire route at connecting points, from the villages of Croatia to the saloon in Chicago. In Croatia they go among the laborers and picture to them the high wages and abundant work in America. They induce them to sell their little belongings and they furnish them with through tickets. They collect them in companies, give them a countersign, and send them on to their fellow-agent at Fiume, thence to Genoa or other port whence the American steerage vessel sails. In New York they are met by other confederates, whom they identify by their countersign, and again they are safely transferred and shipped to their destination. Here they are met by their enterprising countryman, lodged and fed, and within a day or two handed over to the foreman in a great steel plant, or to the "boss" of a construction gang on a railway, or to a contractor on a large public improvement. After they have earned and saved a little money they send for their friends, to whom the "boss" has promised jobs. Again their lodging-house countryman sells them the steamship ticket and arranges for the safe delivery of those for whom they have sent. In this way immigration is stimulated, and new races are induced to begin their American colonization. Eventually the pioneers send for their families, and it is estimated that nearly two-thirds of the immigrants in recent years have come on prepaid tickets or on money sent to them from America.[67]

The significance of this new and highly perfected form of inducement will appear when we look back for a moment upon the legislation governing immigration.

=Immigration Legislation.=--At the close of the Civil War, with a vast territory newly opened to the West by the railroads, Congress enacted a law throwing wide open our doors to the immigrants of all lands. It gave new guaranties for the protection of naturalized citizens in renouncing allegiance to their native countries, declaring that "expatriation is a natural and inherent right of all people, indispensable to the enjoyment of the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."[68]

In the same year, 1868, the famous Burlingame treaty was negotiated with China, by which Americans in China and Chinese in America should enjoy all the privileges, immunities, and exemptions enjoyed by citizens of the most favored nation. These steps favorable to immigration were in line with the long-continued policy of the country from the earliest colonial times.

But a new force had come into American politics--the wage-earner. From this time forth the old policies were violently challenged. High wages were to be pitted against high profits. The cheap labor which was eagerly sought by the corporations and large property owners was just as eagerly fought by the unpropertied wage-earners. Of course neither party conceded that it was selfishly seeking its own interest. Those who expected profits contended that cheap foreign labor was necessary for the development of the country; that American natural resources were unbounded, but American workmen could not be found for the rough work needed to turn these resources into wealth; that America should be in the future, as it had been in the past, a haven for the oppressed of all lands; and that in no better way could the principles of American democracy be spread to all peoples of the earth than by welcoming them and teaching them in our midst.

The wage-earners have not been so fortunate in their protestations of disinterestedness. They were compelled to admit that though they themselves had been immigrants or the children of immigrants, they were now denying to others what had been a blessing to them. Yet they were able to set forward one supreme argument which our race problems are every day more and more showing to be sound. The future of American democracy is the future of the American wage-earner. To have an enlightened and patriotic citizenship we must protect the wages and standard of living of those who constitute the bulk of the citizens. This argument had been offered by employers themselves when they were seeking a protective tariff against the importation of "pauper-made" goods. What wonder that the wage-earner should use the same argument to keep out the pauper himself, and especially that he should begin by applying the argument to those races which showed themselves unable rapidly to assimilate, and thereby make a stand for high wages and high standards of living. Certain it is that had the white wage-earners possessed the suffrage and political influence during colonial times, the negro would not have been admitted in large numbers, and we should have been spared that race problem which of all is the largest and most nearly insoluble.

For it must be observed in general that race antagonism occurs on the same competitive level. What appear often to be religious, political, and social animosities are economic at bottom, and the substance of the economic struggle is the advantage which third parties get when competitors hold each other down. The Southern planter was not hostile to the negro slave--he was his friend and protector. His nurse was the negro "mammy," his playmates were her children, and the mulatto throws light on his views of equality. It was the poor white who hated the negro and fled from his presence to the hills and the frontier, or sank below his level, despised by white and black. In times of freedom and reconstruction it is not the great landowner or employer that leads in the exhibition of race hostility, but the small farmer or wage-earner.[69] The one derives a profit from the presence of the negro--the other loses his job or his farm. With the progress of white democracy in place of the old aristocracy, as seen in South Carolina, hostility to the negro may be expected to increase. With the elimination of the white laborer, as seen in the black counties, the relations of negro and planter are harmonious.[70]

So it is in the North. The negro or immigrant strike breaker is befriended by the employer, but hated by the employee. The Chinaman or Japanese in Hawaii or California is praised and sought after by the employer and householder, but dreaded by the wage-earner and domestic. Investors and landowners see their properties rise in value by the competition of races, but the competitors see their wages and jobs diminish. The increase of wealth intensifies the difference and raises up professional classes to the standpoint of the capitalists. With both of them the privilege of leisure depends on the presence of servants, but the wage-earners do their own work. As the immigrant rises in the scale, the small farmer, contractor, or merchant feels his competition and begins to join in measures of race protection.

This hostility is not primarily racial in character. It is the competitive struggle for standards of living. It appears to be racial because for the most part races have different standards. But where different races agree on their standards the racial struggle ceases, and the negro, Italian, Slav, and American join together in the class struggle of a trade-union. On the other hand, if the same race has different standards, the economic struggle breaks down even the strongest affinities of race. The Russian Jew in the sweat-shop turns against the immigrant Jew, fleeing from the very persecution that he himself has escaped, and taking his place in the employment of the capitalist German Jew.[71] It is an easy and patriotic matter for the lawyer, minister, professor, employer, or investor, placed above the arena of competition, to proclaim the equal right of all races to American opportunities; to avow his own willingness to give way should even a better Chinaman, Hindu, or Turk come in to take his place; and to rebuke the racial hatred of those who resist this displacement. His patriotism and world-wide brotherhood cost him and his family nothing, and indeed they add to his profits and leisure. Could he realize his industrial position, and picture in imagination that of his fellow-citizens, their attitude would not appear less disinterested than his own. The immigrant comes as a wage-earner, and the American wage-earner bears the initial cost of his Americanization. Before he acquired the suffrage his protest was unheard--after he gained political power he began to protect himself.

The first outbreak of the new-found strength of the American wage-earner was directed against a race superior even to the negro immigrants in industry, frugality, intelligence, and civilization--the Chinese. And this outbreak was so powerful that, in spite of all appeals to the traditions and liberties of America, the national government felt driven to repudiate the treaty so recently signed with the highest manifestations of faith, good-will, and international comity.

Very early in the settlement of California the Chinaman had encountered hostile legislation. The state election had been carried by the Knownothings as early as 1854. Discriminating taxes, ordinances, and laws were adopted, and even immigration was regulated by the state legislature. But the state and federal courts declared such legislation invalid as violating treaties or interfering with international relations. Then the wage-earning element of California joined as one man in demanding action by the federal government, and eventually, by the treaty of 1880 and the law of 1888, Chinese laborers were excluded.[72] Thus did the Caucasian wage-earner score his first and signal victory in reversing what his opponents proclaimed were "principles coeval with the foundation of our government."

The next step was the Alien Contract Labor law of 1885 and 1888, placed on the statute books through the efforts of the Knights of Labor and the trades-unions. As early as 1875 Congress had prohibited the immigration of paupers, criminal, and immoral persons, but the law of 1885 went to the other extreme and was designed to exclude industrial classes. The law is directed against prepayment of transportation, assistance, or encouragement of foreigners to immigrate _under contract_ to perform labor in the United States, and provides for the prosecution of the importer and deportation of the contract immigrant. This law has been enforced against skilled labor, which comes mainly from northwestern Europe, but, owing to the new system of _padroni_ and middlemen above described, it cannot be enforced against the unskilled laborers of Southern and Eastern Europe, since it cannot be shown that they have come under contract to perform labor. By the amendment and revised law adopted in 1903, after considerable discussion, and an effort on the part of the labor unions to strengthen the law, it was extended so as to exclude not only those coming under contract but also those coming under _offers_ and _promises_ of employment.[73]

From what precedes we see that there are two exactly opposite points of view from which the subject of immigration is approached. One is the production of wealth; the other is the distribution of wealth. He who takes the standpoint of production sees the enormous undeveloped resources of this country--the mines to be exploited, railroads and highways to be built and rebuilt, farms to be opened up or to be more intensively cultivated, manufactures to be multiplied, and the markets of the world to be conquered by our exports, while there are not enough workmen, or not enough willing to do the hard and disagreeable work at the bottom.

He who takes the standpoint of distribution sees the huge fortunes, the low wages, the small share of the product going to labor, the sweat-shop, the slums, all on account of the excessive competition of wage-earner against wage-earner.

Consider first the bearing of immigration on the production of wealth.

=Immigration and Wealth Production.=--Over four-fifths of the immigrants are in the prime of life--the ages between fourteen and forty-five. In the year 1906 only 12 out of every 100 were under fourteen years of age, and only 4.5 out of every 100 over forty-five years of age. The census of 1900 offers some interesting comparisons between the native-born and the foreign-born in this matter of age distribution. It shows quite plainly that a large proportion of the native-born population is below the age of industrial production, fully 39 per cent, or two-fifths, being under fifteen years of age, while only 5 per cent of the foreign-born are of corresponding ages. On the other hand, the ages fifteen to forty-four include 46 per cent of the native and 58 per cent of the foreign-born. This is shown in the diagram based on five-year age periods. The native born are seen to group themselves in a symmetrical pyramid, with the children under five as the wide foundation, gradually tapering to the ages of eighty and eighty-four, but for the foreign-born they show a double pyramid, tapering in both directions from the ages of thirty-five to thirty-nine, which include the largest five-year group. Thus, immigration brings to us a population of working ages unhampered by unproductive mouths to be fed, and, if we consider alone that which produces the wealth of this country and not that which consumes it, the immigrants add more to the country than does the same number of native of equal ability. Their home countries have borne the expense of rearing them up to the industrial period of their lives, and then America, without that heavy expense, reaps whatever profits there are on the investment.

In another respect does immigration add to our industrial population more than would be done by an equal increase in native population, namely, by the large excess of men over women. In 1906, over two-thirds of the immigrants were males and less than one-third were females. This is shown on the accompanying diagram, as well as the fact based on the census statistics that among the foreign-born the men predominate over the women in the ratio of 540 to 460, while among the native-born population the sexes are about equal, being in the proportion of 507 males to 493 females.

This small proportion of women and children shows, of course, that it is the workers, not the families, who seek America. Yet the proportions widely vary for different nationalities. Among the Jews 48 per cent are females and 28 per cent children. This persecuted race moves in a body, expecting to make America its home. At the other extreme the Greeks send only 4 per cent females and 3 per cent children, the Croatians 13 per cent females and 4 per cent children, the South Italians 21 per cent females and 11 per cent children. These are races whose immigration has only recently begun, and naturally enough the women and children, except in the case of the Jews, do not accompany the workmen. A race of longer migration, like the Germans, has 41 per cent females and 15 per cent children. The Irish have a peculiar position. Alone of all the races do the women equal the men, but only 5 per cent are children. Irish girls seeking domestic service explain this preponderance of women. Significant and interesting facts regarding other races may be seen by studying the table entitled "Industrial Relations of Immigrants."

Such being the proportions of industrial energy furnished by immigration, what is the quality? Much the larger proportion of immigrants are classed as unskilled, including laborers and servants. Omitting those who have "no occupation," including mainly women and children, who are 30.5 per cent of the total, only 21.7 per cent of the remainder who are working immigrants are skilled, and 73.4 per cent are unskilled. The proportions vary greatly among the different races. The largest element of skilled labor is among the Jews, a city people, two-thirds of whom are skilled workmen. Nearly the same proportion of the Scotch and Welsh and over one-half of the English and Bohemians are skilled mechanics. Nearly one-third of the Germans and Dutch are skilled, and one-fourth of the Scandinavians. At the other extreme, only 3 to 5 per cent of the Ruthenians, Croatians, Roumanians, and Slovaks are skilled, and 8 to 10 per cent of the Magyars, Lithuanians, and Poles. One-fifth of the North Italians and one-sixth of the South Italians are skilled. These and other proportions are shown in the statistical table.

The skilled labor which comes to America, especially from Northern and Western Europe, occupies a peculiar position in our industries. In the first place, the most capable workmen have permanent places at home, and it is, in general, only those who cannot command situations who seek their fortunes abroad. The exceptions to this rule are in the beginnings of an industry like that of tin plate, when a large proportion of the industry moved bodily to America, and the highly skilled tin workers of Wales brought a kind of industrial ability that had not hitherto existed in this country. As for the bulk of skilled immigrants, they do not represent the highest skill of the countries whence they come.

On the other hand, the European skilled workman is usually better trained than the American, and in many branches of industry, especially machinery and ship-building, the English and Scotch immigrants command those superior positions where an all-round training is required.

This peculiar situation is caused by the highly specialized character of American industry. In no country has division of labor and machinery been carried as far as here. By division of labor the skilled trades have been split up into simple operations, each of which in itself requires little or no skill, and the boy who starts in as a beginner is kept at one operation so that he does not learn a trade. The old-time journeyman tailor was a skilled mechanic who measured his customer, cut the cloth and trimmings, basted, sewed, and pressed the suit. Now we have factories which make only coats, others which make only vests, others trousers, and there are children's knee-pants factories and even ladies' tailor establishments where the former seamstress sees her precious skill dissipated among a score of unskilled workers. Thus the journeyman tailor is displaced by the factory, where the coat passes through the hands of thirty to fifty different men and women, each of whom can learn his peculiar operation in a month or two. The same is true in greater or less degree in all industries. Even in the building trades in the larger cities there are as many kinds of bricklayers as there are kinds of walls to be built, and as many kinds of carpenters as there are varieties of woodwork.

So it is with machinery. The American employer does not advertise for a "machinist"--he wants a "lathe hand" or a "drill-press hand," and the majority of his "hands" are perhaps only automatic machine tenders. The employer cannot afford to transfer these hands from one job to another to enable them to "learn the trade." He must keep them at one operation, for it is not so much skill that he wants as cheap labor and speed. Consequently, American industry is not producing all-round mechanics, and the employers look to Europe for their skilled artisans. In England the trade-unions have made it their special business to see that every apprentice learns every part of his trade, and they have prevented employers from splitting up the trades and specializing machinery and thereby transforming the mechanic into the "hand." Were it not for immigration, American industries would ere now have been compelled to give more attention to apprenticeship and the training of competent mechanics. The need of apprenticeship and trade schools is being more seriously felt every year, for, notwithstanding the progress of division of labor and machinery, the all-round mechanic continues to play an important part in the shop and factory. American trade-unions are gaining strength, and one of their most insistent demands is the protection of apprenticeship. The bricklayers' and carpenters' unions of Chicago even secure from their employers instruction for apprentices in school. Not much headway in this line, however, has yet been made, and American industry has become abnormal, we might almost say suicidal, or at any rate, non-self-supporting. By extreme division of labor and marvellous application of machinery it makes possible the wholesale employment in factories of the farm laborers of Europe and their children, and then depends on Europe for the better-trained types of the skilled mechanic, who, on account of the farm laborer, have not been able to learn their trade in America.

Not only does immigration bring to America the strongest, healthiest, and most energetic and adventurous of the work-people of Europe and Asia, but those who come work much harder than they did at home. Migration tears a man away from the traditions, the routine, the social props on which he has learned to rely, and throws him among strangers upon his own resources. He must swim or drown. At the same time he earns higher wages and eats more nourishing food than he had ever thought within reach of one in his station. His ambition is fired, he is stirred by the new tonic of feeling himself actually rising in the world. He pictures to himself a home of his own, he economizes and saves money to send to his friends and family, or to return to his beloved land a person of importance. Watch a gang of Italians shovelling dirt under an Irish boss, or a sweat-shop of Jewish tailors under a small contractor, and you shall see such feverish production of wealth as an American-born citizen would scarcely endure. Partly fear, partly hope, make the fresh immigrant the hardest, if not the most intelligent, worker in our industries.

=Industrial Capacities of Different Races.=--But, however hard one may work, he can only exercise the gifts with which nature has endowed him. Whether these gifts are contributed by race or by civilization, we shall inquire when we come to the problems of amalgamation and assimilation. At present we are concerned with the varying industrial gifts and capacities of the various races as they actually exist at the time when immigration, annexation, or conquest takes place.

The mental and moral qualities suited to make productive workers depend upon the character of the industry. It is not conceivable that the immigrants of the present day from Southern Europe and from Asia could have succeeded as frontiersmen and pioneers in the settlement of the country. In all Europe, Asia, and Africa there was but one race in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that had the preliminary training necessary to plunge into the wilderness, and in the face of the Indian to establish homes and agriculture. This was the English and the Scotch-Irish. The Spaniards and the French were pioneers and adventurers, but they established only trading stations. Accustomed to a paternal government they had not, as a people, the self-reliance and capacity for sustained exertion required to push forward as individuals, and to cut themselves off from the support of a government across the ocean. They shrank from the herculean task of clearing the forests, planting crops among the stumps, and living miles away from their neighbors. True, the pioneers had among their number several of German, French, and Dutch descent, but these belonged to the second and third generations descended from the immigrants and thrown from the time of childhood among their English-Scotch neighbors. The French trappers and explorers are famous, and have left their names on our map. But it was the English race that established itself in America, not because it was first to come, not because of its armies and navies, but because of its agriculture. Every farm newly carved out of the wilderness became a permanent foothold, and soon again sent out a continuous colony of sons and daughters to occupy the fertile land. Based on this self-reliant, democratic, industrial conquest of the new world the military conquest naturally, inevitably followed.

But at the present day the character of industry has entirely changed. The last quarter of the nineteenth century saw the vacant lands finally occupied and the tribe of frontiersmen coming to an end. Population now began to recoil upon the East and the cities. This afforded to manufactures and to the mining industries the surplus labor-market so necessary for the continuance of large establishments which to-day need thousands of workmen and to-morrow hundreds. Moreover, among the American-born workmen, as well as the English and Scotch, are not found that docility, obedience to orders, and patient toil which employers desire where hundreds and thousands are brought like an army under the direction of foremen, superintendents, and managers. Employers now turn for their labor supply to those eastern and southern sections of Europe which have not hitherto contributed to immigration. The first to draw upon these sources in large numbers were the anthracite coal operators of Pennsylvania. In these fields the English, Scotch, Welsh, and Irish miners, during and following the period of the Civil War, had effected an organization for the control of wages, and the outrages of a secret society known as the Molly Maguires gave occasion for the importation of new races unaccustomed to unionism, and incapable, on account of language, of cooperation with English-speaking miners. Once introduced in the mining industry, these races rapidly found their way into the unskilled parts of manufactures, into the service of railroads and large contractors. On the construction of the Erie Canal in 1898, of 16,000 workmen, 15,000 were unnaturalized Italians.[74] The census of 1900 showed that while the foreign-born males were one-fourteenth of the laborers in agriculture, they were three-fourths of the tailors, more than one-half of the cabinet makers, nearly one-half of the miners and quarrymen, tannery workers, marble and stonecutters, more than two-fifths of the boot and shoe-makers and textile workers, one-third of the coopers, iron and steel workers, wood-workers and miscellaneous laborers, one-fourth of the carpenters, painters, and plasterers, and one-fifth of the sawmill workers.[75] The foreign-born females numbered nearly two-fifths of the female cotton-mill operatives and tailors, one-third of the woollen-mill operatives, one-fourth of the tobacco and silk-mill operatives.

On the Pacific slope the Chinese and Japanese immigrants have filled the place occupied by the southeast European in the East and the negro in the South. They were the workmen who built the Pacific railroads, and without them it is said that these railroads could not have been constructed until several years after their actual completion.

The immigration of the Chinese reached its highest figures prior to the exclusion laws of 1882, and since that time has been but an insignificant contribution. In their place have come the Japanese, a race whose native land, in proportion to its cultivable area, is more densely populated than any other country in the world. The Chinese and Japanese are perhaps the most industrious of all races, while the Chinese are the most docile. The Japanese excel in imitativeness, but are not as reliable as the Chinese. Neither race, so far as their immigrant representatives are concerned, possesses the originality and ingenuity which characterize the competent American and British mechanic. In the Hawaiian Islands, where they have enjoyed greater opportunities than elsewhere, they are found to be capable workmen of the skilled trades, provided they are under the direction of white mechanics.[76] But their largest field of work in Hawaii is in the unskilled cultivation of the great sugar plantations. Here they have been likened to "a sort of agricultural automaton," and it becomes possible to place them in large numbers under skilled direction, and thus to secure the best results from their docility and industry.

In the United States itself the plantation form of agriculture, as distinguished from the domestic form, has always been based on a supply of labor from backward or un-Americanized races. This fact has a bearing on the alleged tendency of agriculture toward large farms. Ten years ago it seemed that the great "bonanza" farms were destined to displace the small farms, just as the trust displaces the small manufacturer. But it is now recognized that the reverse movement is in progress, and that the small farmer can compete successfully with the great farmer. It has not, however, been pointed out that the question is not merely an economic one and that it depends upon the industrial character of the races engaged in agriculture. The thrifty, hard-working and intelligent American or Teutonic farmer is able to economize and purchase his own small farm and compete successfully with the large undertaking. He is even beginning to do this in Hawaii since the compulsory labor of his large competitors was abolished.[77] But the backward, thriftless, and unintelligent races succeed best when employed in gangs on large estates. The cotton and sugar fields of the South with their negro workers have their counterpart in the plantations of Hawaii with their Chinese and Japanese, and in the newly developed sugar-beet fields of Nebraska, Colorado, and California, with their Russians, Bohemians, Japanese, and Mexicans. In the domestic or small form of agriculture the bulk of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe are not greatly desired as wage-earners, and they do not succeed as proprietors and tenants because they lack oversight and business ability. Where they are located in colonies under favorable auspices the Italians have achieved notable success, and in the course of Americanization they will doubtless rival older nationalities. But in the immigrant stage they are helpless, and it is the immigrants from Northwestern Europe, the Germans and Scandinavians, whose thrift, self-reliance, and intensive agriculture have made them from the start the model farmers of America.

The Jewish immigrant, particularly, is unfitted for the life of a pioneer. Remarkably individualistic in character, his field of enterprise is society, and not the land. Of the thirty thousand families sent out from New York by industrial and agricultural removal societies, nine-tenths are located in industry and trade, and the bulk of the remainder, who are placed on farms, succeed by keeping summer boarders. Depending on boarders, they neglect agriculture and buy their food-stuff. Their largest colony of hoped-for agriculturists, Woodbine, New Jersey, has become a clothing factory.[78] Yet the factory system, with its discipline and regular hours, is distasteful to the Jew's individualism. He prefers the sweat-shop, with its going and coming. If possible, he rises through peddling and merchandising.

These are a few of the many illustrative facts which might be set forth to show that the changing character of immigration is made possible by the changing character of industry; and that races wholly incompetent as pioneers and independent proprietors are able to find a place when once manufactures, mines, and railroads have sprung into being, with their captains of industry to guide and supervise their semi-intelligent work.