iHE-TIDE-€>F IMMIGRATION I ANjK-yj u l:i AN:^a^R^:NE GfarneU Hniuerattg Eihrarg 3tt)aca, ^tm larb BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT fUMD THE GIFT OF HENRY W. SAGE 1691 JV 6465. W2™" """'"■'"y Library ..illj* Jijje of immigration 3 1924 020 333 393 The original of tiiis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924020333393 THE TIDE OF IMMIGRATION The Yearly Fixiw or thi Compiled from Statistics from Report EMIGRATION Tide Since 1820 United States Bureau of Immigration THE TIDE OF IMMIGRATION BY FRANK JULIAN WARNE, A.M., Ph.D. SPECIAL EXPSBT OW FOBSIOn-BOBK POPULATIOlf, tTBITED STATES 60VERN&CENT. THIBTBENTH CENSUS: FOBMEB 6ECBETABT, NEW TOBE STATE COMMISSION or IMUIOBATION AUTHOB OF *'THE IMMIQBANT INVASION," ETC. D. APPLETON AND COMPANY NEW YORK LONDON 1916 COPTBIOHT, 1916, BT D. APPLETON AND COMPANY Printed in the United States of America TO THOSE OPTIMISTIC PATRIOTS WHO WITH0T3T OBJECT or PERSONAL GAIN ARE CONSCIOUSLY STRIVING TO ESTABLISH UPON AN ENDURING FOUNDATION THE DEMOCRATIC INDUSTRIAL STATE. CONTENTS I. The Flow of the Tros 1 II. SOUECES OP THE TiDE 13 III. The Tidal FoBCE 28 IV. Two Views of the Tide 41 V. Stimttlated and Induced Immigbation . . 54 VI. "BiBDS OF Passage" 63 VII. The Ebb of the Tide 74 VIII. Thbough the Tide Gates .... 84 IX. Debelicts op the Tide 99 X. The Tide's Flotsam and Jetsam . . .112 XI. "The Undesibables" 123 XII. Immigbation and Social Pbogeess . . .134 XIII. Immigbation's Tide-Rip 146 XIV. The Imaugbant and the Native Wobkeb 160 XV. Two Views of the Tide-Rip .... 170 XVI. Some Effects op the Tide-Rip . . 179 XVII. The Alien Contbact Labob Law . .192 XVIII. Within the Tide Basin — Net Immigbation 205 XIX. Within the Tide Basin — Distbibution 220 XX. A Ghapteb peom Histoby 235 XXI. Regulating the Immigbation Tide . 249 XXII. The LiTEEACY Test 263 CONTENTS CH17TEB nan XXIII. The Three Vetoes .... . 273 XXIV. Amekica's Traditional Policy . 283 XXV. Distribution as a Remedy . 300 V XXVI. Immigration Restriction . . 313 / XXVII. Effects of the European War . 327 XXVIII. The Basis of a National Policy . . 342 XXIX. Immigration and Assimilation . 354 Index . 365 LIST OF DIAGRAMS The Yearly Flow of the Immigration Tide since 1820 . Frontispiece Immigration by Leading Countries . .... 15 Total Immigration, 1914, Comparing Country and Race, . 25 Leading European Immigrating Peoples 26 Temporary Immigration and Temporary Emigration . . 70 The Annual Ebb of the Immigration Tide ... .76 The Annual Flow of Immigration the Past Thirty Years . 87 Total Annual Immigration, Showing Also Permanent and Temporary 89 Sex Distribution of Immigrants 14 to 44 Years of Age . . 93 The Spring and Autunm Flow of Immigration .... 97 Permanent Immigration in 1914 by Occupational Groups . 147 The Annual Flow and Ebb of Immigration and the Net Gain in Immigrants 206 Permanent Immigration by Ten- Year Periods Since 1825 . 212 Geographical Distribution of Immigrants by States, 1914 . 222 Immigration and the Southern States 231 Vote in House of Representatives on the Taft Veto of Immigration Bill 292 Vote in Senate on the Taft Veto of Immigration Bill . . 293 Vote pn House of Representatives on the Wilson Veto of Immigration Bill 294 THE TIDE OF IMMIGRATION CHAPTER I THE FLOW OF THE TTOE The great ontpouring of the peoples of foreign countries and their inpouring into the United States, which for nearly a century now has been characterized as "immigration," is comparable in many of its aspects with manifestations of the mighty ocean tide. Like the waters of the ocean, this great human tide has its flow and its ebb, and these are as clearly subject to the laws of economic science as are the rise and fall of the ocean tide to the laws of physical science. So plainly is this movement of aliens to and from the shores of the United States in obedience to well known laws that its alternate rise and fall at well defined intervals in the course of the year can be foretold with almost the same degree of accuracy as the move- ment of the ocean tide. Knowledge of its other characteristics has likewise been secured through long and painstaking accuracy in observation and verification. Similar economic manifestations, re- peated at intervals over a period of time, are also indicative of underlying forces or laws at work to produce them. Repetition has so often verified conclusions drawn that in regard to many phases 1 THE TIDE OF IMMIGRATION of the immigration tide tli§ point of safe prophecy has been reached as to its future manifestations under given conditions. Immigration has not only its spring tide and its annual ebb but also its neap tides, its flood tides, its tidal waves, and its overflows and inundations. It has its tide channels by means of which it gains entrance to this country. It has its tide gates, its tide-rip, its tide mills, its tide basin. There have developed tide tables and tide dials, and also tide gauges by means of which we are able to measure its volume at any particular time or over a period of years or decades ; to learn of its racial, occu- pational, age, and sex composition; to know its geographical distribution within the country, and to become familiar with its other characteristics. First, as to the volume of this inpouring of peoples. At the very outset of any attempt to measure the quantity of immigration we are confronted by the diflSculty of persuading the mind to grasp com- pletely its stupendous proportions. Although sta- tistics help us to realize its magnitude, even at their best figures convey only a hazy and indefi- nite impression and do not enable us to compre- hend fully the size of this immigration. Particu- larly is this true when the figures dealt with mount into the millions. Have you ever painstaMngly tried to form a mental concept of one million four hundred thou- sand people? Mathematically, of course, this number is one hundred times fourteen thousand. 2 THE FLOW OF THE TIDE It is fourteen times one hundred thousand. But even arithmetic does not enable us to picture to ourselves the real signiflcanoe of this many people. This number represents all those born in some foreign country who came to the United States during the fiscal year preceding the outbreak of the European War. It is the largest total immi- gration of any year in our history excepting that of 1907. And yet it is only about one-tenth the total number of foreign born in the country at the taking of the last census, these numbering 13,500,- 000. Thirteen million five hundred thousand men, women, and children ! More than the total popu- lation of Korea! Nearly twice the entire popu- lation of Persia! And yet these comparisons do not help much in comprehending the multitudi- nous extent of our foreign-bom population be- cause not many of us know anything about Korea or Persia. Thirteen million five hundred thousand people are four million five hundred thousand more than the population of both Ireland and Scotland. If the source of our immigration were confined to these two coimtries, its volume of the single year 1914 would drain them of the last of their inhabitants within a little more than six years. If confined to Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, it would depopulate these Scandinavian countries of their ten miUion inhabitants within little more than seven years. It would depopulate aU of Mexico within less than ten years, Switzerland 3 THE TIDE OF IMMIGRATION within one year, and Greece within less than twelve months. No single city in the history of the world ever contained thirteen million five hundred thousand inhabitants! Our largest city, New York, and probably, too, now the largest city in the world, has only one-third this many people. And New York really comprises a number of cities. Think of a foreign-born population suflBcient in niunber to make three cities the size of New York! Take our next largest city, Chicago, with a pop- ulation in excess of two million. Our foreign- born population, if assembled in one place, would make six cities the size of Chicago! Let your imagination play on this statement. Think what it means! Six cities the size of Chicago with their miles upon miles of streets and thousands upon thousands of residences and stores and churches and saloons and factories and all that go to make up a large American city! Thirteen million five hundred thousand people ! According to the United States Bureau of the Census there are in this country fifty cities each with a population in excess of one hundred thou- sand. Excluding the two largest. New York and Chicago, to which reference has already been made, our foreign born are numerous enough to more than populate completely every one of the remaining forty-eight cities. This means that we have dwelling among us as large a number of per- sons bom in some foreign country as is repre- sented in the combined populations of Philadel- 4 THE FLOW OF THE TmE pMa, St. Louis, Boston, Cleveland, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Detroit, Buffalo, San Francisco, Mil- waukee, Cincinnati, Newark, New Orleans, Wash- ington, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Jersey City, Kansas City, Seattle, Indianapolis, Providence, Louisville, Eochester, St. Paul, Denver, Portland, Columbus, Toledo, Atlanta, Oakland, Worcester, Syracuse, New Haven, Birmingham, Memphis, Scranton, Eichmond, Paterson, Omaha, Fall Eiver, Dayton, Grand Eapids, Nashville, Lowell, Cam- bridge, Spokane, Bridgeport, and Albany. Here are forty-eight of the principal cities of the United States and yet all of them together have not as large a number of inhabitants as that which im- migration has given to this country at the present day! Although there are recorded in the pages of his- tory descriptions of the movements at different times of vast numbers of peoples from one geo- graphical area to another, such as the historian delights in referring to as hordes or swarms and as "barbarians breaking in upon the empire," stiU there is not to be found a single account of the dislocation of peoples comparable in magni- tude to this immigration of aliens to the United States. Until interrupted temporarily by the Eu- ropean War it had assumed such proportions as to have become the greatest movement of the largest number of peoples the world has ever known. In 1854 the wave of permanent immigration for the first time reached and passed the 400,000 mark, 5 THE TIDE OP IMMIGRATION the arrivals that year numbering 428,000. In 1882 arriving immigrants for the first time in any one year exceeded 700,000 and all but reached the 800,000 mark, the immigrants coming here in those twelve months numbering 789,000. During the foUowing twenty years immigration declined from this high-water mark, and it was not untU 1903 that the number of yearly arrivals exceeded 800,000. In no single year since, except imme- diately following the outbreak of the European War, has our annual immigration fallen below this number. In 1905 it exceeded 1,000,000; in 1906 it passed the 1,100,000 and in 1907 the 1,200,- 000 marks; in 1913 and 1914 total annual immi- gration was exceeding 1,400,000. Prior to 1907 our records of alien arrivals account for those only who reported that they were coming here per- manently and do not tabulate those arrivals who stated that they were here only temporarily; since that year the Grovemment statistics of immigra- tion Eujcount for all arriving immigrants. During the ten years since 1905 nearly 12,000,- 000 foreign-bom persons have landed in the United States, a yearly average of 1,200,000 ar- rivals. These alone form more than thirty-seven per cent, of all recorded immigration since 1820 ; they make up more than eighty-eight out of every one hundred of our present total foreign-bom population. Some conception of the annual flow of the immi- gration tide since 1820 is secured from a study of the frontispiece chart, which is compiled from 6 THE FLOW OF THE TIDZ statistics of the Bureau of Inmiigration of the United States Government. The enormous in- crease during the years of the last several dec- ades is strikingly indicated. Immigration has been in even larger volume than that which is indicated ia the chart, as that takes account of permanent alien arrivals only, excluding those who come here temporarily and also those incom- ing foreign bom who have been here before and have become citizens of the United States. The volume of arriving aliens, separate and apart from all other aspects of the so-called im- migration problem, is in itself an important phase of that problem. This is true to a much greater extent than the public has beeil persuaded to believe. It is plain that whatever evils accom- pany immigration, these must necessarily be mag- nified and made more serious in their effects the larger the number of arriving immigrants. If pauperism is regarded as an evil of immigration, then the larger the volimie the greater is likely to be the injury resulting from pauperism. If criminality among aliens is an evil, then the greater the number of immigrants the more prob- able it is that there will be greater injury from this cause. If lowering the standard of living of the native and Americanized worker is a serious evil of immigration, then most assuredly the larger the number of immigrants competing for jobs and wages the greater the horrors of this evil And so it is through all the particular as- pects of the injurious effects of iaunigration. In 7 THE TIDE OF IMMIGRATION brief, the number of alien arrivals may be so large as to constitute by itself the one preeminent na- tional menace to the stability and permanency of our society and our institutions. It may, in fact, become the principal aspect of immigration which should cause us to restrict or regulate the flow of aliens to our shores. It is the moving cause of that ever-growing and more fiercely contested conflict which for several years now has been be- fore the Congress and the President of the United States for the enactment into law of the literacy- test provision for the restriction of immigration. As regards the volume of the immigration cur- rent, Professor Henry P. Fairchild, of Yale Uni- versity, in his book, Immigration, says: "The modern period has witnessed a continuation of the same general process which has been going on since 1820. The same succession of crests and depressions in the great wave has continued, the only difference being that the apex reached a much higher point than ever before. . . . The re- cent rapid development of commimication has made the ease of immigration so great that we have been overwhelmed by the resulting prob- lems. The movement of millions of people from one region to another is a phenomenon of pro- digious sociological import." In their book. The Immigrant Problem, which is a summary of the findings of the Federal Im- migration Commission, Professors Jenks and Lauck state that "it is absolutely necessary to impose some limitations upon the numbers of im- 8 THE FLOW OF THE TIDE migrants who are rapidly entering the country" if we are "to establish firmly an American stand- ard of work and living, to guarantee a proper dis- tribution of the benefits of our marvelous natural resources and our wonderful industrial progress and at the same time to maintain the spirit of en- terprise and the stimulation to industrial progress and efficiency."' Continuing, these authors say: "Unless there is a restriction of immigration, the situation for the American industrial worker is not very promising. A policy of permanent or absolute exclusion is not imperative. All that is essential is to limit temporarily the number of in- coming aliens so that the foreign workmen al- ready in the country may be industrially assimi- lated and educated to the point where they will de- mand proper standards of living and wiU be con- strained by the economic aspirations of the native American. If the existing influx of immigrant wage-earners continues, there is no ground for expecting any noteworthy improvement in the near future in the working and living conditions of the employees of our mines and factories." That the volume of immigration alone has be- come a menace in recent years and has fast out- stripped our assimilative powers is supported by ample evidence in the results of investigations, by every commission and like disinterested bodies, as well as by individual students of the question. The mere number of immigrants, if we disregard all other factors in the problem of immigration, is alone sufficient to cause us to pause and take com- 9 THE TIDE OF IMMIGRATION pass as to the drift of our national tendencies. Of prime, if not of first, imporiiance is this ques- tion of number. A million and more unmigrants a year may give an entirely different direction to our national tendency in development than would one-half that number or less. In other words, a relatively smaller amount of immigration than that which we were receiving before the Eu- ropesin War was precipitated might conceivably be beneficial, while the greater volume is affecting quite differently those economic forces on which rests our national life. That recent immigration, with the incoming of more than a million annually, is an entirely different and more complex prob- lem than would be that resulting from the coming of a lesser number — ^than was the immigration of almost any period prior to 1880 — ^is refiected in the report of the Massachusetts Commission on Immigration. Not only "the vastly greater num- ■ ber of annual arrivals" but also, even more for- cibly, "the greatly increased nmnber of nationali- ties and of languages" included in recent inmii- gration make the task of assimilation the tremen- dous one it has come to be. And it is this in part that emphasizes the significance of the volume of ;^ immigration. ^ Occasionally there occurs a volcanic upheaval of economic forces which violently disarranges the usual flow and ebb of the immigration tide. This occurred during the period of our Civil War; it has happened repeatedly in times of financial panics and industrial depressions; it is in evidence 10 THE FLOW OF THE TIDE in the effects upon immigration of the present Eu- ropean War. With the tremendous interests at stake, with the upheaval in the social and eco- nomic life of the European populations, and with the interruption to ocean travel, the streams of population which have been flowing from the vast reservoirs of peoples in Europe and which have been draining to the United States during the past decade an average of more than a million immigrants annually, have been temporarily shut off by this great armed conflict of the nations. The twelve months following the first declaration of war show the smallest permanent yearly immi- gration since 1899 — ^it slightly exceeded 325,000. In consequence, the present is an opportune time to consider impassionately the problem of immigration — to put our house in order if we find it being disordered by immigration. At this criti- cal period, amid the armed clash of the nations of Europe, it is imperative for us "as a people whose earlier hopes have been shocked by the hard blows of experience" to pause and take invoice "of the heterogeneous stocks of humanity that we^ have admitted to the management of our great political enterprise. "^ -• For all aliens entering the country the law pro- vides that manifests shall be supplied to a des- ignated Government ofl&cial by the steamship com- pany. These manifests show the full name, age, and sex of the alien; whether married or single; the calling or occupation; ability or inability to > Commons: Bacea and Immigramta in America. 11 THE TIDE OF IMMIGRATION read or write; nationality; race; country of last residence; name and address of nearest relative in the country from wMcli the alien comes; the seaport for landing in the United States ; the final destination, if any, heyond the port of landing; whether having a ticket through to such final des- tination ; whether the alien has paid his own pas- sage or whether it has been paid by any person or by any corporation, society, municipality, or government, and if so, by whom; whether going to join a relative or friend, and if so, what rela- tive or friend, and his or her name and complete address ; whether ever before in the United States, and if so, when and where; whether ever in a prison or an almshouse or an institution or hos- pital for the care and treatment of the insane or supported by charity; whether a polygamist; whether an anarchist ; whether coming by reason of any offer, solicitation, promise, or agreement, expressed or implied, to perform labor in the United States; the alien's condition of health, mental and physical, and whether deformed or crippled, and if so, how long and from what cause. Statistics based upon the information contained in these manifests supply us with much valuable data for measuring and determining the trend and significance of the various characteristics of the aliens who compose the immigration tide. CHAPTER n SOURCES OF THE TIDE Otje tide tables — ^the statistics compiled by the Federal Bureau of Immigration — show that the immigration tide flowing into the United States from all quarters of the globe has its source, for the greater part, in Europe. Of the 1,403,000 alien immigrants landing upon our shores in the twelve months preceding the beginning of the Eu- ropean War, as many as 1,114,000 were from Eu- rope ; only 35,000 came from Asia, and the remain- ing 254,000 were from all other countries com- bined, these being principally Canada, the West Indies, and Mexico. Eighty out of every one hundred immigrants in that fiscal year came from European countries. As many as sixty of these eighty were from three countries only — ^Italy, Austria-Hungary, and Rus- sia. Italy was first in importance, sending 295,- 000 ; Austria-Hungary held second place, contrib- utiag 286,000; Russia was third, its contribution reaching 262,000. From all of England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales came only eighty-eight thousand or as few as six out of every one hundred ; from Germany, only forty thousand or three out of every one him- 13 THE TIDE OF IMMIGRATION dred; and from Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, only thirty-one thousand or two out of every one hundred. Thus is indicated the much greater importance of the contrihution from the eastern and south- em European countries over that of the countries of western Europe. Greece, France, Portugal, Bulgaria, Serbia, and Montenegro ; Spain, Turkey, the Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, and Eou- mania, of importance in the order given, contrib- uted virtually all the remainder of our 1914 im- migration from Europe. Our total immigration from each of the principal countries of origin, showing the relative importance of the respective contributions annually since 1907, is presented in the chart on opposite page. This grouping of immigrants by countries of origin does not give, or rather it conceals, infor- mation as to the racial elements making up our immigration tide. For this reason care must be exercised by bearing in mind exactly what this ar- bitrary but necessary grouping really means. Country of origin may be, and usually is, the same as nationality, but it is not always the same as identity of race. Politics often cuts through and separates race. Thus it becomes an important factor in the organization of populations. The same race is not infrequently found organized in more than one nationality. Again, political boun- daries sometime coincide with racial differentia- tion of population. We must remember, then, that country of origin or nationality as determined by 14 1^ uu IMMIOBA.TIOIT BT LEADINO COUNTBIES THE TIDE OF IMMIGRATION political boundaries or governmental jurisdiction "bears no constant or necessary relation whatever to race," as Professor Eipley says in The Races of Europe, but is usually "an artificial result of historical causes. Political boundaries, moreover, may not often be national; they are too often merely governmental." The sources of our immigration according to country of origin are by nationality or political boundaries solely. Because of failure to recognize exactly what this means, the statistics of immi- gration are quite commonly misinterpreted, with ensuing erroneous conclusions. Take for illus- tration our immigrants from Russia. The two hundred and sixty-two thousand arrivals from that country in 1914 were not Russians proper but Hebrews, Poles, Lithuanians, Finns, and Grer- mans. More than ninety-five out of every one hun- dred of our population enumerated by the census as having been born in Russia are non-Russian; less than five out of every one hundred are Rus- sians. Austria-Hungary, even more than Russia, com- prises a heterogeneous assemblage of races. This hyphenated name as applied to immigration from, that country is apt to be misleading. The Ger- manic Austrians, who rule in Austria, and the Hungarian Magyars, who are politically dominant in Hungary, taken together form less than one- half the total population of the dual' kingdom. The majority of the Austro-Hungarian peoples, therefore, belong to races which are neither 16 SOURCES OF THE TIDE "Austrian" nor "Hungarian" properly so- called. "Most of them," says Mr. F. H. Palmer, in Ms Austro-Hwngarian Life in Town and Goimtry, "are of Slavonic origin; but they, too, are broken up into numerous races, more or less distinct from one another in language, religion, and habits of life. Czechs, Croatians and Serbians, Euthenes, Poles, Slovaks, and Austro-Bulgarians are all Slavonic races, nearly akin to, and sometimes identical with, others who dwell beyond the fron- tiers of Austria-Hungary. Quite separate from all these are races more nearly allied to the Latin group, such as the Roumanians or Wallachians and Italians in parts of the Austrian Tyrol and the coastlands. Nor are these all. There are, be- sides, over two million Jews, and considerable fragments of other races — Greeks, Turks, and Gipsies." This population of the dual kingdom shows "the most complicated racial mosaic of all modem na-^ tions — Si juxtaposition of hostile races. ' ' Not only are the Slav, the Magyar, the German, the Latin, and the Jew found in Austria-Hungary but they present also numerous subdivisions. In the north the Slavic Czechs are separated into the Bohe- mians and Moravians ; there also are to be found other Slavs — Slovaks, Poles, and Euthenians or Eussniaks; in the south and along the Adriatic are more Slavs — Croatians and Serbians and Dal- matians and Slovenians. Between these north and south Slavs are the non-Slavic Magyars and Ger^ 17 THE TroE OF IMMIGRATION mans — ^the politically dominant races. In the southwest are Italians ; in the east the Latinized Slavs or Eomnanians. The southern Slavs and Eoumanians are under the sway of Hungary; the Roumanians, a disrupted nationality of Slavs, form partly independent kingdoms and are partly dominated by the Magyars. The most numerous of the Slavic groups in the dual monarchy are the Czechs, together with the closely allied Slovaks. These gave the United States a combined immigration in 19M of thirty- seven thousand, of which twenty-seven thousand were Slovaks. They inhabit principally the hilly northwestern Hungary, but, as is the case with so many other races, says Mr. Palmer, they are found also in small groups and communities in other parts far removed from the Carpathian Moun- tains. Within the Magyar district in Hungary, he tells us, are Slovak villages in which the Slo- vak language and customs are still preserved un- changed. The Slovaks alone nmnber in the neigh- borhood of two million five hundred thousand, forming twelve per cent, of the total population of Hungary. Nearly allied to the Czechs and Slovaks are the Poles, the most unfortunate of all the Slavic peoples. So entirely distinct is the nobility from the great mass of the people that one might almost say that the Poles consist of two separate races. Destroyed as a distinct nationality by the parti- tion of their country between Russia, Germany, and Austria, the Slavs of Poland have been a per- 18 SOURCES OF THE JIDE secuted and oppressed people for more than an hundred years. In Galicia, Bukowina, and other parts of north- em Hungary are the Euthenians, a branch of the Little Russians, also called Russniaks or Eussra- ians. Although nine-tenths of the Euthenians live in Eussia and only one-tenth in Austria-Hungary, virtually all the forty-two thousand inunigrating to the United States in 1914 were from the dual country. Besides the Euthenians and Poles, Eoumanians also come to the United States from northern Aus- tria. The Eoumanians from east of Hungary in the neighborhood of the Black Sea are not Slavic but Italic, being more allied to the Spanish, Ital- ian, and other Latin peoples. Notwithstanding, a strong mixture of Slavic blood permeates the Eou- manians, and they are almost surrounded by groups representing this race. Their immigration to the United States in 1914 reached twenty-five thousand. The Slovenians, also called Slovenes, Griners, Wends, Slovinci, and in the United States Aus- trians, come principally from southern Austria. A large majority of the one million five hundred thousand inhabit Austria; others are in Hungary and Italy. Croatians and Serbians also emigrate from southern Austria to the United States. Most of our immigrants from Hungary are not really Hungarians, for the true Hungarian is the Magyar. This people comprises about forty per cent, of the inhabitants of the country. They are 19 THE TIDE OF IMMIGRATION surrounded on all sides by other races, so much so that there is not a single point where they touch the- political boundaries of Hungary. To their north are the Slovaks ; to the east the Rou- manians; to the south the Serbo-Croatians ; and to the west the Germans. Thus Hungary is by no means made up solidly of Hungarians. Our im- migration of these Magyars in 1914 amounted to forty-seven thousand, and they formed the largest number of any single group from Austria-Hun- gary, with the possible exception of the Poles. While Austria-Hungary contains only one-fifth, and Eussia nearly three-fourths, of the world's one hundred million Slavs, it is from the former and not the latter country that the United States receives the larger part of its Slavic immigration. In 1914 as many as twenty-three out of every one hundred of our total immigration — as many as three hundred and nineteen thousand — were Sla- vic. The group contributing the largest number was the Poles, totaling one hundred and twenty- eight thousand; next came the Russians proper, forty-nine thousand ; then the Ruthenians or Russ- niaks with forty-two thousand ; the Croatians and Slovenians with thirty-nine thousand ; the Slovaks with twenty-seven thousand ; the Bulgarians, Ser- bians, and Montenegrins with seventeen thou- sand; the Bohemians and Moravians with ten thousand ; and the Dalmatians, Bosnians, and Her- zegovinians with five thousand. The term "Slav," it should be emphasized, is a racial expression like Teuton or Celt and does 20 SOURCES OF THE TIDE not apply to any distinctive nationality ; the Rus- sians and Poles and Slovaks are Slavic, just as the Germans are Teutonic and the Scotch are Celtic. The Slavs form about one-fourth of the popula- tion of Europe. The most important according to numerical strength are the Eussians, number- ing nearly seventy million, next the Poles com- prising about eleven million, then the Bohemians, Moravians, and Slovaks having about seven mil- lion, the Serbians and Croatians six million, the Bulgarians three million, and the Slovenes one milhon three hundred thousand. These Slavic peoples, according to Professor Ripley, have played a role in the eastern part of Europe "somewhat analogous to, although less successful than, that of the Teutons in the west. They have pressed in upon the territory of the classic civilization of Greece and Rome, ingrafting a new and physically vigorous population upon the old and partially enervated one. From some cen- ter of dispersion up north toward Russia, Slavic- speaking peoples have expanded until they have rendered all eastern Europe Slavic from the Arc- tic Ocean to the Adriatic and ^gean Seas. Only at one place is the continuity of Slavdom broken ; but this interruption is sufficient to set off the Slavs into two distinct groups at the present day. The northern one consists of the Russians, Poles, Czechs, and Slovaks. The southern group com- prises the main body of the Balkan peoples from the Serbo-Croatians to the Bulgars. Between these two groups of Slavs is a broad belt of non- 21 THE TIDE OF IMMIGRATION Slavio population, composed of the Magyars, lin- guistically now as always, Finns; and the Eou- manians, who have become Latin in speech within historic times. This intrusive, non-Slavic belt lies along or near the Danube, that great highway over which eastern peoples have penetrated Europe for centuries. The presence of this waterway is dis- tinctly the cause of the linguistic phenomenon. Rome went east, and the Finns, like the Huns, went west along it. Linguistically speaking, there- fore, the boundary of the southern Slavs and that of the Balkan Peninsula, beginning at the Danube, are one and the same." ^ That country of origin may not, and in a num- ber of instances does not, convey accurate infor- mation as to the character of its emigration is again illustrated in the facts that "Greeks pre- dominate everywhere on the coast of the ^Egean" under Turkish rule, and Armenians form com- munities in all large Turkish towns with the ex- ception of Macedonia. These Armenians are prob- ably the most numerous of the races coming to the United States from Asia. Their country lies west of the Caspian Sea and east of the Black Sea, be- ing partly in Asiatic Russia, partly in Asiatic Turkey, and partly in Persia. These Armenians call themselves Haiks. From that country also come Kurds and Georgeans. They are governed largely by Turkey, and also by Persia and Rus- sia. In Turkey are to be foimd also Kurds, Circas- 'Eipley: The Baoes of Europe, p. 403. 22 SOURCES OF THE TIDE flians, Albanians, Vlachs, Bulgarians, and others, the population of that country being possibly the most heterogeneous of any outside the United States. The Albanians, who were brought under Turkish rule five hundred years ago, have never considered themselves a conquered race and occa- sionally rebel against the authority of the Porte. The Christians of Macedonia. belong to four dif- ferent nationalities — Bulgarian, Serbian, Greek, and Vlach or Wallachian. All these different races have been subjected within a politically united empire to the Ottoman. Turks or Osmanlis. The Turkish element forms a small proportion only of the population of European Turkey; it is scarcely a third in the Armenian provinces of Asia Minor. The presence in every important town of representatives of divers races is indicative of the fact that the assimilating power of the Turks during their five centuries of rule has been negli- gible. In the Balkan Peninsula Slavs and Albanians form about one-half the total population; there also are Greeks and Tatar-Turks. The Slavs com- prise Serbo-Croatians and, in a measure, Bulga- rians. The Greeks constitute about one-third of the population of the Peninsula. As for the Turks, their number is relatively unimportant, dominat- ing only in eastern Bulgaria, and elsewhere being scattered as a minority among the Slavs and Greeks. These Greeks are in the southern portion of the Peninsula, having spread out beyond tV limited area of Greece itself. 23 THE TIDE OF IMMIGRATION That many of the Greeks immigrating to tlie United States do not come from Greece is indi- cated in the fact that our total immigration from that country in 1914 was not quite thirty-seven thousand, while the number of Greeks admitted reached nearly forty-nine thousand. We received in the same year nearly three times as many im- migrants from Turkey in Asia as we did from Tur- key in Europe, the numbers being respectively twenty-two thousand and a little over eight thou- sand. While Turkey thus gave us a total of thirty thousand, the actual Turkish immigration was less than three thousand. Most of the remainder was composed of Greeks, Bulgarians, Serbians, Mon- tenegrins, Syrians, Armenians, and Hebrews. This immigration by race and country is com- pared in the diagram on page 25. Particularly is it true that coimtry of origin tells us virtually nothing of the large Hebrew im- migration to our shores. The Jew comes from many countries and from no particular country that he can call his own. Most of the recent im- migration of Hebrews has been from Eussia, com- ing principally from what is known as the "Jew- ish Pale of Settlement" in the western part of that country. Others come from Austria-Hun- gary, Eoumania, Germany, and Turkey. In 1914 Hebrews formed the fourth largest group among all the immigrating peoples; their number was nearly one hundred and forty-three thousand. Immigration by race since 1908 is illustrated in the diagram on page 26. 24 «Mtai LbADIITO BuBOPEAN iMMlOBATINa PeoPUES SOURCES OF THE TIDE It should be clear by now that country of origin or nationality is not always identical with race solidarity. Even where there is no clear-cut line of racial demarkation within a country, there may be important differences among the immigrants which are hidden from view by their being desig- nated according to the country of their origin. Such is the case with Italy. EeaUy important dif- ferences are to be foimd between the people who come to us from northern Italy and those who emigrate from its southern section. So well is this recognized that the Bureau of Immigration of the United States Grovemment keeps a separate record of north and south Italian immigrants. Of the total of three hundred and twenty-four thou- sand in 1914, the south Italians made up as much as eighty-four per cent, and the north Italians only sixteen per cent. Most of the south Italians come from the provinces of Abbruzzi, Campania, Calabria, and the island of Sicily. Eacially, how- ever, it can be "said that there is only one race in Italy, although there has been in historic times an admixture of foreign blood that has brought about significant differences between the north and south Italians. These are the more important countries and races comprising the principal sources of our im- migration tide. What are the basal economic forces at work in these countries and among these races that cause their peoples by millions to emi- grate to our shores? CHAPTEE in THE TIDAL FORCE It should be realized at the outset that the cause of emigration from, any particular country or from all countries may not necessarily be also the cause of immigration to the United States. The one movement may occur without the other. As a matter of fact, there is a considerable amount of emigration from European countries that does not come to this country. United States Consul-General Hale, in reporting to the State Department on immigration to this country from England in the eighties, stated that there were three general conditions Upon which emigration from Europe depended and under which all the specific causes of emigration could be included. The most important of these condi- tions is the attraction of the country of destina- tion. Next in importance is the facility or means of escape from the conditions of dissat- isfaction in the emigrant's home country. These means include principally comfort, cheapness, and speed, and also the attitude of the country the emi- grant leaves and the one to which he goes. It is only after these two conditions are satisfactory that the third cause of emigration — dissatisfaction 28 THE TIDAL FORCE on the part of tlie emigrant over conditions in Ms own country — ^becomes of importance, "Considered witli reference to these condi- tions," says Consul Hale, "statistics of emigra- tion to the United States of British, German, and French show a very remarkable nnif ormity in the response which the emigration makes to the pre- vailing condition of the period. The uniformity, however, is not remarkable at all, but only nat- ural, if it be borne in mind how universal is the application of the great laws which govern human action. The statistics show that the Briton, the German, and the Frenchman instantly availed themselves of the remarkable increase of the facili- ties of ocean transit which began to be developed in the early part of the double decade 1841-60, in which period he found at the same time increasing benefit from the attraxjtions of America. The fig- ures also show that the Briton expressed his ap- preciation of the suddenly developed advantages of this period by increasing his emigration nearly five hundred per cent, over his emigration in the preceding period 1821-40 ; the German by increas- ing his emigration over six hundred per cent.; and even the Frenchman, whose emigration is so small as scarcely to be expected to sympathize with the general movement, by increasing his emi- gration one hundred and fifty per cent." ^ With the emigration of the twenty years prior to 1860 Consul Hale compares that of the twenty 'United States Consular Eeports on Emigration and Immigra- tion, House Executive Document No. 157. 29 THE TIDE OF IMMIGRATION years following. Both dissatisfaction with home conditions and the facilities for reaching the United States were greatly increased during the second period and would have resulted in a greatly increased emigration from the United Kingdom and Germany, at least, if the other element— con- ditions ia the United States— had been favorable. As a matter of fact, these were unfavorable, and in consequence the ratio of emigration, iastead of greatly increasing, actually decreased. ' ' The at- tractions of the United States had declined so," says Consul Hale, "that the Briton decreased the ratio of his emigration twenty-three per cent." United States Consul Lathrop, in reporting also upon British emigration, stated that a study of the statistics shows the ruling factor to be the state of trade in the United States. "Prosperity there largely increases emigration from Great Britain ; and this appears to be the case whether trade be active or not in Great Britain. In fact, it must be thus, for prosperous periods in the two countries have been almost synchronous ; and so emigrants have transferred their homes and their families more largely in those seasons of comforts and well-doing than when their circum- stances were depressed." And so it is with emigration from Germany. It has been determined not so much by economic conditions in that country as by favorable condi- tions in America. The statistics of emi^ation from Germany show the largest number of depar- tures to the United States in those years when 30 THE TIDAL FORCE there was the greatest and most active industrial and commercial activity in this country — ^when factories, workshops, and shipyards were busy, when crops were good, and when remunerative prices brought comforts and luxuries to the Amer- ican farmer. Proof is just as conclusive that the years of least emigration from Germapy are marked by business and commercial depression in the United States. In brief, the increase or de- crease in emigration from Germany to this coun- try has been determined by the rise or fall in the prosperity of the United States. "While economic conditions in the emigrants' home country have always had more or less in- fluence in determining the volume of emigration, at the same time it is more than probable that the decidiag factor has usually been the economic con- ditions in America," say the United States Con- sular Eeports on Emigration and Immigration in reference to Germany. ' * For illustration, the fluc- tuations of the trans-Atlantic emigration from Germany, as indicated in the statistics of immi- gration, show that the rise or faU is largely due to greater or less business prosperity in America. Neither good nor poor times in the immigrant's home country stimulate emigration to the United States as much as do the reports from others in America of the prevalence there of prosperous conditions." Consul Eckstein, reporting to the State Depart- ment of the United States Government in regard to emigration from the Netherlands, stated that 31 THE TIDE OF IMMIGRATION the falling off in the eighties of emigration from Holland to the United States "has not been owing to favorable surroundings or prosperous condi- tions prevailing in Holland," for, on the contrary, they had been exactly the reverse. During the early part of the decade emigration from Holland had been increasing. In 1884 occurred a period of industrial depression in that country accom- panied by the workers' "strike for work," not for increased wages nor to prevent a reduction of wages nor for shorter hours. Ordinarily, these conditions would have meant increased emigra- tion, but, as a matter of fact, it actually decreased. The primary explanation of this is to be found in the prevalence of less favorable conditions in the United States. He expresses the opinion that emi- gration was ordinarily more influenced, that it increased or decreased, according as favorable or unfavorable news respecting the economic and so- cial conditions in the United States was received and circulated in Holland than it was affected by conditions in that country, A search of the causes of emigration from Switzerland to the United States discloses the fact that they are to be found more in the latter coun- try than in the former. This is all the more im- portant when we remember that in Switzerland there were no instances of great wealth, no ap- pearance of great ease and luxury, no rich and arrogant aristocracy, but, instead, almost every head of a family, however humble in circum- stances, possessed a home belonging to him in fee 32 THE TroAL FORCE with all its civilizing influences. Pauperism as an institution was scarcely known. Neither did compulsory military service nor onerous taxation enter as a cause of Swiss emigration to the United States. Take the Scandinavian emigration to this country. Hardly any other people in Europe en- joyed greater peace and more continued progress under free and democratic institutions. There were no political disturbances, no religious con- troversies, and no military exactions sufficient to cause emigration in any large numbers. That which did take place was almost entirely due to economic causes operating in the United States and not in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. A recent investigation^ of the large immigra- tion movement to the United States from eastern Europe and Asiatic Turkey presents additional evidence of the fact that it is due to the demand for labor being much greater and the wages paid much higher in the United States than in the countries from which the immigrants come. "Avoidance of military service, a desire for ad- venture, dissatisfaction with political and social conditions, alleged discrimination on account of race or religion, and various other causes are also operative," says this investigator, "but all of these combined are of httle importance when eom- ^ Made during the last six months of 1913 by Mr. W. W. Hus- band, an immigrant inspector of the United States Bureau of Immigration. Published as an Appendix in the Annual Beport of the Commissioner-General of Immigration, 1914. 33 THE TIDE OF IMMIGRATION pared with tlie simple economic inducement re- ferred to." Provided times are "good" in the United States, emigration from Europe takes place re- gardless of conditions there. It occurs when times in Europe are "good" as regularly as when they are "bad." It does not necessarily take place during periods of greatest dullness in trade in the particular European country; nay, more, quite often it occurs when agricultural and indus- trial conditions there are prosperous. The rec- ord of emigration of every European country shows that this movement of population out of the home country takes place ia times of prosperity immediately following a period of dullness, pro- vided times are "good" in the United States; that it declines or falls off when depression in this country sets in again. This close relation between periods of industrial prosperity and an increase in immigration to the United States, on the one hand, and of industrial depression and a decrease in immigration on the other, is indicated strikingly in the chart which supplies the frontispiece illustration to this vol- ume. It illustrates the annual waves of immigra- tion that have washed our shores each year since 1820. "It is interesting to note," says the Ee- port of the Federal Bureau of Immigration for 1914, "the successive periodical increases, reced- ing less each time coincident with the periods of financial depression, only to reach to a greater height with the next ascending wave. . . . The 34 THE TIDAL FORCE three periods of depression following 1857, 1873, and 1893 stand out prominently, and the recent financial and conunereial depression (1907) oansed the wave line to drop to a marked degree. This periodical rise and fall well represents the rela- tive prosperity of the country." Even before 1857 there was the same tendency in immigration. What has come to be character- ized in American history as "The Golden Age" preceded the panic of 1857 and followed that of 1837. It was accompanied by a striking increase in the number of aliens entering the country, as many as 428,000 arriving in a single twelve months, marking the pinnacle of an almost unin- terrupted increase from 52,000 in 1843 and stand- ing out conspicuously in our statistics of immigra- tion as the largest single yearly inflow up to that time. This inrush was accompanied by the most remarkable industrial and agricultural develop- ment the people of the United States had yet wit- nessed. So large was the emigration from Eu- rope that it became known in the history of cer- tain of those coimtries and especially of Ireland as "The Exodus." So it was with "The Era of Good Feeling" pre- ceding the 1837 panic. It was accompanied by a wave of immigration which increased the number of arrivals in six years from less than twenty three thousand to more than seventy-nine thou- sand. This was for that period a large annual in- flow. As the years of financial and business prosper- 35 THE TIDE OF IMMIGRATION ity are accompanied by large and increasing inuni- gration, so the years following financial panics and those which mark industrial depression show a falling off in the number of alien arrivals. These panics occur usually at the close of a period of prosperity in this coxmtry; at the same time is recorded a decline in the volume of immigration. In 1873, for illustration, immigration was 460,- 000. The panic of that year was the most serious the country had ever experienced. Immigration declined in the five years following to less than 139,000. By 1882 immigration had again risen to about 789,000. Accompanying the business de- pression which began in that year, it dropped to less than 335,000 four years later. The height of business revival was again reached in 1892 and immigration that year was 580,000. The panic of 1893 interrupted this inflow and the following years of depression saw immigration drop to as low as 229,000 in 1898, the smallest yearly inflow since 1879. Following 1898 came a period of bet- ter times culminating in 1907, when permanent immigration reached 1,285,000, the highest point it had ever attained in our history. In the fall of that year the country was once more plunged into the throes of another financial panic and en- suing industrial depression. Immigration dropped within two years to less than 752,000. The immediate effect upon immigration of a financial panic here is the cutting off of the inflow at its source. In the past, this has not affected the stream to any considerable extent for that 36 THE TIDAL FORCE year as reflected in the statistics of arrivals; in fact, a "panic year" usually marks the flood-tide of immigration. This is explained in the fact that many aliens had already left their European homes and were on their way to this country when the panic was precipitated. The departure of these and others who had made their plans for emigrating was not affected by the adverse condi- tions, and their arrival here is thus recorded in the panic year. But under modern conditions of communication and transportation the effect of a panic upon immigration is now reflected almost immediately. For instance, the effects of the panic of October, 1907, were such as to prevent almost entirely the arrival on our shores in 1908 of the usual spring tide. The years of commercial or industrial depres- sion in the United States correspond with the years which show the least emigration from Eu- rope. This lends force to the contention that in considering the causes of immigration emphasis should be laid upon conditions prevailing in the United States rather than upon those in Europe. Unfavorable conditions alone in the European country cannot be regarded as the basal cause of immigration to the United States. However bad they may be, emigration does not result unless there are fair prospects that better conditions will be found here. Thus, adverse conditions in Eu- rope do not necessarily mean immigration to this country — they should be regarded only as a sec- ondary cause of immigration inasmuch as the^ 37 THE TIDE OF IMMIGRATION nearly always have to be coupled with the exist- ence of improved conditions in the United States. Economic opportunity here, heightened at in- tervals by periods of industrial and business pros- perity, is the single powerful force drawing immi- gration to our shores. Much significance lies in the fact that there has never been a period of economic prosperity in this country that has not been marked by large and increasing immigration. Similarly, immigration from all or from any particular European country is smallest in volume when business or industrial conditions here are "bad." That it is the eco- nomic situation in the United States at any par- ticular time which determines our immigration from Europe, is proven by the often recurring fact that even where this improved economic condition corresponds to good times in the particular Eu- ropean country, there is still immigration to this country. The result quite often is an increase in emigration from Europe when times there are good and a decline in immigration when times there are bad. If conditions in Europe were the primary operating cause of immigration to the United States this anomalous situation would not BO often be presented. That immigration is most closely related to the conditions of business in this country is proven not only by the record of emi- gration from every European country, but also by the statistics of immigration of the United States Government. "The great determining factor in the volume of 38 THE TIDAL FORCE immigration," says Professor Fairchild, "has been the economic situation in this country. Pros- perity has always been attended by large immi- gration, hard times by the reverse." Develop- ing this point further, he says: "The natural causes of immigration at the present time lie pri- marily in the superiority of the economic condi- tions in the United States over those in the coun- tries from which the immigrants come. Modern immigration is essentially an economic phenome- non. Religious and political causes have played the leading part in the past, and still enter in as contributory factors in many cases. But the one prevailing reason why the immigrant of today leaves his native village is that he is dissatisfied with his economic lot, as compared with what it might be in the New World. The European peas- ant comes to America because he can — or believes he can — secure a greater return in material wel- fare for the amount of labor expended in this country than in his home Mnd. This fact is rec- ognized by practically all careful students of the subject, and is frequently emphasized in the re- cent report of the Immigration Commission. It is worthy of notice, also, that the changes which af- fect the volume of immigration current, and cause those repeated fluctuations which we have ob- served, are changes in the economic situation in this country, rather than in the countries of source. A period of good times in this country attracts large numbers of immigrants by promis- ing large rewards for labor; an industrial depres- 39 THE TIDE OF IMMIGRATION sion checks the incoming current, eind sends away many of those who are here." ^ At the present time, he adds, "the motives of the immigrants are ahnost wholly economic.^ . . . There can be little doubt that on the average the immigrant is able to earn and save more, not only of money, but of wealth in the broader sense, than he could at home. This is the great underlying motive of modern immigration, and if it were il- lusory, the movement must soon fail."® Thus, it can be stated as a law of immigration that by far its greater volume is determined by, and its movement depends upon, the condition of business in the country receiving the immigrants. This is beyond dispute among those who have carefully studied the facts. It explains, in large part, the moving force back of those waves of hu- manity which during the past century have surged across the broad Atlantic; it explains, also, the fluctuations in the flow and ebb in this movement of population out of Europe. ^Fairchild: Immigration, p. 145. 'Ibid., p. 363. 'Ibid., p. 428. CHAPTER IV TWO VIEWS OF THE TIDE Periods of prosperity in this country, then, are nearly always accompanied by an increase in the volume of immigration, regardless of conditions in Europe. This is because there are better oppor- tunities at those times for securing employment at high wages. For instance, take immigration into our New England mill towns. Its volume is determined with clock-like regularity by the pros- perity of those mills — upon poorer business pros- pects setting in, the alien workers leave for their home countries, only to return immediately upon improved chances for employment. The same is true of the anthracite and bituminous coal mines, of the steel mills, of the clothing trade, and of scores of other industries now almost entirely dominated by this alien labor. So well organized is the machinery for the transmission of informa- tion to Europe as to economic conditions and pros- pects here, and for the transportation of labor across the Atlantic, that the populations of Euro- pean countries are enabled to take instant ad- vantage of the demand for labor in this country. The fact is, and a startling fact it is, too, im- migration today and in the large has become a co- 41 THE TIDE OF IMMIGRATION lossal business enterprise — a huge commercial un- dertaking — ^the wholesaling of human labor for gain. There have grown up in many industrial cen- ters and large cities of the United States and at different sources of emigration in Europe agen- cies whose principal business is the promotion of immigration. These agencies comprise an exten- sive system of organization through labor con- tractors, employment agents, immigrant bankers, padrones, and steamship and ticket agents, and this system has come into existence to supply the American employer with this cheap European la- bor. These agents are known to go so far as to advance the cost of transportation to immigrants who give security to refund the amount out of the first wages they earn in the United States. These agencies have contracts to supply labor to indi- viduals and firms engaged in large industrial and manufacturing enterprises and in railroad and other constniction work, such as public buildings, reservoirs, and the like. That these agencies are the instigating cause of many of the inhabitants of European countries leaving for the United States who otherwise would not come here is common knowledge to all inves- tigators of immigrant conditions. These agents are the inciting cause of that remarkable fluctua- tion in the volume of immigration which we have seen marks alternate periods of industrial depres- sion, on the one hand, and of good times on the other. They transmit abroad information as to 42 TWO VIEWS OF THE TIDE prosperity in the United States and encourage hundreds of thousands of the industrial and agri- cultural classes to come here. This is the under- lying explanation of increasing immigration. The peasants of Austria-Hungary, Italy, and Russia, in particular, continue to supply, as they have sup- plied for years past, an abundant harvest to these promoters of immigration. Evidence on this point is overwhelming. The activities of these ticket agents or brokers are referred to as being among the chief secondary or immediate causes of immigration by Mr. W. W. Husband, an immigrant inspector of the Federal Bureau of Immigration, who only recently con- cluded an investigation of the immigration move- ment to the United States from eastern Europe and Asiatic Turkey.^ The function of these agents, he says, is largely to convince potential emigrants that going away is possible and to as- sist and direct them in so doing. He believes that they are so important a factor, at least in a con- tributory sense, that their elimination would re- sult in a greatly reduced emigration, while their better control along lines contemplated by the United States law, as weU as by the emigration laws of most European countries, would have the same effect, only in a lesser degree. High officials in Eussia expressed to him the opinion that more than one-half of the emigration from that country is due to the activity of steamship ticket agents, 'Appendix to Annual Beport of the Commissioner-General of Immigration, 1914, p. 392. 43 THE TIDE OF IMMIGRATION while a competent aiitliority in Hungary estimated that fifty thousand emigrants left that country in 1913 as the result of such propaganda. "Further evidence in this regard," says Mr. Husband, "is the claim of Government officials that the suppres- sion of ticket agents in Bulgaria has reduced enai- gration from that country to a minimum — a claim that seems to be substantiated by our statistical records." Writing of the illegal agent, who carries on probably the greater part of the emigration busi- ness in the eastern European countries, Mr. Hus- band says that these secret or contraband agents, as a rule, do not "directly represent any particu- lar steamship company, but rather deal with gen- eral agents of such companies or semi-independent concerns which are more or less closely allied to some particular line or group of lines. In many cases the so-called agents are merely brokers who round up emigrants and turn them over to the representative of some line or semi-independent agency just outside the borders of the country where they are recruited, or in some cases to legal agents at home. Still further down the list are the runners who go about the villages and direct their patrons — or victims, as the case may be — to some legal agent or illegal broker for a small commission per head. Still another important feature of the business is the piloting of illegal emigrants out of the country of origin. In Rus- sia, Austria-Hungary, and to a lesser extent in the Balkan States, the business of conducting 44 TWO VIEWS OF THE TIDE groups of illegal emigrants has reached enormous proportions, and in the aggregate scores of thou- sands so cross the frontiers of their respective countries annually." In addition to these secret or contraband agents, who are responsible for the existence in Europe of "underground railroads" permitting egress to emigrants, are other agents who represent transportation concerns authorized to conduct an emigration business in the particular country and who usually operate under government regula- tions which forbid the solicitation of emigration. In some countries, says Mr. Husband, there are authorized emigration agents which do not direct- ly represent any specific transportation company or companies. "Unfortunately in some instances the law respecting the artificial promotion of emi- gration is not weU observed, and legal agents so- licit business with the same eagerness that char- acterizes their illegal competitors. ' ' There is also a considerable number of emigration agents more or less independent of the steamship companies which, although not in close contact with the sources of immigration, are represented in such fields by agents or brokers, some of whom also conduct "a vigorous propaganda through form letters and so on sent to potential emigrants whose names are secured in various ways. ' ' Mr. Husband states that the practice of insuring emigrants against rejection at United States ports has become a very common one. "It is openly carried on in practically all of the impor- 45 THE TIDE OF IMMIGRATION taut ports of eastern Europe," lie says, "and in some cases the business is transacted in emigra- tion stations maintained by steamship companies or at their ticket agencies, although it appears that such companies are not directly interested." The American people have been slow to realize and to recognize these facts. They continue to be influenced in great part by the inherited belief that immigration in the large is still the free and volun- tary movement to the United States of oppressed peoples of Euroi)ean countries in search of re- ligious, political, and civil liberty; that they come seeking opportunities of greater independence and freedom for individual development outside the restraints imposed by kings and abbots and lords. These sentiments and motives the Ameri- can people have idealized overmuch — ^they have pictured to themselves the immigrant as one who is "unconscious of the gold and the iron slumber- ing in our hills" and who comes for "conscience' sake." This view is based upon the fact that Pil- grims, Puritans, Huguenots, Quakers, Catholics, and German Pietists ' ' sailed the treacherous seas and marched into the pathless wilderness, driven by something higher than the mere necessity to sustain life"; and that others have come who also were "Dreamers of Dreams" and seekers after "a city whose builder and maker is God." ^ This halo attaches itself to immigration of the present day, notwithstanding the revolutionary changes which time has brought about. Through ^Steiner: The Immigrant Tide, p. 186. 46 TWO VIEWS OP THE TIDE this view we have a picture of the ideals and soul longings of the immigrant which appeals to our higher humane emotions. The poor, down-trod- den, persecuted, idealizing alien on board the im- migrant ship looking longingly towards the shores of America and with outstretched arms suppli- cating "The Statue of Liberty Enlightening the World" is a familiar but much over-drawn and often over-worked figure. They who hold up to our view this picture would have us believe that the typical immigrant is a future American patriot in embryo or a far-sighted and soul-longing dreamer and philosopher. For the greater part such word pictures are imaginary and emotional tales from the writer's own subjective view of what he or she thinks the immigrant thinks. They represent a view of im- migration which most of us have inherited from the more favorable conditions of the past and this view impels us, unless we are on our guard, to adopt an unintelligent attitude toward immigra- tion of the present day. This situation is being taken advantage of by a well defined group of writers and public speakers and by a much larger group comprising transportation companies, large employers of cheap labor, steamship ticket agents, labor contractors, employment agents, padrones, immigrant bankers, associations of foreign news- paper publishers, liberal immigration leagues, and others whose economic seK-interest lies in continu- ing the recent large immigration. These groups are making use of this view of immigration in in- 47 THE TIDE OF IMMIGRATION numerable ways in a well planned campaign to persuade the public to continue a policy of prac- tically unrestricted immigration. And as a con- scious part of the campaign autobiographies and personal sketches of successful immigrants are finding a place in our magazines and newspapers and occasionally in book form, and we are being told in moving words of the successful work among immigrants of social settlements and the like. All this is the viewpoint of the sentimentalist. As an unsigned contributor to an article entitled * ' Sentimentalism — Soft and Hard, ' ' in the Unpop- ular Review, says: "There have always been peo- ple who color the actual world to suit their own fancy, passion or weakness, but oddly we have only within a century or so had a word to define their state of mind. . . . The essence of all senti- mentalism is inability to march up to the facts of a case. Whoever simply evades the facts, closes his eyes to actual data of his own fabrication, is a soft sentimentalist. . . . He oversimplifies his problem by canceling all disagreeable or difficult terms, and by playing with tractable terms of his own evocation. . . . Phantasm replaces reality.'- ... To blur valid distinctions which tell against one's major enthusiasm is usually the first symp- tom of sentimentalism. . . . When it suits the pur- pose of soft sentimentalists, they recklessly equate things and issues really very different; when a fact is too inconvenient for their maxims, they pre- tend it away. Invariably they are verbalists, 48 TWO VIEWS OF THE TIDE substituting wide shibboleths for the painful an- alysis of human motive and conduct as they are." Our problem is "to restrict the insidious and often delightful process of reshaping the world that is into a false guise conformed to our own desires. It is so much easier to square the most obvious aspect of any transaction with our own mood, than to analyze the transaction in all its aspects, and adjust our mood to the inexorable require- ments of reality. . . . The surest guarantee of any state is a citizenry that, obeying the law of reason, has the courage and lucidity to face the world as it is."^ The plain, unadulterated fact is that the immi- grants of today, in the mass, do not approach even in the tenth degree the imaginary word-figure of the sentimentalist. For the most part, they are sober and industrious, are endured to arduous toil and, as a rule, are moral and trustworthy. Adver- sity and disappointment they face unflinchingly. That they have many virtues there is no denying ; still they are simply rough, unskilled, illiterate, unimaginative, hard-working laborers, and even in America with all its opportunities they will never be anything else. They come here solely to improve their harsh economic status. This is the one dominant cause of emigration from Eu- rope that can be applied, with due regard to the facts, to the greater volume of our alien arrivals. Please do not misunderstand. Let us not be un- * The Unpopular Beview, Vol. 14, 1915. 49 THE TIDE OF IMMIGRATION fair or intellectnklly dishonest and twist the facts to suit our own point of view. Let us be courage- ous enough to face all the facts even though some of them may appear to direct us into a path our opinions would not have us go. Let us even be brave enough to admit those facts which are ad- verse to our personal viewpoint. As the Puritans, the Catholics, the Quakers, and other religious refugees and seekers after liberty of conscience migrated here in earlier days, so today among those immigrating are some in search of freedom of worship. But of the million and more immigrants now landing annually upon oar shores these dreamers and seekers are few, very few in number. So, also, as to those seeking to escape from the effects of adverse polit- ical conditions — those searchers in quest of the same goal earlier sought by the Pilgrims on the Mayflower. They come today as they came in days past, but their number is small, very small compared to the total immigration. Neither the desire for freedom of conscience in religious mat- ters, nor the longing for civil and political liberty, nor the ambition to secure educational advantages — ^none of these are uppermost as primary causes giving to us the great body of immigrants of the present day. The religious and political motives have almost wholly disappeared in favor of the economic in modem immigration, says Professor Fairchild.^ Those who accept the sentimentalist's point of 'Fairchild: Immigratwn, p. 378. 50 TWO VIEWS OF THE TIDE View magnify the atom or molecule and ignore the mass. They have their eyes so close to the mole-hill that it obscures their view of the moun- tain. The inevitable result is to decide the im- migration issue upon the acceptance of evidence dealing with an insignificant part of this wonder- ful movement of populations and ignoring entirely the great, primal economic forces that give to us by far the greater number of the aliens migrating to our shores. I If the American people fail to regard iinmigra- tion of today in the light of these facts — ^if our legislators refuse to treat it as it really is and, instead, accept an imaginary picture of it — then we shall fail as a people to take that action which the economic facts of the situation warrant and justify. Above all, sentimentaJism must not be permitted to blind us to the economics of the prob- lem. I say in all seriousness and in no spirit of selfish nativism that we as a people will not solve the immigration question, either to our own ad- vantage as a nation or to that of the immigrant seeking liberty and freedom, if we attempt to do so from the sentimental point of view of the imaginary immigrant seeking a religious, civil, political, and personal Utopia. We can not see immigration of today in its true dimensions if we look at it through an historical perspective or accept the picture of the sentimentalist as repre- senting the present-day facts. The solution of the immigration problem must be approached, as Pro- 51 THE TIDE OF IMMIGRATION f essor Carver of Harvard University so well says/ from that point of view which has "reference to external, economic facts, rather than to internal criterions such as the 'sentimental morality' that has hitherto influenced thought" and determined action on this very important and serious public question. In dealing with immigration of the present day, it is of supreme importance that we recognize the indisputable fact that it is not comparable with the free and voluntary movement to our shores of seekers after religious and civil and political liberty — ^that it is not the result of voluntary ini- tiative on the part of the immigrant — ^but that, instead, much of it is stimulated and induced, and therefore unnatural and artificial immigration. If left to the initiative of the immigrants themselves, the United States would not have received any- where near the one million four hundred thousand aliens who came to our shores in 1914. Upon this point there is no disagreement among scientific authorities. Special reports on emigra- tion made to the United States Department of Commerce and Labor by our consular representa- tives in the countries from which the greater part of our immigration comes, also show virtual un- animity on this point. The evidence is voluminous and indisputable. It is supplied by every intellec- tually and sympathetically free investigator and thinker who has ever undertaken a painstaking study of present-day conditions. 'Carver: Essays in Social Justice. 52 TWO VIEWS OF THE TIDE That inunigration today is by no means the same problem, although it bears the same word- name, that it was forty and more years ago is a point which needs constantly to be emphasized. The problem is different because conditions in the United States are wholly different. The solution must come from a thorough knowledge and a clear understanding of the economic factors that are today the cause of immigration and not through any sentimental view colored by history's mirage. CHAPTER V STIMULATED AJSTD INDUCED IMMIGRATION "FoEEiGiT laborers are now available in this city for less wages than you can secure men for in your state. Are you in need of any? If so, we can offer for immediate shipment any number of them of any desired nationality." This quotation is from a circular issued in 1913 to large employers of labor by a Hoensed and bonded employment or labor agency in New York City. One of the leaders of the Industrial Workers of the World, Mr. Joseph J. Ettor, in 1912, at the time of the industrial upheaval in New England against intolerable conditions of employment in the textile mills, known as the "Lawrence Strike" after a mill town of that name, stated that "in portions of Syria, G-alilea, and Eussia people know only Lawrence, United States. Who told them? The agents of the textile industry. They have cards with a picture of a mill and a house — ■ a real mansion — ^with the people heading from the mill to the house, and then a bank with workers with big pay bags." The advice and financial assistance of immi- grants already in this country are also among the chief secondary or immediate causes of immigra- 54 STIMULATED AND INDUCED IMMIGRATION tion, according to Mr. Husband, to whose investi- gation of the subject reference has already been made. "The desire and purpose to emigrate is for the most part due," he says, "to encourag- ing letters from friends in the United States, or the evidences of prosperity exhibited by those who have returned to their home land. As a mat- ter of fact, it is doubtful whether steamship ticket agents, however active and persuasive, could pro- mote anything like the present volume of emigra- tion from eastern Europe were it not that an in- tense spirit of emigration has been created and kept alive by the encouraging reports of those who have sought their fortunes in the New World."* The primary cause of the remarkable exodus from Eussia and Austria, United States Consul Diedrich says,* is the stimulating of discontent among the laboring classes of Europe by reports more or less exaggerated of greater prosperity in the United States. Every workman who comes to this country and finds employment becomes an advertising agent among his circle of relatives and friends in Ms home country. He is worked upon by his foreman or superintendent or the aggres- sive labor employment agent mth the result that his representation of conditions and prospects here prove irresistibly attractive and invariably result sooner or later in his friends joining him. * Appendix to the 1914 Annual Eeport of the Conmiiasioner- General of Immigration. 'Special Consular Eepoits on Emigration to the United States, Department of Commerce and Labor. 55 THE TIDE OF IMMIGRATION United States Consul Croncli, in reporting to the State Department upon Italian emigration, states that the discontent among these people caused by adverse home conditions "is further increased by the growing knowledge of the vastly better economic conditions in the countries of the New World, by the example of emigrants returning with comparative wealth, by reports and money sent from friends and relatives who have thus sought and found fortunes, and also by the glow- ing and exaggerated descriptions of the agents of steamship lines, land companies, and similar in- terested parties." Vice Consul Huning, reporting from Austria, states that the number of emigrants would not be so large "if the devices and schemes of emigration agents and alluring reports sent over by relatives and acquaintances who went before were not con- tinually at work to enlist fresh numbers to swell the ranks." "Fifty per cent, of those who emigrate," says Consul Partello, reporting from Diisseldorf,"have friends or relatives in the United States who in- duce them to come, often advancing means suffi- cient to meet the necessary expenses. This, how- ever, is regulated principally by the condition of affairs in the States, causing corresponding changes with the financial conditions of the coun- try. "^ Consul Millar, reporting from Leipsic, says: "House of Eepreaentatives, Forty- Ninth Congress, Second Ses- sion. Executive Document No. 157. 56 STIMULATED AND INDUCED IMMIGRATION ' ' The bad conditions of the labor market in Ameri- ca have also had a direct effect in the diminution of emigration, from the fact that latterly much fewer prepaid tickets have been sent by emigrants to their friends here than formerly. . . . The fall- ing off in the number of emigrants in the last few years is attributed to the circulation of bad news from America in the newspapers. ' ' It is no exaggeration to say that literally hun- dreds of thousands of the immigrants coming to us annually sail from their home country without the faintest conception as to what they are going to do, relying upon the stories they have heard and what has been told to them to the effect that they would have no trouble in finding work at con- siderably higher wages than those paid in their native land, particularly in industrial and mining pursuits. It is unquestionably true that were it not for the letters and passage tickets sent from the United States, hundreds of thousands of im- migrants would never have come here. Of course, back of these letters is the reported existence in this country of economic conditions which offer better opportunities than the immigrant believes he has at home. The enormous increase in recent years in our immigration from southern and eastern Europe is to be explained in the fact, says the 1910 Report of the United States Commissioner-General of Im- migration, that "it is, to a very large extent, in- duced, stimulated, artificial immigration." Induced immigration, says Professor Commons 57 THE TIDE OF IMMIGRATION in Ms Races f\ ( ^1 i - / n fi r urn. y /n P i ^J \ (\ r/ 1 ^ ; MNUIM 1 •^ J ^ n ^ ^ ^ / I V i-^ / i ^ z' 1 \ f ^ / ^ y V y MiQw a fill! srauKui iiilil siaFaunio Ruuia iiiil laimiiinEii liliililiillil ■miimraisiiDuwjmiioitiaiiiGiuiiDi The Annttai, Flow of Immigration the Past Thibtt Xeabs Prior to that year the Government record took no account of temporary arrivals. By including these non-immigrant aliens the volume of per- manent immigration is increased about twenty per cent. The effect of this for the past eight years is also shown in the chart on page 89. Even this larger total does not include those f or- 87 THE TIDE OF IMMIGRATION eign born immigrating who have become natural- ized citizens of the United States, there being no available statistics as to this element in our im- migration tide. According to Mr. Eobert Watchorn, formerly Commissioner of Immigration at Ellis Island, these immigrants are in the "formative years of youth and manhood, splendid years"; they com- prise "the youth and strength and vigor and ambition of foreign lands"; their immigration to our shores "is an influx of bright, ambitious men and women, the brawn and backbone of any country. ' ' In further commenting upon the char- acter of our immigration, Commissioner Watchorn says: "We can not have too much of the right kind of immigration; we can not have too little of the wrong kind. We are seeing to it that we get the right kind — of that I am certain. The steamship companies have learned that it does not pay them to ship any old sort of immigrant to this country. The reason why they have come to know this is that we catch the undesirable aliens at this island and make the company take them back at its own expense, plus also the cost of maintaining them while they are in this port. We sent back so many persons in this way that the steamship companies finally issued letters to their agents all over the world saying that it was absolutely useless for them to send on would-be Americans who were ailing in body or mind, or who were otherwise in- eligible to land under the immigration laws of the 88 THROUGH THE TIDE GATES United States. The refusal of steamsMp com- panies to carry undesirable immigrants is one of the greatest checks upon pernicious immigration that I know of. Last year, for instance, the va- rious steamship companies refused to bring twenty iiM nin till ml ini 1913 igit nn 1 1 1 1 i 1 1 >-~-r-r-PEBHAH£NTIMMIGRAT10ll>-Z-Z-Z-Z-i:-Z-Z-Z-Z- .^^^^^R^^^^^^^c^^xxxxH^ mm isn 1912 1913 I9I< lais Total Annual Immiqeation, Showing also Pebmanent auto Tempoeaet thousand aliens to this country, not through any deep regard for our laws, of course, but simply for their own interests, knowing that we would have sent them back even if they had brought them here. ' ' ^ '^ Facts on Immigration, National Civic Federation. 89 THE TIDE OF IMMIGRATION Considered strictly from the economic point of view and rigidly excluding the social and political meaning of the descriptive adjectives of which Mr. Watchom makes use, there is much truth in what he says. Of our permanent immigration in 1914 as many as eighty-one out of every one hundred — a total of 982,000 — ^were between the ages of fourteen and forty-four. Of these, 668,000 were males and 314,000 females. The races supply- ing a greater proportion in this age group than the average of eighty-one per cent, include vir- tually all the Slavs (excepting the Slovaks, Bo- hemians and Moravians), Finns, Greeks, Irish, Lithuanians, Poles, Russians, Rutheniaus, Scan- dinavians, and Turks. Among the French, Hebrews, English, and Scotch those in this age group formed a proportion considerably less. Regarded merely as an economic means to pro- duction, this rough, unskilled, illiterate immigrant between fourteen and forty-four does possess ' ' youth, " " strength, " " vigor, " " brawn and back- bone." And all these are valuable and important in the process of wealth production in which this country is principally engaged at the present time. More than this, all these admirable economic quali- ties are brought to us without the expense of their production, this having been borne by the country of the immigrant's birth and rearing. On the as- sumption that it costs on the average five hundred dollars to rear each alien to the age of fourteen, we had presented to us as a country in 1914 by all 90 THROUGH THE Tn)E GATES the various geographical sections of Europe im- migrants between the ages of fourteen and forty- four alone of the enormous money value of $491,- 000,000. No slight element, this, in the balanc- ing of international trade! In addition, they brought with them in cash an amount in excess of $42,500,000. They paid as head tax to the United States Grovemment a total of more than $5,000,000. From the economic point of view of the nation these amounts are offset by the sums annually sent abroad by the foreign born, the total amount being estimated as high as $300,000,000, and it is part of this much larger sum sent out of the coun- try that the arriving immigrants bring with them. Then, i;oo, as an offset to the head tax contribu- tion is the expense of $2,600,000 which the United States Government spent in 1914 in the conduct of its immigration service. It should be plain that we are not here attempting to strike a balance as to the money value and cost of immigration to this country, but are merely pointing out some sug- gestive facts. When our total permanent immigration between the ages of fourteen and forty-four is considered, there are two males out of every three immigrants. This proportion varies, of course, among the dif- ferent races, some sending more females and oth- ers fewer. For instance, virtually all the Turks coming here are males — ^ninety-seven out of every one hundred — ^while as to the Irish there is as large an immigration of females as of males. 91 THE TIDE OF IMMIGRATION No other group shows this same tendency along with those from Ireland. Among the more im- portant races giving a much greater proportion than two males for every female immigrant are nearly all the Slavic group, and Greeks, Ital- ians, and Roumanians, the last three mentioned contributing four males for every female. As a general statement, among the older immi- grant nationalities there is a nearer approach to an equal number of the sexes immigrating. This is also tnie of some of the newer immigrant races, such as the Bohemians and Moravians, the Hebrews, the Lithuanians, and the Slo- vaks. Only one-third of our permanent immigration is made up of females. These in 1914 numbered four hundred and twenty thousand, of which three-fourths were between the ages of four- teen and forty-four. By far the larger number — as many as one hundred and eighty-four thou- sand — ^were unmarried. Exactly thirty out of every one hundred of all female immigrants are between the ages of fourteen and twenty-one years. This unequal distribution of the sexes in the present immigration of many of our races results in serious social evils. The males leave their mates in Europe but they bring their passions with them. This is not infrequently the real explana- tion of the horrible deeds of atrocity and murder of which accounts occasionally break through to the consciousness of the native population from 92 napotmm or maus and fcmaus by pcoples 1014 □ nSURES HEPRESeMT PEK CCNT Sex Distribution of Immigrants 14 to 44 Teabs of Agb THE TIDE OF IMMIGRATION behind the veil of ahnost impenetrable secrecy with which alien tongues and customs and habits surround the communal life in the "foreign" colo- nies. Many of these crimes are never heard of by the native population outside the locality of their commission. The news sense of the English- speaking editor causes him to eliminate the unpro- nounceable and unspellable names, and the gen- eral lack of interest among the native population in such an event by unknown participants results in the news item of the crime becoming "just a stick," if even that much, in some obscure column. I do not know — ^I know no one who might know, because scientific informatidn is lacking on the subject — ^but I venture the assertion that if the facts were ascertainable they would prove that certain crimes of a peculiarly atrocious character among our alien population diminish according as the number of the sexes approach an equality. Where there is an unnatural disproportion of males to females there we find such offences and crimes of common occurrence. In 1914 the total number of alien arrivals under fourteen years of age was nearly one hundred and fifty-nine thousand, and these were about equally divided between boys and girls, the males being slightly more numerous. Men and women who have arrived at the age of forty-five years and over are not conspicuous among our immigrants or rather they are conspicuous, too, but because of their absence. On the average, those of this age period formed only six per cent, of our 1914 im- 94 THROUGH THE TIDE GATES migration. Those races supplying a proportion considerably above the average were the Rou- manian, English, French, Scotch, and Magyars; those whose contribution was much smaller than the average were the Turks, Russians, Finns, Lithuanians, Poles, and Greeks. The total arriv- als of those in this age group exceeded seventy- eight thousand, not quite two-thirds of whom were men. In not a few cases the representatives of this group are the parents of immigrants who have be- come established here and they come to make their home with their children. Virtually all the mem- bers of this group, both males and females, have been or are at present in the state of marriage, only six out Of every one hundred being unmar- ried. Those in this forty-five-year-and-over age group and the children formed two hundred and thirty-seven thousand of our total immigration in 1914. It has already been shown that immigration from Europe comes during what we call "good times. " It is rapid then and slow in ' ' bad times. ' ' Our monthly record of arrivals passing through the tide gates throws an interesting sidelight on this aspect of the immigration tide. By far the larger volume arrives in the spring months when greater opportunities for employment are open. Conversely, the larger outflow, that is, emi- gration to Europe, manifests itself at the be- ginning of the winter months when opportunities for employment are not so numerous. The num- ber of alien arrivals is at its highest and that of 95 THE TIDE OF IMMIGRATION alien departures at its lowest during the spring tide. Immigration's seasonal or spring tide is regu- lar and constant compared with other months of the year. The elements making up this spring tide gather from all parts of Europe at the ports of embarkation following the close of winter. By the first month of spring this tide begins to wash upon our shores, increasing in volume during March, April, May, and sometimes far into June. Usually, however, April shows the largest immi- gration of any single month of the year. The regularity year after year of this spring tide, is indicated in the diagram on page 97, which shows total immigration by months for each of the four years from 1909 to 1912. The smallest pro- portion of the total yearly immigration that came in the four months March, April, May, and June was forty per cent, in 1912 and the largest pro- portion f orty-SLK per cent, in 1910. In these four spring months we received as many as 1,957,000 or forty-four per cent, of the total immigration for the entire four years. This spring tide usually recedes by July and August. Immigration rises again during September, October, and November but not to its spring height, falling to its low- est point during December, January, and Feb- ruary. ' These three winter months usually mark the smallest number of arrivals of any like period during the year — they are immigration's neap tide. For the four years from 1909 to 1912 as small a proportion as one-sixth of 96 \ THE TIDE OF IMMIGRATION all arriving aliens came during these winter months. These are some of the characteristics of the im- migration tide as it rushes through our tide gates. In addition, there are elements coming to our shores on this tide that do not always succeed in passing through to the tide basin within. These are the human derelicts of this great movement of population — the tide's flotsam and jetsam. Some are caught in the net at the gates and debarred; others who succeed in eluding the net are later apprehended and deported. CHM'TEE IX DERELICTS OF THE TIDE Not all aliens borne to onr shores on th© flow of the immigration tide gain access to the conn- try. Under the laws enacted by Congress for the protection of the American people, aliens with specified physical, mental, moral, and economic defects are debarred and if brought here by the steamship company are sent back to the country from which they embarked. These are not statis- tically a part either of immigration to or emigra- tion from the United States, as they are not in- cluded in the figures recording the number of arrivals and departures. These aliens of the excluded classes who are floated to our gates on the currents of immigration are the tide's human derelicts. They usually are wrecks of humanity, pushed hither and thither in their helplessness by the powerful economic forces of the undercurrents of the immigration move- ment. And what a lot is this mass of human wreckage! Idiots, imbeciles, feeble-minded, in- sane, and epileptics; paupers and beggars and those likely to become such; those afflicted with loathsome or dangerous contagious diseases, such as trachoma and favus, and with tuberculosis; 99 THE TIDE OF IMMIGRATION those mentally, morally, and physically defective ; criminals ; prostitutes and procurers and other im- moral aliens! In the single year, 1914, the total number in the excluded classes who were debarred exceeded thirty-three thousand. Those likely to become a public charge, technically known as "L. P. C.'s," and paupers and professional beggars numbered 15,714, or nearly one-half of the total excluded. Those defective mentally and physically to such an extent as to make probable their inability to earn a living amounted to 6,537 or one-fifth of the total debarred. Together these two classes formed sixty-eight out of every one hundred excluded. Among the 15,784 debarred because of their eco- nomic dependency, 2,215 or fourteen per cent, were Italians; English, Hebrews, and Russians came next in importance, these four groups supplying more than one-third. Of those of whom it was doubtful as to their ability to make a living, thir- ty-three per cent, were Italians and thirteen per cent, each Greeks and Hebrews, these three groups forming fifty-nine per cent, of this class. Among those debarred in 1914 were 3,253 suf- fering from loathsome or contagious diseases, forming nearly ten per cent, of all those prevented from entering the country. By far the most nu- merous of these diseased aliens were afflicted with trachoma, these alone numbering 2,565 and com- prising nearly four-fifths of all those debarred because of physical diseases. Tuberculosis and favus are also important among the contagious 100 DERELICTS OF THE TIDE diseases, the possession of which, causes the alien to be refused admittance. These diseased aliens debarred in 1914 were most largely Italians, form- ing eighteen out of every one hundred, next Poles with ten, Hebrews with nine, and Syrians with eight out of every one hundred, these four groups supplying forty-five per cent, of all those de- barred in this excluded class. In the case of others temporarily unfit physically the Federal Government has established what might be called a repair shop in order to enable them to become qualified for entrance. This is by means of hospital treatment. In 1914 nearly one thousand aliens received such medical atten- tion and of these ninety out of every one hundred were cured and admitted. Most of these — as many as sixty per cent. — ^were Japanese, and twenty-one per cent. Chinese. They were afficted principally with uncinariasis and usually required hospital treatment of less than one month. Nearly four- fifths of these hospital cases were at the San Fran- cisco and Seattle ports of entry on the Pacific Coast. The immigrants excluded in 1914 because they were mentally defective, such as the feeble-minded, the insane, imbeciles, epileptics, and idiots, sup- plied 1,274 or four per cent, of the total debarred. Within this class the feeble-minded were by far the most numerous, comprising seventy-eight per cent. Of this class the Italians contributed nearly fifty-five out of every one hundred. The detection of those whose defects bring them 101 THE TIDE OF IMMIGRATION within tMs class of undesirable aliens is sur- rounded with great difficulty. The Commissioner- General of Immigration, in his 1914 Report, says : "Medical science has demonstrated that many, if not all, of these serious mental deficiencies are handed down from generation to generation, with steady increase in the strain; so that the impor- tance of rejecting and expelling aliens of this class, even to the extent shown to have occurred, can hardly be overstated. The law on this sub- ject should be even more strict; and the bureau urgently recommends that legislation supplemen- tary to the excellent provisions of the existing law be enacted at an early date, so that the people of this country may be fully protected against the in- troduction here from abroad of additional strains of latent but none the less dangerous cerebral de- ficiencies, as well as against the introduction of such strains actually developed into acute stages. Why should our difiSculties on this score, already sufficiently great, be increased by immigration?"^ A word of explanation as to Italians holding first place among the total number of immigrants debarred and also among the dependents, diseased, and mental defectives who were denied admit- tance in 1914. The statement does not mean that there is a greater tendency among Italians than among other races towards the defects of these excluded classes but simply that, because the Ital- ian immigration is larger than that of any other race, naturally a larger number of them is con- ' Report of Commissioner-General of Immigration, 1914, p. 7. 102 DERELICTS OF THE TIDE tributed to these groups. Among, say, one hun- dred thousand immigrants we should expect to find a larger number of defectives than among seventy-five thousand, and this would be true of any race. At the same time, it remains true that the contribution by the Italians to most of the excluded classes is larger than that of any other race. Prostitutes and females coming for any im- moral purpose, those supported by or receiving proceeds of prostitution, and aliens who procure or attempt to bring in prostitutes or females for immoral purposes who were debarred in 1914 num- bered six hundred and thirty-nine or two per cent. of the total excluded. Virtually all of these were prostitutes and procurers, the former furnishing fifty-nine and the latter forty out of every one hundred. By far the larger number of both classes were Mexicans, next the English, then the Grermans, the French, and the Hebrews. While the Commissioner-General of Immigra- tion believes it is important to exclude or expel the physically defective, and still more important that those mentally below the standard should be kept out, he also considers it of paramount im- portance that the morally degenerate shall not be permitted to lower American standards of life. "Wise, therefore," he says, "is the provision of the law that allows the sexually immoral to be de- ported without time limit, and the law should be the same with regard to criminals and anarchists. There should be no room in this country for the 103 THE ilJJUi Kjr xivii»xxvjixi.xi. J. j.i->i, moral degenerates of foreign lands. The bureau has been exerting special efforts to carry out the law concerning these classes." ^ At the same time, in the case of the sexually im- moral, it is hardly necessary to say, so obvious is the fact, states the same report, that the figures covering the deportation of prostitutes and pro- curers and so on, notwithstanding they show an increase over the work along these lines done in the preceding year, really cover no more than a mere "scratching of the surface," The bureau's activity in this direction is limited to causing the arrest in cases discovered or disclosed to it in the regular course of business, without putting forth any special efforts to "clean up" the country or sections of it. "I estimate, and in so doing con- sider myself exceedingly conservative," says the Commissioner-Greneral, "that one million dollars could be spent in ridding the country of sexually inunoral aliens, and that even after a judicious ex- penditure of that amount there would still be some work to do along the same line." The economically dependent, those with mental or physical defects likely to prevent them from earning a living, the physically diseased, the men- tally afflicted, and the morally defective make up eighty-four out of every one hundred immigrants excluded by the authorities in 1914. The remain- ing sixteen out of every one hundred debarred were contract laborers, criminals, children unac- companied by parents, aliens accompanying im- 'Beport of Commissioner-Geueral ot Immigration, 1914, p. 7. 104 DERELICTS OF THE TIDE migrants dependent upon them, assisted aliens, Chinese ineligible for admittance, those misusing passports, polygamists, and anarchists. Alto- gether there are twenty-six separate classes of aliens whom the present laws exclude from en- trance into the country. Those actually debarred are not all the immi- grants whose mental or physical characteristics or immoral practices or economic status bring them within or very close to the line separating the admitted from those to whom admittance is refused. For illustration, in 1914 there were 8,584 appeals from the decisions of the Government officials who are called upon to pass judgment as to the qualifications of the immigrants and out of these appeals 2,814 aliens were admitted. In this many cases at least it was questionable as to whether the immigrant should be permitted to en- ter the country. No one familiar with the conditions will con- tend that those debarred in 1914 or in any other year are all that should have been excluded under already existing laws. This is proven in the mere statement that of the 4,610 aliens deported in 1914 for various causes as many as 4,365 had been in this country only three years or less. The Commis- sioner-General, in his last annual report, says on this point: "All the efforts that are being made to secure a reasonable enforcement of the law are not producing the desired results. This must be obvious to all who will study the statistics and observe the aliens now entering at our ports. 105 THE TIDE OF IMMIGRATION Even the existing law, inadequate and cumbersome as it is in many respects, could and should be made to exclude many more than 2.3 per cent, of such aliens as are now coming to our shores. As a mat- ter of fact, the country is not obtaining the results that should follow from a reasonable and just administration of our laws." ^ It is very difficult, almost impossible, to arrive at any sound judgment, within the brief moment the immigrant is passing the inspector at the port of entry, as to the alien's physical, mental, moral, and economic status and the possibility of his becoming a public charge. Such a determination would be extremely questionable under any prac- tical or conceivable circumstance. Besides, the rigidity or flexibility and the application of the rule of measurement vary at different times and with the attitude of the head of the Federal department in charge of immigration, fewer being excluded under one secretary than under another. The facilities at our principal ports of entry for the examination of immigrants when they are pouring into the country in greatest volume at high tide are not adequate. In consequence, at such times thousands of aliens, diseased both men- tally and physically, are permitted to enter, it be- ing impossible properly to examine all those who present themselves for admittance. Mr. William Williams, while Commissioner of Immigration at 'Eeport of the CommiBBioner-General of Immigration, 1914, p. 5. 106 DERELICTS OP THE TIDE Ellis Island, stated that of necessity many aliens are passed during the spring flood-tide who should be held for a second and more thorough examina- tion but there were no accommodations for doing so. Provision at Ellis Island is made for only eighteen hundred persons at night and when twice that number arrive, as is not unusual in the spring months, the authorities are compelled to rush them through. When several steamships reach port the same day and the rush is on to get the immigrants past the inspectors, the medical officers must ex- amine one hundred and fifty persons every five minutes if they are to keep the gangway clear and avert chaotic congestion. Under such condi- tions adequate inspection for the elimination of the unfit is impossible. This lack of time and of facilities for a thorough examination as to mental condition, for instance, is largely responsible for there being so many feeble-minded alien children in the public schools of New York ; it accounts also, in part, for the large number of alien inmates in the Ehnira Eef ormatory as well as for many alien members of our criminal class. Ex-Commissioner Williams states that the prin- cipal class of immigrants securing admission when the rigidity of inspection is relaxed, who other- wise would be kept out, are those who are most dangerous to our national health. The feeble- minded and the epileptics and the defectives, whose condition requires more than superficial ex- amination for discovery, are also among those who slip in at such times. These defectives marry and 107 TH? TIDE OF IMMIGRATION disseminate the ailments they have brought into the country. Such aliens are made acquainted with the fact that in March and April, when large numbers of immigrants are coming to the United States, the examination must necessarily be con- ducted in a lax manner. Consequently those men- tally and physically deficient take advantage of this rush season to gain entrance to the country. Once here, they are willing to enter a charitable institution, where they receive better care than they would at home.^ It is plain that all the debris, all the human dere- licts washed to our shores by the flow of the im- migration tide are not debarred at the tide gates but that some gain access to the tide basin within. These enter at the recognized ports of entry, at points along the northern and southern, borders of the United States, by lakes and rivers, and at unguarded landings on both the Atlantic and Pa- cific coasts. "Enforcement of the exclusion laws along the borders and even the coast lines and along the lakes and rivers near our boundaries has always been and still is a difficult undertaking," says the Commissioner-General of Immigration. "With the best methods that can be devised and the best force that can be selected it will so continue as long as the Government has to deal with men who make a profession of smuggling and also with people so desirous of entering the country without inspec- tion that to attain their object they will readily * From an interview in the New York Herald, April 13, 1912. 108 DERELICTS OF THE TIDE assume any risk and pay higli prices for the services rendered them, no matter how triv- ial." ^ This brancli of tlie immigration service has to its credit since its inauguration "the institution of proceedings against seventy-five persons found engaged in illegal importation of contraband Chi- nese, sixty-three of whom were arrested — ^thirty- two have been convicted, thirty are awaiting trial, one has been discharged — and the rest are fugi- tives from justice. During this period, as a result directly or indirectly of its operations, over four hundred alleged contraband aliens have been ap- prehended. It should be emphasized that the new system is not complete or extensive enough to cope with the organized efforts on the part of those who engage in the business of bringing aliens into this country contrary to law. This contraband traffic and illegal entry of aliens can only be broken up by a general and complete organization of border patrol and by active measures calculated to seek out, arrest, and deport all who are in the United States in violation of law, treaties, and agree- ments. More officers and better equipment are absolutely necessary both for land and sea serv- ice, so as to equal if not surpass at all times the means employed by the violators of our law." ^ Witb a northern border along Canada of nearly four thousand miles in length; with a southern * Report of the Commissioner-General of Immigration, 1914, pp. 20-22. 109 THE TIDE OF IMMIGRATION boundary line along Mexico not quite so extensive ; with innumerable points advantageous for smug- glers to ply their vocation and also for aliens, even unaided by guides, to gain access to the country; with few inspectors to guard these frontiers, coasts, lakes, and rivers — under such conditions the situation is met by the United States Govern- ment only in a limited degree. All this is substantiated by the findings of the Immigration Commission. The report of that Federal investigating body says: "Many unde- niably undesirable persons are admitted every year. The Commission's inquiries concerning de- fective and delinquent classes show this fact very clearly and in a way which, it is believed, will be thoroughly understood and appreciated. In the- ory, the law debars criminals, but in fact many en- ter ; the law debars persons likely to become pub- lic charges, but data secured by the Commission show that too many immigrants become such with- in a short time after landing. The same is true of other classes nominally, at least, debarred by the law. In short, the law in theory, so far as its exclusion provisions are concerned, is exception- ally strong, but in effect it is, in some respects, weak and ineffectual." That immigrants coming within the excluded classes gain access to the country in greater or less numbers is evidenced in the operation of the law providing for deportation. Any aliens enter- ing the United States in violation of law and those who, after entering, become public charges from 110 DERELICTS OF THE TIDE causes existing prior to landing are subject to de- portation at any time within three years after the date of entry in the case of specified classes, and without any time limit whatever in the case of others. CHAPTER X THE TIDE'S FLOTSAM AND JETSAM Immigeants in possession of economic defects — those likely to become a public charge and those who actually become such — are among the most important of the excluded classes who escape de- tection at the time of entrance and are later ap- prehended and deported. These two groups made up fifty-three out of every one hundred deported in 1914. Germans, Italians, English, and Poles in the order named formed the four leading races whose members were likely to become a public charge, and Italians, Hebrews, Poles, and Ger- mans those who had actually become such. Those entering without inspection, prostitutes and pro- curers, and criminals, were also of importance among the aliens deported. The charge of pauperism is nowadays often hurled at the immigrant as one reason for the re- striction of immigration. We are told by these re- strictionists that "immigrants furnish three times their proportion of paupers"; that "our alms- houses and charitable institutions are filled with them"; that "they supply thirty paupers out of every one thousand of their population in this country as compared with only three out of every 112 THE TIDE'S FLOTSAM AND JETSAM one thousand for the native population. ' ' And to substantiate these and like claims voluminous sta- tistics on the subject are presented. But in nearly every instance where these sta- tistics have been thoroughly analyzed they present glaring defects in so far as proof of the major pre- mise is considered. For illustration, the charge that "thirty out of every one thousand aliens be- come paupers" confuses the meaning of words. The term "alien" is commonly understood as meaning only the unnaturalized foreign born who have been in the United States less than five years. But the statistical evidence upon which this par- ticular charge of pauperism is based includes also all foreign bom who have been here anywhere from five to seventy years and more. This statis- tical evidence errs still further — in arriving at the proportion of thirty out of every one thousand, it considers only xmnaturalized foreign-bom males of twenty-one years of age and over and excludes women and children. Even if the women and chil- dren were included and if only the foreign born who have been in this country for five years and less were taken to show the prevalence of pauper- ism among aliens, the result might be interesting, but it certainly would not be of any practical value in measuring the economic dependency of immi- grants as compared with that of the native popu- lation. This is true for many self-evident reasons, but in particular for the simple reason that the point does not have to be proven. It is admitted, even by the immigrants themselves, 113 THE TIDE OF IMMIGRATION The immigrants as a class are poor. That they are poor in the sense of worldly possessions is a fact so potent that it ought not to need any proof. It is evident in the mere statement that they are immigrants. If they were not poor we would have very little immigration. The fact that they are poor is the basal reason why they come here. It is this very state or condition just across the bor- der-line of poverty that the immigrants come here to escape. Being so near this border-line the smallest misfortune pushes them across it into pauperism. Thus, it should not be surprising to find — there is no need of proving — ^the existence of a relatively larger amount of economic depend- ency among the immigrants than among the na- tives. To say that the poor are more dependent than those who are not so poor is a self-evident truism. This is not an excuse or apology for the exist- ence of pauperism among immigrants. There is entirely too much of it for the good of our demo- cratic society. If only five or even one per cent, of the immigrants became public charges, this is one hundred per cent, too much. We cannot be too cautious for our own sake as well as for that of the immigrant in keeping at its lowest possible point social dependency among our foreign bom, and among the native population, too, for that matter. At the same time the charge of pauperism is not a legitimate objection to immigration. Very little, practically no, progress in the solution of the problems of immigration can be made by asserting 114 THE TIDE'S FLOTSAM AND JETSAM that immigrants are more dependent upon public support than other groups of our population. Nor do we get anywhere in meeting intelligently the economic facts presented by immigration when we waste time and energy with comparisons which attempt to prove that the recent immigrant groups, such as the Italians, Hebrews, and Slavs, are subject in greater degree to economic depend- ency than were the earlier immigrants of the Teu- tonic and Celtic races. To compare the present condition of immigrants who came here during the last five years with the present condition of those who came here thirty and forty years ago is not scientific. The latter have had a much longer time within which to escape dependency. In other words, those who came during the last five years have not had their chance. It is just as fallacious, insofar as supplying ma- terial evidence is considered, to state that "au- thoritative opinions based on ascertained facts are favorable to the present immigration." The special report of the Bureau of the Census on "Paupers in Almshouses," 1904, after referring to the Irish, Germans, English, Canadians, and Scandinavians in almshouses, says: "Of the re- maining countries, the returns yield distinctly fa- vorable percentages for Italy, Hungary and Bo- hemia, and Russia and Poland; that is, the pro- portion which these countries contributed to the foreign-born white pauper population is consid- erably l^ss than their representation in the for- eign-bom population. This is not true of Scot- 115 THE TIDE OF IMMIGRATION land and France. The figures for France are per- haps too small to permit generalizations." Just as the older immigrant groups have been here much longer and have had greater opportu- nity to escape economic dependency, so it is also true that a much larger number have reached old age, a period of greater dependency, than is the case with the more recent immigrant races who are found more largely in the younger age pe- riods. It is beyond the realm of accurate possibil- ity to measure fairly the present economic status of the immigrants of today in comparison with the present economic status of those who came in the forties, fifties, and sixties, and even later. A more correct comparison would be between the economic status of the immigrants who have come to this country during the last five years and the economic status during the first five years of the earlier immigration. Even then allowance must be made for the much larger number of arrivals in the more recent, compared with the earlier, pe- riod and so on. Closely related to pauperism as a charge against the immigrant is that of criminality. The immi- grant of today has not escaped being called a criminal any more than he has that of pauper. And this usually takes the form of statement that among the foreign bom there is a greater tendency to commit crime than among the native population. Even should such a fact be iadisputably estab- lished by statistical evidence, it is essential to the whole truth that certain related but often wholly 116 THE TIDE'S FLOTSAM AND JETSAM ignored facts also be taken into consideration in arriving at a final judgment. One of these related facts is that crime is much more an urban than a rural phenomenon. This is not saying that the city population is inherently more criminally inclined. Under similar condi- tions the country or farming population would more than likely manifest the same tendency. In the city certain acts are statutory offenses and thus subject the perpetrator to arrest and impris- onment while the very same acts may be commit- ted in the country districts without any such re- corded result. The act of the individual is the same but the social penalty and the statistical classification are different because the conditions are different. This is illustrated in the case of city ordinances for the regulation of sanitation or street traffic. These result in arrest and imprison- ment being much more common in the city than in the country districts, and consequently more city people are classified as criminals or at least as offenders against the law when, in reality, there is no such difference in criminal tendency. Expec- torating on the sidewalk, playing ball in the public thoroughfare, throwing ashes or other refuse in the street, and the like, are acts forbidden in the city, and if committed there. subject the offender to arrest and fine. In consequence of the existence of a situation which these instances but inadequately reflect, the population living most largely in cities must nec- essarily show a larger proportion of offenders and 117 THE TIDE OF IMMIGRATION prisoners. And our foreign-bom population is most largely in tlie cities while the native popula- tion is most largely in the country districts. Un- der these conditions we should expect to find rela- tively a larger number of recorded violations of law among the foreign bom, but this does not prove the existence of a greater criminal tendency on the part of the immigrant as compared with the native. Attempts to prove that the immigrant is more criminally inclined than the native do not carefully distinguish between the kinds of offenses recorded as crimes. Neither do they clearly separate pris- oners and criminals, these two distinct groups be- ing constantly confused. Statistics of persons im- prisoned for crime may give entirely different re- sults than those of persons arrested and tried for crime. And here is where the greater economic dependency of the immigrants as a class may en- ter as an explanation in part as to why a larger number of immigrant than native prisoners are recorded as criminals. There are some offenses committed where the payment of a fine will free the violator from being included in criminal sta- tistics. Thus, statistics of prisoners may be mere- ly a reflection of the economic status of those ar- rested rather than an indication of any criminal tendency. Still another important fact must be considered. Crime is largely a question of age, the criminal age being between fifteen and thirty. The immi- grant is generally over fourteen years of age, the 118 THE TIDE'S FLOTSAM AND JETSAM proportion of children among tlie immigrants be- ing much smaller than among the native popula- tion. Of our total immigration in 1914 as much as eighty-one per cent. — ^more than four-fifths — were between the ages of fourteen and forty-four and only thirteen per cent. — about one-eighth — ^under fourteen years of age. It is only natural that those elements of the population which are largely of oriminal age, such as the immigrants, should show a relatively higher recorded tendency. The pro- portion of crime being very much larger among grown-up people than among children, this ex- plains a greater recorded criminality among the immigrant than among the native population, but most assuredly it does not follow that the immi- grants or their children are more criminally in- clined. If eighty-one per cent, of our immigrants happen to be of an age when the criminal tendency most strongly manifests itself, whereas only twenty-four per cent, of the entire population of the United States are of that age, we should expect the immigrant to suffer by a comparison based on such statistics. Again, as to crime among children of immi- grants compared with children of natives. The progress during the past twenty years in our treat- ment of juvenile delinquents makes any compari- son with previous years practically valueless. Ju- veniles were arrested for all sorts of things a dec- ade and more ago that are not now considered crimes and, besides, they are now dealt with in an entirely different maimer. The whole attitude of 119 THE TIDE OF IMMIGRATION the police and the judiciary toward the juvenile incorrigible and delinquent has undergone a radi- cal change. Here, also, must be considered the fact that the children of immigrants are more largely in cities, where recorded crime is more common, and the children of the native population more largely in the country districts, where there is greater freedom for youthful activities without the greater danger of these becoming offenses against social peace and order. Nor have we any better or more convincing evidence of the asser- tions that "the children of the foreign bom are more criminal than the immigrants themselves" and that "the children of immigrants are more than twice as criminal as the immigrants them- selves." Such statements are insufficient and in- conclusive and lack a foundation based upon scien- tific facts. It is within the probability of the truth to state, in regard to criminal tendency among immigrants, that the conditions in which they find themselves, and not inherent personal characteristics, are more conducive to this tendency than that in which the natives are placed. Change the conditions, and it is more than likely that the tendency will be reversed. Very little progress towards a solu- tion of the situation will be attained merely by blaming the immigrant. Perhaps we natives should justly bear some, if not much, of the re- sponsibility. These important qualifications make of doubtful value statistics purportiag to measure the tend- 120 THE TIDE'S FLOTSAM AND JETSAM enoy to oommit crime among our foreign-bom pop- ulation. These qualifications are not presented here for the purpose of minimizing the extent of crime among immigrants. As large or as small as this may be in comparison with that of the native population, it is entirely too large, and drastic measures should be taken not only to keep crim- inals out of the country, but also to prevent an increase in crime among the foreign bom already here. "We should not ignore the fact that some immi- grants come to us with the criminal instinct al- ready firmly implanted by their European envi- ronment. Not to recognize this is to overlook salient facts, such as the notorious Black-Hand outrages, all too commonly committed in this coun- try by Italians. Members of this race in this re- spect bear a relation to our present immigration somewhat similar to that of the Irish in relation to the older immigration, when the foreign bom from Ireland gave to us the "MoUie Maguires" and like secret, unlawful organizations. South- em Italians, in particular, have an unenviable rep- utation for crime, the existence there of brigand- age, the Mafia, and the Camorra supplying evi- dence of it. In the earlier days of Italian immi- gration in this country, crimes of the Mafia were almost as conspicuous in the press accounts as are today the depredations of the Black Hand. Indi- vidual characteristics and an inborn distrust and hatred of governmental authority seem to have feeen developed in the southern Italian by centu- 121 THE TIDE OF DIMIGRATION lies of misgovemment with the result that he has a perverted code of honor which requires all pri- vate or personal differences to be settled privately as between man and man. This characteristic is quite frequently shown in cases where the victims of Black-Hand outrages have time and again not only declined to enter charges with the authorities, but have also even gone so far as to refuse infor- mation to the police which might have led to the capture and punishment of the guilty parties. Usually the depredations of the Black Hand are preceded by warnings in which demands are made for money, and if these demands are not complied with the explosion of a bomb frequently follows. Their absolute disregard of the danger in which they are placing the lives of innocent parties through the perpetration of such outrages would seem to indicate the absence of a social tempera- ment. These explanations are not intended to justify either present-day conditions or tendencies. Not- withstanding all that has been said in order to be fair and just, it still remains true that because of immigration we have a greater amount of pauper- ism and crime than would be the case if there were no immigration. It is also an indisputable fact that with a better regulation of immigration the United States would have less of these social hor- rors. CHAPTEE /XI "THE UNDESIRABLES" CouPiiED -with, paupers and criminals as undesir- able immigrants are the mental defectives, sucli as the insane, feeble-minded, epileptics, and so on. The fact that all these are excluded by law from entering the country does not prevent a greater or less number gaining admittance. In considering this class in comparison with the native popula- tion, it is just as important as in the cases of pau- pers and criminals that regard be had for the dif- ference in age conditions and in geographical dis- tribution. Of importance in this connection is the fact that insanity bears a close relation to old age. Con- versely, there is relatively little insanity among the young. According to census statistics, it is ■more than six times greater among those between sixty and sixty-four years of age as compared with those between the ages of twenty and twenty- four.^ This naturally affects the foreign bom more seriously than the native because a relatively larger number of the former are in the older age groups, with the result that it tends to show a greater extent of insanity among the foreign bom. 'Walter F. Willcox, The Ameriom Year Book, 1913, p. 386. 123 THE TIDE OF IMMIGRATION Somewliat the same tendency is also due to the difference in distribution of the foreign bom in cities and of the native population in country dis- tricts. While it has not been scientifically proven that insanity is more of an urban than a rural phe- nomenon, at the same time we do know positively that cases of insanity occurring in the cities are more likely to be recorded than are those in the country districts. The foreign bom being largely in the cities where there is a more accurate enu- meration of the insane, our statistics of the insti- tutional insane naturally reflect a more complete measurement for them than for the native and, in consequence, show a relatively larger amount of insanity among the foreign born. Let us take for illustration the statistics of the insane for the State of New York. Of the 31,432 insane patients under treatment in the fourteen State Hospitals in 1911, as many as 13,163 or forty-two per cent, were aliens. Of the 1,230 pa- tients in the two State Hospitals for the criminal insane more than forty-four per cent, were for- eign bom. The proportion of aliens to the total population in the state in 1910 was less than thirty per cent., with the result that statistically the prevalence of insanity among the foreign born is shown to be much greater than among the native. Of the 5,700 patients admitted to the city hos- pitals, 2,737 or forty-eight per cent, were aliens and 1,481 or twenty-six per cent, of alien parent- age; only 1,224 or less than twenty-six per cent, were of native stock. The situation as to the care 124 "THE UNDESIRABLES" of the insane in New York State has naturally grown worse with the increase in immigration. It has become so portentous to that Commonwealth as to require as much as one-fourth of the entire revenue of the state to care for these insane de- pendents. This question is really a serious one. Nearly three-fourths of the insane or mentally defective foreign born now receiving public care in this country are in the institutions of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Ehode Island, and Maryland. Eeferring to this situa- tion at the public hearing before President "Wilson in the White House on the Burnett Immigratibn biU on January 22, 1915, Dr. Stewart Paton, rep- resenting a delegation of alienists and members of state boards on insanity, said: The states named receive their population chiefly through immigration. In New York State the number of immigrants who come to settle permanently there every year is greater than the number of babies bom. The application, through eugenics, of the facts learned by the scientific study of heredity wiU doubtless make it possible in years to come to cut off defective strains, so that fewer babies who have inherited the mental defect of their parents will be bom. But how weak our efforts in this direction compared with the enormous need! It is in eliminating the insane and mentally defective from the great tide which flows through Ellis Island that the most practical and humane field for the control of in- sanity and feeble-mindedness in this coimtry is to be found. It may be said that the present immigration law excludes the insane and the mentally defective. In reply I have to say that under the present immigration law our public institu- 125. THE TIDE OF IMMIGRATION tions are filled with, the alien insane. There are serious de- fects in the immigration law, and these defects have long been recognized, not only by those who care for the alien insane and mentally defective in the public institutions of this country, but also by the medical authorities actually engaged in the examination of immigrants at our ports of entry. I take the liberty of reminding you that there are more insane in institutions in this country than there are students in colleges and universities. There are more insane in this country than there are enlisted men of the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps; and in addition to these, each year there is being added to this great army, an army practically equal to the army of the United States, approximately sixty thousand new cases every year. The cost of conducting these institutions in which this vast number of persons is cared for is so great that in several states it is exceeded only by the amount ex- pended for education. In New York the expenditures for the insane are one-fourth of the total appropriation of the state. And if proper provision were made in this country for the care of the insane, the amount so expended would ex- ceed that expended for education. So I think that we are justified in saying that in dealing with this problem we are dealing with one of the great bio- logical problems which fundamentally affect not only the future of this country but the future of our race: and cer- tainly the permanency of democratic institutions must depend upon the intelligent interest that we take in the conservation of the brain power of this nation.^ As serious as is the phase of immigration that is represented by the influx of so many "undesir- ables," it is not approaching the immigration problem in the direction of its correct solution by applying these characteristics indiscriminately to all immigrants, as is frequently done by some I From stenographie report of the hearing. 126 "THE UNDESIRABLES" of the restriotionists. For illustration, in a cir- cular issued to members of the Junior Order of United American Mechanics, the immigration problem is put this way: "A large per cent, of immigration is made up of outcasts, criminals, an- archists, thieves, and offscourings of the earth, who are forced to leave their own lands and still are allowed to land upon American soil. Isn't it time we began to take measures to stop this in- flow of foreign scum? Every true American, nat- uralized or native born, regardless of nationality, partisan or sectarian affiliation, wUl answer, Yes!" By far the greater volume of the immigration tide washing upon our shores annually is not made up of paupers, criminals, and the insane. It is in equal degree contrary to the facts when the restrictionist characterizes iu these particu- lars the present immigrating races in contrast with the earlier immigration from the United Kingdom, Germany, and the Scandinavian coun- tries. Nowadays we are told that the Italian, the Hebrew, and the Slav are unlike the German, the Irish, and the English immigrant of the earlier period, and the comparison made between the two groups is usually in favor of the older immigrant races. This point is of sufficient importance to require examination in some detail. The same charges now being made against our present immigration were also hurled at the heads of the immigrants of earlier days. This is likely to be forgotten by many of the present generation 127 THE TIDE OF IMMIGRATION and is not known at all by many others. Tlie re- searches of the historian show that the very same aliens who are now regarded so favorably in. com- parison with the present immigrant races were looked upon by some as "a worthless and de- praved class"; as "the dregs of all nations"; as "the very canaille of the city"; as "bands of homeless, houseless mendicants." Immigration was an "indiscriminate influx of foreigners" and the immigrants were "hordes of foreigners."^ Complaint was long current among our people that paupers, criminals, the insane, the crippled, the lame, and the diseased were "being dumped on our shores. ' ' We read of this earlier immigration as "a deluge of paupers," "an influx of ragged paupers," the "dumping on our shores of the paupers of Europe," "the sweepings of English poorhouses," "swarms of foreign beggars of both sexes," and are told that "the jails and work- houses of Europe (were) pouring their felons and paupers" into the United States. "Most of the German immigrants were persons who, when they paid their passage, had little or no money left, and might, therefore, become paupers on landing. It was the custom of the (home) gov- ernment to require of such persons before embark- ing to renounce allegiance, lest they should return and become a burden."^ "Many of the British (immigrants) had been assisted by their parishes, and not a few were the lame, the halt, the blind, * McMaster, History of the People of the United States, Vol. 6, pp. 422 and 424. 128 "THE UNDESIRABLES" and paupers." Others could not make a living in their parish and were often a burden on their neighbors. An English newspaper ^ declared that of seventeen thousand passengers recently sailing for Canada one-half were paupers destined to the United States, The captain of a British ship on one occasion was applied to by five parishes to take paupers to America.^ A royal conmiission appointed in 1833 to collect evidence as to pauper- ism in Great Britain, reported to Parliament that some parishes had adopted the plan of getting rid of their paupers by persuading them to emigrate to America, and the commission was so strongly impressed with the practicability of the scheme that it recommended to Parliament its adoption generally. "Worse than all," says Professor Mc- Master, "is the stream of foreign paupers that has already begun its gloomy procession to our shores. The poorhouses and parishes of England, unable longer to bear the burden of a pauper pop- ulation, are unloading a part on the United States. "3 Numbers of persons coming to Baltimore from foreign ports were absolutely destitute, said the health officer of that city in his annual report in 1828, and two years later he declared the increase every year to be remarkable, the condition of many deplorable, and that paupers were still be- '■ The Kentish Chronicle; National IntelUgencer, August 14, 1830. ' The New ¥ork Daily Advertiser, August 18, 1830. 'McMaster, History of the People of the United States, Vol. 6, pp. 422 and 424. 129 THE TIDE OF IMMIGRATION ing brought in in great niunbers. Out of eleven hundred admitted to the almshouses of Baltimore during 1831 nearly five hundred were foreigners, and of these more than one hundred had not been in the city a week. Of twenty-two hundred pau- pers in the almshouses of New York, one thousand and fifty were recently from the Old World.^ In Louisiana a joint committee to examine a charity hospital reported that out of 6,062 persons admit- ted in 1834 as many as 4,287 were foreigners. In 1838 a committee of the House of Representatives appointed to investigate immigration reported that "it is estimated that more than one-half the pauper population, and that the most helpless and dependent, are foreign." There were fifty-three hundred foreigners and forty-seven hundred natives in the almshouses of New Tork,2 Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Boston.^ It needed no extensive examination of the returns of public hospitals, poorhouses, and like charitable institutions to show that the immigrants furnished a large part of their material. "In all the sea- ports to which came fugitives from the distress in Europe in 1845," says Professor McMaster, "the almshouses, hospitals, and places of refuge 'for the destitute were packed full. ' ' * '■NUes Begister, January 14, 1832. 'Three-fourths of the inmates of the almshouses of New York City in 1836 were aliens. — MeMaster, Sistory of the People of the United States, Vol. 7, p. 226. 'McMaster, History of the People of the United States, Vol. 6, p. 422. *In the three years from 1837 to 1840, of 8,671 paupers in 130 "THE UNDESIRABLES" The charge that he was a criminal was also made against the immigrajit of the earlier period, the words criminal and convict often being coupled with pauper as descriptive of the character of the earlier immigrant. Parson Brownlow, in his speech before Congress, described the immigration prior to 1850 as "paupers and convicts that pour in upon us from European prisons." Diffused over the country were "aliens of various charac- ters, and among them the most abandoned villains, convicted of the blackest crimes" who had escaped from chains and prisons. The suggestion was se- riously advanced that to extirpate these people ' ' would be a wise policy. ' ' It was quite generally believed that criminals sentenced in Germany for life or for a long term in prison were given the option of emigrating from that country, and if they went their passage was paid. It is only natural to expect that among the large population washed upon our shores by the immi- gration tide, whether in the earlier or later pe- Massachusetts only 2,567 were American bom. In New York the number admitted to Blackwell's Island (Almshouae) during the last six months of 1849 totaled 1,672, of whom 411 were na- tives and 1,006 Irish. Of the 134,972 recorded paupers in the United States within the year ending June 1, 1850, as many as 66,538 were foreign bom. In New York State in 1850, of the 59,855 paupers 40,580 were foreigh bom; in Massachusetts, of the 15,777 paupers 9,247 were foreign born. In New York City, of the 12,833 paupers on June 1, 1850, 7,077 were foreign born. In 1852 the whole number of paupers supported or relieved in the state of Massachusetts was 27,737, of whom 11,321 were for- eign bom. In Boston alone there were 9,464 paupers, of whom 5,913 were foreign bom. — Compendmm of the 1850 Census, p. 161. 131 THE TIDE OF IMMIGRATION riods, there should be dependents, defectives, and delinquents who are not only a burden but also a danger to our society. A feature of this phase of immigration which deserves attention is pointed out by Henry J. Dannaabaum, a district president of the B'nai B'rith, a Jewish organization in New York. He says : Perhaps the most brilliant jewel in the crown of Jewish character has been the purity of its womanhood. For ages we have boasted of it and it was the one quality for which for ages even our enemies praised us. Suddenly we find appearing in the life of the large cities the scarlet woman of Jewish birth. The number multiplies until it becomes a problem that causes us to fear and to tremble. Then comes the knowledge that this sudden break in Jewish morality was not natural, that it was the product of cold, calculating, mer- cenary methods, devised and handled by men of Jewish birth. Let me hasten to add that there are others besides Jews among the traffickers and their victims. But the very con- gestion in the large cities, to which I have already referred, makes the immigrant Jewish population a fertile breeding ground for both. James Bronson Reynolds, of New York City, is perhaps the oldest student and greatest authority on the subject of the white slave traffic. Twenty-five years ago he was a settlement worker on the Bast Side. Trom his lips I have the statement that at that time the Jewish women of that section were equal in purity to any womanhood on earth. Then came the trafficker and began his work of ruin. His easy success tempted many more of the evil-minded to follow in his path, the business has spread like a prairie fire imtil this night when, in the Woman's Night Court of New York City and on gilded Broadway, a majority of street-waJkers bear Jewish names. And I may add the information acquired during my service with the Federal Government, that in practically every part of the United States Jewish traffickers and Jewish victims 132 "THE UNDESIRABLES" are far in excess of our proportionate relation to the general population.^ As long as there is any considerable immigra- tion, aliens will continue to supply additions to all these undesirable classes. The only way to escape this is to prevent immigration almost entirely. But this inflow of aUen peoples makes contribu- tions to our social wealth fund through those other immigrants who become valuable members of our communal life. 'Report of Hearings before the Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, House of Bepresentatives, Sixty-Second Congress, Second Session. CHAPTEE Xn IMMiaRATION AND SOCIAL PEOGRESS The foreign-bom dependents, defectives, and delinquents, these derelicts of the immigration tide, this flotsam and jetsam, represent only one phase of the contribution immigration makes to our population. That it has brought and contin- ues to bring the idle and the worthless; the va- grant and the criminal; the devil-loving; "the weak, who is alone responsible for his own mis- fortune," and "the failure, the unstable man, who, having tried everything, has made a success of nothing because he has neither industry nor appli- cation, and who turns to emigration as he has played with everything else" ^ — ^that immigration brings to us these elements of human frailty there can be no denying. But to secure consolation from, or to see a social advantage in, their coming takes one far afield in search of an argument in justification of unregu- lated immigration. We are told in an editorial in the New YorJc Evening Post, for instance, that the immigrants have supplied "the great oppor- tunity of the social workers" and have been "the touchstone of the awakening social conscience." 'A. Maurice Low: The American People. 134 IMMIGRATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS Thus the evils of immigration are made to serve as a buffer for the virtues of the social worker. This argument would seem to lead logically to the conclusion that the greater the evils the greater the opportunity; therefore, let immigra- tion be unrestricted. It assumes that without im- migration there would not have arisen in this country somewhat the same conditions which brought this opportunity and this awakening. Such an assumption cannot be admitted. Inherent in our own economic conditions were abundant op- portunities for the exercise of social virtues, such as the political, economic, religious, educational, and general social status of the negro, or of the "poor white," or of the Indian in many of our states. These opportunities immigration caused us to ignore or neglect in large part. Into these channels of activity might have been directed the forces of social regeneration. But immigration bulked so large as to overshadow these opportuni- ties. In consequence, this aspect of immigration has been magnified through the activities of such institutions as the social settlement. Factory laws, women and children in industry, workingmen's insurance, widow's pensions — ^"the entire complex of social legislation" — ^would in all probability have been established among our na- tive population several decades earlier if there had been no European immigration of the magni- tude of the past three decades. If the powerful economic forces at work building up our industrial state had not attracted the immigrant they would 135 THE TIDE OF IMMIGRATION have drawn with equal force into our industrial centers elements of the native population, and these would likely have been surrounded at first by somewhat the same environment as that into which the immigrant was plunged. This is illustrated conspicuously by present-day conditions in the southern states where there has been practically no recent European immigration, but where eco- nomic forces have drawn the "poor whites" from the mountain recesses into the mill villages. Fac- tory laws are just as necessary in North and South Carolina and Georgia as they are in New York and Pennsylvania. Women and children in in- dustry is just as serious a problem in these south- ern states as it is in the New England states. Workingmen's insurance and widow's pensions have become as necessary in southern industries without European iromigration as they are in the eastern industrial centers which have been flooded with immigrants. To overlook the blighting conditions among the native working population in the southern states and at the same time magnify similar conditions among the immigrant population in the eastern states, permits the conclusion that immigration is the cause of the disgraceful situation that has been the opportunity of the social worker. The fact is, that intolerable industrial conditions pre- vail alike in the southern cotton mill towns with- out immigration as they do in the cotton mill towns of New England with their large immigra- tion, so that these conditions cannot entirely be 136 IMMIGRATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS laid at the door of immigration. They would have presented the opportunity, and this opportunity would have been taken advantage of, if there had been no immigration. If the dehsity of population and the newspapers and magazines and like instruments of news dis- semination were centered in the southern states, where there has been no recent immigration, in- stead of in the eastern and middle western states into which the flood of immigration has poured, it is more than probable that all these evils with which immigration is so closely associated in the public mind would have been pointed out as af- fecting the native worker instead of primarily the immigrant. In other words, many intelligent people have been prevented from seeing the real cause of our industrial evils because of the over- shadowing part immigration has been made to play in them through its continual but accidental association with problems of which it is only in- cidental. At the same time that all this is true there is no denying that the settlement or social worker has worked with the material which immi- gration supplied ready-made to his or her hands. But immigration has also supplied material of an entirely different character. Professor Mayo- Smith says in his Emigration and Immigration: "When emigration is brought about by the free action of a man's own mind, without extraneous aids or influences, it is naturally the men who have intelligence, some financial resources, energy and ambition that emigrate. It requires all these to 137 THE TIDE OF IMMIGRATION break loose from the ties of kindred, of neighbor- hood and of country, and to start out on a long and difficult journey." Immigration has brought to us the industrious and worthy; the home builder; the justice lover; the liberty seeker; the God-fearing; "the resolute, courageous man, practical but imaginative, who sees the future and has the pluck to grapple with it," and "the strong, who, having succeeded, is self-reliant enough to know that with larger op- portunity there will come to him a greater meas- ure of success." As A. Maurice Low in The Amer- ican People fiirther says: "The opportunity the United States has offered mankind has always at- tracted and is today attracting two distinct ele- ments in European society from whatever coun- try they come, with different and one might say with opposite traits or characteristics. . . . The immigrant has always been drawn from the two extremes of the moral and temperamental scale." One would be brave indeed to attempt to sum up in brief space the contribution the iiomigrant has made to American progress. This is merely one way of saying that it is not possible to indicate in a sufficiently comprehensive manner the impor- tant part the immigrant has played and the im- portant place he now occupies in the social, po- litical, religious, educational, and economic prog- ress of the United States. An attempt to do so could only be successful by contrasting his contri- bution alongside that of the native. And when one endeavors to do this he is confronted with 138 IMMIGRATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS the insurmoTintable fact that there is no rule of measurement of value applicable to the one that does not measure in ahnost equal degree the con- tribution of the other. That the immigrant's con- tribution to American life has been of a positive character and not merely indirect and passive is proven by his activities in all the channels of American communal life. In art, in science, in lit- erature, in industry, in law, in medicine, in poli- tics, in education, and so on, he has been and is conspicuous. He has sweetened and ennobled life wherever he has touched it. Equally with the na- tive, the immigrant has labored unselfishly for the attainment of those ideals which lie at the foundation of American society and of American institutions. Andrew Carnegie, world-renowned for his ben- efactions and before his retirement to private life one of our largest employers of labor as well as a pioneer manufacturer in the iron and steel indus- try, was an immigrant from Scotland. Samuel Gompers, an English Jew, one of the founders and for thirty-three years President of the American Federation of Labor and the recognized national leader of organized labor in the United States, im- migrated here as a cigar-maker. Prank Morrison, the Secretary of the Federation, came as an im- migrant printer from Canada. From the Domin- ion also came James J. Hill, one of the promoters and for many years President of the Great North- em Eailway, who has also been prominent in es- tablishing a direct steamship line between this 139 THE TIDE OF IMMIGRATION country and China and Japan. S. S. MoClure, founder and editor of one of the best known popu- lar-priced magazines, who established the first newspaper syndicate in this country, was an im- migrant from Ireland. Edward Bok, editor of the Ladies' Home Journal, came as an immigrant from the Netherlands. One of the best mayors the city of Philadelphia has ever been fortunate enough to elect is Eudolph Blankenburg, born id Germany, who first served as a clerk and traveling salesman upon his arrival here. Nikola Tesla, one of our most famous inventors, was born in Aus- tria. So also was A,nthony Lucas, the mining en- gineer and oil producer. From Denmark came the late Jacob A. Eiis, social worker and friend of former President Roosevelt, who was desig- nated by the latter as "America's most useful citizen." Carl J. Mellin, the mechanical engineer in charge of the designing and construction of the machinery for the battleship Texas and who de- signed and patented the compound locomotive, of the Mallet articulated principle, now in extended use on American railroads, came from Sweden. So also did Ernst F. W. Alexanderson, the electrical engineer and inventor identified with the General Electric Company, who has to his credit more than seventy United States patents. These are only a few selections from the many striking illustrations that could be given. They are presented merely as indicative and not at all as comprehensive. So also is the following refer- ence to the contribution of the German element 140 IMMIGRATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS in particular. As much could be said of other im- migrant races in the United States. The German element has been prominent in all those industries requiring technical skill and spe- cial training, Mr. Faust tells us in his chapter on " German Influences on the Material Development of the United States."^ As bridge-builders and as electrical, civil, and mining engineers, he says, the Germans have not only done a very large part of the work demanded by modern transportation and manufactures, but their inventive genius has also made lasting contributions to the sum of hu- man achievement. They have also predominated in the manufacture of scientific apparatus and of musical instruments. They established the art of lithography and have been well represented as printers. Prominent is their share in the chemi- ical industries and in the manufacture of glass, iron, and steel. In navigation and shipping they have directed attention to foreign ports, and their names are numerous and distinguished on the rolls of the captains of industry in varied fields of activity. In scientific farming, such as fruit growing, gardening, nurseries, forestry; as stock raisers, brewers, bakers, pharmacists, physicians ; in naval architecture, railway engineering. Gov- ernment scientific work, medicine and chemistry, and, in fact, in all lines of communal activity the Germans have been and are conspicuous in Ameri- can life. Nor has the least of their contributions Tanst: The German Element in the United States, Vol. II, p. 120. 141 THE TIDE OF IMMIGRATION been along the line of teacMng the native Ameri- can, in gymnastics and cooking, how to take better care of himself. From the German element came the Conestoga wagon, the Wagner palace car, the Buckeye mow- er, the Mergenthaler linotype, the Blickensderfer typewriter, the Steinway piano, the Faber lead pencil, the Leffel turbine wheel, the modern mow- ing machine and reaper, rolled oats, Eoyal Baking Powder, the "57 varieties" of food products, and the like. Steinmetz, the inventor, and Prang, the lithographer, were Grermans. A German was the inventor of the modern suspension bridge, and a German, so it is claimed, was the designer of the Monitor.^ The originator of the Republican "Elephant" and the Tammany "Tiger," the man whom Presi- dent Lincoln styled in the dark days of the Civil War as the country's "best recruiting sergeant," he who gave powerful aid in the overthrow of the Tweed Eing, the cartoonist, Nast, was a German. The founder of Puch and Zimmerman, the cari- caturist of Judge, were Germans. German architecture gave to us the Library of Congress, the Cathedral of St. John the Divine of New York, and the St. Louis Union Station. Biemstady, the landscape artist; Weimer, the painter of the North American Indian; Ulrich, ' The distinction of having invented the Monitor is also claimed for the Swedes by Mr. Pennock Pusey of the Historical Society of Delavfare. Erieson, he says, was the son of a Swedish miner, born and reared ia a miner's hut in the backwoods of Sweden. 142 IMMIGRATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS whose "Promised Land" represents European im- migrants landing at Castle Garden; Lautze, the painter of "Columbus in Chains," "Columbus be- fore the High Council of Salamanca," "Washing- ton Crossing the Delaware," "Emancipation of the Slaves," and other famous artists came from the German element in America. Conried in opera, Sousa in military music, Dam- rosch, Anton Seidl, and Theodore Thomas in or- chestral music; the Philharmonic Society, Ger- mania Orchestra, Boston Symphony Society, Men- delssohn Quintet Club, Kneisel Quartet, the Han- del and Haydn Society, the Harmonic Society, the Oratorio Society, the Mannerchore, and the Ger- man Singing Societies — these merely have to be mentioned to indicate the contribution the German element has made to music. The music festivities of the United German Singiag Societies both in the East and in the West are important events in the musical history of the country, an audience of from fifteen to twenty thousand being a common spectacle at these song fests. In music schools and universities, as teachers of singing in our pub- lic schools, and as musical critics the German ele- ment is prominent. And in closing, it is only nec- essary to inquire, "Who can number that vast throng of German inunigrants whose members have become the music teachers of the humbler class of America?" Mr. Faust summarizes the German influence in music in this striking state- ment: "From 'Yankee Doodle' to 'Parsifal' in less than seventy years is the record of German 143 THE TIDE OF IMMIGRATION influence on the development of rausioal taste in America."^ In the rough, unskilled work of opening up the great interior West to human habitation, in fell- ing the forests, in the building of our great cities, in constructing our railroads and digging our ca- nals and making our public highways, in mining and manufacture, in agriculture — in all these and more ways essential to the making out of America a place for human habitation, the immigrants' toil-worn hands and brawny muscles have left en- during monuments to his industrious characteris- tics. Even the ostracized and persecuted Chinese can rightfully lay claim to having contributed ma- terial assistance, particularly in California, in the construction of railroads, the reclamation of swamp lands, in mining, in farming and fruit cul- ture, in domestic service, and in. manufactures. This brief and inadequate reference is by no means exhaustive of all that the immigrant can claim as his contribution to our social advance- ment. These facts are seldom mentioned by those who call attention to the paupers and insane and criminals and the like, which the immigration tide is washing upon our shores. Not only have there been these and other contributions by the immi- grant but an even wider field is included when that part played in American life by the entire foreign- bom population is considered. Thus, there have come to us through immigra- * Faust: The German Element in the United States, VoL II, p. 293. 144 IMMIGRATION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS tion, just as there have come to us through, the springs of rejuvenation of our own native popula- tion, much of good that has been effective in the direction of economic, religious, educational, po- litical, and social progress. To deny this would be to deny a conspicuous fact. In innumerable di- rections the immigrant has been a positive force in the quickening of many influences that have tended to make the United States a better place in which to live. Nor have these influences come from the immigrant of any single country ; these contributions have been made alike by the Irish, the Scotch, the Welsh, the English, the Scandina- vian, the French, the Italian, the German, the Aus- trian, the Jew, and so on. To attempt to measure or estimate the extent or value of the contribution to American civilization that has been made by each of the racial groups which have been impor- tant elements in our population is to attempt, if not the impossible, at least the unsatisfactory. That each of these groups has made such contri- bution is beyond question. One fact should not be forgotten, and this is that at all times in the history of the American people, from the very earliest colonial period down to the decade when the frontier line of the United States may be said to have disappeared from the map, even down to the present day, during all these years millions of immigrants have given to the land of their adoption the very best that was in them. And this best is not to be minimized. CHAPTER Xin IMMIGRATION'S TID&RIP All alien arrivals at the ports of entry are grouped by tlie Federal immigration authorities according to occupation. By far the larger num- ber come from agricultural districts, and naturally they report themselves and are recorded as farm laborers. These and others recorded as "labor- ers" contribute as many as forty-two out of every one hundred immigrants — a total of five hundred and fourteen thousand in 1914. If those reported as "servants" are included, we have accounted for as many as fifty-four out of every one hundred. Another one-fourth of the arrivals (twenty-six per cent.) reported no occupation; these are prin- cipally women and children. About fourteen per cent, are skilled workers, including tailors, seam- stresses, dressmakers, milliners, clerks and ac- countants, carpenters and joiners, shoemakers, miners, masons, mariners, blacksmiths, bakers, and painters and glaziers. An insignificant pro- portion of our immigrants — less than two out of every one hundred — are of the professional class, and these are principally teachers, engineers, mu- sicians, clergymen, electricians, and actors. This occupational grouping of our 1914 immigration 146 IMMIGRATION'S TIDE-RIP according to tlie four general classes is illustrated in the diagram below. Comparatively few of the professional class are found among the newer immigrant peoples, as many as fifty-six out of every one hundred immi- grants of this class being English, German, Scotch, Irish, and French in this order of relative impor- tance. With the skilled class the distribution by NO OCCnPATION SKILIiBD (LABGELT WOUEH AHD FBOFESSIONAIi childbzn) AB UANT AB 59 Om OV ETIXIT 100 IMUIOBAHTa COmNS HEBE TXSOASmitL'! IN 1914 WEBX TJNSEILLBD ONLY 14 OUT OF EVERT 100 WEBB BEILLED IN SOME TBADE OB OC- CUPATION AND ONLY 1 OUT OF EVEBT 100 WAB THAENED IN SOME FBOFESSIOH. THE BEMAININO 26 OUT OP EVEBT 100 WERE MOBT LABQEXiT WOUEN AND CHILDBBN. Permanent Immigeation in 1914 by Occttpationai. Groups peoples is somewhat different, the Hebrews alone contributing thirty-five and the Italians seventeen out of every one hundred; the German, English, Scandinavian, and Scotch combined give only twenty-three out of every one hundred. Of the one hundred and forty-four thousand rep- resentatives of the servant class arriving in 1914 more than fifty-eight out of every one hundred — as many as eighty-four thousand — ^were Poles, 147 THE TIDE OF IMMIGRATION Italians, Hebrews, Euthenians, Magyars, Lithua- nians, Slovaks, and Croatians and Slovenians. The Germans, Irish, Scandinavians, and English combined contributed only one-fourth — a total of thirty-six thousand — of this class. An analysis of those in the unskilled groups shows that virtually all are of the newer immi- grant races, nearly four-fifths of the farm laborers being south Italians, Poles, Russians, Euthenians, Eoumanians, Magyars, Slovaks, and Croatians and Slovenians. A somewhat similar statement is true of the distribution of laborers — ^more than two-thirds are Italians, Greeks, Eussians, Poles, Croatians and Slovenians, and Magyars. The Greeks and north Itahans come most largely from the cities. The Croatians and Slovenians are fairly equally divided between city and farm la- borers. This classification of "farm laborers" by the Federal immigration officials is likely to convey an altogether erroneous impression if we inter- pret it as having the same meaning economically as it has when applied to similar workers of the Teutonic races. We must go back of the mere words and understand their real significance. These "farm laborers" in Austria-Hungary, Italy, and Eussia, for instance, are as closely iden- tified with industrial production as with agricul- tural pursuits. In the winter months these peas- ants become artisans in industries of various kinds, such as textile, tanning, cutlery, metal work, cabinet making, pottery, glass making, and so on. 148 IMMIGRATION'S TIDE-RIP As employees of large country estates they are also blaoksmiths, barbers, carpenters, saddlers, shoemakers, tailors, watch and clock repairers, and the like. Although given largely to agricul- tural work, they are at the same time capable of adapting themselves readily to any labor not call- ing for higher qualities than muscular force, quick apprehension, and willingness to work. This is evident in the fact that they quickly adjust them- selves in the United States to other than agricul- tural labor. Thus, there is not that clear distinc- tion between the farm laborer and the workingman which exists in the United States. This is the explanation, in part, as to why the more recent immigrant races enter into the manu- facture of iron, agricultural implements, electrical machinery and supplies, railway cars and sup- plies, pottery, paper, wood products, silk goods, clothing, shoes, collars, cuffs and shirts, carpets, linoleum, leather goods, cigars, and scores of other products. They have overrun the cotton textile industry of New England. They dominate the clothing industry of New York and other cities. They have flooded the unskilled occupations in the steel industry. They fill similar places in ore and coal mines and collieries. They have also be- come conspicuous in most of the trades and occu- pations, such as brick-laying and masonry, plumb- ing, sheet metal working, carpentering and wood- working, painting, decorating and paper hanging^ and stone and marble cutting; they are barbers and waiters and the like, 149 THE TroE OF IMMIGRATION Into our mines and mills and factories and work- sliops, generally, and not onto our farms, flows this stream of foreign labor. It meets with the stream of native and Americanized workers which is engaged in the operation of our industries, of our tide-mills. The result is somewhat similar, figuratively, to the tide-rip — a body of water made rough by the conflict of opposing tides or currents. These two streams of labor, being composed of ele- ments that have been affected differently in the formation of their economic, industrial, and social characteristics by widely different environmental and hereditary influences, meet at the entrances to the industrial plants in competition for jobs and wages. This compact of these conflicting currents of labor sets in motion economic forces which vi- tally affect the native and earlier immigrant wage earners, their families, their industrial and social conditions, and our democratic institutions. For this reason, some insight into these economic char- acteristics is of importance. This insight can be secured from a brief description of the effects upon these alien laborers of their economic and social environment before they arrive in the United States. In the first place, as has already been said, the immigrant is poor, very poor as to the possession of this world's material goods. He has barely enough with which to pay his transportation to this country, and many thousands do not possess even this small sum. In 1914 the 1,218,480 perma- nent arrivals brought with them cash to the 150 IMMIGRATION'S TIDE-RIP amount of $42,553,266. This is an average for each immigrant of $34.92. But in this, as in most cases, the average is meaningless. This average gives this amount to every child under fourteen years of age ; excluding the one hundred and fifty- nine thousand children the average for all other immigrants is $40.15. But even this average is of importance only to the extent that it furnishes something definite and tangible by which to measure the relative economic status of the different immigrant groups at the time of arrival. For illustration, the Lithuanian, Euthenian, Pole, Hebrew, Roumanian, Slovak, and Turk each had in his or her possession an amount averaging less than the average for all adult immigrants. So did the Bulgarian, Serbian, and Montenegrin; the Croatian and Slovenian; the Dalmatian, Bosnian, and Herzegovinian ; the Finnish, Greek, Italian, Magyar, and Eussian. All these are of the newer immigrant races. The largest average sum, according to race, for each adult alien, amounting to $99.18, was in the possession of the English immigrant; the Scotch and Welsh each possessed more than ninety dol- lars ; the French $84.39 ; the German $69.65, while the Scandinavian, the Bohemian and Moravian, and the Irish each had an amount larger than the average for all adult immigrants. All the groups possessing more than the average are of the older immigrant races. The possessioi of these amounts, however, does not mean in all eases that the money belongs to 151 THE TIDE OF IMMIGRATION the immigrant. It is important that he should be in possession of a certain sum upon his arrival in order to avoid the risk of being sent back to Eu- rope by the United States immigration authorities, as its absence would subject him to the possibility of his being debarred from entrance and deported on the ground that he might become a public charge. It is a matter of official record that many deposits of money are made at Ellis Island by in- terested parties for immigrants after arrival for the mere purpose of securing their admission in evasion of the law, and are taken away as soon as the immigrants for whom the deposits are in- tended have left the Island. There is no statutory provision as to the amount of money an alien should have on deposit to his credit or actually in his possession upon arrival, and in consequence the immigration officials have made no hard and fast rule. Generally, however, it is required that the immigrant should have enough money with which to provide for the rea- sonable wants of himself and those accompanying him who are dependent upon him until such time as he is likely to find employment. When bound for an interior destination he must have sufficient funds, in addition, with which to meet transporta- tion charges if not already in possession of the railroad ticket, as is true in many cases. It should be expected in consequence of this in- dication of the immigrant's worldly possessions, that any word picture of the economic conditions surrounding him in his European home that is at 152 IMMIGRATION'S TIDE-RIP all true to the facts must necessarily be a gloomy one. Of course, it must be recognized at the out- set that among the aliens coming to the United States there are wide differences of life, of habits, and of industrial characteristics. Some there are who have a training in a skilled occupation and an education much beyond the mere ability to read and write. But by far the larger number have not these advantages. For the greater part, being principally from the backward agricultural dis- tricts, they are densely ignorant and very super- stitious. In many cases they are intensely de- voted to the Eoman Catholic faith. In scarcely none of the countries from which these peasants come have they shown sufficient ability to de- velop a middle class strong enough to bridge the age-long chasm between them and the upper class. Professor Edward A. Steiner, in The Immigrant Tide, says of the Slavic peasant that "to be a peasant means to be addressed by a personal pro- noun which is a niark of inferiority ; it means to be bound by customs which are irksome as an 'iron shirt'; it means to be the butt of the ridicule of stage fools, who, after all, only mimic the fools in real life. Poverty and contempt have been ac- cepted as the reward for hard labor and as the divinely appointed lot of the peasant, who in but few Slavic countries has escaped serfdom, a con- dition of semi-slavery from which he emerged with insufficient land, or none, with many limitations as to individual ownership and with practically no 153 THE TIDE OF IMMIGRATION limitations as to his share of the burden of gov- ernment support. The masses of the peoples of the Slavic coun- tries have never been above economic want, says Professor Steiner. To the peasant, bread and cabbage to eat, a straw-thatched izba to shelter his family, and an occasional pull at the vodka bot- tle, means comfort, while to have feather beds, a crowing cock in the barn-yard and a pig-killing once a year, is the realization of his wildest dreams. Fully two-thirds of these more than one hundred million people do not know what it means to have enough bread to eat and, with the excep- tion of Hungary, many of the countries in which they live do not produce enough foodstuffs to allow every man the ordinary military rations. Economically, the Slavic peasant is always at the edge of want and in the shadow of starvation, and, socially, always at a disadvantage. To peo- ple living under such economic conditions, emi- grating to America will, for some years at least, be going from Egypt to the Promised Land. A description of the economic environment in Europe of the other races that are coming to us in such large numbers is not any more prepos- sessing. Only a very small percentage, as we have seen, are skilled workers, and the extremely low wages paid in Europe to unskilled labor per- mits of a standard of living barely removed from that of physical want for the very necessaries of life. These immigrants know virtually nothing of the comforts and beauties of home ; they crowd 154 IMMIGRATION'S TIDE-RIP together in small, ill-ventilated rooms where squalor and filth usually prevail. "The emigrants from this district," reports Consul Carroll to the State Department of the United States Government, referring to Palermo, Italy, "few of whom, if any, are able to read or write, as a rule, previous to their emigrating, live in poverty bordering on the extreme and in a man- ner not easily conceived by an American or other person not conversant with the poverty-stricken localities of Europe. The huts or hovels in which they live and sleep, together with their pigs, goats, and donkeys, and possibly any number of other living things, are not pleasant to look upon, nor is there any desire for a second inhalation of the odor which emanates from them. In the city ten to fifteen often live on the ground or street floor, occupying the same room, with or without curtain partitions, depending upon the degree of taste or refinement of the occupants. In such places there is usually one large bed, which is plainly seen day or night from the street. In passing up or down a street in Palermo during pleasant weather, one of the most common sights is that of seeing people sleeping on steps and sidewalks, and those who are obliged to be on foot and abroad must pick their steps in order not to trample upon them." "The poorer classes live in wretched habita- tions, mostly in the lower story of houses from five to nine stories high, erected of tufa stone. Entire families of many persons live in one apart- 155 THE TroE OF IMMIGRATION ment, receiving light and ventilation by means of a large front door, open during the day and closed at night, shutting out air and circulation." This summary of a report from United States Consul Camphausen at Naples also indicates the manner of living at home of our Italian immigrants and perhaps throws some light upon the cause of con- gested districts in the Italian quarters in the United States. As to the food of the Italian immigrants in their native homes, this consists of bread of in- ferior quality, polenta (boiled Indian meal), rice soup, native wine, fish, and vegetables, with occa- sionally meat of the poorest grade. Among the better class of workers macaroni with greens cooked with butter, cheese, lard, or milk is not un- common. A dish often described in consular re- ports as almost the exclusive food of the poorer class is called "minestra" — a mixture of -vege- tables, bread or macaroni, grated cheese, and olive oil. Among the poorer agricultural classes, espe- cially in years of bad harvest, the food is almost exclusively polenta, frequently made of diseased and inferior Indian com. Consul Camphausen reporting to the State De- partment from Naples says that in the provinces of Basilicata, as in some of the other provinces, "the people subsist on raw provisions during six days of the week, cooking warm meals twice a day on Sunday only." In some of the provinces "they eat meat about three times a year." Villari tells us that the general standard of 156 IMMIGRATION'S TIDE-RIP comfort in south. Italy is decidedly low even in the more prosperous parts of the country. "In many places," he says, "several families occupy a single room, and the clothes of the lower classes are often in a wretched state ; it is a common sight to see men and women, and especially children, absolutely in rags."^ It is from south Italy that we receive by far our largest number of Italian immigrants. In 1914, while the total immigration from Italy reached nearly three hundred and twenty-five thousand, as many as two hundred and seventy- one thousand — eighty-four out of every one hun- dred — were south Italians and only fifty-two thou- sand north Italians. There is a striking difference between the im- migrants coming to us from north and from south Italy. According to Villari, north Italy is indus- trial, prosperous, active, and progressive. The south is almost exclusively agricultural, and mis- erably poor. The north has made a great ad- vance in wealth, trade, and education, while the south is almost stationary. The ignorance of the south is proverbial. Thus it should be expected that from northern Italy come immigrants of a different kind than from southern Italy. From north Italy come largely masons, stonecutters, railway laborers, and so on. They are, on the whole, physically and otherwise better than those coming from the southern provinces. * Villari: Italian Life i/n Town and Country. 157 THE TIDE OF IMMIGRATION The Poles, Euthenians, Eoumanians, and others of our immigrant races also live poorly in their European homes. Very few of the Ruthenians from Austria-Hungary rise above the rank of the peasantry, the vast majority of the land owners, as well as of the middle and upper classes gen- erally in Galicia, being Poles, but not the Poles that immigrate to America. The Ruthenians are among the poorest and most backward of the Austro-Hungarians. The southern Slavs of Aus- tria-Hungary, including the Slovenes or Slove- nians, the Croatians, and the Serbians, are also among the most ignorant and superstitious races in that country. Our Hebrew immigration from Russia comes ahnost entirely from the western part of that country, from what is known as the "Jewish Pale of Settlement." Unlike our Russian immigrants proper, most of these Hebrews come from the towns. The trades they represent call for little physical strength, they being tailors, shoemakers, cabinet-makers, glaziers, painters, and so on. The Jewish artisan usually knows fairly well at least two trades more or less closely related, which is an advantage to him in competition with other workers. The Jew, too, is poor, with a low stand- ard of living forced upon him by adverse economic conditions. Here, then, is a picture of the standard of living of the immigrant at home who is suddenly thrown into the American labor market in competition with the earlier arrival and in particular with 158 IMMIGRATION'S TIDE-RIP the native worker. Being farm laborers, these immigrants are accustomed among other things to long hours of work each day, quite in contrast with the native industrial worker who is demanding that the work-day be limited to eight hours. CHAPTEE XIV THE IMMIGRANT AND THE NATIVE "WORKER By far the larger number of aliens coming here are seeking the benefits of the better economic opportunities for employment and wages that are offered by our industries in contrast with those in their home country. If these opportunities here gave no better economic rewards than those the immigrant is able to secure ia his European home, it is a certainty that there would be comparatively little immigration to the United States. These rewards for his toil not only enable him to better his living condition, but also to improve the eco- nomic status of his family and of others depend- ent upon him. This resultant fact is conspicuous in the history of every race migrating to our shores the past one hundred years. Take for illustration those coming here from Ireland. At home, prior to the fifties, the Irish peasant was not only depreciated but also stigmatized as an idle good-for-nothing. In Ireland he had "nothing to hope for; nothing beneficial in prospect to rouse his dormant ener- gies and to urge him on to exertion ; the cabin was his birthplace, potatoes his chief food, servility his position, ignorance and prejudice his legacy, and 160 THE IMMIGRANT AND NATIVE WORKER proscription Ms lot. The occurrences of every year vouch for the truth of the assertion that the landlords of Ireland cared little or nothing for the peasantry; they neither permitted nor helped them to live like rational beings at home, nor did they use any great efforts to enable them to emi- grate. ' ' 1 But in America these very same Irish peasants turned out to be industrious and thrifty citizens. "They appear to me to adapt themselves to the country and its institutions with more ease than emigrants from almost any other nation. They rapidly improve in intelligence, not a few get money and establish themselves in a large way of business, and nearly all of them in a few years or months have improved their condition and appear- ance in a most wonderful manner. We find them now in every position from hodmen and excavators to common councilmen, mayors, members of Con- gress and the various legislatures; as farmers with farms of their own; as wholesale and retail grocers; as large and small drapers and mer- chants ; and as lawyers, doctors, editors, and office- holders. Here they have the prospect by industry, frugality, and perseverance, of bettering their condition, and raising themselves in society; and so here they prosper and progress." ^ The same is true of the more recent immigrant races if allowance is made for the difference in time of arrival in this country. The first indiea- '^ Emigration, Mmfigrants and Know-Nothings, by a Foreigner, 1854. 161 THE TIDE OF IMMIGRATION tion of an improved economic status is the accu- mulation of savings which represent the differ- ence between their standard of living and the wages they receive here. Formerly accustomed to a wage of from twenty to fifty cents a day and with a correspondingly low standard of liv- ing, the one dollar and more a day they are paid in this country represents a large sum for the expenditure of which their low standard makes no provision. This explains why the foreign ele- ment in the United States succeeds in saving money. "An alien in the TJnited States," reported the United States Consul at Fiume, Hungary, in 1904, even "allowing what to him are luxuries, such as daily meat, shoes, and tobacco, is still able to save over half his earnings. In two or three years he either starts a business of his own or returns home. Many times he again emigrates, often hav- ing married, paid off a mortgage on his land, or made an investment of some sort." Up to the outbreak of the European War every mail took thousands of dollars for deposit in the banks of Italy, Austria, Hungary, Russia, and other countries from which the more re- cent immigrants came, thus increasing the al- ready large deposits there of money earned in America. While there is no denying that the improved conditions here have the effect of bettering the lot of the immigrant, there is still another aspect of the effects of the working of the tide-rip. This 162 THE IMMIGRANT AND NATIVE WORKER aspect lias regard for the welfare of the Ameri- canized and native workers who, with a higher standard of living, are also engaged along with the immigrant in industrial pursuits. A contrast of the low economic status of the arriving immigrant with the higher standard of living of the native and Americanized worker is presented in detail by the author in The Immigrant Invasion.'^ Therein, also, the necessity to support this higher standard of living is explained as the basis of the higher wage demands of the native worker. The relation of this lower standard of the toilers of Europe to that of the American workingman and the relation of the two to wages are not properly understood. This standard of living all depends upon a few things — the quality and quantity of food and cloth- ing and shelter. If, for instance, the workers of southeastern Europe ate as much meat and other substantial food of as good quality as do the workers of the United States, if they lived in as good a house, wore as good clothes, sent their children to school, had a home life of some degree of comfort, and were affected by the other more expensive influences of democratic institutions, they would find it compulsory to earn and they would spend fully as much to live as does the American workingman. This is proven in the thousands of cases so conspicuous among natural- ized citizens of the older immigrant races who have been raised to this higher standard of liv- ' Published by Dodd, Mead & Co., New York, 1913. 163 THE TIDE OF IMMIGRATION ing by their environment in this country. In con- sequence, they can not afford to work for a low wage any more than can the native worker. Eeversing the statement somewhat, if the American worker had not effectively operating upon him the broad social forces that make him dissatisfied with a condition in life similar to that of the European toiler, then he, too, would be content with a wage equally as low. We have seen how this more recent arrival who comes to America lives in his native home in Europe. If the American workingman were to content him- self with mere food, clothing, and shelter of as poor quality, if he lived here as the immigrant lives in Europe, he, too, could afford to work for as low a wage as the imported European and from it could accumulate savings. The representatives of these two widely vary- ing standards meet in competition for employ- ment and wages at the doors of our industries with somewhat the same commodity to sell. This commodity is labor. The laws of economics teach that where two similar commodities bear differ- ent prices, other things being equal, the purchaser will buy the cheaper. Unregulated, the competi- tion of the lower rate of one railroad fixes the rate on all rival lines. One storekeeper selling shoes at five dollars a pair will keep down or reduce higher prices for the same commodity in other stores. The operation of the power of compe- tition which the immigrant brings to bear upon the native worker in the sale of labor has a simi- 164 THE IMMIGRANT AND NATIVE WORKER lar effect. The price of Ms labor — ;the wage for which he will work — ^is lower than that demanded by the native. All that a manager or a foreman of a mine, mill, or factory needs in order to make effective the lower wage scale is not as large a number of inunigrants as he has workers, but just enough of those willing to work for the low wages to enable him to threaten the native em- ployee with the loss of his job. Thus a foreman or boss can in divers ways effectively use one im- migrant against fifty or one hundred employees. In consequence, a small number of immigrants working for a low wage sets the rate of pay and determines the conditions of employment for a much larger group of workers. The basis of this ability of the immigrant la- borer to undersell the native worker is illustrated as follows in the Eeport of the Immigration Com- mission: "The recent immigrant males, being usually single, or, if married, having left their wives abroad, have been able to adopt in large measure a group instead of a family living ar- rangement, and thereby to reduce their cost of living to a point far below that of the American or older immigrant in the same industry or the same level of occupations. The method of living usually followed is that commonly known as the 'boarding-boss system.' Under this arrangement a married immigrant or his wife or a single man constitutes the. head of the household, which, in addition to the family of the head, will usually be made up of two to twenty boarders or lodgers. 165 THE TIDE OP IMMIGRATION Each lodger pays the boarding boss a fixed sum, ordinarily two dollars to three dollars per month, for lodging, cooking, and washing, the food being usually bought by the boarding boss and its cost shared equally by the individual members of the group. Another common arrangement is for each member of the household to purchase his own food and have it cooked separately. Under this general method of living, which prevails among the greater portion of the immigrant households, the entire outlay for necessary living expenses of each adult member ranges from nine dollars to fifteen dollars each month. The additional ex- penditures of the recent immigrant wage earners have been small. Every effort has been made to save as much as possible." The Bureau of Labor of the United States Gov- ernment, in a pamphlet reporting upon the cost of living of an Italian or Hungarian, shows that in eighty-nine gangs aggregating more than fifteen hundred men the cost for food per man was $5.30 and for shanty room and sundries $1.49 a month. The average earnings were $37.07, leaving for each man a saving of $30.27 a month. This competition of the immigrant with the na- tive worker is much more serious today than it was during the arrival upon our shores of the aliens of the earlier immigration. While these also were principally farmers and farm laborers, at the same time their distribution in this country was more largely upon the farms and not as now in our industries. This change from farm labor- 166 THE IMMIGRANT AND NATIVE WORKER ers seeking land and a permanent home upon it to those in search of wages through temporary in- dustrial employment is as important in many ways as are the changes in the racial composition of our immigration or in its geographical distribution within the United States. Take only one illustration. The liberal land policy of the Federal Government as represented in the Homestead bill, signed by President Lin- coln in 1862, was most beneficial to the artisan class of the eastern states in that it gave to the native worker in times of industrial depression, and even during prosperous times when wages did not keep pace with the increase in his standard of living, the alternative of choosing between con- tinuing his trade or taking up land to farm. This situation prevented a surplus labor population from developing too rapidly, the excess being con- stantly drained off on to the land in the West. In consequence, even in spite of large immigration, the rate of wages of the industrial worker was easily maintained at the point not very far re- moved from that which the standard of living of the self-employed farmer was able to maintain. If wages fell too far below the worker's wants, he was not compelled to continue at work but could take advantage of this opportunity that was open to him to work the land. Prior to the panic of 1893, the existence of this situation had the effect of forcing out into the West that portion of the population of the east- ern cities which was affected in their employment 167 THE TIDE OF IMMIGRATION by industrial and financial disturbances. It was a common occurrence to witness hundreds of thou- sands of unemployed workers from idle industries pouring into the limitless West where land was to be had on credit almost for the asking. These in- cluded immigrant operatives to whom the oppor- tunity to secure land at such low prices free from rentals, ties, or poor-rates was a greater induce- ment when out of work than that of returning to the adverse conditions in Europe from which they had migrated. But the panic of 1893 marks a change. No longer was there an abundance of unoccupied land in the West upon which the excess population thrown out of employment could settle. The un- precedented immigration of the eighties had clogged and choked the stream of labor that had been pouring into industrial pursuits. How great a part the tremendous immigration of the eight- ies had to do with precipitating this eco- nomic convulsion we have no means of telling. But the panic almost instantly checked immigra- tion. Our industrial fabric was shaken to its very foundation. For the first time the country experi- enced idle farm hands in large numbers tramping the country in search of work, large numbers of unemployed operatives thronging the streets of factory towns, laborers abandoning the industrial districts and pouring into the cities, all demand- ing work or food. It was the time of Coxey 's arm- ies. It brought the vanguard of that long train of social problems with which the industrial his- 168 THE IMMIGRANT AND NATIVE WORKER tory of England tlie past hundred years lias made us all too familiar. The panic of 1907 repeated the experience. It emphasized over again the fact that the equalizing influences of the pioneer period of this new coun- try have passed, never to return; that no longer are there any unoccupied puhlic lands that can be cultivated to advantage by the small farmer. What land available for settlement still remains in the West has increased in price beyond the means of the immigrant to purchase. All this tends to make the competition of the immigrant with the native worker much more severe today than formerly, and also more successful. CHAPTER XV TWO VIEWS OF THE TIDE-RIP "It is certainly not fair or just to the American workingman or to those who have come here some years ago that a newly arrived immigrant should be forced by his own necessities to take the first job that is offered to him. It means that he takes the job held by some one who preceded him here or who was bom in thi^ country. I think it is not unreasonable, with the large population we have and with our citizens irregularly employed, for us to afford to those who are here the first and best consideration, ' ' Thus succinctly stated is a clear view of some effects of immigration as seen by Mr. John Mitch- ell, formerly President of the United Mine Work- ers of America and the leader of the anthracite miners in their great strikes of 1900 and 1902. These strikes were brought about in large part by the disastrous effects upon the wages and standard of living of the anthracite mine workers through the ruthless competition of unregulated immigration. He says: I belong to an organization of -wbich practically all the coal miners of America are members. And in this period of un- 170 TWO VIEWS OF THE TIDE-RIP precedented industrial prosperity the people of my trade are given the opportunity to work about two hundred days a year. There is certainly something the matter when a man who offers to work three hundred days a year is permitted to work only two hundred days, and if during this time of great industrial activity a trade or an industry is only per- mitted to work two hundred days a year, what will it be per- mitted to work in times of either financial or industrial de- pression? It is a matter of grave concern to the six hundred thousand men who mine coal in America whether there is to be some reasonable restriction made upon the admission of aliens into this country. I do not approach the subject as a student or an expert, but I do approach it as a practical workingman who has from daily experience observed the effect of practically unregulated immigration.^ "To US who have rubbed up against immigra- tion in times when we were not at the pinnacle of prosperity and when men are competing with each other, vieiag with each other for a living for themselves and their offspring, then we feel it, then we know something about immigration, ' ' says Mr, James O'Connell, President of the Interna- tional Association of Machinists and a member of the United States Commission on Industrial Ee- lations. It is not academic with us. It is not a matter of figures with us. There is a practical point to this. I have the honor of representing an organization of one hundred thousand skilled mechanics, and we feel the immigration proposition every day. We meet it every day in our own way. We meet the man who comes in every day and stands at the shop door. We have to compete with him. He is not competing '■Facts on Immigration, National Civic Federation, pp. 68-69. 171 THE TIDE OF IMMIGRATION with us, we compete with him, and if we succeed, all right. If we succeed in assimilating, well and good. But if we don't, what then? The question of immigration has its effect upon the wealth producers of our country — ^upon the wage earners who are in competition every day with the immigrant — and they are the ones most affected, yes, veiy materially affected. Our living is gauged by immigration. Our wages are based on immigration; the condition of our family, the way our families are cared for and fed is gauged by immigration; the schooling of our children is dictated by immigration. It is governed by the fellow who is competing with us for a job. Has that any effect upon our people or our standard of living? We are the ones who suffer from immigration, not the employer. We have been up against it so often and so continuously that we do not need to be from Missouri in our ease, because we meet it here and there and everywhere — in the mining district, in the mechanical trades, in the clothing industry, the alUed industries — and in all of the industries in which labor is engaged we are confronted with immigration. We can not show to you, we can not prove to you, we can not bring to you chapter and verse for all these things, but we meet it, we know it. It is in our hearts, before our eyes every minute of the day. We simply say we know it is so because we have suffered from it. We have felt it and our families have suffered from it, and are being punished by it. It is a real problem with us, and not imaginary. We feel that our standard of living is kept down. We feel that by a better protection against immigration, we would be given oppor- tunities for a stUl higher standard of citizenship. We want fair opportunities here, and we do not want an unfair competition. In other words, we do not want the American labor to compete with the slums of Europe for a living. We don't want a tariff upon our product, and no tariff upon competition with our labor. We want protection from all sides. I do not say this from a political standpoint, as I am not a politician. 172 TWO VIEWS OF THE TIDE-RIP We could not convince you that you are wrong and we are right, but I think we feel it. I know we suffer from the results of it, and I think we know that we need some pro- tection from it, and I am sure if you were with us in our daily walks of life, if you were in our factories and work- shops, and down in the bowels of the earth where labor is employed, you would agree witti us as to the necessity for protection. Not only in prosperous times like these, but when the reverses come. Then we have to contend with not only what has come, but what will come in under the present restriction.^ Thus we have descriptions of the operation of immigration's tide-rip from men who actually see its workings day in and day out. They describe it from no theoretical or imaginary point of view but from that of practical experience with its op- posing currents. Their view is reflected ia the following, which is contained in a circular issued by the Junior Order of United American Me- chanics to its members: "Will we American citi- zens allow the Dago, the other riff-raff of southern Europe, and the coolie laborers, who will work for a matter of nothing and live on the refuse of the cesspool and the garbage dump, to replace Ameri- can labor and take our earnings back to foreign lands, or assist more filth and vice to land on our shores?" But immigration also presents itself from a point of view other than the distribution of wealth through wages. This is the production of wealth. They who view it from the standpoint of produc- tion see "the enormous undeveloped resources of ^ Foots on Imrmgration, National Civic Federation, pp. 73-77. 173 THE TIDE OF IMMIGRATION tMs 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 will- ing to do the hard and disagreeable work at the bottom."! This view of immigration is the only one us- ually seen by the employer. Crudely, but at the same time pointedly, this view is presented by Mr. D. G. Ambler, a member of the Board of Trade of Jacksonville, Florida. After stating that it may be we have enough and perhaps too much of skilled labor, he says the time has come when all laws that interfere with the supply of common labor should be repealed. "To object to it on the ground that these laborers do not become a part of the body politic is equivalent to saying that all such forms of productive energy as horses, mules, and machinery should be rejected because they can not be incorporated in the body politic," is the opinion of this spokesman of the em- ployer. However much this blunt way of expressing this view may shock the sentimentalist and the pa- triot, it represents the attitude of a large ele- ment in our society. It has no regard whatever for the view which holds that that immigration only is desirable which will assimilate with and become a part of our social order. It is the view * Commons: Baces and Immigrants w America, p. 119. 174 TWO VIEWS OF [THE TIDE-RIP of the slaveholder towards the negro in the days before the Civil War. The iminigrant, just as was true of the imported negro slave, combines bodily vigor with a docility and meager physical demands that make it practi- cable to obtain his labor at the low cost of the coarsest subsistence. These aliens are not pur- chased outright by the producers of steel, coal, iron, and others who use their labor, as was the case of the plantation owners with their slave labor. But like this forcible importation of the negro in the days gone by, the present-day free and liberal importation of immigrants does permit of the rapid creation and as rapid accumulation of wealth through exploitation by the class in society that is in an economically advantageous position. Instead of the products being of the field, such as tobacco, rice, cotton, sugar, and so on, as in the period before the war, they are now of the mine, mill, and factory, such as coal, iron, copper, steel, clothing, and so on. While the commodities pro- duced have changed their material form, the ob- ject of the producer has not changed one particle. History supplies more than one illustration of the falsity of the assertion that the great body of men must be kept on starvation wages, or at least must ever have held over them the dread or fear of starvation, in order to secure work from them. But there are some immigrants that the em- ployer even would not allow to enter the country. In the words of Mr. Ambler: "Keep the insane out. Keep the diseased out. Keep the criminal 175 THE TIDE OF IMMIGRATION class out. But let in every able-bodied man and woman. On this basis alone can we continue to prosper. The present law against contracting for labor in Europe prevents the farmers and mill men of the South getting the common labor they need and bringing it direct to their own ports, and it is for this section I enter my plea with all the vigor I am capable of." With his siren's song of self-interest Mr. Am- bler mingles confusingly a bar or two of sectional patriotism : The South of the present is awake; she realizes her power, her resources, but alas, awaking from her lethargy, she finds her hands tied by the laws of her country. She finds the labor she needs denied her. The education that she has acco rded to her ^colored^jopulaJjfln- haajLn_Iaigfi_£art_robbed her of he r most valuable asset, her labor, and today she stands asking that the laws of her country be amended so as to enable her to get relief from Europe, or, if need be, from Asia.. We much prefer the laborer from northern Europe and the sturdy Italian from Lombardy, or even the Slav, feeling sure that with time and opportunity they will all make good citizens, but if need be we will take the Oriental, feeUng quite sure that we can profit by his labor, letting him do with his wages as he will. Again I say, shut out the criminals, shut out the imbeeUe, shut out those having contagious diseases, shut out, if you will, the skilled laborer or pauper laborer from the cities that interferes with a man getting a fair wage in this country, but do not shut out the man of the axe, the hoe, the plow, and the pick. Do away with the laws that prevent the farmers and men of the South and West importing direct the labor needed to cultivate and raise the food, and the fiber needed to feed and clothe you and them. Give us of the South a chance to fill up our waste places with homes of 176 TWO VIEWS OF THE TIDE-RIP sturdy immigrants. Give us a chance to till our lands and work our log and turpentine camps, our mills and our factories.^ "A million more immigrants a year" should be the slogan of the employing class, in the opinion of Mr. Theodore Ahrens, President of the Stand- ard Sanitary Manufacturing Company. He does not believe we have reached a point where we do not need continued immigration. "As a manufac- turer I today feel the necessity, the absolute want, for labor," he says. "That condition exists not only in Kentucky but also in Alabama and other southern states, and I believe that we could use a million more immigrants a year, but they should be the best of the kind. This is the keynote of the whole situation. I believe such immigrants as criminals or consumptives or epileptics or people who are not fit to take care of themselves should be kept out. I believe that every absolutely healthy man, woman, or child who comes into the United States, whether they have twenty-five dol- lars or not, should be allowed to come here, be- cause we know this country was built up by just such people."^ These two views of one of the most important aspects of the immigration tide as it pours into our industries have been seen through the eyes of two groups in our population who occupy dia- metrically opposite and economically antagonistic positions, each having as its basis economic self- ^ Facts on Immigration, National Civic Federation, pp. 94-97. 'Ibid., pp. 65-66. 177 THE TIDE OF IMMIGRATION interest. One view is that of the native employee who strives not only to maintain the higher wage and other advantages of his employment, but also to increase those advantages; the other view is that of the employer desirous of securing an abundance of cheap labor. The latter favors "let- ting the bars down" and "throwing wide open our gates"; the former wants to restrict the volume of immigration. CHAPTEE XVI SOME EFFECTS OF THE TIDE-RIP One result of the competition of the urmiigraiit which is claimed by the restrictionist and admit- ted by the "liberal immigrationist " is the driving- out from their trade and occupation of native and Americanized workers. Facts proving this result to be the actual situation have been presented in The Immigrant Invasion.^ This very important point is discussed at some length by Professor Fairchild. He says among other statements : " It is claimed that the natives are not displaced, but are simply forced into higher occupations. Those who were formerly common laborers are now in positions of author- ity. While this argument holds true of individu- als, its fallacy when applied to groups is obvious. There are not nearly enough places of authority to receive those who are forced out from below. The introduction of five hundred Slav laborers into a community may make a demand for a dozen or a score of Americans iu higher positions, but hardly for five hundred. Furthermore, in so far as this process does actually take place, it must result in a lowering of the native birth rate, for ' Warne : The Imrmgrcmt Invasion, Chapters VIII and IX. 179 THE TIDE OF IMMIGRATION it is a well known fact that in all modern societies the higher the social class, the smaller is the aver- age family." ^ It is hard to see how any one can seriously hold the opinion that the immigrants simply force the native laborers up into higher positions, continues Professor Fairchild. "It is, of course, perfectly obvious that at the present time most of the na- tive workmen m industry are in the better paid positions, and that the lower grades are occupied by foreigners. But the question is, are there as many native workmen in high positions as there would have been in all positions if there had been no immigration? This is what the 'forcing up' argument assumes, and the falsity of the posi- tion seems self-evident. It appears much more reasonable to believe that while a few native work- ers have been forced up, a vastly larger number are working side by side with the immigrants and earning approximately the same wages — ^to say nothing of that other body of native labor which the immigrants have prevented from ever being brought into existence."^ Also, it has been claimed, says Professor Fairchild, "that a large proportion of the 'hobo' class (who are, to be sure, not necessarily criminal) are native Ameri- cans who have been forced out of employment by foreign competition. In a similar way, other in- dividuals may have been driven into active crime. "^ 'Fairchild: Imrmgration, p. 223. 'Ibid., p. 308. 'Ibid., p. 329. 180 SOME EFFECTS OF THE TIDE-RIP "There is every reason to believe," he adds, "that our immigrants have not meant a gain in the labor supply, but the substitution of one la- bor element for another. Not only have the immi- grants in general displaced the natives, but the newer immigrants have displaced the older ones in a wide variety of industries and occupations. This latter process has gone on before our very eyes ; it is manifest and perfectly comprehensible. . . . While some of the displaced individuals have gone into other, very likely higher, occupations, the real substitution has been the concomitant of a cessation of immigration from the older sources. The north Europeans, being unwilling to meet the competition of races industrially inferior to them, have either ceased emigrating in large numbers, or else axe going elsewhere. At any rate they do not come here. The diminution of the supply of native labor has been brought about in an analo- gous way, though in this case the restrictive forces operate upon the principles of reproduction in- stead of immigration. ' ' ^ "The number of unskilled workers coming in at the present time is sufficient to check decidedly the normal tendency toward an improved stand- ard of living in many lines of industry," says Pro- fessor J. W. Jenks, formerly a member of the Immigration Commission. He says this is "the fundamental reason" why there should be at the present time "a rather widely extended restric- tion * ' of immigration. ' ' Of course I am well aware ^Fairehild: Immigration, p. 342. 181 THE TIDE OF IMMIGRATION of the fact that Mr. Hourwich in his new book, as often before, and many others claim that the bring- ing of these laborers simply fiUs the demand for unskilled workmen and that the American labor- ers and the earlier immigrants go to higher posi- tions. That was doubtless true earlier; that is doubtless true in part now, but the figures col-. lected by the Immigration Commission, from a sufficient number of industries in different sec- tions of the country to give general conclusions, prove beyond doubt that in a good many cases these ineoming immigrants actually drive out into other localities and into other unskilled trades large numbers of American workingmen and work- ingmen of the earlier immigration who do not get better positions, but, rather, worse ones. My own judgment and that of a number of our investiga- tors when the work of the Immigration Commis- sion began was substantially that upheld now by Mr. Hourwich and those who agree with him. But Professor Lauck, our chief superintendent of in- vestigators in the field, and, so far as I am aware, every single investigator in the field, before the work ended reached the conclusion from personal observation that the tendency of the large per- centage of immigration of unskilled workers is clearly to lower the standard of living in a num- ber of industries, and the statistics of the com- mission support this impression. I therefore changed my earlier views. ' ' ^ 1 Letter from Professor Jenks to Pre^dent Taft, February 8, 1913. 182 SOME EFFECTS OF THE TIDE-RIP "An increasingly large number of laborers go downward instead of upward," says the United States Commission on Industrial Relations. "Young men, full of ambition and high hopes for the future, start their life as workers, but meet- ing failure after failure in establishing them- selves in some trade or calling, their ambitions and hopes go to pieces, and they gradually sink into the ranks of migratory and casual workers. Continuing their existence in these ranks, they begin to lose self-respect and become 'hoboes.' Afterwards, acquiring certain negative habits, as those of drinking and begging, and losing all self- control, self-respect, and desire to work, they become 'down-and-outs' — tramps, bums, vaga- bonds, gamblers, pickpockets, yeggmen, and other petty criminals — in short, public parasites, the number of whom seems to be growing faster than the general population."^ Over against these facts, in an effort to mini- mize the seriousness of the tendency they portray, is the opinion of "liberal immigrationists" to the effect that the workers who are displaced and who are deprived of their means of livelihood by im- migration "go up higher," the claim having ref- erence to their economic position in this world. I have never seen any successful attempt to pre- sent facts to prove this assertion or to follow this line of argument to its logical conclusion. And I never expect to see anyone trying to do so who values his reputation for intelligence. The in- * Final Beport of the CommiBsion on Industrial Belations, p. 157. 183 THE TIDE OF IMMIGRATION ference plainly intended is unavoidable, that is, that this competition of the immigrant is not bad, that in fact it may be good for the American workingman, inasmuch as it enables him to "go up higher" into a better paying occupation. To secure this laudable end we should impose no obstacles to the unlimited importation of the cheaper European labor ! For the sake of the argument let us admit that some native workers do "go up higher" into bet- ter paying trades and occupations. It is not ad- mitted, however, that immigration is necessary in order for this process to take place. The fact is, this desirable end can be better accomplished in another way. In every industrial society two counteracting economic forces are constantly at work. One is directed by capital to keep the cost of production at the minimum. This affects wages — ^the eost of labor — just as it affects the price of any other element entering into the cost of producing a commodity, and it tends to keep down wages. The other force also affects wages — ^it is the con- centrated broad social influences at work upon the worker's standard of living with the tendency to increase both standard and wages. If this stand- ard rises to the point where it tends to raise wages too high, then the necessity of capital to keep down the cost of production compels the manager of capital to resort to counteracting influences. In the absence of cheap labor through immigra- tion, such an influence is the labor of the machine 184 SOME EFFECTS OF THE TIDE-RIP when brought to bear in competition with the labor of the worker. If there were no immigration much of the so- called rough work that society needs to have done and which is now performed for the greater part by the cheaper labor of the immigrant would be done by machines. Cheap labor prevents inven- tion and retards the introduction of machinery. A country that has an oversupply of cheap human labor has no record of any consequence in machine invention. The opposite is true, however, of coun- tries where wages are relatively high. It is so because of the necessity capital is put to in order to keep down the cost of production, and this urges capital to substitute the cheaper machine labor. This encourages inventive skill, and in the absence of immigration would encourage it still more, thus improving the arts and also relieving human beings of some of the present inhuman toil. In addition to the competition of the machine to prevent wages from going too high, there is always at work the competition of the single man with the married worker ; of the young, just enter- ing upon their life-work, with the older wage earner; of girls and women with men. If these are not sufficient to urge on the native worker there are always present in every Ameri- can community those powerful social forces which, imhampered, tend constantly and regularly to raise the worker's standard of living by increas- ing his effective wants. These wants draw rather than push or force him towards the higher and 185 THE TIDE OF IMMIGRATION better paid positions, for the simple reason that these positions supply the wage which alone per- mits these growing wants to be satisfied. In brief, under these more natural conditions the native worker would be "drawn" towards the better pay- ing trades and occupations after he has served his apprenticeship in the lesser ones. He should not be "pushed" or "forced" up higher by the ruth- less competition of the more cheaply produced foreign labor. Employers, ministers, steamship ticket agents, university professors, employment agents, settle- ment workers and others who blandly, and some of them sometimes innocently, discuss this advan- tage of immigration would see it in a different aspect, and in its true aspect, if conditions were such that each year we imported from foreign countries hundreds of thousands of persons en- gaged in these various activities. Under these conditions competition for their places in our social organization would soon bring about a situa- tion where protests loud and deep would ring out from all in these groups. They would then feel the pressure towards lower profits and salaries to such an extent as seriously to lower their standard of living. Then they would do exactly what the American workiugman is coming consciously to do — ^they would oppose the practically unrestrict- ed and unregulated influx of foreign competitors. Where the immigrants are outside the control of the labor union, in which the native worker has organized himself largely for protection against 186 SOME EFFECTS OF THE TIDE-RIP the competition of these aliens, the latter are docile and obedient, are ignorant of their rights, and work long hours for low wages. Lacking in under- standing and in appreciation of all that fair wages to the citizen-worker means towards the continu- ance of our democratic institutions, this imported laborer with his competitive abihty is playing havoc with the growth and development of our democratic society and with the democratization of our production and distribution of wealth. This is one of the most conspicuous economic effects of immigration. It depresses the money wages of the native worker, prevents them from rising with the increasing cost of his necessities and thus keeps him at a relatively lower standard of living while all about him social influences are at work demanding a rise in his standard. Do not the pitifully low wages paid in many of our industries and the physically injurious low standard of living of the workers in many of our industrial centers bear any relation to immigra- tion? Does not unemployment, such as was so shockingly in evidence in all our large cities the past several winters preceding the European War, indicate that there is something wrong some- where? Does not child-labor, the industrial labor of women, the congestion of population, long hours of work, the rising death-toll from preventable ac- cidents and occupational diseases, the startling increase in poverty among our industrial classes, the discarding by our industries of men in their forties for the labor of the much younger immi- 187 THE TIDE OF IMMIGRATION grants — do not these and like social horrors have a relation to immigration? Is there not still another aspect of this competi- tion of the immigrant worker? Of the thirty or forty per cent, of our total immigration that re- turns to Europe, an enormous number go back, by the evidence of the Immigration Commission, de- feated, disheartened, ruined. The first annual report of the New York Bureau of Industries and Immigration for 1911 says : The combination of steamship agents, emigrant hotels, runners, porters, expressmen, and cabmen throughout the country, operating chiefly through New York City, forms one of the most stupendous systems for fleecing the alien from the time he leaves his home country until he reaches his destination in America, and vice versa. In the matter of living and labor conditions in labor camps and colonies, aliens are discriminated against in regard to housing, sanitation, food supplies, and emplojmient methods, being denied the ordinary decencies of life; in regard to labor conditions, aliens are checked and tagged, amounts ordered by the padroni are deducted from their wages without their knowledge or express sanction, and exploitations occur in hospital charges and the purchases of supplies. In the matter of industrial calamities and personal injuries, exploitation by lawyers and their runners and claim agents and collection agents bear heavily on the alien because of his alienship and international complications with his family and property in his home country. In the matter of savings, the private banking laws are affording no protection whatever outside of cities of the first class; frauds in the sale of homes to aliens by means of the solving of puzzles or by means of excursions arranged to interest aliens in "show" pieces of property, or by other means are widespread; and the settlement of affairs in the 188 SOME EFFECTS OF THE TIDE-RIP bid country, when aa alien wishes to settle here, is in the hands of a most unscrupulous class of lawyers, notaries public, col- lection agents, information bureaus, and protective leagues. In the matter of education for children, inadequate pro- visions exist for taking care of groups of people, who collect with the starting of new industries in remote places, such as mines and quarries, and adults outside of cities are wholly neglected in matters of instruction in English, civics, and naturalization. There are no systematic assimilation processes by the state and cities under way except in the largest cities. Cominenting on the above, Mr. Samuel Gom- pers, President of the American Federation of Labor, says: The reader of this indictment of America's civilization may well wonder if there could be worse conditions for the bureau to investigate and describe. In the body of the report, of which there are 184 pages, and diagrams besides, the details bear out the ugly summary. If there are any bodily ills or human brutishness or crooked customs or skin games to which the immigrants are not exposed, from their landing at Ellis Island until they either go back home to Europe or get away from the clutches of the harpies that beset them here, it would be interesting to have them set forth. The record of the ills under which they suffer as given in the report is sickening, and the thought that most of them come from the immigrants' own countrymen or from men who should be their protectors is, in the extreme, discouraging. The question naturally arises. Why do the immigrants come at all, when their experiences are so outrageously bad as here officially given? Do they know beforehand the risks they run of misfortune in endless forms? Or, bad as conditions are for them here, are they possibly worse oft in their own country? Of course there are immigrants and immigrants. The atten- tion of the bureau is naturally taken up with the ease of the poorest, most ignorant, most helpless. But of these there are X89 THE TIDE OF IMMIGRATION great numbers, . . . When we contemplate the fate of the horde of immigrants arriving in New York we do not feel proud of what is being done with them by our eoimtiy. The opportunity for the poor of all lands, of which our people once boasted, is a sadly dwindled vision.^ Mucli depends upon one's point of view. This is as true of the effects of immigration as it is of any other of our many present-day problems. In spite of the competition of immigrant labor of the past fifty years or more, the average American workiugman has a higher standard of living today than he had before the CivU War — he not only receives higher money wages but he also works a less number of hours each day and his real wages have risen considerably. If this is true one might justly ask, "What, then, have been and where are the injurious effects of immigration?" The an- swer is as to what might have been if the com- petition of the immigrant had been better con- trolled in the interest of the American worker and of American democracy. Undoubtedly wages would be higher than they are now, the standard of living of the average American toiler would be more in conformity with the demands of his edu- cational, religious, political, and social environ- ment, and many of the evils of present-day indus- trialism would not now exist. Our whole indus- trial state, instead of being autocratic and mon- archical, iastead of being conducted in the interest and to the advantage of a limited few, would rest on broad grounds of democracy. * The American Federationist, November, 1912. 190 SOME EFFECTS OF THE TIDE-RIP ' ' The standard of living is the index of the com- fort and true prosperity of a nation," says Pro- fessor Fairchild. "A high standard is a priceless heritage, which ought to be guarded at all costs.^ ... A standard of living, once established, has great tenacity, and people will suffer almost any- thing in the way of hardship before they wiU re- duce it." ^ We must consciously realize that it is not con- ducive to the success of American democracy that the native worker should be content with a stand- ard of living as low as that of the immigrant. This American is more than an industrial toiler, he is a citizen also ; he is a husband and a father. His wants naturally are greater in number and these he can satisfy only through wages. He is subject to inescapable pressure from all those social, re- ligious, political, educational, and economic forces which are back of that constant tendency so notice- able in the United States for the standard of living of the people to increase. The wages of the native worker should be released sufficiently from the competition of the immigrant to permit of that elasticity which keeps wages within promis- ing distance of standard of living. This can be influenced in part through better governmental regulation of the volume of immigration. It is upon the gratification by the industrial toiler of these growing wants that rests the success of "The American Experiment," the answer to "What is the Promise of American Life?" 'FaircUld: Im/rmgration, p. 303. 'Hid., p. 304. 191 CHAPTEE XVII THE ALIEN CONTEACT LABOR LAW To prevent tlie injurious effects of immigration in its operation upon the wages and standard of living and the general social condition of the na- tive worker is the object of what has come to be known as the "Alien Contract Labor Law." These effects were felt and their cause con- sciously recognized by the American workingman as early as 1820. At that time the ranks of free labor were being largely increased by the arrival each year of thousands of aliens from the British Isles and from the Continent who were coming here eager to begin life anew in the land of liberty. No law was then on our statute books to protect the native worker from this competition, and, in consequence, many of the industries of the country were drawing freely upon immigration for their labor. In this coimection it is of significance to note that the modem labor movement had its origin in the economic forces that were operating in the country at that time. Ever since then immigra- tion has played a large part among the basal forces that have become interwoven in the Ameri- can labor movement. It was especially conspicu- 192 THE ALIEN CONTRACT LABOR LAW ous during the period of industrial activity which cuhninated in the organization of the Knights of Labor in 1869, the first strong national union of workers. This association was started by garment workers, who in particular were suffering from the injurious effects of immigration. The history of labor organization since, and its psesent-day tendency to emphasize industrial unionism runs parallel with the increase in immigration. The credit, if credit there is, for securing the enactment of the Alien Contract Labor Law is due to the Knights of Labor. This was in 1885. In order to understand its significance, it is neces- sary to review briefly the economic conditions which preceded and which were the cause of its enactment. These are indicated by the author of Emigres tion, Emigrants and Know-Nothings, written by "A Foreigner" and published in 1854. He says: Our manufactureis, iron makers, machinists, miners, agri- culturists, railway, canal and other contractors, private fam- ilies, hotel keepers, and many others, have got into the way of expecting and seeking for cheap labor, through the supply of operatives, workmen, laborers, house-help, and various kinds of workers, kept up by the indiscriminate and unrestrained admission of emigrants. Indeed it is no secret that emigrants, or rather foreign workers, have become an article of importa- tion; professedly for the purpose of providing for the de- ficiency of supply in the labor market, but in reality with the intention of obtaining efficient workers at lower wages. I remember well in the early part of 1846, when our manu- facturers and iron makers, far and near, were struggling hard for the retention of the high protective tariff then in existence, 193 THE TIDE OF IMMIGRATION and the profits on cotton spinning' and manufacturing ranged from thirty to one hundred per cent., that hundreds of opera- tives were imported from England for the purpose of obtain- ing practiced hands, and to keep wages from rising. And I remember also that some years ago when there was an attempt to "reduce the wages of iron makers and machinists at Pitts- burgh and elsewhere, and the men resisted, that importation was resorted to with considerable success. This importation has had, and probably will continue to have, a very unfair and deplorable effect upon the native laboring population; for it needs no proof to sustain the assertion, that but for these specific and large importations of cotton and woolen manufacturing operatives, machinists and iron workers, the wages of the then located population must have risen, and the natives been made better off. It is worthy of mention and attention, in this connection, that master coal miners, master iron makers, master machin- ists, master cotton and woolen manufacturers, etc., are to a man advocates for a very high tariff upon coal, iron, steel, machines, tools, and cotton and woolen goods; and for the unlimited admission of workers without a sixpence duty; by which means the consumers of all those articles are made to pay exorbitant prices for their benefit (the benefit of the masters) while they can and do avail themselves of the free importation of labor in order to keep wages from rising or for the purpose of lowering them. This is certainly the pro- tective system, but it is protecting the masters and not the workers; the strong against the weak; the high livers and little workers, against the low livers and hard workers. If any protective system is wanted, I am an advocate for a protective system which shall prevent pauper labor from com- ing into the coTintry, and admitting all merchandise free which by making it abundant and cheap would add to the comfort of the masses. The principle underlying the Alien Contract Labor Law is to the native worker what the pro- 194 THE ALIEN CONTRACT LABOR LAW tective-tariff principle is to the domestic manu- facturer. That it has not worked in practice as successfully as has the protective tariff does not invalidate the comparison any the less. The first step taken by the National Government in the direction of protecting the native worker from the free and unlimited importation of foreign labor was by the Act of May 6, 1882, which sus- pended for ten years the immigration of Chinese laborers and which is known as the "Chinese Ex- clusion Law." It was reenacted in 1892 for an- other ten years, and in 1902 was extended indefi- nitely. The Alien Contract Labor Law of February 26, 1885, made it unlawful in any manner to pre- pay the transportation or assist or encourage the importation of any alien "under contract or agree- ment, parol or special, express or implied," made previous to the importation of such alien, to per- form labor or service of any kind in the United States.^ Two years later, in 1887, Congress en- acted that all such excluded persons, upon arrival, "shall be sent back to the nations to which they belong and from whence they came." The sup- plementary act of March 3, 1891, provided that it shall be deemed a violation of the act "to assist or encourage the importation or migration of any alien by promise of employment through adver- tisements printed and published in any foreign country, and any alien coming to this country in ' Skilled labor may be imported if labor of like kind unemployed cannot be found in this country. 195 THE TIDE OF IMMIGRATION consequence of such an advertisement shall be treated as coming under a contract as contem- plated by such act, and the penalties by said act imposed shall be applicable in such a case." Subsequently, various other amendments were added to these laws. That of March 3, 1893, "to facilitate the enforcement of the immigration and contract labor laws, ' ' provided that all transporta- tion companies regularly engaged in bringing alien immigrants to the United States "shall twice a year file a certificate with the Secretary of Labor that they have furnished, to be kept conspicuously exposed to view in the oflSce of each of their agents in foreign countries authorized to sell emigrant tickets, a copy of the law of March 3, 1891, and of all subsequent laws of this country relative to immigration, printed in large letters, in the lan- guage of the country where the copy of the law is to be exposed to view, and that they have in- structed their agents to call attention thereto of persons contemplating emigration before selling tickets to them." By the act of February 20, 1907, the contract laborers who are excluded from admission into the United States are described as follows: "Per- sons hereinafter called contract laborers who have been induced or sohcited to migrate to this country by offers or promises of employment or in conse- quence of agreements, oral, written or printed, expressed or implied, to perform labor in this country of any kind, skilled or unskilled; those who have been, within one year from the date of 196 THE ALIEN CONTRACT LABOR LAW application for admission to the United States, deported as having been induced or solicited to migrate as above described; any person whose ticket or passage is paid for with the money of another, or who is assisted by others to come, un- less it is afiSrmatively and satisfactorily shown that such person does not belong to one of the fore- going excluded classes and that said ticket or pas- sage was not paid for by any corporation, associa- tion, society, municipality, or foreign Government either directly or indirectly. ' ' The law makes it a misdemeanor for anyone in any manner whatsoever to prepay the transporta- tion or in any way to assist or encourage the im- portation or migration to the United States of any contract laborer. Those violating this pro- vision are subject to a fine for each offense in the sum of one thousand dollars. Any individual may bring suit for this amount and if successful can retain it, a separate suit being allowable for each alien assisted into the country in this way. Neith- er directly nor indirectly, by writing, printing, or oral representation shall transportation com- panies or owners of vessels or others engaged in transporting aliens to the United States solicit, invite, or encourage the immigration of any aliens into the country. A fine not exceeding one thou- sand dollars or imprisonment not exceeding three years or both is provided for any person bringing into or attempting to bring into the country any alien not duly admitted by an immigrant inspector or not lawfully entitled to enter, 197 THE TIDE OF IMMIGRATION The term "laborer, skilled and unskilled," has been interpreted by Government officials in enforc- ing the immigration laws to mean, primarily, per- sons whose work is essentially physical, or, at least, manual, as farm laborers, street laborers, factory hands, contractors' men, stablemen, freight handlers, stevedores, miners, and the like ; and persons whose work is less physical, but still manual, and who may be highly skilled, as carpen- ters, stonemasons, tile setters, painters, black- smiths, mechanics, tailors, printers, and the like, but not persons whose work is neither distinctively manual nor mechanical, but rather professional, artistic, mercantile, or clerical, as pharmacists, draftsmen, photographers, designers, salesmen, bookkeepers, stenographers, copyists, and the hke. In the interpretation of these contract labor laws two important principles have been deter- mined upon to guide the action of the Department of Justice. One is that these laws prohibit "any offer or promise of employment which is of such a definite character that an acceptance thereof would constitute a contract."^ The other is to the effect that the laws are "directed against a promise which specially designates the particular job or work or employment for which the alien's labor is desired." ^ This necessarily specific con- struction of the laws leaves a large loop-hole through which hundreds of thousands of immi- ' Report of the Immigiation CominisBion. 'Ibid. 198 THE ALIEN CONTHACT LABOR LAW grants anmially arrive in the United States who are induced to come here under the promise of employment and whom it is the intention of the laws to exclude from entrance. If these contract labor laws could be made effective in practice they would strike at the root-cause of much of our re- cent immigration and would remove to a consid- erable extent the necessity for restriction by means of the literacy test. This is true because the kind of promise or offer specified by the Department of Justice as cause of exclusion is relatively rare or, at least, is most difficult of uncovering. "Nothing so definite is required to iaduce unskilled laborers to emi- grate," says Professor Fairchild. "Broad and general assurances of employment awaiting them are sufficient. The wide discrepancy between the letter and the interpretation of the law is unfor- tunate. This section of the law is the one upon which immigrants are coached more thoroughly than on any other. . . . The whole matter of con- tract labor needs to be thoroughly reconsid- ered."^ If strictly interpreted and enforced, adds Professor Fairchild, the contract labor clause of the immigration law would exclude prac- tically every immigrant who had the slightest as- surance of employment awaiting him. The law prohibiting the immigration of aliens under contract is one thing. Its enforcement is an entirely different proposition. That it is con- stantly being evaded, that persons whom it is 'Fairchild: Immigration, p. 280. 199 THE TIDE OF IMMIGRATION intended should be kept out of the country gain entrance, is patent to anyone conversant with the facts. It is no exaggeration to say that hundreds of thousands of laborers who have been induced, solicited, stimulated, and in other ways persuaded to migrate to this country under promise of em- ployment come here annually, the law to the con- trary notwithstanding. "There can be little question that a large part of the present immigration of unskilled laborers is induced to come to this country by more or less direct promises of employment, but these oases are exceedingly difficult of detection," said Sena- tor Dillingham of Vermont in the debate in the Senate on the literacy-test provision for restrict- ing immigration. Senator Dillingham was chair- man of the Federal Immigration Commission which made an extensive investigation of the subject. "It is certain also," he said, "that a considerable part of this class of immigrants are solicited to come by agents and subagents of steamship companies working in various parts of Europe. Such solicitation is forbidden by the United States immigration law, but it appears that the enforcement of the law as it now stands is impracticable." "Undoubtedly the great majority of eastern European immigrants coming to the United States are assured before leaving home that work will be available here," says Mr. W. W. Husband, an inspector of the Federal Bureau of Immigration and who in 1913 made a special investigation of 200 THE ALIEN CONTRACT LABOR LAW the subject in Europe for the United States Gov- ernment. ''Usually," he says, "they know the nature of the work and approximately what the wages will be. It is such assurance, as a rule, that induces them to come. Nearly all inunigration originates in the villages and smaller towns, and when a community has sent out even a few emi- grants those who remain at home are kept well advised relative to labor conditions in America. A considerable part of the immigration seems to result from general knowledge of this nature, while another large part moves in response to more direct advices from relatives or friends here. "So far as could be learned the average eastern European who is contemplating emigra- tion does not require an assurance that some spe- cific job awaits him in this country, but only that labor is in demand. During the inquiry in Russia many attempts were made to ascertain the nature of the promises of work that had induced emigra- tion in specific cases, and only rarely was it found that the emigrant had the promise of a particular job. The emigrating classes are confident that work is available here, because their friends have found it so, and their chief trouble is to get money with which to follow them. In many instances, of course, the assurance of employment is based on a more or less direct promise of employers that work will be available; but, as before suggested, a less specific assurance probably would have the same result in most cases. Nevertheless, the prac- 201 THE TIDE OF IMMIGRATION tice alluded to undoubtedly is so common that many of the immigrants are, technically at least, contract laborers. . . . Some indications were found which pointed to direct violations of the contract labor law through the recruiting of groups of laborers for specific employers. ... A system has developed which makes artificial pro- motion of this nature practically unnecessary here so far as common labor is concerned. There is evidence also that steamship ticket agents in the United States sometimes seek to promote busi- ness by advising potential immigrants in Europe of opportunities for labor here."^ Contract laborers debarred in 1914 numbered 2,793 or eight per cent, of all aliens excluded. More than one-fourth of these, 724, were Italians ; next in numerical importance came the English and then the Eussians, these three races supply- ing forty-four out . of every one hundred aliens excluded because they came here under contract for the sale of their labor. Failing to secure from the Federal Government adequate protection from the importation of this cheap labor, the native workers in some of the states have had recourse to state laws. For in- stance, in Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Idaho, Arizona, Wyoming, and Cahfomia, the employment of aliens on public works is expressly prohibited. In New York State, in 1915, the severity of the law was relaxed 'Appendix to the 1914 Beport of the CommisBioner-Geiieral of Immigratioii. 202 THE ALIEN CONTRACT LABOR LAW by legislation in order not to interfere with the construction of the subways in New York City. The anti-alien law of Arizona was declared un- constitutional by the United States Supreme Court in 1915. Under its police powers that state had enacted a statute entitled "An act to protect the citizens of the United States in their employment against non-citizens," which provided that any employer of labor employing more than five work- ers at any one time "shall employ not less than eighty per cent, qualified electors or native-bom citizens of the United States." A fine of not less than $100 and imprisonment for not less than thirty days was the punishment for the conviction of any employer; also for any employee misrepre- senting his nativity or citizenship. The decision of the Supreme Court stated that the effect of such a statute would be to transfer the authority to control immigration from the Fed- eral Grovemment, in which it is vested solely, to the state, for the reason that the aliens * ' can not live where they can not work" and a denial of the op- portunity of earning a livelihood is tantamount "to the assertion of the right to deny them en- trance and abode. ' ' The same court, however, held constitutional the law of New York State which prohibited the employment of aliens on public works, the court distinguishing clearly between the power of the state in this direction and in that of exercising such authority over private employ- ment. Failure in these and other directions to secure 203 THE TIDE OF IMMIGRATION that protection which the native workers are be- ginning to feel is necessary, explains in large part the support organized labor is giving to the ef- forts to restrict immigration by means of the literacy test. CHAPTER XVin WITHIN THE TIDE BASIN— NET IMMIGRATION That all immigrants coming to our shores do not remain here has been made clear in the chap- ter "The Ebb of the Tide." While the flow of the tide brought a total of 8,379,000 for the eight years ending in 1915, the ebb took away during the same period as many as 4,259,000. This left a gain of immigration over and above emigration of 4,120,000. That is, our net immigration for these years has been only a little more than forty- nine per cent., or not quite one-half, of the total number of arrivals. In 1907 net immigration was twenty-three per cent., and in 1915 as low as twelve per cent, of the total, while in 1910 it was as high as sixty-eight per cent., or more than two-thirds. The relation between immigration's flow and ebb and the net difference in the addition to our foreign-born population are indicated in the dia- gram on page 206, which shows immigration, emigration, and net immigration for each year from 1907 to 1915. The fluctuations in emigration, as will be seen by a study of the diagram, have varying effects upon net in relation to total immi- gration. For illustration, the years 1910 and 1913 gave almost exactly the same net immigration — 205 THE TIDE OF IMMIGRATION about eight hundred and twenty thousand. And yet in 1910 total immigration was one million two hundred thousand and in 1913 it exceeded one million four hundred thousand. This is explained by the fact that in 1913 emigration was some two nam 1 — r nil Mil su in M nn T — \ — r 1 — r (09,0110 ■.-----_*-W.--- ;-3c<3:: • moon IJOUMO The Annxtai. Flow and Ebb or Immigeation and the Net Gain in Immigeants hundred thousand greater than in 1910. Again, total immigration was almost the same in 1909 as in 1908, being for each year around nine hundred and twenty thousand. And yet in 1909 our net immigration exceeded five hundred and forty thousand, while in the year preceding it was less 206 NET IMMIGRATION than two hundred and twenty thousand. Such are the varying effects of emigration upon immi- gration, as to the net, that it not infrequently oc- curs that net immigration is greater when total immigration is less in one year compared with an- other. The tide gauge which has been employed to measure these movements in the immigration tide is the statistical record of the Bureau of Im- migration of the United States Grovernment. But this gauge has not been consistently uniform over a period of years in the meaning of the unit that has been employed. This is pointed out by Pro- fessor Walter F. Willcox of Cornell University.^ In its administrative or statistical sense this unit, that is, the word "immigrant," is not de- fined in the reports of the Commissioner-General of Immigration, but from that source and from instructions and other circulars issued by the bureau the following statements regarding its meaning have been drawn up by Professor Will- cox: 1. The administrative or statistical meaning of "immigrant" is not fixed by statute but is de- termined by the definitions or explanations of the Bureau of Immigration. These are dependent up- on and vary with the law and administrative de- cisions. 2. In the latest circular of the Bureau, immi- grants are defined as "arriving aliens whose last permanent residence was in a country other than * Facts on Immigration, National Civic Federation, pp. 103-107. 207 THE TIDE OF IMMIGRATION the United States who intend to reside in the United States." 3. This definition is modified by a subsequent paragraph of the same circular which excludes from the immigrant class "citizens of British North America and Mexico coming direct there- from by sea or rail." So the official definition is substantially this: An alien, neither a resident of the United States nor a citizen of British North America, Cuba, or Mexico, who arrives in the United States intending to reside there. Thus the statistical definition excludes as immigrants ar- riving citizens of British North America, Cuba, and Mexico. 4. The statistical definition of immigrant has been modified several times by changes of law and administrative interpretation. Until January 1, 1906, an alien arrival was counted as an immi- grant each time he entered the country, but since that date an alien who has acquired a residence in the United States and is returning from a Visit abroad is not classed as an immigrant. This ad- ministrative change has reduced the number of im- migrants more than ten per cent, and has made it difficult to compare the earlier and the later statistics. Until January 1, 1903, an alien arriv- ing in the first or second cabin was not classed as an immigrant but under the head of other alien passenger. This change likewise makes it difficult to compare the figures before and after that date. By a mere change of administrative definition, the reported number of immigrants is thus increased 208 NET IMMIGRATION nearly twelve per cent. Until the same date an alien arrival in transit to some other country was deemed an immigrant but since then has been classed as a non-immigrant alien. This change also makes the figures before 1903 not strictly comparable with later ones. About three per cent, of those who were formerly classed as aliens have been excluded since 1903. 5. An immigrant in the statistical sense is a person liable for and paying the head tax. But to this there are two slight exceptions. Desert- ing alien seamen not apprehended are liable for the head tax which is paid by the steamship com- pany from which they desert, but such cases are not included in the statistics. Citizens of British North America, Cuba, and Mexico coming from other ports than those of their own country are reported as immigrants but do not pay the head tax. Obviously both are minor exceptions hardly affecting the rule. 6. Probably other changes of definition have occurred in recent years. No attempt has been made to exhaust the list. These changes have probably tended to make the increase of immigra- tion indicated by the figures greater than the actual increase, and to that degree to make the figures misleading. The general tendency of these changes in the statistical use of the word immigrant has clearly been toward a closer agreement between the popu- lar and the statistical meaning of the term. "It is a common but fallacious assumption," says 209 THE TIDE OF IMMIGRATION Professor Willcox, "that a word used as the name of a statistical unit has precisely the same mean- ing that it has when used in popular speech. In the present case the two should be carefully dis- tinguished. In the popular or theoretical sense, an immigrant is a person of foreign birth who is crossing the country's boundary and entering the United States with intent to remain and become an addition to the population of the country. In this sense of the word an alien arrival is an im- migrant whether he comes by water or by land, in the steerage or in the cabin, from contiguous or non-contiguous territory, and whether he pays or does not pay the head tax. The essential ele- ment is an addition to the population of the coun- try as a result of travel,- and the word thus covers all additions to the population otherwise than by birth. A person can not be an immigrant to the United States more than once any more than a person can be born more than once. It is a char- acteristic of this meaning that it does not alter." There is also need to call attention to the dis- tinction between the words "immigrant" and "foreign born" as used respectively by the Bureau of Immigration and the Bureau of the Census. For illustration, included among the foreign-born population as enumerated by the census are citizens here from British North Ameri- ca, in particular from Canada, and from Mexico and Cuba, while, as has been stated, these are not recorded as immigrants by the Bureau of Im- migration. The significance of this is indicated 210 NET IMMIGRATION in the fact that in 1910 the census reported among our foreign born more than 1,200,000 from Canada and 220,000 from Mexico. Nor do the statistics of the Bureau of Immigration record as immigrants those ari^ivals who though bom in some foreign country have become naturalized citizens of the United States. The term "foreign born" is more comprehen- sive, then, than that of "immigrant" and includes all alien arrivals without distinction as to the dif- ferent countries from which they reach the United States or the part of the steamship in which they travel, and includes also persons born in some for- eign country who have become citizens of the United States. During the ninety years from 1820 to 1910 there came to this country through immigration from all parts of the world, exclusive of Canada and Mexico, more than twenty-eight million immi- grants. At the taking of the census in 1910 there were in the United States less than one-half this number of foreign born, only a little more than thirteen million five hundred thousand, inclusive of those from Canada and Mexico. Between the taking of the census of population in 1900 and 1910 there was an immigration to the United States of more than 8,500,000 persons bom in foreign countries. The estimated return mi- gration for the same ten years was about 3,250,000. Thus there was an excess of immigration over emigration, that is, a net immigration, of about 5,250,000. For the same period the increase in 211 U2S-U9* 3a>.an ^ USE>,U44 TOS.OOO ^^^^^^^^^^ le4E-l«M t.94S.(m ^^^l U5S-UM 1 l,C03.