The logic of manufactured movement: How industrial demand and transport constructed modern migration

“ Nature (the art whereby God has made and governs the world) is by the art of man, as in many other things, so in this also imitated, that it can make an artificial animal. For seeing life is but a motion of limbs, the beginning whereof is in some principal part within; why may we not say, that all automata (engines that move themselves by springs and wheels as does a watch) have an artificial life? For what is the heart, but a spring; and the nerves, but so many strings; and the joints, but so many wheels, giving motion to the whole body, such as was intended by the artificer? ”

“ Secondly, as has been pointed out, immigration is distinctly a modern movement, and history furnishes no parallels, but only more or less remote analogies.
The opinion of the average American citizen, based perhaps upon prejudice or conviction, rather than reasoning or investigation, is probably that a certain degree of assimilation is essential to the welfare of the American nation, and that the nearer the approach to complete assimilation, the better. ”

“ Hence, the slightest artificial stimulus is a danger to mankind, and the giving thereof a crime; for the experience of all times tells us what modern psychology is beginning to explain—viz., the strange connection between the imagination and the senses, the hitherto mysterious power of awakening physical desires, of almost reproducing sensation, possessed by the mind, even as the mention of dainty food is said to make the mouth water, and the description of a surgical operation to make the nerves wince. ”

“ It should be stated, however, that emigration from Europe is not now an absolute economic necessity, and as a rule those who emigrate to the United States are impelled by a desire for betterment rather than by the necessity of escaping intolerable conditions. This fact should largely modify the natural incentive to treat the immigration movement from the standpoint of sentiment, and permit its consideration primarily as an economic problem. ”

“ The hotel men have made fortunes, the railroads have added millions of dollars to their passenger earnings because of Atlantic City.
There you have the best example of this new creed of the practical railroader—making traffic. It is not a lost example. Across the land every city and town, every resort, from the haughty spa with a cluster of brilliant hotels down to the humblest inn that ever cuddled by the shore of a silvery lake, is taking notice of the creed. The farmer is bending himself to increase the yield of his land, while the railroad reaps a benefit. ”

“ Steam-power is in a most literal sense the maker of the modern town. When the motive-power of industrial work was chiefly confined to the forces stored in man, the economy [325] obtained by collecting larger numbers of men to work in close proximity to one another was comparatively small, and was commonly outweighed by the difficulty of securing for them a sufficient supply of food and other commodities, and by the greater immobility of labour at a time when fixed local associations were a strong binding force, and transport was slow and expensive. ”

“ The development of a fibre of great strength and without the dead weight of granite gave engineers new possibilities. They began in simple fashion, and then they developed once again, with marvellous strides. Steel, the dead thing with a living muscle, could span waterways from which stone shrank. Steel redrew the maps of nations. Proud rivers at which the paths of man had halted, were conquered for the first time. Routes of traffic of every sort were simplified; the railroad made new progress; and economic saving of millions of dollars was made to this gray old world. ”

“ The influences of machine-production upon the size of the units of capital, the intensification and limitation of competition; the natural formation of Trusts and other forms of economic monopoly of capital; trade depressions and grave industrial disorders due to discrepancies between individual and social interests in the working of modern methods of production. ”

“ That immigration throws upon our shores hordes of undesirable foreigners, whose infusion into our social body, and whose eventual admission to political rights and privileges, will in a dangerous degree lower the standard of American citizenship; secondly, that it brings great masses of the pauper laborers of the Old World into direct competition with our laboring force, and thereby will lower the wages and the standard of living of American working-men ”

“ Hand in hand with these changes has come a sweeping change in the scale of production, which must have an important bearing on the immigration situation. The early immigrants, to a very large extent, came into more or less close personal relations with their employers, often working side by side with them on the farm or in the shop. Now foreigners are hired by the thousands by employers whom they perhaps never see, certainly never have any dealings with, the arrangements being made through some underling, very likely a foreigner himself. ”

“ According to the established laws of economics there are two ways in which immigration may operate to lower wages. First, by increasing the supply of labor in the country, and thereby diminishing the amount of remuneration which the individual laborer can command. Second, by introducing a body of laborers whose customary wage in the countries they come from, and whose corresponding standard of living, is much lower than the prevailing standard in the new country. ”

“ The two middle stages of transport and manufacture have fallen far more fully under the control of steam-driven machinery than the others, and it is in the elaboration of older manufacturing and transport processes and the addition of new processes that we trace the largest effects of the evolution of modern industrial methods. ”

“ When production was slower, markets [193] narrower, credit less developed, there was less danger of this big miscalculation, and the corrective forces of industry were more speedily effective. But modern machinery has enormously expanded the size of markets, the scale of competition, the complexity of demand, and production is no longer for a small, local, present demand, but for a large, world, future demand. Hence machinery is the direct material cause of these great fluctuations which bring, as their most evil consequence, irregularity of wages and employment. ”

“ In a word, while it is the interest of each producer of machine-made goods to give regular employment, some wider industrial force compels him to irregularity. What is this force? It is uncontrolled machinery. In the several units of machine-production, the individual factories or mills, we have admirable order and accurate adjustment of parts; in the aggregate of machine-production we have no organisation, but a chaos of haphazard speculation. "Industry has not yet adapted itself to the changes in the environment produced by machinery." ”

“ If this new demand must perforce be met by the labor already in the country, there would be an opportunity for an increase in wages to the working man. But the condition which actually confronts the American workman at such a time is this—not only is the amount of wages which can be successfully demanded by labor profoundly influenced by the number and grade of foreign workers already in the country, but there comes at once, in response to improved conditions, a sudden and enormous increase in the volume of immigration. ”

“ The familiar argument that the immigrants simply force the native laborers up into higher positions is often urged in this connection. It is hard to see how any one can seriously hold this opinion. The fallacy of it has already been shown. It is, of course, perfectly obvious that at the present time most of the native workmen in 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? ”

“ It seems wholly probable that the development of the country would be retarded for a time if the immigration current was stopped.
But why this insistent demand for a rapid exploitation of our resources? Wherein are we the gainers if the wonderful natural riches of the country, which, as we have seen, constitute one of the two great elements which have accounted for our past prosperity, are consumed in the shortest possible time? ”

“ His steel muscles reach across great rivers and deep valleys, his tireless hands have long since burrowed their way through God’s eternal hills. He is here, there, everywhere. His great life is part and parcel of the great life of the nation.
He reaches an arm into an unknown country, and it is known! Great tracts of land that were untraversed become farms; hillsides yield up their mineral treasure; a busy town springs into life where there was no habitation of man a little time before, and the town becomes a city. Commerce is born. The railroad bids death and stagnation begone. It creates. ”

“ Coal, for instance, is a freight business of itself. It is not handled in the regular stations of the railroad, but in specially designed pockets and storage sheds, which may be located at from one or two to half a hundred different accessible points about the city. One begins to see, after a little while, why the railroads now seize with avidity each opportunity to gain lines through the hearts of our cities. Each line gained means some appreciable relief toward the taking up of a traffic burden that increases yearly. ”

“ Even a small road, like the Algomah Central, has its own freight and passenger steamboats running south from the Soo as far as Cleveland, Ohio. It is a pretty poor line with Great Lakes terminals that cannot boast some sort of steamship service of its own.
In the development of the coastwise and the inland waterways of the United States, the railroad may be doing the nation a far greater service than it imagines. For the general trend of railroad expansion in the country to-day seems to be toward a development of the auxiliary water-routes rather than toward their curtailment. ”

“ The presidential election, the panic, the state of the crops in the United States, are familiar topics 379of conversation. [344] Almost every individual in the established currents of immigration has at least one friend in this country. Many of them know exactly where they are going and what they are going to do. To a host of them the change is no greater than to go to the next village in their native land, perhaps less so. For as likely as not, just as many of their friends and relatives are awaiting them in the new country as are lamenting them in the old. ”

“ It is noteworthy that there is still no fear of the economic competition of the immigrants, though there is a faint foreshadowing of such a condition in the preference expressed for “artists” as against agriculturists, of which there already seemed to be enough in some states. On the whole, however, immigrants were regarded as assets, and there existed a vigorous sentiment in favor of encouraging them to come. ”

“ With the difference in race go differences in mental characteristics, traditions, and habits of life. As a result, the problem of assimilation in this country has taken on a completely different aspect. Moreover, this change is a very recent one. It was not until the year 1896 that the three currents from Austria-Hungary, Italy, and Russia exceeded in volume the contributions of the United Kingdom, Germany, and Scandinavia. The real dilution of the original American stock is a matter of scarcely half a generation. ”

“ In the days of the Native Americans and the Know nothings, the uneasiness was mainly due to the fear that too many aliens would acquire the rights of citizenship. Then it was the naturalized foreigner who was the undesirable. Nowadays, the fear is that the foreigners will ignore the privileges of citizenship, and a high percentage of naturalization is a test of desirability in any foreign group. This change may be attributed to a change in the situation of the United States, and to a difference in the character and causes of immigration. ”

“ The immigrant from England, Ireland, Germany, or Sweden no longer finds his lot so much easier here than at home. The United States has now its own problems of congestion, pauperism, and competition of labor. Consequently it is much less worth while for the northern immigrant to come. But as compared with the more backward countries of Europe, there is still a sufficient margin of advantage in the United States to make it well worth while for the peasant to make the change. ”

“ A stimulating agent causes, on the other hand, a rush of the beam of light in the opposite direction, the up-stroke being more pronounced than the down-stroke. The unseen waxings and wanings of life are thus, for the first time, revealed by the moving trail of light. ”

“ This consideration, as well as those affecting the political, moral, and industrial interests of our country, leads me to renew the suggestion that admission to our country and to the high privileges of its citizenship should be more restricted and more careful. We have, I think, a right and owe a duty to our own people, and especially to our working people, not only to keep out the vicious, the ignorant, the civil disturber, the pauper, and the contract laborer, but to check the too great flow of immigration now coming by further limitations. ”

“ The American people are a welcoming and generous people. But those who enter our country illegally, and those who employ them, disrespect the rule of law. And because we live in an age where terrorists are challenging our borders, we simply cannot allow people to pour into the United States undetected, undocumented, and unchecked. Americans are right to demand better border security and better enforcement of the immigration laws. ”