Allan J. McLaughlin

“ After years of effort the aliens in the mining fields have been organized successfully and are now, for their own betterment, heart and soul in the movement for living wages. The cheap native labor in the soft coal mines has caused the organizer much more trouble than the alien laborers.
Most of the skilled trades are able to maintain their unions and their wage-standards in spite of foreign immigration. In some occupations, however, the stream of skilled alien addition is so great and so constant, that disorganization and confusion result in the trade, and wages drop to a minimum. ”

“ One of the chief offenses charged to the immigrant is reduction of our wage standards. There are other factors more potent in depressing wages than immigration, some of which are not connected with it in any way; others are associated with it so intimately that it is difficult to separate them from it. These factors are obscured in the minds of many by the fact of our increasing immigration, and some are prone to charge the sum of their effects to immigration alone.
Cycles of business depression seem to reach us almost periodically, as they do every other country. ”

“ The illiterate immigrant can only be reached from the public platform and the anarchistic exhorter can be easily suppressed or deported, but it is not so easy to prevent the dissemination of anarchistic pamphlets, which sow the seeds of discord and fan the flame of discontent in the heart of the laborer who can read. ”

“ We can not have too much immigration of the right kind, and we should have none at all of the wrong kind. The need is to devise some system by which undesirable immigrants shall be kept out entirely, while desirable immigrants are properly distributed throughout the country. At present some districts which need immigrants have none; and in others, where the population is already congested, immigrants come in such numbers as to depress the conditions of life for those already there. This brings us to the question of what constitutes a desirable immigrant. ”

“ The introduction of improved machinery, with its enormous effect upon our power of production, made necessary increased numbers of unskilled laborers and without these sturdy workers the use of machinery would not be successful financially or otherwise, and we should retrogress to the position of manual production which we occupied twenty-five years ago. Immigration and machinery are both charged with displacing American labor and depressing wages, but they are simply new forces demanded and made necessary by the expansion of our industries. ”

“ The standard of living among immigrants is of course below American standards, but it is being constantly elevated, with a rapidity, among our alien population as a whole, in inverse ratio to the increase of yearly arrivals. Among individual families the elevation of the standard of living keeps pace with their Americanization and their success in life. The immigrant's daily contact with Americans, coupled with the ideas absorbed by his children in American schools, is a potent factor in raising this standard. ”

“ Persons less than 15 seldom are criminals and the immense number of natives below that age contribute few to the number of criminals, but help greatly to reduce the criminal average in the total native population. The great majority of immigrants, on the other hand, are of the sex and age which predispose to crime. It is also a fact that before our laws were made strict, and rigidly enforced, thousands of paupers, cripples and criminals were shipped here from Europe, and the effect of these upon our institutional statistics can be imagined, but should not be charged to the immigrant of to-day. ”

“ This competition of the rural shop or factory is felt in tobacco, cotton, silk, leather and many other industries. Many of the industries of the south are of a similar competing character. The wages paid, the standard of living and cost of necessaries are all much below those of the North. This cheap native labor of the south is felt most as a competing factor by the textile industries of New England, who are forced to secure cheap labor for their own salvation.
The difficulty of maintaining efficient labor organization is the cause ascribed by many labor leaders for wage depression. ”

“ Instead of absorbing false ideas of sociology and politics, the rural immigrant would have the opportunity of studying that bulwark of our institutions, the American farmer. What a different influence the honest, conservative farmer must exert over the alien immigrant from that of the ward boss of the city! ”

“ Even if the immigrant could be eliminated from our social problem, Utopia would not be with us. The lowly place now occupied by the foreign born, the lowest stratum of our social formation, would still exist, and would then be made up of urban degenerates or native failures from the rural districts. Idealists seem to think that the immigrant is wholly responsible for the slum with its crime and pauperism. ”

“ The effect of machinery has been felt upon wages in the textile trades, woodworking, steel and iron industries, soft coal mining and other occupations. The advent of improved machinery was inevitable, and no labor organization, however strong, could indefinitely clog the wheels of progress by postponing its employment. The immigrant is not responsible for its introduction, for it has been introduced in countries with no immigration problem. He simply took advantage of the demand for labor thus created and played no small part in the wonderful growth of our mining and manufacturing industries. ”

“ Inclination for city life is not confined to any particular race, nor to the alien alone. All races contribute to our crowded cities, some of course more constantly than others, but the best and the worst are alike fully represented. ”

“ In order to be a desirable immigrant, the type of immigrant represented must be necessary. As skilled alien laborers are no longer necessary, they can scarcely be classed as desirable. The necessity for the unskilled laborer will be conceded by those who take the trouble to study economic conditions.
The aliens of poor physique, who are usually skilled laborers, go to the crowded city, to the dark, poorly ventilated and disease-infected tenement. The thousands of these city dwellers arriving every year perpetuate the tenement house problem, and retard the work of sanitation and reform. ”

“ The worst features of the system have been eliminated through the enforcement of our laws, and the remnant of the system would disappear if the Italian immigrants could be distributed to the rural districts, instead of being at the mercy of padroni in the crowded Italian quarters of our cities.
It will be seen that the competition of the newly arrived unskilled laborer with native Americans is indirect. He competes directly only with other alien laborers, who are already settled in the country. On the other hand, the alien skilled laborer competes directly with native Americans. ”

“ Moral deterioration is a certain accompaniment of life in the slums, and physical degeneration is still more marked. His occupation is parasitic in character or at best competitive from a standard far below that compatible with decent living. And while this deadly struggle for existence is being waged by the immigrant in the city, the farmers south and west can not procure enough labor to harvest their ripened crops. What a different story could be told of these poor aliens of the tenement could they be directed to the proper sphere! ”

“ The question of illiteracy in our own country is largely a question of presence or absence of schools, and statistics show that the immigrants go to the states which have the best common school system and are thus best fitted to reduce their illiteracy. The fact that illiteracy in New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois and Massachusetts has decreased in spite of the thousands of aliens received every year, speaks well not only for the public school system of these states, but also for the adaptability of the immigrant and his desire for education. ”

“ In case of those who come here as home-seekers and who are able to pay such a tax, it would deprive them of a sum of money which would be of great value in their struggle, and much needed at the very outset of their new life. The imposition of such a tax is a weapon of defense which might be used in the event of great danger from immigration, owing to absence of demand for labor here, but that possibility seems remote and this high head tax must be considered as a last resort, not likely to be needed. A moderate head tax will probably be the rule for the next few years. ”

“ As a result of this unnatural competition the white laborer has been driven from the field wherever the coolie system has found a foothold. The Japanese adopts our dress and manners, but his Americanization never extends beyond external appearances. The yellow and the white races are as immiscible as oil and water. No forces of education or civilization can make aught but an Asiatic out of a Chinese or a Japanese. There can be no assimilation, nor do they desire it. ”

“ There is no longer demand for foreign skilled labor in the United States. Skilled labor in its ratio to unskilled labor among Americans has steadily increased until now the American skilled laborer can supply every demand, and each foreign skilled laborer who comes here comes as a competitor of our own workmen. On the other hand, the demand for unskilled labor is increasing in proportion to the decrease of American unskilled laborers. ”

“ In order to appreciate fully the effect of barring illiterates, it is necessary to consider the proportion of illiterates in each of the principal racial factors of our immigration. Consideration must also be given to the percentage of unskilled laborers furnished by each of these races, because, although the illiteracy amendment is intended to exclude the parasitic city-dwelling immigrant, it affects as well a large proportion of the races furnishing us with the bulk of our necessary unskilled labor. ”

“ In this confusion and disorganization caused by the influx of foreign skilled labor, the clothing trade suffered more than any other industry. So constant has been the stream of foreign tailors to this country that they have now almost monopolized this occupation. The wage scale has descended to a point where the American can no longer compete, and he has been finally forced out of the business as a workman. A revolution has taken place in the manufacture of clothing. ”

“ In many instances the judge passing upon the qualifications of aliens for citizenship sent him by his political organization is a candidate for reelection, the result of the election being often decided by the vote of these aliens. Under these circumstances it is not strange to find that little or no attempt is made by such judge to ascertain the fitness of the alien for citizenship and that the number rejected is practically nil. It is a common thing for an alien rejected in one court to be admitted in another court on the same day. ”

“ After passing the doctors, the immigrants are grouped, according to the number of their manifest sheet, into lines of thirty or less. At the head of each line is a registry clerk, or interpreter, and an immigration inspector. The clerk, or interpreter, interrogates each alien, and finds his name, and verifies the answers on the manifest sheet before him, and if, in the opinion of the immigrant inspector, the immigrant is not clearly and beyond doubt entitled to land, he is held for the consideration of the board of special inquiry. ”

“ This subdivision of labor makes it possible to train and employ almost at once the thousands of new arrivals, and out of the employment of these new arrivals and the conditions resulting from their ever increasing competition arise the sweat shop and its evils. The sweating system produces a condition of affairs in which the operative performs the maximum amount of work for the maximum wage, the length of his working day only limited by his endurance, and, even when he extends himself to the limit, in many cases he can earn scarcely enough to keep him from starvation. ”

“ In regard to occupation and geographical distribution, we must also judge the alien after he is established here, rather than by the statement he makes to the immigration officials upon arrival. During years of industrial depression, the number of aliens returning to Europe is much increased, and while no claim is made that these birds of passage are desirable immigrants, it must be admitted that they do not add to our burdens in times of trouble by swelling the army of the unemployed. ”

“ Immigrants established years ago a reputation for bringing in epidemic diseases. They have played their part in the past in outbreaks of typhus, smallpox and cholera, but with the disappearance of the old immigrant sailing ships, the advent of the swift, clean ocean steamships and efficient modern methods of quarantine and prevention of disease, the immigrant to-day as a carrier of epidemic disease no longer causes us apprehension. ”

“ Illiteracy is seldom a matter of choice with the peasant. It is usually a matter of bad government. The governments of certain countries maintain no free school system, and paid schools of academies are out of the reach of the miserable peasants. ”