Labor migration

“ There is at least some reasonable basis for the belief that if the absence of immigration to this country had resulted in a smaller laboring force, the greater pressure on employers to secure machinery, and the greater intelligence of the machine worker, would together have brought about such a betterment of labor-saving machinery as would have resulted in a total production equal to what we have actually witnessed. ”

“ We have used great numbers of aliens in building the railroads of the country, in mines and steel mills, in workshops and factories. On the other hand the flood of immigration has at times proved too strong. It has on occasions served to produce an over-supply of labor and this, in turn, has caused wages to fall. Labor leaders claim that the steady stream of immigrants has prevented the rise in the American workman’s standard of living which otherwise would have taken place. Organized labor would like to place a protective duty upon immigrants. ”

“ It must also be evident that increasing immigration adds to the demand for goods and that the only advantage to be expected in this way is from increasing production production in greater ratio by the skillful use of the new labor, which may open constrictions in our industrial system that have arisen from the refusal of our existing labor to function in certain capacities. ”

“ A distinct deterioration of the masses displaced by the cheaper labor has marked the advent of the new immigration. While some of the workingmen thrown out of employment by immigration rise with the increase in the number of superior positions, the great mass are obliged to accept the lower standard or are forced out of the industry into misery, pauperism, and crime. The greater tendency of immigrants, by reason of their poverty, to permit or encourage the employment of their wives or children, still further increases the intensity of the competition for employment. ”

“ The great mass of unskilled workers in the factory towns proved quite as tempting to the propagandist. Among laborers of this class, wages are the lowest and living conditions the most uninviting. Moreover, this group forms the industrial reservoir which receives the settlings of the most recent European and Asiatic immigration. These people have a standard of living and conceptions of political and individual freedom which are at variance with American traditions. ”

“ By extreme division of labor and marvellous application of machinery it makes possible the wholesale employment in factories of the farm laborers of Europe and their children, and then depends on Europe for the better-trained types of the skilled mechanic, who, on account of the farm laborer, have not been able to learn their trade in America.
Not only does immigration bring to America the strongest, healthiest, and most energetic and adventurous of the work-people of Europe and Asia, but those who come work much harder than they did at home. ”

“ The importance of immigration and emigration is firstly, the addition or subtraction thereby made to or from the supply of labor, and, secondly, the influence of the immigrants upon those habits of the community, which in turn affect the supply of labor. ”

“ Those who have investigated and studied the lower strata of American labor have long recognized the I.W.W. as purely a symptom of a certain distressing state of affairs. The casual migratory laborers are the finished product of an economic environment which seems cruelly efficient in turning out human beings modeled after all the standards which society abhors. ”

“ As a rule, the natives do not wish to work, and wages are no sufficient inducement. Hence they must be made to work, and slavery, either openly or in one of its disguised forms, appears. Since a very small number of Europeans will suffice to direct the activities of a large number of natives, the movement of population from the home state is small, and we find agriculture in the tropics developing along the line of a large unit, producing a single commodity, and operated by compulsory labor, under conditions of waste and exploitation. ”

“ The popular interpretation of this fact is that this emigration movement serves to mitigate the evils of the crisis by removing a large part of the surplus laborers, until returning prosperity creates a demand for them again. The Italian, who displays the greatest mobility in this regard, has been called the safety valve of our labor market. Thus the movements of our alien population are supposed to be an alleviating force as regards crises. ”

“ This supply was not forthcoming from the native population, who were, by instinct and training, independent workers, particularly agriculturists. It was extremely difficult to persuade any great number of them to forego the possibility of becoming independent landowners and cultivators, in order to become hired workers in somebody else’s factory. The close of the second historical period, accordingly, is marked by a keen demand for foreign artisans, and the beginning of a general demand for immigrant labor, to which Europe was commencing to respond. ”

“ Herein lies perhaps the greatest and most popular argument for immigration. It is claimed that without our foreign laboring force it would have been impossible to develop the resources of the country so rapidly and completely as they have been developed, and that if the supply were cut off now, it would seriously cripple the entire industry of the country. It is certainly true that under the present organization of industry in this country, production in many lines depends to a very important degree upon foreign labor. ”

“ But the immigrant sends a very large proportion of his savings to friends and relatives in the old country, or deposits it in foreign institutions, so that it is not available at such a time. Moreover, our laboring class is not as yet wholly foreign, and the native has to share approximately the same wage as the alien. Without the immense body of alien labor, we should have a class of native workers with a considerably higher wage scale, and a large amount of savings accumulated in this country, and available when needed. ”

“ It is worthy of notice, also, that the changes which affect the volume of the immigration current, and cause those repeated fluctuations which we have observed, 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 promising large rewards for labor; an industrial depression checks the incoming current, and sends away many of those who are here. ”

“ Still another influence was the fact that the unfamiliar American farm was less attractive to the southern European immigrant than was the opportunity of performing unskilled labor in the city. To-day four fifths of our immigrants are unskilled laborers who are employed chiefly in mining, construction work, transportation, and domestic service. ”

“ But at the present day the character of industry has entirely changed. The last quarter of the nineteenth century saw the vacant lands finally occupied and the tribe of frontiersmen coming to an end. Population now began to recoil upon the East and the cities. This afforded to manufactures and to the mining industries the surplus labor-market so necessary for the continuance of large establishments which to-day need thousands of workmen and to-morrow hundreds. ”

“ As the wage-earners have become relatively more numerous, many of them have felt more keenly the pressure of competition from immigrant labor. Moreover, the immigration since 1890 has been increasingly from southern and southeastern Europe, from countries with much lower standards of living, and has been of enormous proportions. ”

“ The only rational, true, and fair way of raising wages, is to relieve an over-stocked labor-market by emigration.
Just before the famine commenced in Ireland, for every day's work there was to do in that country, there were three men to do it, which gave to each laborer two days' work, on an average, in the week. This produced such a competition among the laborers to get work, that wages were reduced to a minimum, upon which it was impossible for the laborer to exist. ”

“ The argument of the eight-hour philosophers is that, by restricting the hours of work, more laborers must be employed and the idle surplus provided for; I consider that this is specious reasoning. The overflowing stream of immigration from European countries, attracted to America by comparatively high wages, suffices even now to produce a permanent flood, at least in the fields of unskilled labor. ”

“ Moreover, among the American-born workmen, as well as the English and Scotch, are not found that docility, obedience to orders, and patient toil which employers desire where hundreds and thousands are brought like an army under the direction of foremen, superintendents, and managers. Employers now turn for their labor supply to those eastern and southern sections of Europe which have not hitherto contributed to immigration. ”

“ The establishment of companies to encourage foreign immigration with the object of developing the material resources of the country was another weight in the scale in favor of greater mobility of labor as regards both place and employment. The abolition of slavery removed the last important legal barrier against perfect mobility.
All of these industrial movements have been important factors in changing the condition and character of domestic service. It is true, in a general sense, that every great change in economic conditions affects all occupations. ”

“ The one is in a certain sense the concomitant of the other, but the movement acquires an additional significance because of the fact that during the past fifteen years the labor class has been so recruited by a tide of foreign immigration that this class is now largely made up of persons of foreign parentage, and the lines of cleavage which begin to appear in this country between capital and labor have been accentuated by distinctions of nationality. ”

“ The dramatic unionization of the garment industries in our large cities has misled the public as to the actual effect of recent immigration upon trade-unions. The fact is that the immigrants from the backward parts of Europe tend to weaken, if not to shatter, labor organizations in the fields they enter. They arrive needy and eager to get any work at almost any pay. ”

“ To thousands of workmen the immigration problem is a question of holding a job against a constantly lowering standard of living, and to withstand this stream of “raw labor” means to them the maintenance of industrial efficiency and of life itself. Workingmen are engaged in a desperate struggle to maintain a standard of wages against the constant arrival of unskilled immigrants at the rate of three-quarters of a million a year, at the [Pg 94] very period when the elaboration of machinery permits the largest use of unskilled men. ”

“ I see the men and boys who were born here crowded out of their places by the imported labor, leaving town, and later hear of them beginning life over again in some western village, or taking up government lands on the prairies. If it were not for the emigration out of the town, wages would scarce be enough to support life, so fast does immigration to the town keep up with the demand for labor. ”

“ Here were economic conditions which upset all notions of the fixity of class distinctions. Here was a continent of free land, luring the disaffected or disappointed artisan and enabling him to achieve economic independence. Hither streamed ceaselessly hordes of immigrants from Europe, constantly shifting the social equilibrium. ”

“ The sudden ceasing of the stream of immigration from Europe, however, created an unprecedented demand for labor in the great industrial centers of the North, and business men were not long in realizing the possibilities of a source that had as yet been used in only the slightest degree. ”

“ Whether the exploitation of our resources would have proceeded at such a rapid pace in the past, whether this pace could be kept up in the future, without the immigrant—these are questions more difficult of answer. There is no doubt that at present a large portion of our industry—possibly the greater part—is closely dependent upon a foreign labor supply, and that a sudden cessation of immigration would check the expansion of those industries, though it would not necessarily prevent their continuing on the present 392basis. ”

“ 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. ”

“ At a later time the great era of railroad development and similar enterprises gave opportunity for a certain mobility as regards place of employment. The tide of western emigration due to the discovery of gold and the cheapness of western land caused much shifting of labor among the non-capitalist class, and this was increased as means of communication were rendered more easy. ”

“ It must not be forgotten that immigrants who by their labor contribute to the development of our resources thereby aid in the enlargement of our activities and of home consumption; in other words, that while increasing the supply of labor, they enlarge at the same time the field and the demand for it. When times are hard and the opportunities of the laboring-man are correspondingly narrowed, immigration dwindles down to a comparatively insignificant figure without restrictive legislation. ”