§ 12. Earlier and recent effects of immigration upon wages. Let us now correlate the principle of decreasing re turns and the facts as to the exploitation of our natural re sources 10 with the growth of our population, on the assump tion that immigration has made more or less of a net contribu tion to our numbers. While the vast frontier was open to set See Vol. I, p. 420.
tlement the growth of population could not fail to be looked upon as a blessing, even though somewhat mixed with political evils, immorality, and pauperism. Beginning in colonial times, the policy of the "open door" to immigrants came thus to be deemed the traditional patriotic American policy. Yet there is grave reason to believe that the rate of growth in the nine teenth century was wastefully rapid and that a slower and sounder growth might have been better." However, this rapid growth was largely extensive, spreading over wider areas, and was consistent with a pretty steady rise of real wages in America until about the level continuing higher than that of Europe despite the contemporaneous rise of wages there. Much of this general rise is undoubtedly at tributable to the adoption of better tools, machinery, and in dustrial processes, the more so as inventions and new methods have rapidly become free goods." The beneficial improve ments long cooperated with the rapid exploitation of rich re sources to raise real wages, and then undoubtedly continued to offset for a time the unfavorable effects as the richer re sources began to show signs of exhaustion. About the begin ning of this century, however, the net trend upward seems to have been checked, and the "rising cost of living" (real cost) became a serious actuality for larger sections of the popu lation." Yet as long as wages are enough higher in America to pay the passage of the low-paid workers of the industrially back ward nations, they will continue to come. The ease and cheapness of migration in these days of steamships, the en couragement of immigration by the agencies and advertise ments of the steamship lines, and the increasing readiness 11 E. g., see above ch. 16, § 11, on the prodigal land policy.
12 See Vol. I, p. 436 ff.
"See Vol. I, ch. 36, on machinery and wages.
14 For analysis of the available statistics bearing on the subject, with conclusions that real wages are no longer rising, see H. P. Fairchild in
"American Economic Review" (March, 1916), "The Standard of Liv ing—Up or Down 1" of the peasantry to migrate have become well-known through recent discussions. Unless immigration is limited, it must continue to depress the wages of American workingmen, through both its immediate and its ultimate effects.
§ 13. Laissez-faire policy of immigration. There are those who take a fatalistic view of the subject, and this results in a laissez-faire policy. They declare that the problem will solve itself as the level of American wages comes to be nearly the same as that of the countries of Europe from which our imagination is coming. True enough, if this can be called a "solution." There are many who cherish the commercial ideal according to which cheap labor is absolutely desirable and needful to produce cheaper products. This ideal has spread to wider circles. Here, for example, are the words of a man who combines wide knowledge of the facts of immigration with keen sympathy for the working-classes: 15 "The past industrial development of America points unerringly to Europe as the source whence our unskilled labor supply is to be drawn. . . . America is in the race for the markets of the world; its call for workers will not cease." Yet a little further on he must say : "All wage-earners in America agree that it is not as easy to make a living to-day as it was twenty years ago, and the dollar does not go so far now as it did then. The conflict for sub sistence on the part of the wage-earner is growing more stern as we increase in numbers and industrial life becomes more complicated, and the fact must be faced that the vast army of workers must live more economically if peace and well being are to prevail." § 14. Social-protective policy of immigration. A differ ent kind of solution is offered by those who favor the strict limitation, if not the complete prohibition, of immigration. The foregoing study indicates that the time has come, if it is not far past, when the traditional policy of fostering immi 15 Peter Roberts in "The New Immigration," 1912, preface, p. viii, and p. 47.