IN 1925 NEARLY 17,000 MORE COMMON LABORERS left the United States than came into the country during ten months’ operation of the new 2 per cent. quota immigration law, according to an analysis made by the National Industrial Conference Board, and a recent report of the immigration committee of the National Association of Manufacturers cites the diminishing supply of unskilled laborers as “a fundamental defect in the legislation.” The executive secretary of the American Engineering Council, estimating a reduction of 800,000 workers a year as compared with years before the war, insists that the loss can only be made up by improved management which will reduce the waste of human labor.

While the Industrial Conference Board first calls attention to the deficit in raw-labor supply, it points out that the ultimate effect of the new quota law can not be determined at this time. The Board concludes, however, that “the scaling down of immigration to about a fifth of what it was before the war has the immediate effect of stabilizing the growth of our population, with the attending result of a sustained high-wage level.” With actual money wages averaging 116 per cent. above what they were before the war, with the decline in the purchasing power of the dollar, and assuming the pre-war standard of living, the Board figures that “the wage-earner is about 30 per cent. better off, as regards ‘real’ wages, than he was at the peak of the wage level of 1920.” For the ten months from July, 1924, to April, 1925, since the new law reducing quotas from 3 per cent. to 2 per cent. went into effect, the figures are given as follows:

  “Common laborers admitted were 27,908, as against 97,886 during the same period a year previous; but 44,750 of that class left the country during the same time, leaving an actual deficit of 16,842.
  “Net immigration of all classes shows a decrease of 71.4 per cent. as against the corresponding period the year before. A total of 242,965 persons were admitted, as against 637,602 during the same period the year previous, showing a decline of 62 per cent. in total immigration. In the same period, 78,578 departed, as compared to 63,324 a year ago, leaving a net immigration during the last ten months of 164,387, as against 574,278 during the corresponding ten months in the year prior to the new quota law.
  “Of the 242,965 admitted, 13,352 were farm laborers; of this class, only 1,232 left the country during the same period, leaving a net gain of 12,120 of farm laborers. Others admitted were: professional people, 8,809, while 1,665 emigrated; skilled labor 41,716, of which class 7,171 left; miscellaneous occupations, 40,204 were admitted, 6,367 of this class leaving; no occupation, including women and children, 98,927 came in, and 17,262 departed.”

“Even in prosperity we are losing the aliens who do our dirty work,” comments the New York World, which remarks that it was not expected that the law would shut off a foreign supply of unskilled labor. It works out that poor wage-earners used to come singly, hoping to earn enough to send for wife or relatives, while now the unnaturalized Greek, for example, who sees Greece’s quota of 8% persons a month filled far in advance with “preferred class” persons, gives up and goes home. If the immigration law is retained unchanged, continues The World, one consequence is evident:

“This nation must furnish its own native labor tor the rough work of field, mine and factory. Machines can not completely take the place of muscle. The social results should show many of the beneficial results produced by a like situation in Australasia. An easily exploited, roughly handled mass of ignorant foreign workers may have meant much to industrial prosperity, but it meant endless evils also. Native-born labor will not work for 40 cents an hour, twelve hours a day, as much steel labor did before public sentiment compelled a reform. It will insist upon some of that dignity for manual effort which observers just after the Civil War noted was being undermined by cheap foreign labor.”

Lower Immigration continued here…

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