The Distribution of Immigrants. If immigrants would distribute themselves evenly over the United States, the immigration problem would be quite different from what it is. Instead of this, there is a massing of immigrants in some states and communities, and very little evidence to show that these immigrants ever distribute themselves normally over the whole country. In 1906, for example, the Commissioner of Immigration reported that 68.3 per cent of the 1,100,000 immigrants who came that year went to the North Atlantic states; 22.1 per cent to the North Central states; 4.4 per cent to the Western states; and 4.2 per cent to the Southern states. If these figures are at all trustworthy, they indicate a congestion of our recent immigrants in the North Atlantic states and in certain states of the Central West. So far as the census is concerned, it tends to confirm these statistics of the Commissioner of Immigration. Our last census returns, being for 1900, can show little, of course, of the distribution of the great number of recent immigrants that have come from Southern and Eastern Europe. Still the 1900 census contains some interesting facts regarding the distribution of foreign born, or immigrants, that have been received previous to 1900. According to the census of 1900 the number of foreign born in the United States was 10,460,000, or 13.7 per cent of the total population. But these foreign born were confined almost entirely to the Northern states, that is, the North Atlantic states and North Central states. In 1900 the Southern states (South Atlantic and South Central) contained but 4.6 per cent of the total foreign born of the country. The reason why so few of our immigrants have thus far settled in the South is perhaps chiefly because of the competition which the cheap negro labor of the South would offer to them, and also because the South is still largely agricultural, offering few opportunities for the industrial employments, into which a majority of our immigrants go. In the North Atlantic states in 1900 nearly one fourth of the population was foreign born, and 20.7 per cent in the Western states. The following statistics will show the percentage of foreign born in typical states: North Dakota, 35.4 per cent; Rhode Island, 31.4 per cent; Massachusetts, 30 per cent; Minnesota, 28.9 per cent; New York, 26 per cent; Wisconsin, 24.9 per cent; California, 24.7 per cent; Montana, 27.6 per cent; Indiana, 8.5 per cent; Maryland, 7.9 per cent; Missouri, 7 per cent; North Carolina, 0.2 per cent; and Mississippi, 0.5 per cent. The influence of the foreign born in a community, however, is better shown, perhaps, if we consider the number of those of foreign parentage, that is, the foreign born and their children, than if we consider the number of foreign born alone. In a large number of states more than one half of the population is of foreign parentage. Thus North Dakota had in 1900, 77.5 per cent of its population of foreign parentage; Minnesota, 74.9 per cent; Wisconsin, 71.2 per cent; Rhode Island, 64.2 per cent; Massachusetts, 62.3 per cent; South Dakota, 61.1 per cent; Utah, 61.2 per cent; New York, 59.4 per cent. Connecticut, New Jersey, Illinois, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, and California all also had more than one half of their population of foreign parentage in 1900. For the United States as a whole the number of foreign parentage in 1900 amounted to 34.3 per cent, or 26,000,000 out of a total population of 76,000,000. Many of our large cities also have a high percentage of foreign born and of foreign parentage in their population. The percentage of foreign born in some of our largest cities in 1900 was as follows:
Per cent.
New York……………………………………. 37
Chicago…………………………………….. 34.6
Philadelphia………………………………… 22.8
Saint Louis…………………………………. 19.4
Boston……………………………………… 35.1
Baltimore…………………………………… 13.5
San Francisco……………………………….. 34.1
Cleveland…………………………………… 32.6
These same cities had the following percentage of foreign parentage in their population:
Per cent.
New York……………………………………. 76.9
Chicago…………………………………….. 77.4
Philadelphia………………………………… 54.9
St. Louis…………………………………… 61.0
Boston……………………………………… 72.2
Baltimore…………………………………… 38.2
San Francisco……………………………….. 75.2
Cleveland…………………………………… 75.6
These figures show the tendency of our immigrants to mass together in certain states and also in our great cities; so that it has come about that it is said that New York is the largest German city in the world except Berlin; the largest Italian city except Rome; the largest Polish city except Warsaw, and by far the largest Jewish city in the world.
Only one nationality distributes itself relatively evenly over the country, and that is the British. All other nationalities have certain favorite sections in which they settle. Thus, the Irish settle mainly in the North Atlantic states; the Germans have two favorite settlements in the United States, one of them consisting of New York and Pennsylvania, and the other of Wisconsin and Illinois, though Michigan, Iowa, and Missouri also contain a large number of Germans. The Scandinavians locate chiefly in the Northwest, especially in Minnesota, North and South Dakota; and the large number of foreign parentage in those states is due to Scandinavian immigration. All these nationalities, however, readily assimilate with our population, as they have very largely the same social and political standards and ideals. But this is not true regarding some of the more recent immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe, whose massing in large communities of their own must be regarded as a more serious matter. The census does not help us to find out how far these recent immigrants have massed in certain localities, but the Commissioner of Immigration has kept statistics of the destination of these recent immigrants, and they show the following results: In 1907, of the 294,000 Italian speaking immigrants who came to us in that year, 120,000 settled in the state of New York; 53,000 in Pennsylvania; 19,000 in Massachusetts; and 17,000 in New Jersey. Three fourths of the Italian immigrants, in other words, apparently go to these four states. Of the 138,000 Poles who came in 1907, 33,000 were bound to Pennsylvania, 31,000 to New York, 12,000 to New Jersey, and 17,000 to Illinois. These four states seem to constitute the favorite places of settlement for the Slavs. Of the 149,000 Russian and Polish Hebrews who came in 1907, 93,000 settled in New York state, 15,000 in Pennsylvania, and 9000 in Massachusetts, these three states being the favorite places of settlement for recent Jewish immigrants.
It seems clear from these figures that the congestion of recent immigrants is serious, and it is a question whether with such congestion it will be possible to assimilate these recent comers, so unlike ourselves in social traditions and ideals, to the American type. It is claimed by some that there is no serious congestion of immigrants in this country, and that the immigrants distribute themselves through the operation of normal economic influences in the places where they are most needed, and that we need not, therefore, be concerned about the congestion of foreign born in certain communities. This view, however, that economic laws or forces will sufficiently attend to this matter of the distribution of our immigrants, is not borne out by the facts of ordinary observation and experience.
The Distribution of Immigrants in Industry. It is probably safe to say that four fifths of our recent immigrants belong to the unskilled class of laborers, though the percentage of unskilled fluctuates greatly from year to year and from nationality to nationality. Out of the total of 1,285,000 immigrants in 1907 only 12,600 were recorded by the Commissioner of Immigration as belonging to the professional classes; 190,000, or about 15 per cent, were skilled laborers, including all who had any trade; while 760,000 were unskilled laborers, including farm and day laborers, 304,000 being persons of no occupation, including women and children. When we consider the matter by races, the contrast is even more striking. Of the 242,000 South Italian immigrants in 1907 only 701 were professional men; 26,000, or 11 per cent, were skilled laborers; while the number of unskilled amounted to 161,000, or 66 per cent. Of the 138,000 Poles who came in 1907, only 273 were professional men; 8000, or 6 per cent, were skilled laborers; and 107,000, or 77 per cent, were unskilled. In the case of the Hebrews, however, there is a much higher percentage of skilled laborers and professional men. It is claimed by those who favor the policy of unrestricted immigration that what this country needs at present is a large supply of unskilled laborers, and so the fact that the mass of immigrants belong to the unskilled class of laborers, it is said, is no objection to them.