Mr. F. A. Bushee, whose authority on matters of population is well recognized, says, “The multiplication of foreign peoples has seriously checked the growth of the old American stock.”[[181]] Mr. Robert Hunter is a pronounced advocate of this view, and says, “The immigrants are not additional inhabitants. Their coming displaces the native stock.”[[182]] Professor John R. Commons supports this position throughout his discussions of the subject. An extreme but convincing opinion is that expressed by Mr. S. G. Fisher in the Popular Science Monthly for December, 1895. After a careful statistical survey of the growth of population in the United States he states his conviction that “immigration has not materially increased, but, on the contrary, has somewhat decreased the American population.... All the immigrants and all their increase cannot make up for the loss of the old rate of increase of the natives.”
In view of this imposing weight of authoritative opinion, it is perhaps surprising that the popular mind still holds so tenaciously and universally to the belief that immigration directly increases population. The explanation probably lies in ignorance of the facts of the case and of the fundamental laws of population and in the somewhat abstruse nature of the reasoning by which the expert conclusions are reached. For it must be admitted frankly that this is not a proposition which can be demonstrated in an absolutely conclusive mathematical way, which will leave no further ground for argument. The factors affecting population are many and complicated, including not only immigration, but war, vice, hard times, marriage customs, the growth of cities, and a host of other things. It is far beyond the present power of social science to define positively the relative importance of each of the forces involved in producing a certain phenomenon.
The line of argument by which, in general, all writers such as those to whom reference was made above have reached their conclusions is as follows. The population of the United States at the time it became a nation was almost wholly of native origin. It was a homogeneous people, of one stock, one language, and one set of traditions, customs, and beliefs. For the first forty years of our national life the increase of population was phenomenal, doubling every twenty-two or twenty-three years. Malthus chose the North American colonies as an example of the extreme possibilities of increase under favorable conditions, and the rate continued for many years after they ceased to be colonies. Between 1790 and 1830 the population increased from less than 4,000,000 to nearly 13,000,000, or 227 per cent in forty years. An estimate made in 1815, based on the first three censuses, reckoned the probable population of the United States in 1900 at 100,235,985. The fact that it was, instead, only 76,303,387, in spite of the incoming of 19,115,221 aliens since 1820, shows that there must have been a tremendous falling-off in the native birth rate. Careful study reveals the fact that the birth rate first began to decline appreciably about 1830, just the period when the effects of immigration first began to be strongly felt in this country, and that it diminished progressively with the swelling volume of the immigration current. Moreover, it was in just those sections where the immigrants congregated most thickly that the fall in the native birth rate was most pronounced, even down to such minor divisions as counties. New England, which, at the time of the Revolution, held the most homogeneous population in the country, and had the highest birth rate, has now the greatest proportion of foreigners and, as far as the natives at least are concerned, the lowest birth rate. To such an extent has this decline gone, that at the present time the native stock in large sections of New England is not even maintaining itself. Coincidences of time and place between the phenomena of immigration and those of the declining birth rate are so numerous and so striking that, in the words of General Walker, they “constitute a statistical demonstration such as is rarely attained in regard to the operation of any social or economic force.”
This line of argument has been so thoroughly and convincingly expounded by a number of writers that it need not be dwelt upon further here. Its great weakness is that which has been anticipated—it lacks mathematical positiveness. An opponent might readily claim that the appalling decline in the native birth rate (the existence of which no one would care to deny) was due to some one or other of a variety of different causes, or to several operating together. The sections where the birth rate is the lowest are not only those where immigration has been the heaviest. They are also to a large extent those which are characterized most distinctively by manufacturing industry, or where the population is the densest. Why not assign the falling birth rate to one of these causes?[[183]]
The best answer to this counterargument is to strengthen the original position by another and wholly different course of reasoning. This may be done very effectively by applying the fundamental and accepted laws of population to the question in hand, and seeing how they would work out in such a case. If the conclusion thus reached coincides with that resulting from the other method of proof, it will furnish a demonstration amounting almost to a certainty.
For this purpose we must go back to the set of doctrines first consistently expounded by Malthus, and known by his name. Though they are now more than a century old, they still stand as one of the profoundest contributions to human knowledge. These doctrines are so familiar to all students of social subjects that the merest summary will serve the present purpose. This may be given in the following words.
Under favorable circumstances, the reproductive power of the human species is very great.[[184]] Actual cases of doubling of population in from twenty to twenty-five years have been known, and this may be taken as a maximum standard. But man is dependent for his existence on the food supply, and, owing to the actual conditions of production, there is no ground for the hope that the amount of subsistence of the world or of any nation can ever be increased at a rate corresponding to the possible increase of mankind. Consequently, the growth of the species is always limited by the possibilities of the increase of the food supply, and as the strength of the reproductive instinct is very great, population will always be pressing hard on the limits of subsistence. The only means of providing for a greater population is by increasing the amount of productive land, or, by improvements in the arts, by making the land already under cultivation produce more food. Briefly stated, in any society, population tends to increase up to the supporting power of the soil. The forces which retard the growth of population, however, are something more than starvation in the strictest sense of the word. They are enumerated by Malthus in a list of what he calls checks. These naturally fall under two heads: First, the positive checks, which increase the death rate, viz. war, famine, pestilence, vice, etc.; these all produce misery and arise whenever population becomes too dense. Second, the preventive checks, which limit the birth rate, such as deferred marriage, celibacy, and voluntary restriction of births, vicious or otherwise; these are under the control of the human reason and will, and while they too entail a degree of suffering, it is not comparable to that caused by the other class of checks. All civilized societies have come more and more to employ the preventive checks, particularly that which is known as moral restraint.
The basic principles of Malthusianism remain as unassailable as when they were first propounded. But there have been certain modifications made necessary by the changing conditions of human society. As already suggested the preventive checks hold a much larger place than formerly, and great weight is now attached to what are known as the institutional checks, such as the demands of education, late marriages, social obligations, the “emancipation” of women, and a host of other customs and conventions which tend more or less imperceptibly to limit the number of births. Still more important, in the place of a bare subsistence as the limit upon which population is always pressing, has been substituted the standard of living. This includes all those necessaries, comforts, and even luxuries which are customary in the social group in which the individual or family finds itself placed. The limits of the family group are not now determined by the amount of bare necessaries which are essential for the preservation of life—probably they never were absolutely—but rather by the amount of advantages which are required to keep the family in the social stratum to which it belongs or to which the parents aspire, either for themselves or for their children. Particularly is this true in a democratic country like the United States, where social position depends not so much on rank or birth, as on wealth and education, both of which are attainable by effort and sacrifice. It is the desire for the “concentration of advantages” of this sort which leads to the restriction of the size of families.
With this set of laws in mind, let us seek to determine the effect which might reasonably be expected to follow the introduction of a large number of immigrants from European countries into the American body politic. In the first place, it will be conceded that the great bulk of our immigrants represent a much lower standard of living than is customary among native American workmen in the occupations into which they go.[[185]] Observation of conditions in the countries from which the immigrants come, and in the communities in which they settle after they arrive, establishes this fact beyond the necessity of proof. In fact, this difference, as has been shown, is the underlying reason for their coming.[[186]] Undoubtedly many of the immigrants raise their standard of living somewhat after their arrival in this country, but not nearly up to the American level.
Since the immigrant has a lower standard than the native, he can afford to work for lower wages, and since the amount of alien labor is so abundant and so easily available, the standard of wages in the occupations into which the immigrants go is set by the amount for which they are willing to work. This amount is lowered still further by the fact that the immigrant is generally quite willing to add to the income of his family by putting his children to work as soon as the law allows—or earlier if possible—whereas the native ordinarily prefers to keep his children at home and in school as long as possible.[[187]] Thus large families become a source of revenue for one, and an item of expense for the other. It is obviously impossible for the native to support the same-sized family in the same degree of comfort on the new scale of wages as on the old. He is compelled to choose between two alternatives. Either he may lower his standard of living and keep the same-sized family, or limit the size of his family for the sake of the standard of living. But the lowering of the standard of living is something which every people—particularly the Americans—resist strenuously. If it is a question of the possibility of raising the standard, people often prefer larger families. This is instanced by the very significant fact that immigrants to this country do, as a rule, raise their birth rate very considerably. The foreign-born birth rate in Massachusetts in 1895 was 50.40, which is from 12 to 20 higher than in most European countries.[[188]] But if it is a question of lowering the standard of living, the opposite course is taken. The standard of living is a matter of custom, and, when once established, has a tremendous tenacity. The American laborer chooses the other alternative. He limits the size of his family.