(a) Continuous subdivision of farms resulting in inefficient and wasteful application of labor and smaller crops per man, although probably larger crops per acre.
(b) Development of a class of landed proprietors on the one hand and a landless agricultural proletariat on the other.
It is true that the great mass of unskilled labor which has come to the United States in the last few decades has made possible the development of many industries that have furnished an increased number of good jobs to men of intelligence, but many who have made a close study of the immigration problem think that despite this, unskilled labor has been coming in altogether too large quantities. Professor Ross publishes the following illustration:
"What a college man saw in a copper-mine in the Southwest gives in a nutshell the logic of low wages.
"The American miners, getting $2.75 a day, are abruptly displaced without a strike by a train-load of 500 raw Italians brought in by the company and put to work at from $1.50 to $2 a day. For the Americans there is nothing to do but to 'go down the road.' At first the Italians live on bread and beer, never wash, wear the same filthy clothes night and day, and are despised. After two or three years they want to live better, wear decent clothes, and be respected. They ask for more wages, the bosses bring in another train-load from the steerage, and the partly Americanized Italians follow the American miners 'down the road.' No wonder the estimate of government experts as to the number of our floating casual laborers ranges up to five millions!"
"It is claimed that the natives are not displaced" by the constant inflow of alien unskilled labor, says H. P. Fairchild,[150] but that they "are simply forced into higher occupations. Those who were formerly common laborers are now in positions of authority. While this argument holds true of individuals, its fallacy when applied to groups is obvious. There are not nearly enough places of authority to receive those who are forced out from below. The introduction of 500 Slav laborers into a community may make a demand for a dozen or a score of Americans in higher positions, but hardly for 500."
"The number of unskilled workers coming in at the present time is sufficient to check decidedly the normal tendency toward an improved standard of living in many lines of industry," in the opinion of J. W. Jenks, who was a member of the Immigration Commission appointed by President Roosevelt in 1907. He alludes to the belief that instead of crowding the older workers out, the aliens merely crowd them up, and says that he himself formerly held that view; "but the figures collected by the Immigration commission, from a sufficient number of industries in different sections of the country to give general conclusions, prove beyond a doubt that in a good many cases these incoming immigrants actually drive out into other localities and into other unskilled trades large numbers of American workingmen and workingmen of the earlier immigration who do not get better positions but, rather, worse ones.... Professor Lauck, our chief superintendent of investigators in the field, and, so far as I am aware, every single investigator in the field, before the work ended, reached the conclusion from personal observation that the tendency of the large percentage of immigration of unskilled workers is clearly to lower the standard of living in a number of industries, and the statistics of the commission support this impression. I therefore changed my earlier views."
If the immigration of large quantities of unskilled labor with low standards of living tends in most cases to depress wages and lower the standard of living of the corresponding class of the old American population, the consequences would appear to be:
1. The employers of labor would profit, since they would get abundant labor at low wages. If this increase in the wealth of employers led to an increase in their birth-rate, it would be an advantage. But it apparently does not. The birth-rate of the employing class is probably little restricted by financial difficulties; therefore on them immigration probably has no immediate eugenic effect.
2. The American skilled laborers would profit, since there is more demand for skilled labor in industries created by unskilled immigrant labor. Would the increasing prosperity and a higher standard of living here, tend to lower the relative birth-rate of the class or not?