Technical reasons rendering an exact comparison of foreigners settled in England at different dates impracticable. Approximate results yielded by the analysis of official figures, and their lessons. Danger of German competition with English clerks exaggerated. Actual occupations followed by foreigners. Allegations concerning alien pauperism tested. Proportion of foreign to English pauperism in London. Percentage and nationalities of foreigners in great towns of England and their occupations. Theories about population, especially Malthus. The Malthusian doctrine examined by the light of English experience. Objections to it summarized. The truth and the details of English population since 1793. Views of Dr Price and others as to decrease refuted by Cobbett. Figures and facts of increase. How the non-pressure on means of subsistence can be explained. New industries.
In the preceding chapter it was mentioned that one of the elements in the increased popularity and prosperity of the theatre as an English institution is the growing addition of foreigners to our native population. This will be a convenient place at which not only to analyse the composition of the foreign influx to our shores, but generally to examine the rate and the results of the increase of our population. Official data for the numerical estimate of the strangers within our gates is not forthcoming with the certainty and completeness that might be desired. The reason given by the parliamentary report[47] is intelligible enough; and is to the following effect. The English census takes cognizance of birthplaces, not of nationalities. British subjects who have been born abroad are indeed asked to state the fact, but frequently fail to do so. When the return reaches the Registrar General, the confusion is frequently such as to render it doubtful whether the foreign birthplace implies a foreign nationality as well. This uncertainty was not removed, but was rather increased, when the Enumerating Officer exercised his ingenuity in deducing the national identity from the surname. For instance few patronymics are more distinctively German than Müller. None is more likely to be written by an English clerk as the indubitably British Miller. The result has been at different times an understatement of residents in England who are foreigners both by nationality and birth, and an overstatement of the foreign-born British subjects. The operation of the principle adopted in the last census is exactly opposite to this; it tends to overrate foreign subjects domiciled in England and to underrate English subjects who were born beyond seas. The general consequence is that as the Report already mentioned reminds one, the foreign residents returns for 1891 are not minutely comparable with those for previous censuses. It will be enough to restrict ourselves on this point to the returns of the last three censuses 1871, 1881, 1891, a period of twenty years. Of persons being foreigners both by birth and nationality residing at these epochs in England and Wales, there were in 1871, 100,638; in 1881 there were 117,999; in 1891 there were 198,113. The process indicated by these figures seems to have been at varying rates going forward through a long series of years.
For the two decades between 1871 and 1891, the growth of foreigners among us was 98 per cent. It will, therefore, probably not be a serious miscalculation to estimate the total of strangers within our gates as having doubled itself during the more recent years of the Queen’s reign. This estimate derives fresh probability from the fact that between 1881 and 1891 the increase of foreigners domiciled in England outstripped by nearly six-fold the augmentation during the previous decade. The greater part of foreigners in England and Wales are with us for business purposes, or are sailors on board ships trading with England. As, therefore, might be expected, most of them are to be found in the great industrial centres, or at the large seaports. Thus, of a total of 198,113, 95,053, or nearly one-half were enumerated in London; 15,536 in the suburban counties of Surrey, Kent, Middlesex, Essex. Lancashire contained 25,109 with an overflow of 2,254 into the suburban parts of Cheshire. In Yorkshire there were 15,755; in the mining counties of Durham, Glamorganshire, Northumberland, though not engaged in mining but in shipping coals, there were 14,908. The foreign miners, it may be said, actually at work in England are very few. The town in which the total proportion of foreigners to the population has always been highest is of course London (the strictly metropolitan area); the London foreign population is 23 to 1,000. In the suburban districts of West Ham, Willesden and Tottenham the proportion is 10 to 1,000. In the provinces, next to London come Cardiff with 21 per 4,000, South Shields and Manchester each with 18 per 1,000, Leeds and Grimsby each with 16, Liverpool and Hull each with 14; Newport and Swansea each with 12; the other towns where a proportion of 10 per 1,000 is reached are Sunderland, Hastings and Brighton. Of the 198,000 odd foreigners now under consideration, 1,804 are Asiatics coming from China, Persia, Arabia or elsewhere; 1,062 are from Egypt or some other part of Africa; 26,226 are Americans; out of these 19,740 belong to the United States, the subjects of the Stripes and Stars enumerated as domiciled among us in 1881 were 17,767, an increase of 11·1 per cent, during the decade. The number of English living abroad is of course immeasurably greater than that of foreigners living in England. Thus in the case of the United States alone, in 1891 there were settled 1,008,220 English people; this was an increase of 35·2 per cent. over those enumerated in 1881.
The complaint that foreign competition in England itself is crowding native industry out of the market recurs periodically; it renders of special importance to Englishmen the estimate of the European foreigners who have, during the period now under review, immigrated to our shores. The total of those composing this category, men, women and children, has been 168,814; as for the reasons already explained one is cautioned to remember, this is an outside calculation owing to the inclusion in it of many who though British subjects, omitted to set this forth in their schedules. Of the 168,814 European foreigners, 101,255 were males. From this total may be deducted 7,421 as boys under 15, and 3,039 as men of upwards of 65; the sailors, in number 15,035 should not appear in the estimate. When all deductions under these headings of industrial ineffectives have been made there is left an aggregate of 75,760 effective competitors with native industry on English soil, whom during these decades their respective countries have equipped and sent forth against us.
With our own population of 37 millions steadily increasing, the numerical rivalry seems less alarming than might have been imagined. As a matter of fact that rivalry strictly speaking may be larger than the provisional estimate now given would show. It sometimes happens within the experience of local registrars that to avoid English jealousy and so to have a better chance of obtaining work, industrial aliens Anglicize their own patronymics, change them for purely English names, or give English towns and counties as their places of birth; for the most part these deceptions are detected by the enumerator. In St George’s in the East, however, in Spitalfields, in Mile End Old Town and elsewhere some registrars seem to think the fraud often passes undiscovered; but others, with equal experience, disavow any reason for the suspicion of such a practice within their areas.
As in the case of our Scotch and Irish colonies, so, too, with our settlers from the European continent the men largely outnumber the women. Whereas in the general population there are 106 women to every 100 of men, and 35 per cent. of the people are under 15 years of age; among the European foreigners there are only 67 women to every 100 men; only 8·8 per cent. of the whole are under 15. In the case of Swedes, Norwegians, Danes, chiefly of course, sailors, there are four men to every woman, and sometimes as many as seven or eight. That in the case of Belgians, French and Swiss permanently settled in England, the men are outnumbered by the women is of course to be explained by the demands made for the former in the capacity of governesses, milliners, and serving maids. The figures relating to the sex of the strangers within our gates, as might be expected, fluctuate. Especially notable is the difference between the statistics for 1881 and for 1891; in the former year children under 15 formed 6·4 per cent. of all foreigners; in 1891 the percentage had risen to more than 8.
The inference to be drawn from this statistical contrast suggests a new kind of immigration and probably implies that with a view to permanent settlement in England the foreigner was transporting his household gods bodily to our shores. Much has of late been heard about the crowding of pauper aliens into England. Some of the figures just examined may have involved cases of outdoor relief. Of this there is no evidence. But that a very serious addition was in this way made to the pauperism within English workhouses does not appear to be true. The exact figures and facts on this point may perhaps as well be given; of the 36,871 foreign Europeans living at the time of the last census in the East End of London, only 105 had seen the inside of an English union; out of the other (English) 668,243 inhabitants of these parts of the town 13·5 per 1,000 were pauper inmates; in other words, the proportion of foreign to native pauperism in those districts where foreigners chiefly congregate was less than one-fourth of the proportion of paupers in the remaining population. Of these foreigners inside English unions 51 were Germans; 16 were French; 14 were Russians or Poles; 5 were Swiss; of the remainder no more than 4 came from any single foreign State.
‘Made in Germany’ is a phrase round which there has centred lately much controversy, political, economical, social and personal. This will have prepared the reader to hear that on an analysis of the nationality of our foreign residents, Germany heads the list with 50,599; Poles and Russians come next with 45,074; then the French with 20,797; afterwards follow in the order indicated with numbers fluctuating between 10,000 and 5,000 Austrians or Hungarians, Dutch, Norwegians, Swiss; no other nationality contributed more than 5,000; the Russian and Polish names, which, after the Germans, constitute the majority are so unmistakable as to render a comparison between their numbers in 1881 and in 1891 tolerably safe. This, for reasons already stated, is not so in the case of foreigners with less distinctive patronymics. In 1881 the Poles or Russians enumerated were 14,468; in 1891 they were 54,074; the increase in ten years had thus been some 212 per cent. Germans, in number 50,599, constitute nearly one-third of our whole foreign population. Of that moiety, 1,981 are teachers; 1,198 musicians; 5,358 domestic servants in private families or inns; 659 are professional cooks. To pass to a higher social category, 1,207 Germans are established in business as brokers and merchants; 1,966 as clerks; 393 are commercial travellers; 2,833 are sea-faring men; 282 are jewellers or goldsmiths; 889 are watchmakers; 794 cabinetmakers; 1,309 are butchers; 2,340 are bakers; 276 are sugar refiners; only 592 are classed as general labourers; 5,042 are occupied in ministering to the needs, luxuries, or vanities of the person from the making of coats to the dressing of hair, or the preparation of feathers for Court head dresses.
From these figures two facts of some interest emerge. The business clerks who are complained of as interfering so disastrously with the clerical labour market of Englishmen do not represent the largest contingent of Teutonic industry among us. Numerically the most serious competition of German with English industry is in the case of domestic servants. German tailors are second in order of importance; the clerks come after, not only these, but other occupations. Next to Germany, Scandinavia, Belgium and Spain seem to supply the most numerous competitors with the industry of the British middle classes.
The growth of the purely English population, not complicated by any foreign elements accompanied, as it has been, with a steady increase of national prosperity is enough to supply instructive material to the philosophical enquirer into the facts and figures of English progress during the Victorian epoch. Before looking into these by the light of the once accepted theory of population it will be as well clearly to state what these doctrines are, as well as to summarize the criticisms to which, on the face of them, they are open. The doctrine of Malthus was first put forward by him at the end of the last century. During the first years of the present, while the reverend philosopher was professor of history and political economy at Haileybury, few subjects excited so much interest or controversy among writers on political philosophy or comparative statistics. The doctrine, as it was originally propounded by its author, is that population tends to increase in geometrical ratio, that subsistence only increases in numerical ratio. It followed, therefore, that unless the population be periodically thinned by the external influences of pestilence or war, the poorest classes chronically must be at starvation point, and that unless the multiplication of the race be checked by prudential restraints, within a given time the point will be reached at which the population on this planet is altogether in excess of the means for its support. On the threshold of the discussion which this proposition elicited, the obvious remark was that it asserted not an actuality but a possibility. Hence, unless, instead of a tendency, a proved experience could be asserted; unless, in other words, in the place of a tendency to increase existing, a historical increase could be established, the commentators on Malthus maintained that the danger which he foresaw was too remote to be reckoned with. The following is the line taken by the critics of the Malthusian theory. It was declared to rest upon a series of hypotheses which as a matter of fact were never fulfilled. Granted that if the progression foreseen by Malthus took place, the calamity apprehended must ensue; it was maintained, as a matter of fact, that the abundant safeguards existing in practice were ignored by the alarmist doctrinaires. Supposing each marriageable pair upon the earth to marry first, and to produce afterwards as many children as a normally healthy couple may expect, not only subsistence, but standing room in this world would fail them. Experience, however, shows the fulfilment of any such forecast to be a moral impossibility. In daily practice there are apart from difficulty of subsistence many checks which avail to keep increase of population within reasonable bounds.