Before taking up the living conditions in Pittsburgh as they especially affect these immigrant laborers, let us consider for a moment certain characteristics of these people, and their relation to the general economic situation. First, it is the wages that bring them here. The workers in the mills of Galicia, the vine-lands of Italy, and the factories of Kiev, earn from twenty-five cents to fifty cents in a day of from twelve to sixteen hours. When the American immigrant writes home that he works only nine, ten, or twelve hours and earns from $1.50 to $2.00, the able-bodied wage earner in the fatherland who hears this will not be satisfied until he also stands where the shorter day and the higher wages govern. It is these home-going letters more than all else which recruit the labor force. They are efficient promoters of immigration. "There are no able-bodied men," said Big Sam to me, "between the ages of sixteen and fifty years left in my native town in Servia; they have all come to America."
DIRECT FROM THE FIELDS OF MID-EUROPE.
Up to September, 1907, the men in charge of furnaces, foundries, forges and mills, in the Pittsburgh district, could not get the help they needed. The cry everywhere was, "Give us men." A foreman, therefore, could assure Pietro and Melukas that if their brothers or cousins, or friends were sent for, they would get work as soon as they arrived. More than that, the Slav and Italian are no longer dependent on the English boss in the matter of finding work for their countrymen. The inflow of immigration from southeastern Europe has assumed such proportions in the industries of the cities that superintendents have, in some instances, appointed Italian and Polish and Lithuanian foremen; and with these, as with German and Irish, blood is thicker than water. They employ their fellow countrymen. They know the condition of the labor market and can by suggestion stimulate or retard immigration.
The tonnage industries of Pittsburgh have expanded tremendously in the last two decades. Such industries need manual laborers as do no others. The Slavs have brawn for sale. Herein, at bottom, is the drawing force which accounts for such a moving in of peoples and the readiness with which they find their places in the specialized industries of the district. Pittsburgh has clamorous need for these men. Take the average Lithuanian, Croatian, Ruthenian, or Slovak, and his physique would compare favorably with that of any people. Most of the immigrants are from agricultural communities. Their food in the fatherland was coarse, their habits simple, their cares few. They had an abundance of vegetable diet, pure water, pure air and sunshine, and they developed strong physical organisms. Taking them as a whole, we get the best of the agricultural communities. The day has not yet come when the weak emigrate and the strong stay at home. No ship agents, however active, can reverse the natural order of the tide of immigration, and natural selection added to federal scrutiny gives us a body of men physically most fit for the development of our industries. Nowhere has this been better illustrated than in Pittsburgh.
These men come to be "the hewers of wood and carriers of water." There are representatives of each race far removed from the lowest industrial stratum, but taking these people as a whole, it is safe to say that the bulk of the unskilled labor in the city,—the digging and carrying in the streets, the heavy labor in the mill, the loading and unloading of raw material on railroad and river, the rough work around forge and foundry, the coarse work around factories, and the lifting necessary in machine shops,—all is performed by them.
YOUNG SLOVAK.
This is the level at which they enter the economic order. What trade equipment do they bring into the work with them? Their industrial efficiency is low and I should estimate that ninety-five per cent have no knowledge of modern machinery or methods of modern production; they are children in factory training. Further, those who have trades find themselves in an industrial environment where their previous training is of little value. They are in ignorance of the English language, and the few mechanics and tradesmen among them can do no better than join the ranks of the common laborers. We must bear in mind, however, that those of them who know how to use tools, once they are put to work that requires some skill, adapt themselves quickly to the situation. Hence we meet not a few Slavs and Lithuanians who execute work of a semi-skilled nature. Sons, also, of men of these nationalities who settled in the city a generation ago have risen to positions of standing in the industries. Thus it is not unusual to hear of this man or that who has become a foreman in the mills or taken a place in business or in the professions.