The Alien Invasion

by W. H. Wilkins

Mr. John Burnett, Labour Correspondent of the Board of Trade, who was specially deputed in August 1887 to make inquiries into the Sweating system in the East End of London, reported that matters were much worse there of late years, because of the "enormous influx of pauper foreigners." He made a rough calculation that of some 20,000 tailors in the East End of London, 15,000 were foreigners—that is, persons not born in England; and of the remaining 5000, nearly all were Jews born in England, who might almost be described as foreigners also, since in their habits and their customs they have nothing in common with the native community. He stated that there were not more than 250 Englishmen employed in the cheap tailoring trade in the whole East End of London. They have all been driven out by Jews. There is, however, still a considerable employment of Englishwomen. Mr. Burnett also drafted a memorandum on the immigration of foreigners, and in it he stated that in respect of the trades and districts chiefly affected by it, the evil had assumed serious aspects. He considered that London, Birmingham, Leeds, Manchester, Newcastle-on-Tyne, Glasgow—to some extent Edinburgh, and also some other Scotch towns—were affected by the evil. There is of course the general lack of actual statistics as to the precise amount of the foreign population in these towns; but the Glasgow Trades' Council, for instance, though it has no specific information to hand on the subject, states generally that the tailoring in that city is overrun by Polish Jews. Mr. Burnett contemplates the time when the ready-made clothing trade will be entirely in foreign hands.

The presence of foreign immigration is felt also, though to a lesser extent, in cabinet-making and other trades. In the cabinet-making trade, Mr. Burnett estimates that of 23,000 persons engaged in it in London, 4000 are foreigners, chiefly Germans, and many of them German, Russian, and Polish Jews. He draws a distinction between the Germans pure and simple, and the German, Russian, and Polish Jews, for this reason. The Germans are found in the superior workshops of the West End, and they are found receiving the same rate of wages as their English shop-mates; but in the cases of the Russian and Polish Jews at the East End, they are receiving a much lower rate when they are employed, and they are employed on inferior work under entirely different conditions.

The foregoing considerations make it clear that the effect of foreign immigration upon the condition of our own workmen is not to be measured by the small percentage foreigners bear to the general population of the United Kingdom; but by their distribution in the particular trades of particular localities.

It is impossible to deny the displacing power of so large an addition to labour, in trades already overcrowded. The fact that under such circumstances the new-comers find employment, infers of necessity the displacement of labour previously employed. It implies also the denial of employment to natives anxious to obtain it. Nor is this large intrusion of a foreign element confined in its effects to the displacement of native labour alone. It brings down to its own level labour that is not displaced. In all trades that do not require long apprenticeship and technical skill, the supply of labour is greatly in excess of the demand. Competition to obtain employment is in consequence cruelly severe. The inevitable results are, the evasion of the law respecting factories and workshops, the reduction of wages to the lowest minimum, and the extension of the hours of work to the utmost limits of human endurance.

The effect of foreign immigration upon our labouring population is far greater than might at first be supposed. Its inevitable effect is the degradation of all the native labour employed, to the level of the foreign labour which is brought into competition with it. When the struggle is between those accustomed to a higher, and those accustomed to a lower standard of life, the latter can obviously oust the former and take their work. Just as a base currency drives out of circulation a pure currency, so does a lower standard of comfort drive out a higher one.

What do competent authorities say on the subject of native labour?

Mr. Goodman, who was a member of the Executive Committee of the Liverpool Tailors' Society, stated in his evidence before the House of Lords' Committee, that fifteen years ago the Sweating system only existed to a very limited extent in Liverpool; but that now it was carried on in a most extensive manner. He said that he accounted for its existence to a very large extent by the influx of foreigners, principally Jews. "At the present moment, fully two-thirds of the sweaters in Liverpool are foreigners; the majority of whom, as I have already stated, are not tailors at all, and have never served one hour in the tailor trade properly as an apprentice. I was told by a Jew some time ago, and he made a serious complaint to me on that head, that he was already finding the competition of his own people so severe, that being a practical man, he should have to do as they had done in many cases, lower his prices, or else he could not make a living. The competition, even amongst the Jews, is getting so severe that the prices are constantly tending to decrease; and I believe that to-day they are very much lower than they were a few years ago in Liverpool, through this competition of foreigners amongst themselves, together with their competition with the natives."

Mr. Allen, Secretary of the Master Tailors' Association in Liverpool, stated that, "As an Association, we have discussed the matter, and we are opposed to it in the main (i.e. foreign immigration), and we passed a resolution that the importation of pauper aliens be prohibited with this condition, the prohibition not to extend to skilled workmen imported under contract."

Mr. Keir, General Secretary of the Amalgamated Society of Tailors, thus moderately and dispassionately stated the case:—"I hardly know that it would be wise to stop immigration altogether. That would be an unnatural and hardly fair way of doing the thing; but I think it ought to be regulated in some way, and that the poorest, and most miserable, and the unskilled, perhaps, of foreign labour ought not to be thrown upon the markets of England to oppose and to act detrimentally to the interests of the English people. I do not think it would be wise, and I don't know that we could advocate, and I am sure any intelligent man would not advocate altogether, the complete prohibition of foreign labour; but at the same time I think there must be, or ought to be, some means devised whereby skilled labour should contend against skilled labour in a fair and straight market. It is not skilled labour against skilled labour; it is poverty thrown in our midst, and it is poverty competing with itself, as it were; and struggling in that way, and the manner in which they live, the food they eat, and the circumstances under which they exist, deprive them altogether of the comforts of home, you may almost say, as far as Englishmen, Scotchmen, or Welshmen are concerned."

One point remains to be noted. It has been urged that these immigrant aliens do not enter upon native trades, but introduce new industries of their own. If that were really the case, such a contention would undoubtedly have much weight. The Huguenots established new industries of silk, glass, and paper; the Flemings introduced the finer class of weaving into England; in both of these cases the alien influx was beneficial. But it cannot be seriously maintained that these low-class Jewish immigrants have stimulated or created new wants. They have created no new trade; they have debased old ones. I admit that they almost monopolize the cheap clothing trade, but even here they have created no new kind of industry.