"Reservoirs of Labor "

The immigration question promises to assume paramount political and industrial importance in the near future. Day by day the tide of protest against the 3% law rises among employers of labor; day by day organized labor is strengthening its defense in support of restriction and protection; while Congress and the press as a whole appear to be taking the position that, bad as the law is in many respects, it would be a short-sighted policy to open the gates to the hordes of European unemployed.

What are the facts of the situation? Judge Gary, Chairman of the U. S. Steel Corporation, who may fairly be said to represent the big employers of labor, said in a recent public utterance: " America is faced by a shortage of labor, due principally to the laws restricting immigration. These laws as passed are the worst thing that ever happened to this country economically. There is a great abundance of labor on the other side of the water that would be glad to come over and develop our resources."

Secretary of Labor Davis, in a report read before a meeting of the Cabinet, confirmed Judge Gary's allegation of a shortage. " Today unemployment has been reduced to a minimum, wages everywhere are rising. During the last few months, there have been wage increases in all of the 43 industries reported to the Bureau of Labor. . . . It is inevitable that there should be agitation for the lifting of immigration restrictions." The report is said to have convinced the President that a labor shortage exists, although Secretary Davis upheld the 3% law with certain modifications.

Over against the charge of a shortage we have the opinion of two eminent authorities. The United States Employment Service is not sure that an actual unavoidable shortage exists because it was so impoverished by Congress in the matter of appropriations that it is unable to get the essential information. Perhaps farm labor could be attracted into industry; perhaps Negro labor could be imported North after the crops are harvested; perhaps the army of casual laborers could be mobilized for our essential industries. The U. S. Employment Service cannot tell.

But Immigration Commissioner Husband has better information. Said he: "I do not know how the immigration law can be blamed for a labor shortage, when during the next two or three months the quota of Germany will permit immigration of 39,000; that of the United Kingdom, 17,000; Sweden, 7,500; and Norway, 5,000. These are the countries from which factory workers have come in the largest numbers."

Whether or not there is a shortage, Congress will probably stand pat. Mark Sullivan, political expert, asserts that there is no one question about which the opinion and the intention of Congress is so clear as about immigration. Reflecting the anti-alien feeling throughout the country, Congress is in favor of even further restriction, if anything.

The danger of admitting too many immigrants during an industrial boom, is perhaps best illustrated by the economics of the situation as it has operated historically. The agricultural population is the labor reserve of industry. In settled countries when industry is booming labor is drawn off the land into the factories. When industry is depressed this reserve goes back to the land. In America, which until about 20 years ago was a pioneer and not a settled country, the labor for expanding industries was drawn from; Europe. Statistics show that the rate of influx of immigrants and the rate of production, say of pig iron, go up and down together. But labor imported from the European peasantry to aid an American business boom cannot go back to Europe when the boom is over. It has to stay, be assimilated and Americanized. This was possible as long as there was free land to take up the slack. But that outlet is now gone, and the result for the last 20 years has been the abnormal crowding of cities with unassimilated and partially employed foreigners, with all the attendant political and social evils.

It is the opinion of our best economists that increased immigration would aid production and prosperity now, but that we should have to pay for it as soon as the cycle of business ushered in another period of depression.