§ 1. Nature of the population problem. § 2. Complexity of race problems. § 3. Economic aspects of the negro problem. § 4. Favorable economic aspects of earlier immigration. § 5. Employers' gains from immigration. § 6. Pressure of immigration upon native wage-workers. § 7. Abnormal labor conditions resulting from immigration. § 8. Popular theory of immigrant competition. § 9. Divergent views of effects on population. § 10. The displacement theory; its fundamental assumption. § 11. Magnitude of the inflow of immigrants. § 12. Earlier and recent effects of immigration upon wages. § 13. Laissez-faire policy of immigration. § 14. Social-protective policy of immigration. § 15. Post-war restriction of immigration. § 16. Population and militarism. § 17. Problem of maximum military power.

§ 1. Nature of the population problem. No one of the problems of labor thus far discussed is of so great importance in its ultimate bearings upon popular welfare as is the "problem of population." By this is meant the problem of determining and maintaining the best relation between the population and the area and resources of the land. What is to be deemed "best" in this case depends, of course, on the various human sympathies and points of view of those pronouncing judgment. Very generally, until the nineteenth century, the only view that found expression was that of a small ruling class which favored all increase in population as magnifying the political power of the rulers and as increasing the wealth of the landed aristocracy. This view still is unconsciously taken by the members of a small but influential class, and is echoed without independent thought by many other persons. But more and more, in this and other labor problems, another more democratic standard of judgment has come to be taken, that of the abiding welfare of the masses of the people. This is the point of view that must be taken by the political economist in a free republic.

Fig. 1, Chapter 25.—Population of the World - Map of Distribution.

The problem of population presents two main aspects: one as to composition, and the other as to numbers of the people.

Changes in either of these respects concern the welfare of the masses. Changes in the kinds of people, or in their relative numbers, may greatly affect the welfare of the people, in some cases touching special large classes, and in others affecting the whole mass of the people.

§ 2. Complexity of race problems. The questions of race composition that we shall here consider are those of the negro and of the immigrant.1 Both of these questions are complex and go beyond the limits of mere economic considerations, touching the most vital political and social interests of the nation. Indeed, they involve the very soul and existence of peoples, for who can doubt that ultimately racial survival and success are mainly to be determined by physical and spiritual capacity?

The negro in America is the gravest of our population problems. In large portions of our land it overshadows every other public question. Yet the negro is here because men of the seventeenth century ignored the complexity of the labor problem and thought only of its economic aspect. The landowners wished cheaper labor, and, reckless of other consequences, they imported slaves from Africa to get it. They gained for themselves and a few generations of their descendants a measure of comparative ease, but at a frightful cost to our national life - a cost of which the Civil War now seems to have been merely a first instalment on account, rather than a final payment.

World Total 1,792,000,000 Persons

Fig. 2 Comparison of Nations.

1 Even more important than these is the relative decrease of the successful strains of the population, briefly treated in Vol. I, ch. 33. This is the problem of eugenics, the choice and biologic breeding of capable men to be citizens of the nation, and, broadly understood, it includes both the negro and the immigrant problems.

§ 3. Economic aspects of the negro problem. The negro as a wage-earner is found very little outside of the least skilled branches of a limited range of occupations. Of these the principal ones, as is a matter of common knowledge, are farm work, domestic service (including janitor service in stores and factories and work in hotels), and crude manual outdoor labor. Repeated attempts to operate factories with a labor force of negroes have proved unsuccessful. In some of the better-paying occupations in which large numbers of negroes were found in the North soon after the Civil War, such as barbering, waiting on table in the best hotels, and skilled manual work, they have been largely displaced by European immigrants. Negroes are a disturbing and unwelcome influence in labor organizations, and even when nominally eligible to membership are in fact rarely accepted. They very frequently are employed as strike-breakers, and this fosters race antagonism both immediately and permanently.

The negro problem is, from our present outlook, insoluble. The most laudable of present efforts, that for industrial training, represented by Hampton and Tuskegee Institutes and the work of Booker T. Washington, leaves the dire fact of two races side by side and yet unassimilated socially, politically, and, in large measure, economically - a situation that involves the undemocratic principle of caste distinctions. Segregation in a separate state, or separate states, a thoroughgoing plan that has been proposed, is practically impossible. The disappearance of all color and race prejudice in respect to marriage, accompanied by miscegenation, or the complete merging of the negro with the white population, as has occurred in some countries, is the ideal of some radical negro leaders, but is so repellent to the thought of white Americans that it cannot be looked upon as a solution. Yet the fact of the continual admixture of white and negro strains, occurring first mainly in the lower social strata of the two groups and through illegitimate relations, cannot be ignored. As a consequence of this there is occurring a slow infiltration of the negro strain into the white population, by the process known among the negroes as "going over to white," which will go far toward race admixture in a thousand years, a period brief in the history of nations.

Finally, there is the conceivable, but improbable, event of the decrease and extinction of the negroes in America. Their absolute number still continues to increase, but their relative number has declined since 1800.2 It seems probable that if European immigration were to be stopped a very large migration of negroes from the South to the North and the West would occur to take places hitherto filled by unskilled immigrant workers. In the year 1915, following the check to immigration as a result of the European war, a very marked movement of this kind set in, and continued until about 1920. If this occurred on a large scale it might result in actually reducing the negro population in some portions of the South; and as the "rate of natural increase" of the negroes in the North is a negative quantity, it might cause the total negro population of the country to begin absolutely decreasing. The census of 1920 showed the remarkable fact that the decennial increase of the negro population had been but 6 per cent, as compared with more than 11 per cent in the preceding decade (the lowest up to that time).