§ 12. Earlier and recent effects of immigration upon wages. Let us now correlate the principle of decreasing returns and the facts as to the exploitation of our natural resources 10 with the growth of our population, on the assumption that immigration has made more or less of a net contribution to our numbers. While the vast frontier was open to settlement the growth of population could not fail to be looked upon as a blessing, even though somewhat mixed with political evils, immorality, and pauperism. Beginning in colonial times, the policy of the "open door" to immigrants came thus to be deemed the traditional patriotic American policy. Yet there is grave reason to believe that the rate of growth in the nineteenth century was wastefully rapid and that a slower and sounder growth might have been better.11 However, this rapid growth was largely extensive, spreading over wider areas, and was consistent with a pretty steady rise of real wages in America until about 1895,12 the level continuing higher than that of Europe despite the contemporaneous rise of wages there. Much of this general rise is undoubtedly attributable to the adoption of better tools, machinery, and industrial processes, the more so as inventions and new methods have rapidly become free goods.13 The beneficial improvements long cooperated with the rapid exploitation of rich resources to raise real wages, and then undoubtedly continued to offset for a time the unfavorable effects as the richer resources began to show signs of exhaustion. About the beginning of this century, however, the net trend upward seems to have been checked, and the "rising cost of living" (real cost) became a serious actuality for larger sections of the population.14

9 See Vol. I, p. 420.

10 See Vol. I, chs. 34 and 35.

Yet as long as wages are enough higher in America to pay the passage of the low-paid workers of the industrially backward nations, they will continue to come. The ease and cheapness of migration in these days of steamships, the encouragement of immigration by the agencies and advertisements of the steamship lines, and the increasing readiness

11 E. g., see above ch. 16, § 11, on the prodigal land policy.

12 See Vol. I, p. 436 ff.

13 See Vol. I, ch. 36, on machinery and wages.

14 For analysis of the available statistics bearing on the subject, with conclusions that real wages are no longer rising, see H. P. Fairchild in "American Economic Review" (March, 1916), "The Standard of Living - Up or Down?" of the peasantry to migrate have become well-known through recent discussions. Unless immigration is limited, it must continue to depress the wages of American workingmen, through both its immediate and its ultimate effects.

§ 13. Laissez-faire policy of immigration. There are those who take a fatalistic view of the subject, and this results in a laissez-faire policy. They declare that the problem will solve itself as the level of American wages comes to be nearly the same as that of the countries of Europe from which our imagination is coming. True enough, if this can be called a "solution." There are many who cherish the commercial ideal according to which cheap labor is absolutely desirable and needful to produce cheaper products. This ideal has spread to wider circles. Here, for example, are the words of a man who combines wide knowledge of the facts of immigration with keen sympathy for the working-classes:15 " The past industrial development of America points unerringly to Europe as the source whence our unskilled labor supply is to be drawn. America is in the race for the markets of the world; its call for workers will not cease." Yet a little further on he must say: " All wage-earners in America agree that it is not as easy to make a living to-day as it was twenty years ago, and the dollar does not go so far now as it did then. The conflict for subsistence on the part of the wage-earner is growing more stern as we increase in numbers and industrial life becomes more complicated, and the fact must be faced that the vast army of workers must live more economically if peace and well-being are to prevail."

§ 14. Social-protective policy of immigration. A different kind of solution is offered by those who favor the strict limitation, if not the complete prohibition, of immigration. The foregoing study indicates that the time has come, if it is not far past, when the traditional policy of fostering immigration is opposed to the welfare of the masses of the people. This belief can be based solely on grounds of numbers, the relation of population to resources, quite apart from a preference for particular races or the familiar arguments regarding social and political evils and lack of assimilation, however valid they may be. The limitation of immigration would at once improve working-class conditions where they are worst in America,16 and would check and probably reverse the tendency to diminishing returns already manifest in many directions. This opinion does not necessitate an absolute prohibition of immigration; it is consistent with the continuance of immigration of a strictly selected character, and in numbers so small that all European immigrants now here could be rapidly and completely assimilated, economically and racially. With a slow national increase of population and with the continued progress of science and the arts, it should be possible for real wages to continue indefinitely rising in America. The selection of immigrants to be admitted should be a part of a national policy of eugenics,17 which aims to improve the racial quality of the nation by checking the multiplication of the strains defective in respect to mentality, nervous organization, and physical health, and by encouraging the more capable elements of the population to contribute in due proportion to the maintenance of a healthy, moral, and efficient population. In such a view, a eugenic opportunity is presented in the selection and admission of immigrants who are distinctly above (not merely equal to) the average of our general population.

15 Peter Roberts in "The New Immigration," 1912, preface, p. viii, and p. 47.