already noticeable in regions in which our newer immigrants have concentrated. If this be true to-day there can be little doubt but that the future has in store considerable changes if the tide of immigration flows unchecked. And this will be especially the case if it be true that immigration so affects the principle of population that our present stock is replaced rather than supplemented by the new arrivals.

3. The third proposition must be put in the form of a question. Will this change be a good or a bad one? Here, of course, is the crux of the whole matter. In order to avoid a controversy that could not possibly be satisfactorily treated in the time at my disposal, I am sure I shall be pardoned if I merely indicate some of the questions to be answered if one is to arrive at a sane judgment on this matter. Discussion of these questions may the more readily be omitted since practically every one has already reached some conclusion as to most of them.

But before proposing this series of questions it should be noted that it is not safe to try to reach any conclusion by that overworked argument as to the mixture of races. The trouble with the argument is that it proves nothing either way. It proves nothing historically, contrary to public opinion, for while some mixed races have been successful, others have been most wretched failures. Further, anthropology and ethnology frankly admit they can predicate nothing from mixture of races, nothing optimistic, nothing pessimistic. It is simply an argument of little or no scientific value.

We must abandon the popular mixture of races argument and turn to the fundamental elements of the problem; upon the one hand environment, both social and physical, upon the other hand race characteristics. Since the physical environment is a matter which we can control but little and one that operates upon all, we may omit it in this discussion and then the questions to be answered are fairly obvious. Are the permanent racial characteristics, those they will retain after they have changed nationality, religion, tongue, and customs, are these permanent racial characteristics of the newcomers such as will be satisfactory to a democracy? Are they by racial disposition fitted or unfitted for the exercise of political rights? Undoubtedly, they, like all other peoples, have some bad qualities. Will these qualities

change with a change of environment, or are they inbred and permanent? Suppose, for the sake of the argument, that immigration means replacement, are we willing to turn over to elements other than Baltic the control of the future of the nation? Would it be a good, a bad, or an indifferent thing if in the future the race composition of this nation should be such that the Baltic element would, compared with the other elements, hold some such position as the descendants of colonial stock hold? In a word, are the permanent race traits of the newcomers equal in quality to those of the present stock? We must remember, that, as Professor Commons says, "race and heredity form the raw material, education and environment form the tools to fashion social institutions."

And as to environment. Here a series of questions arises, and to discuss any one of them in even a cursory manner would require a whole paper in itself. It deals with the effect of the present immigrant upon a list of matters ranging through disease, illiteracy, pauperism, crime, tendency to form classes, standard of living, and a host of others, not the least important of which is the fact that since the so-called lower classes are the classes with large families, from the racial point of view it is highly worth considering who are to compose the lower classes. Then, too, we should not forget that the future aspects of this problem are the important ones. Suppose, for the sake of the argument at least, that the number coming is to increase and the change in racial origin to become more marked, what then? These are some of the questions to be considered.

And must the whole discussion end with a question? Yes and no. As far as it can be treated in a short paper merely intended to outline the nature of the problem - yes, though that is doubtless displeasing to the mind that demands a short, satisfactory answer, whether true or false. But the matter is not altogether indefinite. Some few things are pretty clear: (1) This people, before the great tides of immigration began, was mainly Baltic and mainly of excellent stock. (2) This people has been influenced to a considerable degree by immigration. Probably the racial effects of the early immigration were not great, but to-day conditions are different. There has been a change in the racial origin of our immigration, a change in the method of

a

selection, and a change in the conditions of this country. (3) If present conditions, laws, and tendencies continue (a large "if," this), there will clearly be considerable racial change in the future.

Whether such a change would be a good or a bad thing, each must decide for himself, and it rests with the American people to decide whether for their own interests and for the interests of the world in general they desire the change.

IMMIGRATION AND THE MINIMUM WAGE 1

THE

PAUL U. KELLOGG, A.M., EDITOR, The Survey

'HE line of least resistance in extending the protection of the state over labor conditions has been to enact laws with respect to women and children. The world-old instinct of the strong to shelter the weak has led the conservative to join forces with the radical, in prohibiting child labor and in shortening the hours of women's work. On the other hand the liberty loving tradition of a male democracy has more often than not thrown the balance on the other side of the scale when the exercise of public control over men's labor has been under discussion.

This tendency has been repeated in the movement toward minimum wage legislation. The voluntary Massachusetts law which goes into effect this year concerns women and children; and so, too, does the compulsory statute which has just passed the Oregon legislature. Public discussion the past winter has centered around relation between the low wages paid working girls and prostitution.

Accident legislation is an exception to this tendency in the field of labor legislation. We do not think of limiting compensation laws to the girls who lose an eye or a hand; we are perhaps even more concerned that industry bear its human wear and tear when workingmen are crippled or their lives snuffed out. The explanation is, of course, a simple one; in this connection we conceive of the workingman as the breadwinner of a family group; and in self-protection American commonwealths are belatedly devising schemes of insurance which will safeguard those dependent upon him.

As we come to look at the problem of living wages more closely, my belief is that legislatures and courts will increasingly take

1 From the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, July, 1913.

cognizance of the household and community well-being which hangs on the earnings of men. It is this aspect which makes the question of the minimum wage as it concerns common labor and as it is aggravated by immigration—if anything, more serious than the question of the minimum wage as it concerns

women.

We have seen whole cities scotched by the floods. Our selfengrossed neglect of the water courses of the midwestern basin, the encroachments of private holdings upon the beds of streams, and the persistent stripping of their woodsy sources have brought a retribution. The nation leaps to tardy relief as the waters burst the dams, strangle men and women, and swamp the cities in their course. Dwellings go under before men's eyes and whole communities which have taken their security for granted see store and street and familiar meeting place sunk in currents over which they have lost control. It has all been spectacular and vivid. The laws of gravitation and of fluids, the "Mene, Mene, Tekel" of narrow private ends and of public preoccupation have been written large in mud and privation. Misery has daubed its lesson up and down the river valleys for all men to read.

The economic ebb and flood of our common life has usually no such spectacular appeal to the imagination; yet, if we turn to the forty volumes of the federal immigration commission - volumes which, seemingly, Congress has done its best to keep from general reading we find a story of household wreckage and of the slow undermining of community life as real as this seven days' wonder of the Ohio Valley. They show us that in the states east of the Rocky Mountains the basic industries are to-day manned by foreigners three to two; that there are as many names on these pay-rolls from eastern Europe and Asia as there are names of native-born and second generation Americans put together. They do not show that the new immigrants have hired out as common laborers for less pay than the old did in their time, for the revolutionary rise in prices throughout the period under discussion must be taken into account. But they go far to show that the newcomers have at least kept down wages and have perpetuated other standards against which the older men were ready to protest. Of the heads of foreign households tabulated by the commission, seven out of ten earned less than $600 a year,