e skilled and professional workers than they are in Europe. It
can hardly be doubted that the most important, tho not the sole, cause
of this situation has been the unceasing inflow of immigrants going
into these low-paid occupations. The "general economic situation" in
America, but for immigration, would compel higher wages to be paid to
the masses of the workers. If immigration were suddenly stopped in a
period of normal or of increasing business, wages in these occupations
would at once rise, and that, without the aid of organization, of
strikes, or of arbitration. This would affect most those occupations
which now present the most serious social problems, in mines,
factories, and city sweatshops. In some small measure the war in the
Balkan States, by recalling many men for service, had this influence
in 1912; and the great war beginning in 1914, by stopping a large
part of the usual immigration, gave a striking demonstration of
this principle. In employing circles the rise of wages was sometimes
referred to with an air of grievance as due to the "monopoly of
labor," as if the economic situation here, enabling the wage-earners
(millions of them immigrants), to get a higher competitive wage when
immigration temporarily was diminished, constituted a monopoly.

Sec. 8. #Popular theory of immigrant competition.# The depressing effect
of the ever-present and ever-renewing supply of immigrant labor upon
wages appears most clearly at the time of wage contests, and often
seems to be the most important aspect of the question. Laws against
contract labor, passed to prevent this particular evil, have put
no check to the great stream of those guided by friends to a "job."
Organized labor thinks most of these immediate effects. Commonly
labor's protest is expressed in terms of the untenable "lump of labor"
theory of wages. "Every foreign workman who comes to America" is
believed to take "the place of some American workman." The error in
this too rigid conception of the influence exerted upon wages by new
supplies of labor is evident in the light of the principles of wages.
Yet it may be true that, both immediately and ultimately, the foreign
workman depresses the incomes of those already here with whom he
directly competes. On the other hand, those in occupations into
which few immigrants enter may, as consumers of cheaper products,
be immediately the gainers in real wages, by the very change
that depresses the wages in the lower