The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1911-01-24
IAN IMMIGRANT
 LABOR TARIFF Minimum Wage for Aliens Suggested American Common Labor Bankrupt Real Protection for La borer Needed.
Paul Q. Kellogg. Associate Editor,
 The Survey. SExclusive Service The Survey Press
 Bureau)

Bureauo
 The Federal Immigration Commis- sion has made its report, and the old war Is on between the restrictionists and the anti-restrictionists over the literacy test
 The Commission recommends the ex- .clusions of all immigrants who can mot read and write in some language. as the simplest method of cutting down the flow. And that the flow should be cut down, they pile up ffacts to show thet so long as every .rise in wages operates merely to suck sn unlimited surplus populations from Europe and Asia, no permanent rais- ting of our own standard will be pos !sible-
 On the other hand, those who are lxealous that the United States shall not be closed to the oppressed of oth- CT nations. point out that, it is not the cultural deficit of a husky coun- try lad of Croatia that threatens tAmerican standards. It is the fact fthat he sells his working day for less fmoney than c family can live on that counts.
 | Now in Australia, they have adopt ed minimum wage legislation. These laws provide that in any depressed trade a board representing the em ploysr. the employe and the public can set a standard of pay below which ' nobody can be hired Ideas of free { dom of contract, and the effects of push to the wall any industry or | state which tried to raise wage stan dards by law. have stood in the way ! of such a plan in the United States. I But why not apply 1t nationally to | the current of migration itself which floods in and keeps the day labor \ rate down below a living wage in all industries?
 Let us look at the situation. If, by poverty, is meant the inabil7 ! sty of an adult male to maintain a tfamily on his earnings then American poverty line as the 27 per cent of families that Rowntree found in New 1, York or the 30.7 per cent that Booth | discovered in London. The rapid ex- panSop of industries and the con- stant Inflow of new immigrants have I which the Commission gives, drawn not from one industry but from \ twenty. clear away these disguises and !. we see the brutal fact that unless a woman supplements the wages paid her man by corporation or contractor she cannot bring up her children. The Commission gathered 750.000 individual schedules, visited 23,0o0 families, made detailed reports on 250 communities. Of more than 22.00O wage earners eighteen years of age or over, writes I w. Jett Lauck, expert in charge of the annual earnings were only $455. Less than two-fifths of all immigrant households were supported solely by the earnings of the husbands and more than one-fourth derived part of their maintenance from boarders or lodgers.
 True" writes Prof H. Parker Will lis. editorial adviser of the Commis- sion. "a very large percentage of inn migrants have come to this country either unmarried or without their wives and children: but where famf- to perform a substantial amount of paid work in order to keep the fam ,sly together The percentage of wom- en thus employed is materially great CT among the immigrants than among native Americans, thus showing the extent to which the immigrant has been reduced not merely personally, but in family life, to a basis of com mercial exploitation
 In other words, as family pro- position. the common laborer cannot make both ends meet on the wages ne gets in America As social group, American common labor is shown to be bankrupt.
 Enormous impetus has been given to American industries by the ex- plOlIaxlOn or InlS raw laDOr Supply. It 3s as If the chambers of a coal mine once cleared with pick and chain-saw were automatically to flood them selves with fuel to be had for the dig ging. 1t is not enough to urge that rhe men scatter into the country dis trtcts after transitional work as un- skilled labor. Crowded tenements, in sanitary milltown courts, construc- ton camp barracks, and the shacks of outlying mining towns are scarcely reasorfable way stations to country life Nor is it enough to urge that .he unskflled men move up to the highly paid grades. Even if this were so the group remains-sixty per cent of the whole force in steel production, for instance-and unless. there is a change in industrial policy, hundreds of American towns will permanently bear the etamp of household life at under two dollars a day.
 We say, in our child labor certffi cates. that a child cannot go to work until he is fourteen and until he has gone through a certain grade in school. Why not have an immigrant labor certificate and provide that un-