The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-01-22
Exclusive Service The Survey Press Blu

Exclusive Service The Survey Press Blu
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 The federal immigration commission has made it's report and the old war is on between the restrictionists and the anti- restrictionists over the literacy test.
 The commission recommend tho ex- clusion of all immigrants who cannot 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 facts to show that SC long as every rise in wages operates merely to suck in unlimited surplus pop ulations from Europe and Asia, no per nanent raising of our own standard will be possible.
 On the other hand, those who are zeal ous that the United States shall not be closed to the oppressed of other nations, point out that it Is not the cultural de- felt of husky country lad of Croatia that threatens American standards. It Is the fact that he sells his working day for less money than family can live on that counts.
 Now, in Australia, they have adopted minimum wage legislation. These laws provide that in any depressed trade board representing the employer, the em- ploye and the public can set a standard of pay below which nobody can be hired. Ideas of freedom of contract, and the ef- fects of interstate competition which might push to the wall any industry or state which tried to raise wage stand ards by law, have stood in the way of such a plan. in the United States. But why not apply it nationally to the current of immigration itself which floods in and keeps the day. labor rate down below c living wage in all industries?
 Let us look at the situation. Z.
 f. tlan fr.n1, nt an adult male to maintain family on his earnings, then American day laborers fall as truly below the poverty line as the 27 per cent of families that Rowntree found in York or the 30.7 per cent that Booth discovered in London. The rapid expansion of industries and the constant info wof new immigrants have disguised the situation; but the figures which the commission gives, drawn not from one industry but from 20, clear away these disgusos and we see the brutal fact that unless a woman supplements the wages paid her man by corporation or contractor, she cannot bring up children. The commission gath ere ed750, 0,O002ndivdual-sc schedules, visited B. coo families, made detailed reports on 250 communities. Of more than 22,000 wage earners. IS years of ago or over, writes w. Jett Lauck. expert in charge of the industrial investigation, the average an- nual 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 Willis, editorial adviser of the commission. "a very large percentage of immigrants have come to this country either unmarried or without their wives and children; but where families exist it is necessary for the wife to perform substantial amount of paid work in order to keep the family together. The percentage of women tn us employed is materially greater among i'm migrants than among native Americans, thus showing the extent to which the i'm migrant has been reduced not merely per- sorally, but in family life to a basis of commercial exploitation
 In other words, as family proposition, the common laborer cannot make both ends meet on the wages he gets in Amer lea. As social group, American com- mon labor is shown to be bankrupt.
 Enormous impetus has been given to American industries by the exploitation of this raw labor supply It is as if the chamber of a coal mine, once cleared with pick and chain-saw, were automatically z to flood themselves with new fuel to be had for the digging. It Is not enough to urge that the men scatter into the country districts after transitional work as unskilled labor. Crowded tenemerts, < insanitary milltown courts, construction camp barracks, and the shacks of out lying mining towns are scarcely reason able way stations to country life. Nor is it enough to urge that the unskilled men move up to the highly paid grades. Even
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