1885, a considerable number of associations of this kind were formed; and about this time the influence of socialism began to be noticeable in the unions, especially in those at Stockholm. The unions grouped themselves in local labor exchanges, affiliated with the socialist party, and in national federations. In 1898, the national federations were, in turn, united in a central federation having its headquarters at Stockholm. The unions pay into the federation to which they belong either a general entrance fee or a per capita assessment. The federation is managed by a committee which reports to the body at its annual convention. It distributes strike and unemployment benefits to unionists whom it has authorized to stop work, the money used for the purpose being either taken from the reserve fund or raised by special assessments. On December 31, 1903, the central federation embraced 26 national federations representing 874 unions, with an aggregate membership of 47,122 persons. In addition to these unions there were, in Sweden, eight federations comprising 299 unions with 27,887 members and 100 independent unions having a total membership of 3,500, making an aggregate of 31,387 organized workingmen not represented in the central federation. Thus the total number of unions in Sweden was 1,273, their 78,509 members representing about 25 per cent of the working population; about 69 per cent of the unions, representing 60 per cent of the trade unionists, were affiliated with the central federation. Certain groups of workingmen, refusing to support any religious or political interests, have remained outside the socialist party. Notable among these is the "Swedish Workingmen's Association," established in 1899, which concerns itself exclusively with economic and social questions. At the beginning of 1904, this association comprised 66 unions with 5,144 members, and had adherents in nearly every part of the country, although a very large number of its members are drawn from the iron workers of Stockholm. - Bulletin de l'Office du Travail, Paris, France, December, 1904. WAGES PAID EMPLOYEES IN THE NAVY YARD AND PRIVATE ESTABLISHMENTS. In 1904 the Bureau considered the wages then paid workmen in the Charlestown Navy Yard, reviewed the statutes governing the rates of pay of said government employees, the hours of labor, and the more important United States Navy Regulations.* Some changes have been made since 1904 in the wages paid at the Charlestown Navy Yard, increases being made in some of the trades, which went into effect January 1, 1906. As the law states that hours of labor worked and rates of wages paid in the navy yards shall conform, as nearly as is consistent with the public interest, with those of private establishments in the immediate vicinity of the respective yards, we have brought together, in the following table, the daily wages paid at the Charlestown Navy Yard, by classes, and the wages paid at representative private establishments in Boston. The data for the Navy Yard were compiled by the Naval Board on Wages. * See Massachusetts Labor Bulletin No. 32, pages 215-219. Wages Paid: Navy Yard and Private Establishments - Concluded. We shall not attempt a comparison of the daily wages paid employees at the Navy Yard and those in private establishments, for in collecting the data for outside establishments we found that the conditions attendant upon employment, even of a like nature, were so dissimilar as to render a direct comparison unfair, and therefore valueless. The eight-hour workday is in force for all employees in the Navy Yard, while the working-day for the outside firms from whom we obtained our information varied, although the majority of the workmen were under the nine-hour schedule. In the building trades, the men were all working but eight hours a day, and the shorter workday also prevailed for a comparatively few workmen in other branches of industry. The Navy Yard employees are granted leaves of absence (provisionally) to the amount of 15 working-days a year; giving vacations to like employees in private establishments is quite unusual. Even by citing these few differences one can readily see that the conditions are not comparable to the extent of supplying a basis for an exactly uniform wage scale. CURRENT COMMENT ON LABOR QUESTIONS. [The Bureau does not necessarily indorse any of the views or opinions printed under this heading, its object being rather to present diverse views on labor questions, leaving the reader to draw his individual conclusions from the testimony or information supplied. The comments, as a rule, are presented in a condensed form; the titles of books, magazines, and newspapers, from which extracts are made, follow the articles, the date of publication, when known, being also given.] Immigration. American Hebrew. The calling of this Congress by the Civic Federation has had a good effect in that it has led to an intelligent interest and discussion, in the public press everywhere, of the subject. It has directed public attention to the subject as has never been the case before, and has served to show the average member of Congress that the public mind is awake to the importance of proper immigration and naturalization. The result will be that Congress will not dare to give them second place and let them rest in committee till the closing hours of the session and then pass an apology of a bill. The people of this country will hold their representatives to strict accountability for their conduct if they fail to give adequate attention.- New York City, Dec. 15, 1905. New York Sun. - The Conference on Immigration which was in session in New York last week did not give direct expression to the feeling of race prejudice, but actually its assembling was due to the change in the races of immigrants which began to show itself markedly about 15 years ago. Before that period the aliens coming to us were almost wholly from northern and western Europe, chiefly Irish and Germans, with a very considerable part also from Scandinavia. Since then the great preponderance has come from eastern and southern Europe, principally Italians and Jews. It is this change that has provoked the discussion of which the conference was the fruit. This transformation as compared with the immigration previous to 1890 is likely to continue and to increase in importance if it is not checked by Federal legislation. . . . After all, what did the conference on the subject come to? No agreement on any plan of restriction was reached and no evidence of the necessity for any such measure of protection was produced. The fears of the new immigration expressed were no greater than those urged against the alien stream which came over between 1840 and 1860. That earlier alarm has not been justified in our experience since that time, and the present misgivings are likely to be made to seem no less imaginary 50 years hence. As President Eliot, of Harvard, said at the conference on Thursday, we have need yet of all the labor and sinew we can get to develop our resources. Moreover, race prejudice is something of an absurdity in a country of which the population is already the most mixed in race composition of any ever before gathered together in the history of the world. December, 1905. Nicholas Alienikoff. — Naturally, if we could assume the possibility of the emigration of all the six millions of Jews from Russia, it would solve the problem. Perhaps, unfortunately for the Jews, but certainly fortunately for Russia, for the Russian nation, for the Russian people, such emigration en masse is a matter of absolute physical and psychological impossibility. With the greatest efforts, concerted in spirit and in action, of the representatives of American Jewry of all shades and denominations, we have succeeded in raising a fund of $1,000,000 for the relief of over 100,000 suffers in dire distress, who have been left homeless and shelterless. With the other $1,000,000 raised in Europe, this would give a per capita of $20 to each person in distress. How ridiculously, nay, painfully inadequate, such relief is, is selfevident. Will a $20 per capita relief tend to rehabilitate or even in the slightest way relieve the distress of the sufferers? Emigration en masse ... of the Russian Jew is not conceivable, and the solution of the Jewish problem in Russia by means of emigration is therefore a chimera. By this, however, I do not mean to say that we shall not find 1,000,000 Jews who, weary of their heavy burden of misery and persecution, would be ready, willing, nay, but too happy, to be transported to any land where they could start life anew, where they would find a refuge, a welcome haven of rest; but where is that land, and where are the means of such transportation and the brotherly hand of human aid in the sorrowful path of the "Wandering Jew?"-American Hebrew, Jan. 5, 1906. Labor Clarion. — If we adopt and enforce the "non-employment and non-intercourse " method of dealing with the "little brown men," we will soon see them "striking tents" and leaving for the Middle West and the Atlantic States, where it is safe to say they will not be very warmly welcomed, no matter how much our New England brethren may love and admire them at a distance of 3,000 miles. - San Francisco, Cal., Dec. 15, 1905. The idea has been too long general in San Francisco that the Japanese coming here are of the laboring class. It is time that our minds were divested of that error. During the past year there were 280 professional men among them, 44 of whom were actors, 36 clergymen, 20 engineers (civil), 74 officials, 21 doctors, 20 sculptors, and 37 teachers. There were also 358 skilled laborers such as-33 carpenters, 84 clerks, 57 seamen, 36 sailors, 25 wood workers and so on. Among the miscellaneous occupations we find 14 bankers, 380 farmers (not laborers), 60 hotel keepers, 28 manufacturers, 777 merchants and retailers, and 5,883 farm laborers, in fact every occupation has its representatives, but in smaller numbers than those mentioned. The Coreans are laborers and nothing more. . . . Among the Japanese coming during 1905 there were 4,287 illiterates-not able to read or write-and among the Coreans, 1,925. Of the Japanese 1,515 had been in the United States before, so had 18 of the Coreans. - Dec. 29, 1905. Coast Seamen's Journal. - Something, how. ever, can and should be done. A head-tax, say of $30 or $40, would act as a salutary check, and would be quite in accordance with our national protectionist policy. Then, too, the Government should have competent inspectors placed at the principal distributing points of emigrants in Eu rope to watch that no persons unable to meet the requirements of our immigration laws would be shipped to this country. Finally, the Government should establish some sort of system for distributing the newly-arrived immigrants where they would be most needed. . . . Under our present immigration policy or lack of policy rather - our already over-congested cities are being still more congested, while the parts of the country which could absorb the major portion of the flood of immigration with great advantage to themselves are in many instances actually receding in point of population. It will be seen, therefore, that an intelligent distribution of the immigrants upon their arrival here would do a great deal in the way of solving some of the difficulties connected with our immigration problem. The most effective way to show the Japanese, and incidentally our own people who know nothing of the conditions existing on this Coast, that no Asiatic labor is wanted is to begin a strict exclusion policy at home. If the Japs are unable to find employment in Western cities they may pos sibly travel eastward and thus help to arouse that healthy sentiment in favor of exclusion which is so sadly lacking at present. . . . Let us all lend a hand in this fight for preserving the purity of our race and thereby maintain and improve our superior standard of living. An ounce of practice is worth more than a pound of protest, therefore let us begin by excluding the Jap at home and in our immediate vicinity and thereby hasten the exclusion from all America.- San Francisco, Cal., Dec. 20, 1905. The Immigration Conference of the National Civic Federation has met and adjourned, and according to local press dispatches two delegates to the conference, both editors-one white and one yellow discussed the problem of Mongolian immigration. It appears that the yellow editor was the favorite, as he expressed the views and sentiments of the vast majority of that plutocratic gathering. The sum total of the sentiments expressed at the Civic Federation Conference was undoubtedly favorable toward the Chinese, and admitting that fact we may as well confess that there can be no hope for the passage of the Japanese and Corean bill at this session of Congress and possibly not for many sessions to come. The people of the Pacific Coast States should be acquainted with the aforesaid facts, not in order to dishearten them, but to urge upon them the advisability of taking individual action. It is estimated that from twelve to fifteen thousand Japan ese have landed in Pacific Coast ports during the past year. During that time Japan was engaged in the greatest war of modern times. The war is over, fully three-quarters of a million of soldiers have returned to Japan and have been discharged or will be discharged within a short time, and a great many thousands will find themselves among the unemployed. Many of the steamers that were used as transports during the war have been put in the Trans-Pacific trade, carrying passengers and merchandise. From these facts we may conclude that Japanese emigration will be doubled and possibly trebled in this year. The future Japanese immigrants to this country will be veteran soldiers. And if it takes as long to pass a Japanese exclusion law as it did to pass the law excluding Chinese, we will have an army of exJapanese soldiers in the Pacific States. Japanese do not come to the United States as colonists. They do not cultivate wild and unreclaimed lands. They come here to be employed at some work that formerly was done by some one else. They are coming over here to be employed. If we do not employ them, they will not come, and if they did come and we did not employ them, they would be only too glad to go back again. The blame is at the door of the employers. As the employer, we will immediately recognize the man who employs labor, but the fact of the matter is, that the one who purchases for self or family con sumption is the real employer. If he did not purchase goods made by Asiatics, the factory would not turn a wheel. . . . We can exclude all Asiatics without the Act of Congress by simply refusing to patronize those who employ and insist in employ. ing them. Our most effective weapon in this struggle is the Union Label. That emblem of fair play is not, will not, and can not be found upon any Asiatic product. - Jan. 3, 1906. Organized Labor.—The laws now existing for the exclusion of undesirable immigrants should be strengthened. Adequate means should be adopted, enforced by sufficient penalties, to compel steamship companies engaged in the passenger business to observe in good faith the law which forbids them to encourage or solicit immigration to the United States. Moreover, there should be a sharp limitation imposed upon all vessels coming to our ports as to the number of immigrants in ratio to the tonnage which each vessel can carry. This ratio should be high enough to insure the coming hither of as good a class of aliens as possible. Provision should be made for the surer punishment of those who induce aliens to come to this country under promise or assurance of employment. It should be made possible to inflict a sufficiently heavy penalty on any employer violating this law to deter him from taking the risk. It seems to me wise that there should be an international conference held to deal with this question of immigration, which has more than a merely national significance. Such a conference could, among other things, enter at length into the methods for securing a thorough inspection of would-be immigrants at the ports from which they desire to embark before permitting them to embark. . . . From all sides we hear the assertion that Japanese laborers are an absolute necessity to the prosperity of our orchardists, vineyardists, hop and berry. growers, that without them the crops would rot in the field, owing to the inability of the rancher to obtain suitable help during the harvesting of his crops. San Francisco, Cal., Dec. 9, 1905. |