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 strata.[5] The manufacturing-employers advocate “protection” which enhances the price of their products, while usually favoring “free trade” in immigration to cheapen their costs.  What more natural than that laborers should favor a policy of protection to labor, to keep foreigners from coming here to be their competitors.

Sec. 9. #Divergent views of effects on population.# The foregoing views of the effects of immigration upon wages, both of those favoring and those opposing it, are short-time views, relating to immediate rather than ultimate effects.  If the immediate causes are continuously repeated throughout the lives of successive generations the results are for those mortal men as ultimate as anything that concerns them.  In this case it would make no difference to the millions of workers, whose wages are depressed, if it could be shown that wages fifty or a hundred years from now would be no lower as a result of continued immigration than they otherwise would be; or to the employer that wages would then be no higher.  But to the social philosopher and to the statesman, interested in the abiding general welfare, the ultimate economic effects are of the greatest importance.

The question is:  What will be the far-reaching, long-time effects of immigration upon the general economic situation, as that determines the welfare of the mass of the people?  We confine ourselves here to the economic effects, leaving aside as far as possible the racial, moral, religious, political, and general social aspects of the subject.

We are met at the outset by two divergent opinions as to the permanent results of immigration upon the growth of population.  The one is that all immigrants coming to our shores are net additions, hastening by so much the growth in density of population; the other opinion, the displacement theory, is that immigration has the effect of checking the natural increase of the native stock so much that it does not materially change the total population, or actually causes it to be less than it would have been had no immigration occurred.