had been no immigration, our native population, rapidly advancing in average wealth, wages, and general education, would have continued with an unchecked birthrate, and would have filled all the places taken by immigrants.  And no believer in the displacement theory has ever ventured to claim, as the argument requires, that if immigration were now stopped, the birthrate would again return to the old standard of 1820, or would cease to decrease somewhat.  Especially of late, since the rate of increase of the native population has become much less, is the effect of continuing immigration apparent.  In the decade of 1900-1910 the total population increased 16,000,000, while nearly 9,000,000 immigrants arrived.  Of the remaining increase, 3,000,000 consisted of children born of foreign parents.  That leaves three or at the most four million (4,000,000) increase attributable to the native stock, white and negro combined.

Sec. 12. #Earlier and recent effects of immigration upon wages.# Let us now correlate the principle of decreasing returns and the facts as to the exploitation of our natural resources[10] with the growth of our population, on the assumption that immigration has been a net contribution to our numbers.  While the vast frontier was open to settlement, the growth of population could not fail to be looked upon as a blessing, even tho somewhat mixed with political evils, immorality, and pauperism.  Beginning in colonial times, the policy of “the open door” to immigrants came thus to be deemed the traditional, patriotic American policy.  Yet there is grave reason to believe that the rate of growth in the nineteenth century was wastefully rapid and that a slower and sounder growth might have been better.[11] However, this rapid growth was largely extensive, spreading over wider areas, and was consistent with a pretty steady rise of real wages in America until about 1895,[12] the level continuing higher than that of Europe despite the contemporaneous rise of wages there.  Much of this general rise is undoubtedly attributable to the adoption of better tools, machinery, and industrial processes, the more so as inventions and new methods have rapidly become free goods.[13] The beneficial improvements long cooperated with the rapid exploitation of rich resources to raise real wages, and then undoubtedly continued to offset for a time the unfavorable effects as the richer resources began to show signs of exhaustion.  Since the end of the last century, however, the net trend upward seems to be checked, and “the rising cost of living” (real cost) has come to be a serious actuality for larger sections of the population.[14]

Yet so long as wages are enough higher in America to pay the passage of the low-paid workers of the industrially backward nations, they will continue to come.  The ease and cheapness of migration in these days of steamships, the encouragement of immigration by the agencies and advertisements of the steamship lines, and the increasing readiness of the peasantry to migrate, have become well known through recent discussions.  Unless immigration is limited, it must continue to depress the wages of American workingmen, through both its immediate and its ultimate effects.