The American labor legislation review Author:John Bertram Andrews Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: and success, all babies a chance for survival, all children a chance for proper care and schooling. Four phenomena have characterized the labor supply situati... more »on in the United States up to the present time: I. A fluctuating but unceasing inflow of immigrant labor; II. An unorganized labor market; III. A rapid, wasteful labor turn-over; and IV. A decentralized labor reserve. These four are closely related. They interact upon one another. The effects of each one are in part a cause and in part a result of the other three. Immigration Immigration has largely been a response to an active demand for labor in America. We have steadily drawn from Europe supplies of labor brought to maturity or near maturity in foreign countries. In the fifteen years immediately preceding the war immigration increased our net population by about ten millions. In prosperous years, the volume of immigration was much larger than in bad years. The wave fluctuated but the human tide continued to flow. And yet on every day of every year in which these millions were coming, there were idle workmen on the streets of every city in America. Abundant supplies of land, rich natural resources, and expanding industries continually called for labor for their utilization. Nevertheless, every morning of the year found idle men at tens of thousands of factory gates, hanging around employment offices, or pacing the streets. Labor surplus has been as ever-present as labor shortage. Investigation after investigation of employment conditions has demonstrated a continuing supply of idle men in America. Men have lacked work at the same time that employers have lacked men. It does not necessarily follow that the accretions of population due to immigration produced a surplus of labor in America that could n...« less