Statistics show that the prevailing wages for unskilled manual workers in America have risen much less since the Civil War than have other wages.[4] Wages in the great lower stratum of the unskilled and slightly skilled workers are much lower in America relative to those of more skilled and professional workers than they are in Europe. It can hardly be doubted that the most important, tho not the sole, cause of this situation has been the unceasing inflow of immigrants going into these low-paid occupations. The "general economic situation" in America, but for immigration, would compel higher wages to be paid to the masses of the workers. If immigration were suddenly stopped in a period of normal or of increasing business, wages in these occupations would at once rise, and that, without the aid of organization, of strikes, or of arbitration. This would affect most those occupations which now present the most serious social problems, in mines, factories, and city sweatshops. In some small measure the war in the Balkan States, by recalling many men for service, had this influence in 1912; and the great war beginning in 1914, by stopping a large part of the usual immigration, gave a striking demonstration of this principle. In employing circles the rise of wages was sometimes referred to with an air of grievance as due to the "monopoly of labor," as if the economic situation here, enabling the wage-earners (millions of them immigrants), to get a higher competitive wage when immigration temporarily was diminished, constituted a monopoly.