Into this favored section of the earth’s surface have been introduced ever increasing numbers of the lower classes of foreign nations. What has been their effect upon the prevailing standard of living? As a major premise, it will be granted that the standard of living of the working classes of the United States has been and still is superior to that of the nations which have furnished the bulk of the immigrants. Common observation and general testimony establish this beyond the need of proof. Particularly at the present time, if this were not so, very few of our immigrants would come, for, as we have seen, this is the great incentive which draws them.[273] It is significant, however, that the bulk of immigration has been recruited from more and more backward races of Europe as the decades have succeeded each other. There is not now the relative advantage for the peasant of England, Germany, or Scandinavia that there was during the first two thirds of the nineteenth century.[274] As regards the new immigrants—those who have come during the last thirty years—the one great reason for their coming is that they believe that on the wage which they can receive in America they can establish a higher standard than the one to which they have been accustomed. And this wage for which they are willing to sell their labor is in general appreciably below that which the native American workman requires to support his standard.[275] What does this mean? It means in the first place that the American workman is continually underbid in the labor market by vast numbers of alien laborers who can do his work approximately as well as he. But it means more than this. It means that he is denied the opportunity of profiting by those exceptionally advantageous periods which as we have seen recur from time to time, and provide the possibility of an improved standard. From his point of view these periods include any circumstances which occasion a sudden increase in the demand for labor—such as the establishment of a great new industry or the opening up of new territory by the completion of a railroad or recurring “good times” after a period of depression. If this new demand must perforce be met by the labor already in the country, there would be an opportunity for an increase in wages to the working man. But the condition which actually confronts the American workman at such a time is this—not only is the amount of wages which can be successfully demanded by labor profoundly influenced by the number and grade of foreign workers already in the country, but there comes at once, in response to improved conditions, a sudden and enormous increase in the volume of immigration. Thus the potential advantage which might accrue to the laborers already in the country is wholly neutralized. The fluctuating nature of the immigration current is of vital importance to the American workman. It means that for him the problem is not that of