Abstract
This chapter analyzes data from the Dillingham Immigration Commission Report on the weekly wages of Jewish and other white male employees in manufacturing and mining in 1909. Other variables the same (age, location, duration in the United States, marital status, and literacy), Jewish immigrant production workers earned 14–20% more than other immigrants, including those of Northwest European/Canadian origin. The Jews reached parity in weekly wages with native-born white men, ceteris paribus, at 4.5 years duration in the United States, after which the Jews had higher wages. Jewish production workers in manufacturing achieved a high level of economic success.
This is a revision of the original article published in Explorations in Economic History, 29(3), July 1992, pp. 274–289.
I am indebted to Professor Francine Blau for making available to me the computer data file she developed from the published records of the U.S. Immigration Commission (1911), and to Xiao-Bo Li for his research assistance. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Tenth World Congress of Jewish Studies, Jerusalem.
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Notes
- 1.
Kahan (1986, pp. 102–103) reports that the occupational profile prior to migration of turn-of-the-century East European Jewish immigrants, as reported by the immigration authorities, is “characterized-by a high participation in manufacturing, the highest among the ethnic immigrant groups for this period. In addition the Jewish immigrants were concentrated in the clothing industry-a special feature of the Jewish occupational structure in Eastern Europe.” From 1899 to 1914 about 64% of the Jewish immigrants reported they had been in manufacturing (of whom half were in clothing); and only 1% were professionals, with no trend over the period. There was no apparent trend in the skill level of the Jewish immigrants over the period. Furthermore, even in the United States during this period most East European Jews were in manufacturing (Kahan 1986, pp. 101–117).
- 2.
The U.S. Bureau of the Census, for example, did not ask earnings or income in the decennial census until 1940.
- 3.
The Dillingham Commission data on immigrant wages have been studied in recent years using econometric techniques by Blau (1980), Higgs (1971), and McGouldrick and Tannen (1977). These studies did not include a specific analysis for Jews. Directly or indirectly, they did test for wage “discrimination“(i.e., wage differences, when measured variables that determine earnings are held constant) against the foreign born, and all found that it was small or nonexistent.
- 4.
Douglas (1919, p. 394–395) is particularly critical of a table in a study by Jenks and Lauck, The Immigration Problem, drawn from the Dillingham Commission tables. Douglas writes: “This table apparently proves that the percentage of skilled workers in the old immigration is more than twice as great as in the new…. The table, however, contains certain statistical fallacies. Hebrews are excluded from the classification of the newer immigrants. This gives a hand-picked table, as the Jews are the most highly skilled of the newer races. To omit them from the category of the ‘new immigration’ would be equivalent to omitting the English or the Germans from the ‘old.’” Douglas analyzed the occupational status of immigrants at the time of immigration, but not the Dillingham Commission data from the employee survey.
- 5.
At the time of the Commission’s report the Chinese Exclusion Act and the “Gentlemen’s Agreement” with Japan had ended virtually all Asian immigration, but Southern and Eastern European immigration was at an annual rate of over 600,000. The Commission recommended a bar to Asian immigration and a literacy requirement, which were formally adopted in 1917, and quotas for European countries based on the country distribution of earlier cohorts of immigrants. The “national origins” quota system was enacted in 1921 and with modifications remained in effect until legislation in 1965.
An example of the Commission’s attitude is expressed in the following paragraph: “The new immigration as a class is far less intelligent than the old, approximately one third of all those over 14 years of age when admitted being illiterate. Racially they are for the most part essentially unlike the British, German, and other peoples who came during the period prior to 1880, and generally speaking they are actuated in coming by different ideals, for the old immigration came to be part of the country, while the new, in a large measure, comes with the intention of profiting, in a pecuniary way, by the superior advantages of the new world and then returning to the old country.” (U.S. Immigration Commission (1911), Vol. 1, Abstract, p. 14)
- 6.
Data on the current occupational distribution of the employee sample are not reported in the Dillingham Commission volumes. The occupational attainment of adult male Jewish immigrants at the turn of the century has been studied using data from the 1900 Census of Population and Russian origin as a proxy for being Jewish (Chiswick 1991a). This analysis revealed that on arrival (i.e., recent immigrants) the Jewish immigrants had a low occupational status, but they experienced very rapid improvements with duration. Other variables the same, parity in occupational prestige scores was reached with Western European and Canadian immigrants at about 5½ years after immigration and with native-born white men at about 14 years duration. The Jewish immigrants at arrival had a higher occupational status than those of non-Jews from Southern and Eastern Europe, and the gap widened with duration in the United States.
- 7.
In 1899 the Bureau of Immigration began classifying immigrants by race/ethnic origin as well as country of birth because of the ethnic heterogeneity of the immigrants from the Austria-Hungarian, Russian, and Ottoman Empires. This classification was abandoned in 1943 as World War II generated a new sensitivity about racial classifications.
- 8.
The Dillingham Commission data indicate that those recorded as “Hebrew-Russian” had higher wages and were more highly skilled than those recorded as “Russian,” a category which may include some unidentified Jews.
This suggests that analyses using Russian-origin as a proxy for turn-of-the-century Russian Jewish immigrants would underestimate the wages and skills of the Russian Jewish immigrants (as was indicated in Chiswick 1991a). It has been shown elsewhere that compared with non-Jews, the Jews in Tsarist Russia exhibited characteristics associated with a higher level of skill – a lower fertility rate, a lower death rate, a later age at marriage, and a higher literacy rate, including literacy in the Russian language (see, for example, Kuznets 1975, pp. 62–82 and Silber 1980).
- 9.
Kuznets (1975, pp. 36–41) shows that about three quarters of the Jewish immigrants to the United States from 1881 to 1907 were from the Russian Empire and more than half of the remainder were from the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, with a smaller proportion from Romania and less than 2% from other countries. The wave of German Jewish migration was concentrated in the mid-nineteenth century, was smaller in magnitude, and was less involved as production workers in manufacturing.
- 10.
For an analysis of earnings among low-skilled immigrants in the late twentieth century which explicitly incorporates literacy, see Chiswick (1991b).
- 11.
All of the explanatory variables are expressed as the percentage in the cell with the designated characteristic, except AGE and DURATION in the United States which are cell means, JEWISH which is unity for a Jewish cell, otherwise it is zero, and BRITISH/CANADIAN which is unity for a British or Canadian cell. The equation is a weighted regression, with the number of observations in the cell serving as the weights. This is done to correct for the heteroskedastic residuals that would arise from the unequal number of observations in each cell. Weighted regressions were also used by Blau (1980) and McGouldrick and Tannen (1977), but not by Higgs (1971) in their analyses of the Dillingham Commission data.
- 12.
This is remarkably similar to the 26% earnings advantage found for those who were literate in a sample taken in 1986/87 of low-skilled immigrants in the Los Angeles labor market (Chiswick 1991b).
- 13.
Tests reveal no significant difference in the effect on wages of literacy or duration in the United States between Jewish and non-Jewish immigrants. There is also no difference in the effect of being a Russian Jew (coefficient 0.1724) or a non-Russian Jew (coefficient 0.1760) when these replace the Jewish variable in the foreign-born equation.
- 14.
Using the same variables as in Table 5.3 non-Jewish immigrants do not reach earnings parity with the native born even though the gap narrows. The differential is 8% at 10 years of residence and is about 5% at 16 and later years.
In Blau’s (1980) regression analysis immigrants reach earnings parity with white native born men at 10 to 15 years residence in the United States. However, she holds constant the percentage speaking English, a consequence of immigrant adjustment, and certain industry characteristics not included in this study. The inclusion of these variables was appropriate as her objective was the study of wage discrimination, not immigrant adjustment. By doing so, however, she reduced the number of cells from the 296 in this study to 202 in her analysis, thereby losing information and statistical precision. Because of missing values for English language fluency the number of Jewish cells would decline from 6 to 4.
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Appendix: Description of the Data
Appendix: Description of the Data
The data for this paper were compiled by Francine Blau from U.S. Immigration Commission, Reports of the Immigration Commission, Vol. 6 to 16, Immigrants by Industries, Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office (1911). Her description of the procedures is available in Blau (1980).
The survey of employees by industry was conducted primarily in 1909 and in 23 states intensive in mining and manufacturing and with immigrant concentrations. The 19 industries include many manufacturing industries (agricultural implements and vehicles; boot and shoe; cigar and tobacco; clothing; collar, cuff and shirt; cotton goods; furniture; glass; glove; iron and steel; leather; silk goods; and woolen and worstered goods), as well as slaughtering and meat packing, sugar refining, oil refining, bituminous coal mining, copper mining and smelting, and iron ore mining. The 23 states are Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania in the North East; Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Nebraska, Kansas, and Missouri in the North Central states; and Delaware, Oklahoma, Florida, Alabama, Virginia, and West Virginia in the South. It is not possible to identify the city or size of place.
Each industry volume included tables by gender which reported, for various economic and demographic characteristics, the mean value, frequency distribution, and number of cases for “general nativity or race” groups (i.e., nativity, race, and ethnicity). Data were presented only for nativity/ethnicity groups with 80 or more persons reporting for wages and 40 or more persons reporting for most other variables. The nativity/ethnicity classification comprised 60 groups, including native born with a native-born father (two groups, “white” and “Negro”), native-born with a foreign-born father (15 parental countries of birth), and foreign born (43 ethnicity categories). Two of the foreign-born categories were “Hebrew, Russia” and “Hebrew, Other,” with another category “Russian.” No other groups were defined by religion.
The demographic and socioeconomic variables reported for each nativity/ethnic group by gender include age, location, marital status, literacy, duration the US for the foreign born, and weekly wages, among other variables. Data are not available on the employee’s current occupation. The wage data are for employees age 18 and over. An error in the coding on the data tape for the wages for “Hebrew, Other” men in clothing manufacturing was corrected (correct value $14.90).
The data analysis in this study included all of the white nativity/ethnicity groups. This excluded from the analysis only the data on U.S.-born blacks and Japanese immigrants. The number of cells for native-born and foreign-born males is greater in this study than in Blau (1980), 296 cells as distinct from her 202. Blau included variables for percentage speaking English and certain industry variables (capital-labor ratio, percent sales growth, average firm size). Missing values for one or more of these variables resulted in her loss of 74 cells. While these extra variables were relevant for her study of discrimination, they were not relevant for the purposes of this study.
The Southern and Eastern Europe group comprises all of the countries in Southern and Eastern Europe, as well as Cuba and Mexico. The Northern and Western European category includes the British Isles, Canada, Scandinavia (except Finland), France, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands.
Because of an unequal number of observations per cell only weighted means and weighted regression equations are computed.
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Chiswick, B.R. (2020). Jewish Immigrant Wages in America in 1909: An Analysis of the Dillingham Commission Data. In: Chiswick, B. (eds) Jews at Work. Studies of Jews in Society, vol 2. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41243-2_5
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