That almost one
quarter of a total million of newcomers should be unable to read or
write is certainly a fact to be taken into account, and one that throws
a calcium light on the general quality of present-day immigration and
the educational status of the countries from which they come. Illiteracy
is a worse reflection upon the foreign government than upon the foreign
immigrant.
[Sidenote: The Army of the Unskilled]
To complete this grouping, we should go one step further, and make up a
number of divisions according to occupation and no-occupation, skilled
and unskilled labor. To begin with, the unskilled laborers would fill a
city of 430,000, or about the size of Cincinnati. Those classified as
servants, with a fair question mark as to the amount of skill possessed,
numbered 125,000 more, equal to the population of New Haven. Those
classified as without occupation, including the children under fourteen,
numbered 232,000, equal to the population of Louisville. Gathering into
one great body, then, what may fairly be called unskilled labor, the
total is not far from 780,000 out of the 1,026,499 who came. This mass
would fill a city the size of Boston, Cambridge, and Lynn combined, or
of Cleveland and Washington.
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