er of the nineteenth century saw the vacant lands finally
occupied and the tribe of frontiersmen coming to an end. Population now
began to recoil upon the East and the cities. This afforded to
manufactures and to the mining industries the surplus labor-market so
necessary for the continuance of large establishments which to-day need
thousands of workmen and to-morrow hundreds. Moreover, among the
American-born workmen, as well as the English and Scotch, are not found
that docility, obedience to orders, and patient toil which employers
desire where hundreds and thousands are brought like an army under the
direction of foremen, superintendents, and managers. Employers now turn
for their labor supply to those eastern and southern sections of Europe
which have not hitherto contributed to immigration. The first to draw
upon these sources in large numbers were the anthracite coal operators
of Pennsylvania. In these fields the English, Scotch, Welsh, and Irish
miners, during and following the period of the Civil War, had effected
an organization for the control of wages, and the outrages of a secret
society known as the Molly Maguires gave occasion for the importation of
new races unaccustomed to unionism, and incapable, on account of
language, of cooperation with English-speaking miners. Once introduced
in the mining industry, these races rapidly found their way into the
unskilled parts of manufactures, into the service of railroads and large
contractors. On the construction of the Erie Canal in 1898, of 16,000
workmen, 15,000 were unnaturalized Italians.[74] The census of 1900
showed that while the foreign-born males were one-fourteenth of the
laborers in agriculture, they were three-fourths of the tailors, more
than one-half of the cabinet makers, nearly one-half of the miners and
quarrymen, tannery workers, marble and stonecutters, more than
two-fifths of the boot and shoe-makers and textile workers, one-third of
the coopers, iron and steel workers, wood-workers and miscellaneous
laborers, one-fourth of the carpenters, painters, and plasterers, and
one-fifth of the sawmill workers.[75] The foreign-born females numbered
nearly two-fifths of the female cotton-mill operatives and tailors,
one-third of the woollen-mill operatives, one-fourth of the tobacco and
silk-mill operatives.

On the Pacific slope the Chinese and Japanese immigrants have filled the
place occupied by the southeast European in the East and the negro in
the