nning
of hostilities was the smallest in fifty years. The following is a
statement taken from reports of the Bureau of Foreign Immigration.

IMMIGRATION SINCE 1913

Year Number
1913 1,197,892
1914 1,218,480
1915 326,700
1916 298,826
1917 295,403

The decrease of over 900,000 immigrants, on whom the industries of the
North depended, caused a grave situation. It must be remembered also
that of the 295,403 arrivals in 1917, there were included 32,346
English, 24,405 French and 13,350 Scotch who furnish but a small quota
of the laboring classes. There were also 16,438 Mexicans who came
over the border, and who, for the most part, live and work in the
Southwest. The type of immigration which kept prime the labor market
of the North and Northwest came in through Ellis Island. Of these, Mr.
Frederick C. Howe, Commissioner of Immigration, said that "only enough
have come to balance those who have left." He adds further that "As
a result, there has been a great shortage of labor in many of our
industrial sections that may last as long as the war."

With the establishment of new industries to meet the needs of the war,
the erection of munitions plants for the manufacture of war materials
and the enlargement of already existing industries to meet the
abnormally large demand for materials here and in Europe, there came
a shifting in the existing labor supply in the North. There was a rush
to the higher paid positions in the munitions plants. This, together
with the advancement of the white men to higher positions nearly
depleted the ranks of common labor. The companies employing foreign
labor for railroad construction work and in the steel mills of
Pennsylvania, the tobacco fields of Connecticut, the packing houses,
foundries and automobile plants of the Northwest, found it imperative
to seek for labor in home fields. The Department of Labor, in the
effort to relieve this shortage, through its employment service,
at first assisted the migration northward. It later withdrew its
assistance when its attention was called to the growing magnitude of
the movement and its possible effect on the South.

Deserted by the Department of Labor, certain northern employers
undertook to translate their desires into action in 1915, when the
anxieties of the New England tobacco planters were felt in the New
York labor market. These planters at first rushed to New York and
promiscuously gathered up 200 girls of the worst