THE DANGER OF UNSKILL 179 
process of our early immigration brought to us. Only men and women 
of such qualities could and would face the long and dreary sea voyage 
and brave the peril of the unknown new world. Only the man of hope, 
of ambition, poor in the wealth of the world, but rich in determination, 
force and foresight, was suited for such migration. So too, it often 
was the leader of the advance movement of civilization in Europe who, 
because of political oppression, led a vanguard of the best blood of his 
country to share the bounties of nature in America. 
But the day in which we can rely for prosperity upon nature’s 
bounty is past. Her resources have been explored and divided up. 
And while new resources continue to be brought to light, they are the 
possession of the few, and offer little of hope to the hungry immigrant 
from the old world. 
We can not, therefore, depend exclusively upon nature and the raw 
force and determination of our people to maintain or continue the old- 
time progress and high position of America. More and more our 
dependence must be placed upon ourselves rather than upon nature 
alone, and in particular upon a character acquired through training. 
The new industrial life, it has been said, demands skill. If America 
is to advance in industry, she must face this demand; her people must 
be trained and trained industrially. 
If such is a true statement of the general character of the productive 
process of to-day, it is pertinent to inquire if the two streams of 
humanity, which furnish the labor necessary to production, are fitted 
to the more specialized demands of this process. Is our labor skilled? 
And what are its means of attaining skill? 
Let us consider first the stream of immigration. The report of the 
commissioner general of immigration for 1907 shows that out of the 
total number of 1,285,000 coming to this country from other parts of 
the world in the year 1906, about eighty-three per cent. were without skill 
requisite to enter a skilled industry. If we eliminate from this number 
the women, children, aged and such other persons as are described as 
having no occupation at all, there remains fifty-nine per cent. of the 
total who are of industrial age and sex and yet are distinctly unskilled 
laborers. A large number, too, of those excluded are women who will 
enter unskilled trades, and many are children who will begin to earn at 
the earliest possible time in unskilled employments. 
The fact that such a large proportion of the immigrant population 
is unskilled is inevitable. It is necessary only to recall that the great 
influx of the present and recent past is from central and southern 
Europe, from regions in which the opportunity to acquire skill is com- 
paratively slight, and where the call for skill is not yet dominant. 
If it be agreed, then, that the stream of immigration is pouring a 
mass of unskilled labor into our country, consider what is the case in 
