LOOSE LABOR MARKETS DRIVE DOWN WAGES

Numbers USA ^ | Jan. 2011 | Roy Beck

[smokingfrog]

Rising immigration from the 1820s to the Civil War drove down wages for free black Americans and immigrants alike.

Jeffrey Williamson and Peter Lindert's macroeconomic history shows that between 1816 and 1856, the American Northeast was transformed from the "Jeffersonian ideal" to a society more typical of developing economies with marked income inequality and very low wages for laborers.

As badly as new immigrants often were treated by established Americans, even worse treatment was meted out to black Americans by the immigrants. Organizing themselves into trade unions, immigrant laborers helped set the terms of hiring at many urban workplaces. Not only would they not allow black workers into their unions, but they usually would refuse to work alongside them if they were hired. Many firms decided not to hire black workers, or to fire the ones already on the site, because of that refusal on the part of the more numerous immigrant workers.

By the 1850s, for example, free black workers had been driven out of most jobs on the New York City waterfront by the Irish immigrants who had gained control over the trades.

Denied work through organized labor channels, black workers increasingly had to resort to gaining jobs by serving as strikebreakers -- an unsavory role they had to endure for another century, and one that engendered further hatred from the immigrant workers.

Blacks also were restricted in their social life. A gang culture was much in control, with each immigrant group fighting for its own culture, and to determine who could live near them, sell in their neighborhoods, and socialize in their pubs.

[smokingfrog]

The point here is not to demonize the immigrants in the big migrations of the 1830-1860 period but to illustrate what happens when a government does not regulate the flow according to the needs of its existing workers. Most Americans are not aware of the thriving free Black communities that had begun to exist in northern cities long before the Civil War led to the outlawing of slavery. If not for mass immigration, those Black communities would have flourished far more and created much better models for economic development for the slaves freed after the war. But mass immigration retarded and sometimes destroyed those tenuous footholds on prosperity and led to a very different history.

[smokingfrog]

Seems like nothing much has changed in 150+ years.

[dp0622]

But by that logic then wouldn’t Italians have driven irish into utter and chronic poverty as the blacks were? And might all western Europeans soon be drowned by the Asians and Eastern Europeans? Just wondering.
The flaw in the thinking is also the Constant need of fast food franchises and car services for workers. Not the best jobs, but if you live 2 or 3 to a house don’t have kids before late 20’s, go to school one at a time while working, i bet you could find a pretty good jbuild a pretty good life
It’s not easy. It never was

[JRandomFreeper]

More government is the problem, not the solution.

/johnny

[SpaceBar]

The current tsunami of illegal aliens isn’t even in the same catagory as your great-grandfather’s immigrants. Previous waves have assimilated, bringing the best of their cultures and becoming productive Americans. Today’s ‘immigrants’ are third world dregs that spit on our flag, demand free everything, and tell us to be more like the sewer they fled.

[Amendment10]

”.. but to illustrate what happens when a government does not regulate the flow according to the needs of its existing workers."

The article and your comment are interesting. My reservation is this. Politically correct interpretations of the Constitution’s Uniform Rule of Naturalization Clause (1.8.4) aside, interpretations used to justify federal immigration laws, the states have actually never delegated to the feds, expressly via the Constitution, the specific power to regulate immigration.

So intrastate labor problems related to immigration were the states' problem, imo, not the business of the feds. But why did the states seemingly not do anything about this problem?

[vpintheak]

I honestly think the biggest difference is the welfare state. It has killed families, motivation, pride, and self-respect.

[TBP]

Isn’t that the point?

[Lurker]

Make that 5,000 and you’re on the mark.

[central_va]

We’ve flooded the USA, it is time to turn the spigot off. Completely for 20 years.

[smokingfrog]

There wasn’t a welfare state (”safety net”)back then. Many Irish immigrants, for example, came here simply as a matter of survival due to the potato famine. People like that will take any job they can get and be thankful just to be alive.

[Reno89519]

Personally, I have never understood why African-Americans have stood by while Democrats have opened the borders and buried us in illegal aliens that take jobs more often filled by African-Americans than any other group. The result is incredibly high and near permanent unemployment. Better to stay on welfare than compete with the low wages of illegal aliens.

[trebb]

And that is why, just as sharks still prowl the sea lanes that used to carry slaves, looking for a tasty snack to be thrown overboard, Blacks still cannot get a job......

Say what you mean - some think Cruz is a betrayer and it seems that you may have found a creative way to say it without actually saying it.

If I'm off-mark, I apologize - just tired of those who seem to hate having a chance at a meaningful victory and who will go out of their way to make excuses (based on faulty information) as to why we shouldn't have a conservative warrior for our next president.