Page:Immigration and the Commissioners of Emigration of the state of New York.djvu/176

148 instruments of production. An idiot costs as much, perhaps more, to raise as a lad of ordinary intelligence; but he is of no capital value. A farmer s boy, whose brain has worked intensely as he broke the sod, though costing no more in education than a dull clodhopper in the next house, finds himself at fifteen worth double the other in his market value, solely because the demand for his labor is greater. The wages or salary of men in the professions is not measured solely by the cost of their education, but by the price which their services will bring in the market; and this is determined mainly, though not entirely, by demand and supply.

"When an emigrant lands in this country, his capital value is conditioned by these two elements, cost of production and demand. There are, probably, every year among the emigrants, a few thousand of poor, ignorant, and rather weakly women who become sewing-women in the great cities. These, on Mr. Kapp's estimate, should be worth $750 each. But, owing to the crowded state of the market for such instruments of production, and to their own ignorance, and the consequent small demand for each seamstress, those women are probably of scarcely any pecuniary value to the community, and are often a burden. On the very property of the Commissioners of Emigration there will be, this winter, some thousands of able-bodied men, who not only produce nothing, but are supported by the contributions to the Emigration Fund of their more industrious fellows. These certainly are not worth $1,175 capital to the nation. Then take the very considerable number of the four million emigrants who have been entirely non-producers, being either paupers, or criminals, or diseased, or who have, as neglected children, fallen into the hands of the public authorities, or whose labor, as destitute women, has not supported themselves. When these are all subtracted from the four millions, there will be a very considerable deduction from Mr. Kapp's enthusiastic estimates of the value of this golden tide.

"We do not question, however, the general conclusion of the Commissioner's paper—the immense value of this current of labor to the production and development of the country. We would only diminish somewhat his numerical estimate of the pecuniary worth of each emigrant.