MIGRATION AND BUSINESS CYCLES 
ployment in one or more states which are notable immigrant centers. 
Monthly statistics of immigration, classified by country of origin 
beginning in July, 1888, and by sex from July, 1892, are available; 
and toward the end of the pre-war period the monthly immigration 
statistics become more and more detailed, so that for the last five or 
six years of the period they are available by race, country of origin, 
occupation, and other bases of classification. Also, beginning in 
July, 1907, monthly statistics of emigration were published, so that 
it becomes possible thereafter to give a relatively complete picture 
of the net movement of migration. 
With its relative abundance of immigration statistics, accom- 
panied by reasonably adequate measures of industrial activity 
and with little in the way of war or legal restriction to interfere 
with the free interplay’ of industrial forces and immigration, the 
quarter century from 1890 to 1914 affords an exceptional oppor- 
tunity for the analysis of these phenomena. 
Method of Analysis. 
The approach in this chapter is, first, by comparisons over the 
entire quarter century between the cyclical fluctuations in the 
monthly statistics of male immigration on the one hand and pig 
iron production and factory employment on the other. Then, to 
facilitate the study of certain significant details which are apt to be 
unduly subordinated in comparisons covering as long a period as a 
quarter century, and particularly to make possible the satisfactory 
analysis of emigration series which are not available prior to July, 
1907, the entire period from 1890 to 1914 has been broken up into 
shorter segments, each of which includes at least one major or 
minor industrial depression and one or two years of the preceding 
period of prosperity and of the succeeding period of recovery. 
These selected depression periods are: the severe depression of 1894, 
the depression of 1904, the major depression of 1908, the minor 
depression of 1911, and the decline beginning in 1913. 
This concentration upon short periods facilitates the focusing of 
attention upon certain details in the reaction of migration to em- 
ployment which are apt to be overlooked in the more inclusive 
picture. In the last three of these short periods we introduce com- 
parisons with emigration and with the net results of immigration 
and emigration. The analysis, however, of the movement of various 
separate elements in the immigrant current, such as studies by 
race or occupation, is largely postponed to a subsequent chapter. 
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