MIGRATION AND BUSINESS CYCLES 
An exception must be made of instances of unusual disaster in 
the home country. In severe famine or political oppression, even 
a poor chance in a new environment may appear as a relative better- 
ment. As a result of the severe potato famines in Ireland in the late 
forties of the last century, great numbers of the Irish population 
sought escape to the newer countries, even though the conditions of 
transportation were wretched and during the passage many perished 
in fever-infested ships. Likewise, when hundreds of thousands of 
Armenians were driven from their homes after the collapse of the 
Greek campaign in 1920, they would doubtless have gladly em- 
barked for America in large numbers had not restrictions upon 
immigration to the United States been imposed in 1921. 
But we are concerned here, not so much with exceptional national 
calamities, as with the ever-recurring succession of prosperity and 
depression which appears to be characteristic of the modern indus- 
trial organization. In this connection, the principal questions to 
be considered are: to what extent are cycles in economic conditions 
internationally concurrent, and are they of substantially equal 
violence; and to what extent do fluctuations in the flow of popula- 
tion from countries of emigration agree? Is there a substantial 
uniformity in the cyclical movements of emigration or does the 
peak of emigration from one country coincide with the trough of 
emigration from another? In the following paragraphs we first 
turn our attention to this latter question. 
COMPARISON OF CYCLICAL FLUCTUATIONS IN THE PRIN- 
CIPAL STREAMS OF IMMIGRATION TO THE 
UNITED STATES AND OF EMIGRATION 
THEREFROM 
Significance of Similarities. 
Are the year-to-year changes in the volume of immigration to 
the United States substantially the same for all countries? Or is 
the change in total immigration merely the non-homogeneous 
composite of many more or less divergent tendencies causing in- 
creases in the emigration from some countries and decreases in that 
from others, with no clearly predominating tendency? Such a direct 
comparison of the fluctuations in the immigration to the United 
States from the leading emigrant countries is a logical first step 
in determining the relative influence of economic conditions in 
those countries. If the flow of immigration from all countries 
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