MIGRATION AND BUSINESS CYCLES 
survey of the pertinent information concerning industrial conditions 
and particularly concerning employment. The hurried reader who 
is interested primarily in conclusions and little in method may find 
it advantageous to skip this chapter on employment indices (Chapter 
ITI) and proceed directly to the comparisons between industrial 
conditions and migratory movements. 
With these preliminary pictures of the nature of the immigrant 
stream and of employment conditions before us, we proceed, in 
Chapters IV to VI, inclusive, first to a survey in broad outline of 
the cyclical movement in migration, then to a more detailed analysis 
of the movements of migration, particularly in the decades since 
1890, there being for this period, especially during the years im- 
mediately preceding the Great War, a relative abundance of detailed 
monthly data concerning migration. 
In Chapter VII attention is turned to differences in the cyclical 
movements of selected elements in migration, in order to ascertain 
the relative extent to which employment conditions affect the move- 
ment of immigrants as compared with nonimmigrants, of males as 
compared with females, or of workers as compared with those im- 
migrants having no occupation. 
The question naturally arises as to whether the economic con- 
ditions which influence migration to the United States are primarily 
those of the country of immigration or whether the alternations of 
prosperity and depression in the country of emigration may not 
exercise an equally strong influence on the time and volume of 
migration. Hence Chapter VIII is devoted to a consideration of 
peculiarities in the fluctuations of immigration from leading coun- 
tries and to changes in economic conditions in those countries, as 
bearing on the relative power of the “push” or the “pull” in determ- 
ining changes in the volume of migration. 
While the cyclical aspects of migration are of most significance for 
the purposes of this study, it is also pertinent to inquire concerning 
the degree to which the seasonal distribution of migration har- 
monizes with the seasonal distribution of employment in those 
industries in which large numbers of immigrants are employed. 
Chapter IX is devoted to such a survey. 
In the concluding chapter, we bring together the significant 
relations and conclusions developed in the earlier chapters. 
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