CHAPTER V 
THE PRE-WAR QUARTER CENTURY: 1890-1914 
Characteristics of the Period. 
The twenty-five years from 1890 to the outbreak of the World 
War include a most fascinating period of American industrial history, 
and one which in many ways affords the richest field for study of 
the relations of migration to industrial activity. The decade of 
the eighties witnessed the virtual passing of the frontier with an 
abundant area of free and fertile land available for the homesteader. 
While railroad construction activities did not in the following decades 
reach the magnitude which they had attained in the eighties, and 
though the first years of the nineties were characterized by prolonged 
depression and business uncertainty, toward the end of the decade 
there began a sharp recovery in industrial activity, accompanied 
by an equally remarkable increase in the volume of immigration, 
which reached its peak in the calendar year 1913 with a recorded 
total of 1,387,318 immigrant aliens and 229,585 nonimmigrant 
aliens. It will be remembered, also, that it is in the nineties that 
the “old” immigration from northern and western Europe ceased 
to be the predominating element in the immigrant stream, yielding 
in numbers to the rising tide of immigrants from southern and 
eastern Europe. 
Data Available for Quantitative Analysis. 
This quarter century also affords much more adequate data for 
the purposes of our study than are available for the earlier decades. 
While the years during and following the Great War have witnessed 
a remarkable development in the variety and adequacy of statistics 
of production and employment, even in the preceding quarter cen- 
tury to which we now wish to turn our attention we find at hand 
statistics which facilitate the close study of cyclical movements in 
industry. Monthly estimates of pig iron production, usually con- 
sidered a good index of industrial activity, are available in some form 
throughout the entire period; and, as noted in a previous chapter, it 
has been possible to weld together a monthly index of factory em- 
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