Migration and business cycles

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Monograph

Identifikator:: 1736236210

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-111544

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Jerome, Harry

Title:: Migration and business cycles

Place of publication:: New York

Publisher:: National Bureau of Economic Research

Year of publication:: 1926

Scope:: 256 S.

Digitisation:: 2020

Collection:: Economics Books

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Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Chapter V. The pre-war quarter century : 1890-1914

Collection:: Economics Books

THE PRE-WAR QUARTER CENTURY i preparatory to the construction of an index of business conditions, puts immigration with the Business Group, which includes clearings, pig iron production, pig iron prices, commodity prices, imports, building, and railroad earnings; Babson groups immigration with new building, commercial failures, and clearings: and Persons, with pig iron production, prices, ete. Departing Steerage Passengers. In examining the depression periods of 1894 and 1904, we have noted incidentally that the volume of departing steerage passengers furnishes a rough index of emigration. Also, beginning in July, 1907, official statistics of emigration are available; hence, before we turn to a comparison of employment and migratory movements in the depression of 1908, it will be of advantage to note the chief characteristics of the emigration movement and its relation to immigration. As previously noted, official statistics of emigration are lacking prior to July, 1907, but for most of the years subsequent to the Civil War there are statistics of the number of departing passengers, made available to the Government by the courtesy of the steamship companies. These data are classified as “cabin” and “other than cabin” or steerage passengers, and also by sex. The male steerage passengers probably afford the best index of the departures of alien workers from this country. The ratio of the number of departing male steerage passengers to the number of incoming male im- migrants affords an approximate measure of the response of the net migration of workers to employment opportunity in this country. This ratio is not to be taken as representing the exact numerical relation of incoming immigrants to departing emigrants, for the numerator of the ratio, male immigrants, does not include those coming for a temporary sojourn (the non-immigrant group); while the denominator, “other than cabin” passengers, is not, in all probability, a complete count of emigrant aliens, though it doubtless includes some nonemigrant aliens and some citizens of the United States. For example, in the years (fiscal) 1908 and 1909 the num- ber of departing male steerage passengers was 578,097 and the number of officially recorded male emigrant aliens was 501,892. However, it is probable that such differences are relatively constant, and hence when the ratio of departing steerage passengers to in- coming immigrants is low it is an indication that emigration is light as compared to immigration. If the ratio is high when industrial 103

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