Migration and business cycles

Bibliographic data

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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Chapter

Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Chapter II. Significant features of migration

Collection:: Economics Books

SIGNIFICANT FEATURES OF MIGRATION 45 land, as has been their custom for decades in this and other countries to which they have emigrated. This practice has given rise to the statement that the Italian comes and goes as he is wanted. The accuracy of this statement we shall consider more at length in later pages. We shall find it interesting, in subsequent analysis, to note whether this relatively temporary nature of the immigration of certain races is accompanied by an appreciably greater susceptibility to cyclical influences. We have seen that for every ten South Ital- ians arriving in the United States approximately six of that race depart as emigrants. Is their departure closely correlated with the business cycle? Occupations of Immigrants. The great bulk of immigrants have been engaged in their native countries in relatively unskilled occupations, as agricultural or common laborers, and in this country enter, on the whole, occupa- tions of the unskilled or semi-skilled grade. In many instances entrance in this country into the ranks of common labor is not necessarily due to incapacity for more skilled occupations, but in part to the inability or failure of the immigrant to capitalize his past experience. Thousands of former farmers and agricultural workers find their way into factory, mine, or construction camp; and many skilled handicraftsmen, handicapped by differences in language and different methods of production, find an inadequate market for their specialized skill and drift into the ranks of the unskilled or at most semi-skilled. The above conclusions rest upon a comparison of the information obtained by the U. S. Bureau of Immigration concerning the occu- pations of immigrants prior to their entry and the occupations of emigrants while in this country, and also upon collateral evidence in the decennial Census of Occupations, the reports of the Immigra- tion Commission in 1910, and various fragmentary studies. This evidence, though not complete, is reasonably conclusive as to the major tendencies. As shown by the 1910 and 1920 Census of Occupations, between forty and fifty per cent of the foreign born workers enter mechanical and manufacturing pursuits; while less than fifteen per cent are found in the agricultural pursuits (Table 6). The tendency for the foreign born to engage in the unskilled labor of certain industries is evidenced by the data in Table 7. Of all employed in agriculture,

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