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 IV. Immigration and business cycles prior to 1890

Collection:: Economics Books

MIGRATION AND BUSINESS CYCLES For example, in the reports of the U. S. Industrial Commission, the conclusion is reached, after a comparison of the course of whole- sale prices and immigration, ‘that there is a striking coincidence, since the year 1868, between business conditions and the volume of immigration” so that ‘it may be said that immigration since the Civil War is a reflection of industrial conditions.” However, that the adjustment of migration to employment con- ditions is not perfect is suggested by J. W. Jenks and W. Jett Lauck in their analysis of the immigrant as a dynamic factor in industry. “The statement,” they say, “that the influx and the outgo of foreign-born workmen automatically adjusts itself to activity or stagnation in mining and manufacturing is only partly true.”’s In the subsequent pages we shall examine the evidence concerning migration and industrial conditions in an effort to determine the accuracy of the a priori reasoning and of the opinions just cited. Does the volume of migration ebb and flow with industry? Do some elements in immigration show the readier response? Is this response imperfect? First let us turn our attention to the earlier period for which the evidence is less detailed and the picture consequently less clear-cut. The Periods Selected. For convenience of analysis the years for which immigration data are available for the United States (1820 to date) are divided in this study into four main periods—namely, the seventy years from 1820 to 1889, inclusive; the pre-war quarter century, 1890 to 1914; the war period, 1914 to 1918; and the post-war years, 1919 to 1923. This division, although somewhat arbitrary, finds justification partly in essential differences in the character of migration and em- ployment movements in the several periods, and partly in variations in the adequacy of the available statistical data. However, in the following analysis there has been no rigid ad- herence to the chronological boundaries just mentioned. These somewhat arbitrary limits have been ignored whenever it has ap- peared that the objects of our inquiry would be furthered by ex- tending the analysis of a particular phase beyond the termination of the period in which the analysis begins. 3United States Industrial Commission, Reporis, Vol. XV, Immigration, p. 305. 4J. W. Jenks and W. Jett Lauck, The Immigration Problem, third edition, p. 208. 7

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