: MIGRATION AND BUSINESS CYCLES
and high emigration, or depression and low emigration.» Further-
more, inasmuch as depression in the United Kingdom is ordinarily
accompanied or preceded by depression in the United States, the
assignment of such a two-year lag to the influence of British economic
conditions upon British emigration would involve the rather im-
plausible assumption that poor employmenticonditions in the United
States stimulate emigration from the United Kingdom or that they
act much more promptly upon British emigration than do conditions
in the United Kingdom.
Quarterly Cycles of Employment in the United Kingdom and the
United States.
The discussion in the preceding pages is based upon annual data.
Quarterly statistics afford the basis for attention to some details
which are not ascertainable from annual statistics. For some
twenty-five years prior to the Great War, there are available quar-
terly or monthly statistics of immigration from Great Britain and
Ireland to the United States, of unemployment among trade union
members in the United Kingdom, and estimates of factory employ-
ment in the United States, the preparation of which is explained
in Chapter III. For convenience in discussion, the signs of the
unemployment series were reversed in plotting and the resulting
curve in Chart 42 may be described as an “employment curve.”
Also, the curve for immigration to the United States from the
United Kingdom will be designated herein as the ‘‘emigration curve.”
9The Pearsonian coefficients of correlation between the cycles of emigration and in-
dustrial conditions afford some evidence in support of the conclusions reached by
graphical analysis. They are: British emigration to the United States with British
industrial composite, concurrent items, +.421 +.08; with emigration lagging one
year, +.06 + .10; with emigration lagging two years, —.26 = .08; British emigration
with the United States industrial composite, concurrent items, + .56 + .07; emigration
lagging one year, +.37 +.09; two years, +.03 * .10.
Dorothy S. Thomas, in Social Aspects of the Business Cycle, pp. 148-151, finds that
for the period from 1862-1913 the coeficient of correlation between her index of British
business cycles and total emigration from the United Kingdom ‘reaches a maximum of
+ .48 with synchronous items. For the first half of the period, 1862-91, the correlation
is +.63 for synchronous items; but for the second half, 1892-1913, the positive coeffi-
cients are not significant and a maximum negative correlation of —.40 occurs with a
lag of two years.” This suggests the possibility that, in the second half of the period,
conditions in Great Britain, allowing for a lag of two years, are the major factors de-
termining fluctuations in emigration from the United Kingdom. However, upon ex-
amination of the relation between emigration from the United Kingdom to the United
States and business conditions in the United States, she finds that even “for the second
half of the period, 1892-1913, the maximum 4.52 was again for synchronous items,”
and hence slightly greater than the maximum correlation with British conditions (—.40,
with a lag of two years assigned to emigration). Thus, using somewhat different data
and Jhstjinas of computation from those used by us, she reaches substantially similar
conclusions.
1892
