SUMMARY 
Summary. 
In brief, whatever may be the basic causes of migration, there is a 
close relation between the cyclical oscillations of employment and 
those of immigration and emigration, and a moderately close re- 
semblance in the respective seasonal fluctuations, with considerable 
reason to believe that this similarity, particularly in the cyclical 
oscillations, is due to a sensitiveness of migration to employment 
conditions. 
With reference to the extent to which migration is responsible 
for seasonal unemployment, the facts presented in the preceding 
chapter lead us to be cautious in stating the general tendency. 
Prior to the Great War, the distribution of net migration was 
moderately well adjusted to seasonal changes in employment in 
those industries in which the newly arrived immigrants most fre- 
quently engaged. Hence, unless the availability of immigrant labor 
accounts in part for the development of seasonal tendencies in 
production—a point which cannot be proved, or at least has not 
been proved, by our method of analysis—it is not clear that un- 
restricted immigration materially aggravated the seasonal variations 
in unemployment. 
However, after the introduction of the quota principle of restrie- 
tion, with provisions which tend to modify the seasonal movement 
in immigration, it would appear that although the flow of immigrants 
is reduced in volume its distribution by months is now less likely 
than formerly to be well adjusted to the seasonal variations in 
employment. 
As to cyclical fluctuations in unemployment, it would appear 
that, directly at least, migration is probably not a primary cause of 
such variations in unemployment; and that in some instances it is 
an ameliorative influence, in that in limited portions of depression 
periods it is withdrawing more workers than it is contributing. 
More frequently, however, it is a contributory factor to the evils 
of unemployment. This conclusion is based in part upon the fact 
that the timing of migration changes to cyclical changes in em- 
ployment is imperfect; and secondly, upon the fact that the peaks 
and troughs of industrial activity frequently coincide in the countries 
of immigration and of emigration, in which case migration cannot 
be well adjusted to conditions in both countries. Also, although a 
decline in employment is usually followed by a decline in immigra- 
tion, the incoming stream does not dry up entirely, and in those 
portions of depression periods in which there is a net immieration— 
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