MIGRATION AND BUSINESS CYCLES
changes in the level of prices, there is a relative labor shortage when
employers are unable to hire laborers at wages which have been
customary; and likewise a labor surplus when workmen, able and
willing, are unable to find employment at what has been the pre-
vailing wage.
This monograph is devoted primarily to consideration of these
short-period aspects of the relation of migration to labor supply, in
an effort to determine whether migration tends to intensify or to
minimize the intensity of the business cycle and particularly whether
that phase of the business cycle most directly and obviously inimical
to human welfare—the unemployment phase—is rendered more or
less severe in its effects because of migratory movements.
The Questions for Solution.
The objects of our inquiry may be conveniently summarized in
the following questions to which answers are sought in the analysis
set forth in the subsequent chapters:
1. To what extent do cyclical and seasonal fluctuations in
migration correspond, in time and degree, with fluctuations
in industrial activity, particularly as measured by employ-
ment or unemployment?
: What noteworthy variations in cyclical and seasonal fluctua-
tions appear when migrants are classified by sex, prior oc-
cupation, race, or country of origin?
» What is the relative influence of the “push” or the “pull”
upon fluctuations in migration; that is, are such fluctuations
primarily determined by changes in the country of emigration
or in the country of immigration?
What is the economic significance of the ascertained ten-
dencies?
The Conflicting Interpretations.
A scrutiny of the scientific and popular literature of immigration
reveals diverse interpretations of the effect of migration upon the
fluctuations in employment which may, for the sake of brevity, be
designated as the “safety-valve’”’ and the “maladjustment” theories
of migration.
Those who advance the safety-valve theory look optimistically
upon the effect of immigration and urge that the coming and going
of the alien immigrant and the alien emigrant are so timed that
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