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,