INFLUENCE OF ECONOMIC CONDITIONS 205
conclusion that cyclical fluctuations in migratory currents to the
United States are determined largely by conditions in this country;
for if conditions in Italy were the dominant factor, we should
expect the ratio of total emigration going to the United States to
show less sensitiveness to economic conditions in the United States.
OTHER COUNTRIES OF EMIGRATION
For the remaining sources of emigration to the United States, we
have not attempted to make statistical comparisons of the kind
made for the United Kingdom, Germany, and Italy; but for some
of them we have endeavored to trace the effect of exceptionally
good or exceptionally poor business or crop conditions upon the
concurrent or immediately subsequent volume of emigration. Also,
when substantial changes appear in the proportion of total immigra-
tion made up by immigrants from the stated country, we have
sought to ascertain whether special conditions existed in the coun-
try of emigration to which the change might reasonably be at-
tributed. This survey is intended to be suggestive rather than
exhaustive. The data concerning immigration which are utilized
in these comparisons appear largely in Tables 44 and 45 and the
accompanying charts (32, 33, 34, 35) in the early part of this
chapter; and the statements concerning conditions in the selected
countries are based chiefly upon Professor Wesley C. Mitchell's
treatise on Business Cycles, and upon the recently published ‘‘Busi-
ness Annals” prepared by Dr. Willard L. Thorp, of the Staff of the
National Bureau of Economic Research.
Sweden.
Immigration to the United States from Sweden reached its max-
imum with a total of almost sixty-five thousand in the year ending
June 30, 1882, but since 1893 the annual inflow of immigrants from
that country has exceeded thirty thousand only in the two years
ending June 30, 1902, and 1903, respectively. The waves of the
cyclical movement in Swedish emigration to the United States
since 1870 have coincided substantially with the alternations of
prosperity and depression in the United States, that is, with a
slump following 1873, another in the middle eighties, a minor de-
cline in the years ending June 30, 1889 and 1890, a marked decline
in the nineties beginning with the depression of 1893-1894, and
further slumps in the years ending June 30, 1904, 1908, and 1912.
