Li MIGRATION AND BUSINESS CYCLES
one-tenth or more, good crops are reported for only two of the
preceding years, fair for three, and poor for two. However, in
three instances (1894, 1897, and 1910) in which poor crops or
agricultural depression are recorded, there is no substantial increase
in the immigration ratio for the following fiscal year. So again, we
reach the conclusion that while there may be a slight tendency for
poor crops to stimulate unusual emigration from Italy, and vice
versa, it cannot be said to be a pronounced tendency.
Comparisons with Pig Iron Production in the United States.
Taking into account the general upward trend in the fraction of
total immigration represented by the number of immigrants from
Italy, the movements in this ratio which particularly challenge
explanation are the declines or low points in 1875, 1880 and 1881,
1884 and 1885, 1889, 1892, 1894 and 1895, 1900, 1904 and 1905,
1908, and 1912 (Chart 35, p. 160).
~ It will be noted that in most of these instances, a relatively low
immigration from Italy—low relative to total immigration—coin-
cides with or immediately follows more o1 less marked periods of
industrial depression, or at least of slackening activity, in the
United States. This frequent coincidence between industrial de-
pression and relatively low immigration from Italy suggests that
Italian immigration is unusually sensitive to industrial conditions in
the United States.
Emigration to Countries other than the United States.
Emigration from Italy was large long before the movement of
Italian emigrants to the United States reached a substantial volume.
In each year prior to the eighties, emigration to the United States
was less than ten per cent of the total emigration to transoceanic
countries, Europe, and the Mediterranean countries.> In the eighties
and nineties, it only occasionally amounted to over twenty per cent
of the total. But from 1900 to 1914, the proportion going to the
United States ranged from 23 to 45 per cent. As a rule, this ratio
was relatively high, as compared with the immediately preceding
and succeeding years, in prosperous years in the United States,
such as 1903 and 1906, and relatively low in the periods marked by
depression tendencies, namely, 1901, 1904, 1908, and 1911. This
fact adds some additional weight to the evidence supporting the
Based upon the statistics of emigration published by the Director General of Sta-
tistics, Italy.
Cor.