5 8 8 8 3 18 18 18 18 18 8 8 8 : JULY 1907 DIAGRAM III. EMIGRATION NET IMMIGRATION III. Monthly immigration and emigration, from July, 1907, to May, 1909. It will be observed that the tide of immigration was rising until 1907, with a slight set-back during the Presidential year 1904. During the industrial crisis of 1908 immigration dropped at once nearly a million, compared with the highwater mark of the previous year, while emigration from the United States was about twice the number of 1906. The result was a net loss of nearly a quarter of a million through emigration. In 1909, with returning business confidence immigration increased and emigration receded to its normal level of the years 1903-1906. The same tendencies appear still more clearly if the returns are compared by months, as in Table 9, and Diagram III.2 ... ... 1 An examination of the Italian statistics of emigration to the United States and the return movement from the United States leads the Immigration Commission to the conclusion "that as a rule the causes which retard emigration also accelerate the exodus from the United States. . . The effect of financial and industrial depressions in the United States is clearly apparent. . . . The most conspicuous instance occurred in the year 1894, following the industrial depression of that period. In that year the outward movement from Italy decreased and the inward movement increased to such an extent that the number returning was 848 to every 1000 emigrating. The same tendency was shown again in 1904, immediately following the financial depression of the preceding year."-Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 4 (in press). Annual Reports of the Commissioner-General of Immigration, 1908, p. 228, and 1910, p. 14. The monthly figures are for immigrant and emigrant aliens, as defined in the statistics of the Bureau of Immigration. These two classes are not identical with third-class passengers arriving From July 1, to October 31, 1907, immigration and emigration went on normally. The latter part of October witnessed the outbreak of the crisis, and the next month emigration doubled. Immigration still remained normal, inasmuch as those who arrived here in November had left their homes before the crisis. But from December immigration dropped to one third of the number of arrivals in November. During the next nine months emigration exceeded immigration by 14,000 persons monthly. From September 1, 1908, the situation began to improve, and the number of immigrants went up again, while departures went down. In the spring of the next year immigration and emigration resumed their normal relation. It is evident that the immigration movement promptly responds to the business situation in the United States. The question arises: How does immigration adjust itself to business conditions in America? The method by which this adjustment is effected is thus described by the Immigration Commission: It is entirely safe to assert that letters from persons who have emigrated to friends at home have be n the immediate cause of by far the greater part of the remarkable movement from Southern and Eastern Europe to the United States during the past twenty-five years. There is hardly a village or community in Southern Italy and Sicily that has not contributed a portion of its population to swell the tide of emigration to the United States, and the same is true of large areas of Austria, Hungary, Greece, Turkey, and the Balkan States. . . It was frequently stated to members of the Commission that letters from persons who had emigrated to America were passed from hand to hand until most of the emigrants' friends and neighbors were acquainted with the contents. In periods of industrial activity, as a rule, the letters so circulated contain optimistic references to wages and opportunities for employment in the United States. . . . The reverse is true during seasons of industrial depression in the United States. At such times intending emigrants are quickly informed by their friends in the United and departing. Those aliens who go to Europe with the expectation of returning may never come again, yet they are not included among "emigrant aliens." As a result, the net emigration is lower in this than in the preceding table. ... States relative to conditions of employment, and a great falling off in the tide of emigration is the immediate result. . . . Emigrants as a rule are practically assured that employment awaits them in America before they leave their homes for ports of embarkation. . . . In fact it may be said that immigrants, or at least newly-arrived immigrants, are substantially the agencies which keep the American labor market supplied with unskilled laborers from Europe. . . . As a rule, each immigrant simply informs his nearest friends that employment can be had and advises them to come. It is these personal appeals which, more than all other agencies, promote and regulate the tide of European emigration to America.1 These conclusions of the Immigration Commission are corroborated by Table 10. It appears that most of the immigrants come to join relatives, and that only a small proportion of those who land here have neither relatives nor friends to meet them on arrival. This percentage is much smaller for the new immigration than for the old, viz., 3 per cent for the former as against 10.6 per cent for the latter. 3 There is a remarkable coincidence of the percentage ratios for the fiscal years ending June 30, 1908 and 1909. I Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. I, pp. 187-189. 2 Annual Reports of the Commissioner-General of Immigration, 1908, p. 15; 1909, p. 23; 1910, p. 21. 3 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 4, Table 38. The figures are for 1908 and 1909. Both were partly affected by the crisis. On the other hand, the year 1910 shows an addition of 274,000, i. e. 47 per cent, to the number of immigrants coming to join their relatives, while the number of persons who came in 1908-1910 to join friends, and the number of those who seemingly had neither relatives nor friends in the United States, exhibit only slight fluctuations from year to year. This means that, as soon as conditions improved, the first thought of the older immigrants was of their kin whom they had left behind; friends came next. I The correctness of this interpretation is supported by Table II, which shows the fluctuations in the number of immigrants whose passage was paid by their American relatives, compared with the number of dependents admitted-in official terminology, "no occupation (including women and children) "— and also the fluctuations in the number of persons whose passage was paid by persons "other than self or relative," i. e. by friends. The fiscal year ending June 30, 1908, included four prosperous months from July to October, 1907. Moreover, many of those who reached the United States later in the year had been provided with steamship tickets before the crisis. Their American relatives and friends must have been saving the money with which their passage was paid, for some months previous to their landing. Steamship tickets are quite commonly sold on small weekly payments. The full effect of the crisis therefore manifested itself during the next fiscal year (beginning July 1, 1908), when the number of immigrants who arrived on tickets prepaid by their American relatives dropped twenty per cent. In 1910 their number again came up to the level of 1908. In 1908 the number of such immigrants exceeded by 32,000 the number of dependents coming to join their relatives who had preceded them. Evidently some of the resident aliens had raised the means to send for their brothers, sisters, and Report of the Commissioner-General of Immigration, 1908, pp. 15, 35; 1909, pp. 23, 46; 1910, pp. 21, 57. |