of southern and eastern Europeans to the overpopulation and poverty of those areas compared to the United States. In the history of our own country each of the periodic panics of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries generated a westward wave of impoverished victims of our own economic maladjustments. The urban industrialization of the United States demanded a type of migration quite different from that by which the country was settled and developed. The insatiable demand of the industrial cities for more and more labor coincided with the emergence of population surpluses in agricultural areas. Especially after the stream of immigrants from Europe was reduced to a mere trickle, the expanding cities could be supplied only by migrants from the countryside. This migration was stimulated during the World War and continued through the 1920's. The last depression reduced the volume of these movements and in one year actually reversed their direction; but with the signs of returning prosperity the migration was resumed.

HISTORICAL IMPORTANCE OF MIGRATION

The fact is that migrations in the history of this country have been not only a means of relieving the pressure of economic distress and surplus population, but also a means of providing population, which is to say labor, where and when it was needed. As pointed out in Migration and Economic Opportunity, the fact that migration has proved an imperfect means of adjustment of population to economic opportunity should not obscure its importance or its effectiveness. The dramatic and pathetic spectacle of thousands of Americans in flight from abject poverty toward an unknown and unattainable security, such as occurs during a depression, confuses the social implications of migration and beclouds its economic function,

It remains true that migration, as a form of social and economic mobility, has provided a fluidity which has made this a country of singular democratic opportunities. People on the move can scarcely be socially or economically caste bound. The migration of rural population to an urban scene involves not only a change of residence but more frequently than not a change of occupation and of social status. It is this many-sided fluidity that has made possible the adjustment of the American people to their rapidly changing social and economic environment.

MIGRATION AND THE DEFENSE PROGRAM

II. A new wave of migration resulting from the national-defense program has been stimulated by employment opportunities especially in aircraft and shipbuilding, in heavy-goods industry, and in large-scale-construction projects. Some indication of the extent of the expansion is given in the Bureau of Labor Statistics indexes of factory employment which show that from March 1940 through March 1941 employment increased by 81 percent in the shipbuilding industry, by 133 percent in the aircraft industry, by 30 percent in machineproduction industries (excluding transporation equipment), and by 23 percent in iron and steel production.

In the early months of the defense program, contracts to the amount of many billions were awarded to plants in established industrial areas. It is estimated that 85 percent of direct contracts went to 12 States containing 48 percent of the population. Because of the importance of the contracts affecting manufacturing in the heavy-goods industries, economic revival has been most marked in thickly populated urban areas, which have long been centers of capital-goods production. In addition, shipbuilding and aircraft contracts have, for the most part, been awarded to urban industrial centers along the seaccasts.

Because the impact of these early contracts has recently begun to strain the facilities and labor resources in areas of industrial concentration, attempts are now being made to locate new plants in areas where reserves of labor have been largely untapped. For example, the first orders for aircraft went to the established California companies; the new plants, authorized more recently, have been located in Mississippi Valley cities close to predominantly agricultural areas. Similarly, while contracts for naval expansion were awarded to shipbuilding centers like Boston, Newport News, and Seattle, attempts have been made to locate some of the shipyards for the merchant shipbuilding program in the relatively unexploited ports of the Gulf.

In addition to the important expansion of industry in already well-developed cities, the national-defense program has led to large-scale construction in rural areas. The building of Army cantonments has been concentrated in the rural sections of the Southern States with many important projects scattered in the Middle and Far West. Powder and shell-loading plants are being built in small towns and rural areas remote from the centers of industry.

The depression left most urban communities well stocked with a diversified labor supply. It was only in certain of the aircraft centers and in the rural communities at the site of construction projects that migration of labor was needed in order to supply essential workers. Nevertheless, the opening up of economic opportunities has led to migration far beyond the requirements of industry, and has brought hundreds of thousands of workers to most of the important centers of defense activity. Large numbers of the unemployed have been eager to flock to places where wages were rumored to be high and jobs abundant. The House Committee on the Interstate Migration of Destitute Citizens has estimated that migration in connection with the defense program has developed in significant proportions during the last few months, and that in general the destinations of this migration are the industrial areas which received the influxes of workers during the World War, and in which important contracts have now been awarded.

FACTORS CONTRIBUTING TO DEFENSE MIGRATION

The level of wages, as well as the volume of employment, plays an important part in determining the areas which are to be the focal points of migration. Practically all States have reported to the Bureau of Employment Security a large-scale movement of workers from lower- to higher-wage areas. Workers are attracted from agricultural to industrial employment; workers in small communities migrate to large communities where wages are higher; workers from low-wage States are attracted to States where increased production provides an opportunity to obtain a "better" job.

In general, migrant workers at the present time fall into two major categories. In the first place, there are those who migrate an response to definitely assured job opportunities. Skilled workers in the machine industries and metal trades have been recruited by employers over wide areas, and skilled, semiskilled, or unskilled construction workers have frequently come great distances to work on vast defense construction projects. The second and probably the larger group of migrants consists of those workers attracted by the hope but no definite prospect of employment, who move in a haphazard and unorganized way. This group consists chiefly of semiskilled or unskilled laborers and includes a large number of agricultural workers seeking industrial employment and young people without experience of any kind.

Labor market reports and the related material received by the Bureau of Employment Security from State employment security agencies from September 1940 through March 1941 give detailed information about these two types of migration and the geographic areas most affected.

OCCUPATIONS OF MIGRANTS

Construction workers form a majority of the skilled workers involved in recent mass migration movements. There has been an out-migration of construction workers from heavily populated industrial areas to rural construction projects. New York State estimates a migration of 22,000 such workers to Army construction projects in recent months. The South Atlantic States appear to have been more affected than any other region by the influx of construction workers. There have also been significant mass migrations to other construction projects in the Middle West and Pacific coast areas, and some migration of carpenters and other construction workers to coastal shipbuilding centers. Many construction workers migrate from one project to another, setting up only tempoary residence at the various points. They appear to be a highly mobile group and move over an extensive territory. Maryland reports an influx of about 5,000 construction workers as a result of construction projects in that area. Five thousand skilled construction' workers are said to have migrated from West Virginia to the site of a huge explosives plant at Radford, Va. California estimates that thousands of construction workers have come from the Southwestern region and from construction projects in other Western States

to Army projects in California. Several States report that a majority of the construction workers do not bring their families with them and are ready to pull up stakes and leave town immediately after the completion of the work. Skilled workers in nonconstruction trades, for example, machinists, metal workers, and aircraft workers, have been drawn to centers with expanding demand for highly equipped technicians. California reports that skilled workers from the eastern seaboard and Detroit areas have been recruited for work in Pacific coast aircraft factories and other defense industries. In addition, thousands of semiskilled workers and graduates of national defense vocational training courses have migrated to California and have obtained employment in large numbers. Eighty thousand workers are estimated to have entered California since August 1940, most of them in skilled or semiskilled occupations. Skilled and semiskilled workers have also been migrating to such centers as Detroit, Louisville, and the industrial cities of Connecticut.

In many States, centers of defense activity have attracted agricultural workers from the surrounding rural areas. Unskilled laborers have been employed in great numbers on construction projects in rural areas as "hammer and saw men," supplementing the skilled labor imported from outside the area. In New England and the Southern States, many agricultural workers have recently secured employment in factory towns.

MIGRANTS WITHOUT JOBS

However, a very considerable number of migrants from rural or depressed areas have failed to find work in defense industries and in many cases have become stranded without resources. Ohio reports that in January 1941 over 7,000 unskilled workers migrated from nearby Kentucky and Tennessee to sites of major defense projects and large industries, and that many of these migrants have remained unemployed. Connecticut reports that migratory laborers are coming into the State "to a large and alarming extent," and that the great majority of these workers "do not have much to offer in the way of skill." In California only a fraction of the thousands of agricultural workers who have moved toward areas of defense production have found work. Large influxes of unskilled rural workers in excess of those needed for construction work have been observed in such areas as Camp Blanding, Fla.; Fort Bragg, N. C.; Fort Meade, Md.; Camp Beauregard, La. ; Fort Jackson, S. C.; and Fort Ethan Allen, Vt. The Work Projects Administration reports substantial defense migration from at least 13 States in which the primary industry is agriculture.

Another indication of the widespread trend of rural to urban migration is the concern expressed by many States in recent months over actual or prospective shortages of farm workers.

AREAS AFFECTED BY MIGRATION

Geographically, migration has affected certain areas of the country more than others. As indicated above there has been a mass migration of urban construction workers to projects in the South Atlantic States and the less pronounced flow of unskilled workers from the South to industrial areas in the border States. From the Mountain States and the drought areas, which in general have been little affected by defense reemployment, there has been a steady outflow of skilled and newly trained workers to the Pacific coast and to special defense projects throughout the West. Massachusetts and Connecticut have drawn many migrants from the New England and North Atlantic States. Some of the eastern industrial areas, notably Pennsylvania, New York, and New Jersey, though reporting some interchange of skilled workers with other areas, appear to have been relatively little affected by mass migration novements. The North Central and Middle Western industrial areas, on the other hand, have reported a considerable inflow of skilled, semiskilled, and unskilled workers. It can accurately be said that with few exceptions the defense program has up to now created few problems of labor supply that could not be solved by intelligent use of local labor without migration. This could have been achieved by training and by systematic processes of breaking down complex jobs into simple ones, grading up experienced workmen to higher skills, and using to best advantage the training and experience of skilled craftsmen. The exceptions to this generalization have occurred principally where it has been necessary to import into a predominantly nonindustrial community relatively small numbers of specialized skilled workmen as a nucleus to permit the use of much

greater numbers of semiskilled and unskilled workers. The establishment of a shipyard, an explosive plant, or an aircraft factory in an area where none of the needed skills are found can often be accomplished only in this way.

MOBILIZATION OF LABOR SUPPLY

From information available to the Bureau of Employment Security it is becoming evident that we are approaching a new phase in the defense program, in which labor shortages may seriously handicap production unless our labor supply is effectively mobilized-literally, made mobile, both geographically and occupationally. The Bureau of Employment Security receives monthly from each of its 1,500 affiliated public-employment offices a report of the number of qualified registrants available in some 400 occupations important to the defense program. Paralleling these are reports from the local employment offices recording the anticipated labor requirements of approximately 11,000 employers in defense industries, together with nonstatistical reports on the changing conditions in the labor market. In addition, the Bureau has for its own use and at the request of the O. P. M. undertaken special surveys of selected local labor markets for the purpose of forecasting a year in advance the labor demand, the available supply, and the expected shortages. During the fall of 1940, these reports, in combination, consistently pointed to the emergence of labor shortages in relatively few highly specialized, highly skilled occupations (principally in machine shops, shipyards, and aircraft factories) in the midst of abundant supplies of unspecialized, untrained labor. Even where shortages were clearly in evidence, they were not, and, up to the present time, have not been sufficient to dissolve the aversions of most employers to the use of skilled Negro and alien workers, although the common depression restrictions on age have largely disappeared. Thus even in the occupations and industries in which the demand presses most heavily on the supply, the shortages must be considered limited, or relative, rather than absolute. In all cases these shortages have been specific to certain occupations, rather than generál.

The most recent reports to the Bureau, however, have indicated that in some communities general labor shortages may appear before the end of this year. In Detroit, for example, nearly 150.000 additional workers will be absorbed into employment during 1941. It is estimated that half of these will have to be imported from outside of the commuting area. Similarly, in Philadelphia the additional employment of nearly 170,000 persons will require the importation of 70,000. In the aggregate, 68 labor-market areas in which special labor surveys have been conducted with a total population of nearly 17,000,000 will absorb just over a million persons in employment during this year, and of these about 350.000 will have to be imported.

Since these estimates exclude construction workers and are for production, skilled and semiskilled workers who will be offered jobs of a permanent nature (at least as long as the defense program continues), it may be conservatively estimated that at least half of the migrants will bring their families with them to the job. Estimating, again conservatively, that each of these married migrants bringing a family has an average of 11⁄2 dependents, a minimum of 612.500 persons will be migrating in 1941 as a result of the increased defense employment in these areas. These figures include only the necessary migration for defense employment in the 68 areas studied, and take no account of the large volume of service workers who may be needed as the result of population expansion in small communities, or of the mass of migrants who may be attracted to defense areas by rumors of employment or uncontrolled advertising.

The circumstances that give rise to this need for migration provide an interesting illustration of the relationship between migration and other types of mobility. In almost all cases it has been found that large numbers of workers already resident in these communities will be trained during the year to meet the local labor requirements. On the other hand, it has generally been found that 50 to 60 percent of the total supply of available labor in these communities cannot be counted on to meet the prospective needs, either because they are physically or otherwise unsuited to perform the work in the occupations in which the demand exists or because they are barred from employment by the hiring preferences of employers. That is to say, it is found with few exceptions that where occupational mobility in the form of training can be provided, the local labor can be used; but where employers' restrictions bar the use of women, Negroes, workers above or below certain ages, or workers of certain nationalities, it is the character of the demand, not of the supply, that will have to be adjusted in order to make efficient use of locally available labor.

NEED FOR UPGRADING AND TRAINING

The Bureau's reports constantly emphasize the futility of attempts to import skilled labor. Except where a new plant is being established and must provide itself with at least a nucleus of skilled workmen before it can operate, employers are generally becoming reconciled to the Nation-wide shortages of certain types of skilled labor and are taking effective measures to grade up and diffuse the skills already available in their plants. The workers needed to be imported into most of these communities are, for the most part, semiskilled and unskilled. A notable exception, of course, is again found in the case of construction workers. In most of the skilled building trades occupations and in most parts of the country, there still seem to be ample supplies of such workers available for movement to the site of some project where they may be temporarily needed.

The mobilization of our labor resources, whether by training or by migration, obviously requires a high degree of coordination of training and placement machinery with the visible labor needs of each community. Under the terms of an agreement recently arrived at between the Bureau of Employment Security, and the United States Office of Education on behalf of the vocational education authorities, training classes are being organized to meet specific labor requirements in each of hundreds of communities. In all cases an attempt is made to adapt through training the local labor supply as far as possible, especially in those occupations which require relatively little skill and for which training can be given relatively quickly. At the same time the employment service, through its machinery for transferring workers from areas of surplus to areas of shortage, is attempting to move needed workers directly in response to job openings and to discourage migration to areas in which local reserves of labor are adequate.

POLICY

III. From all of this there is beginning to emerge the outlines of a policy toward migration as an aspect of the defense program. There is a determination on the part of those responsible for planning various aspects of defense production to avoid as far as possible the mistakes made during the World War period, which survived to plague us long after the conflict. Although, in order to speed the present program, it was necessary to concentrate the early contracts very largely in great industrial cities where there were idle plant facilities and plentiful supplies of labor, there is now a determined effort to carry the jobs to areas relatively unexploited where labor is still available in order to avoid attracting to already overcrowded cities large numbers of people who will be left stranded when the emergency is past.

Similarly, in laying plans for the defense-housing program, attention has been given to the likely amount and kind of in-migration of workers for defense industries and to adapt the housing to suit their needs.

Underlying all of these efforts is the concept of migration as a means of adjusting labor supply to the needs of the defense program. As the policy is formulated it is clear that migration as a form of mobility should be encouraged only after all practicable means of adapting resident labor have been exhausted. This is not to say that the patterns of distribution should be frozen in their present form; it is to say, however, that migration should be directed as far as possible to achieve an optimum distribution in the light of economic resources and opportunities.

For the first time there exists in this country a mechanism which, if properly used, can achieve this result. Historically it has been one of the functions of a network of labor exchanges to encourage migration when and where it was needed and to prevent useless, aimless, wasteful wanderings of people in search of work. Indeed, this has been one of the reasons for the existence of labor exchanges. The Employment Service in the United States has only just made a beginning in this direction. Up to now the influence of the Employment Service in guiding migration has been relatively slight because the employment offices had at their disposal only a fraction of the job opportunities available. Where migration was necessary (and even in many cases where it was not) employers have found ways of stimulating it without reckoning the social and economic consequences. Where migration was not necessary, the Employment Service has been unable to stem it in the face of rumors or reports which the more ambitious and the more desperate workers felt compelled to follow themselves. This is, unhappily, hardly less true today than it was 2 or 3 years ago. And yet, there are signs that after many false starts some progress is beginning to be made. There is definite evidence that in certain agricultural areas the Employment