temporarily out of employment. During the years 1909 to 1913, the ratio of the annual arrivals of alien workers to the number of wage earners attached to the leading industries ranged from 3.45 per cent in 1909 to 4.96 per cent in 1913. During the war the ratio dropped to less than one per cent, but recovered in 1920 to almost two per cent. It is obvious that the incoming tide of alien workers is ordinarily an appreciable fraction of the total number of wage TABLE 11.-RATIOS OF GROSS AND NET ARRIVALS OF ALIEN WORKERS TO THE Includes wage earners attached to factories, transportation and communication, mines and quarries, construction and building, agriculture and "unclassified industries." Computed from estimates for calendar years prepared by Dr. W. I. King. All arriving aliens (both immigrant and nonimmigrant) less those listed as having no occupation. All alien workers arriving less all departing aliens (both emigrant and nonemigrant) except those listed as having no occupation. dExcess of departures over arrivals. earners. However, it is also true that an immigration of three per cent may be a helpful influence in one phase of the cycle and an unwelcome and aggravating factor in another. The volume of immigration must be considered in relation to the contemporaneous conditions of employment before its real importance can be appraised. Also, allowance must be made for the offsetting factor of emigration. To these problems we shall turn our attention in subsequent chapters. CHAPTER SUMMARY Upon the facts presented in this chapter, we have based the following major conclusions concerning the immigration elements to be selected for study and the method to be used in their analysis. 1. Primary, though not exclusive, attention should be given to those alien arrivals and departures ordinarily designated, respectively, as alien immigrants and alien emigrants. 2. For our purpose, the volume of male immigration is more significant than the volume of total immigration. 3. Owing to the violence of the major fluctuations in immigration, the estimation of trends in the subsequent chapters is, in most cases, by the flexible method of moving averages, with adjustments in some instances to iron out minor irregularities. 4. Immigration movements are characterized by strong seasonal fluctuations for which adjustment must be made to facilitate the study of cyclical fluctuations. 5. The increasing fraction of total immigration contributed by the peoples of southern and eastern Europe in the years before the Great War suggests the desirability of special attention to the cyclical fluctuations in the leading elements of this group. 6. Immigrants of the various races or peoples exhibit marked differences in the extent to which they establish a permanent residence in this country, indicating the desirability of comparing cyclical fluctuations in emigration by race or people. 7. A large proportion of immigrants engage in relatively unskilled occupations in factories, mines, and construction operations; hence special attention should be given to fluctuations in employment in these industries and particularly to variations in the market for common labor. 8. Lastly, the relative volume of migration compared with population is indicated by the fact that while, in this century, the annual number of net alien arrivals has exceeded one per cent of the total population only in 1907, in some of the years just before the Great War, the number of net arrivals of alien workers was equivalent to more than two per cent of the total number of wage earners attached to the leading industries in the United States. CHAPTER III EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITIES FOR IMMIGRANTS The Significance of a Measure of Employment Opportunity. With the passing of the era of abundant and fertile free land, industrial employment rather than agricultural opportunity has been the lodestone attracting the foreign worker to our shores. Particularly within the last three or four decades the typical immigrant has been a prospective wage earner seeking employment in factory, mine, or construction camp. Data concerning fluctuations in the employment of wage earners are, accordingly, particularly pertinent to our study. The cycle of employment is the aspect of the business cycle which is of direct meaning to the immigrant. It is the most tangible measure of the conditions affecting his economic welfare; and hence it affords the obvious and logical basis for appraising the influence upon migration of fluctuations in economic opportunities and the celerity with which immigration and emigration currents respond to such changes. The Ideal Measure. The ideal index of employment, for our purpose, would cover all of those occupations in which immigrants engage in large numbers and would indicate, not merely the variations in the number of workers employed, but also the extent of part-time and over-time employment. Not only that, but to give a complete picture of the relative economic opportunity afforded the immigrant, our ideal index would be adjusted to variations in real wage rates, that is, in money rates reduced to terms of comparable purchasing power by allowance for changes in the prices of those articles which comprise the budget of the immigrant worker. In short, such an index would make allowance for both the volume of employment and the real rate of compensation and thus measure changes in the real earnings in the immigrant industries. An index of employment portraying the condition of employment for the unskilled laborer would be particularly valuable, for it is 54 the concensus of opinion of commentators on employment conditions that this class bears the chief brunt of cyclical and seasonal variations in employment, and furthermore, it is the immigrant who makes up a large part of the unskilled labor group. For much of our analysis, monthly, or at least quarterly, rather than annual data are essential. Annual data serve well to give indications of general tendencies, but the picture which may be drawn with them is necessarily only in broad outline and permits symptomatic details to be obscured. For example, with only annual data, it becomes impossible to determine, with any reasonable degree of precision, whether the immigrant tide slackens in premonition of an impending industrial slump, or, on the contrary, begins to ebb only after employment has been on the decline for several months. Lastly, if we could have an equally comprehensive index of fluctuations of economic opportunities in the country from which immigrants come, we should feel excellently equipped for the task before us. The data actually available do not make possible the construction of such an ideal index as that just outlined, but, nevertheless, afford, in our judgment, a basis for reasonably accurate conclusions, particularly when reinforced by other indices of industrial activity. Types of Employment Statistics. The principal sources of information concerning employment conditions in the United States are of four types: (1) indirect evidences of employment conditions as found in statistics of production and such even less direct indices of employment opportunities as are afforded by prices, clearings, and other indicators of business activity; (2) records of the average number of wage earners employed during the month, or the number employed on a given day, as shown by payroll data; (3) statistics of the percentage of trade union members unemployed; and (4) employment office statistics, giving the ratio of applicants to jobs. All four of these types have been utilized in the subsequent analysis, although the primary index of factory employment by months, for the period beginning with 1889, has been constructed from statistics of the average number employed, supplemented for a portion of the period by trade union statistics of unemployment. ANNUAL STATISTICS OF INDUSTRIAL CONDITIONS To obtain a picture of the major features of changes in employment conditions, let us first turn our attention to the fluctuations in various series of annual data which serve as more or less satisfactory indicators of conditions in the several industries in which immigrants find employment. For this purpose we have used the following series: for factory employment, an index of estimated average number employed, 1890 to 1922; for coal mining, the number of tons of anthracite and bituminous coal, respectively, produced each year from 1870 to 1922; for construction, the annual increase in the operated mileage of railroads from 1891 to 1916 and an index of the estimated annual total value of construction from 1902 to 1920; for railway maintenance, the average number of trackmen employed from 1889 to 1914; and for general industrial and business conditions, several series, including the value of imports of merchandise 1870 to 1923, pig iron production 1870 to 1923, the clearings index computed by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York for 1876 to 1923, wholesale prices 1870 to 1922, and Professor E. E. Day's index of manufacture 1899 to 1923. For convenience in comparison, these series have been charted in two groups, on pages 59 and 62, one group consisting of those series which refer to calendar years (Tables 12-A and 12-B and Chart 6); and the other group, those series which refer to fiscal years ending June 30th (Tables 13-A and 13-B and Chart 7). The Calendar Year Group. The annual production of pig iron, bituminous coal, and anthracite coal, respectively, an index of the physical volume of manufacturing, an index of the estimated total value of construction, the number of railway trackmen employed, and an index of wholesale prices comprise the calendar year group. Pig iron is discussed more fully at subsequent points in this chapter. A few words concerning the reason for choice of some of the other series are pertinent. Railway Employment. Large numbers of immigrants are employed in the maintenance of railway track and roadbeds, and, consequently, we have included in our evidences of employment conditions a curve showing the |