EUROPE’S EMIGRANTS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 72, Issue 235, 3 October 1929, Page 10

EUROPE’S EMIGRANTS

PUT AT 55,500,000 TIDE WAS IN FLOOD IN 1846 European emigration 1o nca-Euro-pean countries totalled 55.500,(100 between 1820 and 1924, and of that number approximately 50,000,000 emigrants departed from Europe between 1846 and 1924. These totals were revealed in a study of migration from the international standpoint, just made public by the National Bureau of Economic Research, 51 Madison Avenue. The study, based on world-wide statistical sources, many of which hitherto have been untouched, has been embodied in “International Migrations,” prepared in two sections. The first section is now complete, according to the announcement by' G. R. Stahl, executive secretary of the bureau. In announcing some of the high points of the study Mr Stahl disclosed that in the first half of the last century the largest emigration was from Great Britain and Germany, while that from France, the Scandinavian countries and Switzerland was a small fraction of the whole. The flow of emigration in that period was from mother countries to territories where racial connections similar to those of the present European emigrants and their American relatives were found to have existed. Mass Movement Began in ’4os Emigration did not become a mass movement until the ’4os, due primarily to the fact that until that time legal obstacles to emigration had not been removed, it was found.

“Increased capitalistic production, through the use of machinery and cheap raw material from overseas involved everywhere an increase in population which provided labour for overseas territories,” the report continued. “The number of emigrants»was increased by the impoverishment or| agriculture. Other causes were political disturbances in Europe, improvements in transportation, exploitation of natural wealth overseas, abolition of the slave trade and stimulation of emigration to colonies by the Britisnj Government. The predominance of British emigration is stressed About 19,000,000 persons left the British Isles between 1815 and 1924, including the great Irish movement. German emigration, which was next in volume to that from Great Britain in the first half of the century, was reduced to a minimum after 1850. The later shift of European emigration to .the Southern and Eastern countries of Europe—notably Italy, Austria. Hungary and Rlissia —was emphasised, attention being called to the “recruiting devices” of the steamship linos as a factor in causing the movement. up to the time it began to deline as a result of anti-immigration laws in this country. Professor Forenczi Headed Study The study was made under the direction of Dr Imre Forenczi, of the International Labour Office at Genova. Switzerland. Professor Walter E. Wilcox, of the research staff of the National Bureau of Economic l Research was a collaborator ofDrFerenczi and is editor of “International Migrations.” Routine investigations were made through contacts of the International Labour Office with Government

agencies throughout the world, and in addition eight study tours were made to London, Paris, Strassbourg, Berlin, Hamburg, Bremen, Vienna, and Budapest, making use of public offices, libraries, museums and other ’ istitutions having useful data. Lists of Colonial emigrant permits dating as far back as 1500 and coming down to 1834 were found in the archives of Seville. Legislation concerning the control of travel by sea from England to Scotland and dating back as far as 1839 was studied. Old newspaper files supplied to the investigators information concerning the 1816-17 emigration wave that swept through the port of Amsterdam after the Dutch archives were found barren of any information on the subject. The principal object of the inquiry, according to Dr Forenczi, was to discover the statistics of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries up to 1924. Neither totals nor even reliable estimates of the total migration during earlier centuries could bo determined, inasmuch as detailed statistical information dates back not much further than a century ago. The second portion of the work, including interpretative articles by scholars of different nations, will be issued later. The National Bureau of Economic Research, described as an American fact-finding organisation, was organised in 1920. Professor Thomas S. Adams, of Yale, is president of the bureau, and Professor, Edwin F. Gay, of Harvard, C. Mitchell, of Columbia, are its directors of research.