SECTION CCLIX.. Effects of Emigration.

EFFECTS OF EMIGRATION.

B. It is sufficiently evident that emigration from an over-populated country[259-1] may be attended with good consequences, especially when it takes place in organized bodies.[259-2] There is little danger that one who knows how to work and pray will go to the bad in a young agricultural colony. In a wilderness which has not yet been cleared, the greater number of proletarian vices spontaneously disappear. There is here no opportunity for jealousy or theft; little for intemperance, the gaming table, licentiousness or quarrelsomeness. Here labor is a necessity, and the rewards of industry and saving soon take a palpable shape. As the emigrant, in such a situation, can scarcely help marrying, children far from being a burthen, soon become companions to their parents in their solitude and, later, helpmates in business. The colonist belonging to the lower middle class is most certain of improving his condition. It may, indeed, require many and toilsome years before he can feel comfortable himself; but his children who would probably have led a proletarian life in the mother country may calculate with certainty on future well-being. The father's small capital which the outlay for education alone would have exhausted at home, here becomes the seed of a number of prosperous households.[259-3] It is otherwise with the mass of the people who remain at home. (Compare § 241.)[259-4] It is a matter of much more difficulty than is generally supposed by those who have not made a study of the matter, that the yearly emigration from countries like Germany should counterbalance the excess of births over deaths.[259-5] It is not to be supposed that men who are really useless at home should be of any service in the colonies. How violently have not English colonies opposed the advent of settlers from the poorhouses of the mother country. The classes which are readiest to emigrate: idlers, fickle characters, fathers of families with altogether too many children, artisans who by a revolution in industry have lost the means of making a livelihood, are precisely those who find it most difficult to obtain employment on the other side of the water.[259-6] Most colonies refuse to receive persons over forty years of age at their own expense. But a young man intellectually and physically able to work, can always make his way even in the old world; only the weaker succumb under the pressure of over-population. Lastly, it should be considered what an amount of capital is required for purposes of emigration and settlement. If emigrants, on the average, take more capital with them than is estimated to be the per capita amount of capital possessed by those remaining at home,[259-7] the consequence would be that, as a result of this very successful emigration, the ratio of consumers to the amount of capital in the country would become more and more unfavorable. The emigrating portion of the country might experience the advantage of this, but the great mass of the population remaining at home would become poorer in capital and in vigorous men,[259-8] and richer in the comparatively needy. The comfortless contrast between colossal wealth and beggarly want could only be thereby increased, since it is almost exclusively the lower middle class who emigrate to agricultural colonies. The over-rich, as a rule, will not, and proletarians can not, go thither.[259-9] [259-10]

Evidently an important consideration is here omitted, viz.: that there is no such a thing as a normal year of marriages, etc. If, for instance, all males were to wait until their 30th year, and all females until their 20th, to enter the married state, and that the government were to send all competent persons as soon as they had reached this age to America, what would be the consequence? Numberless situations affording the means of supporting a family would be vacant, and a number of young men of 29 and of young women of 19 would be induced to marry, etc. The number of children to a marriage in England in 1838-44 was 4.13; 1845-49, 3.96; 1850-54, 3.26; 1855-59, 4.15. (Journal des. Econ., Oct., 1861.)]

================================ in | Persons. -------------------+------------ 1847, | 258,000 1848, | 248,000 1849, | 299,000 1850, | 280,000 1852, (maxim.) | 368,000 1853, | 329,000 1855, | 176,000 1857, | 212,000 1858-60, (average)| 96,000 1862, | 121,000 1863, | 223,000 1865, | 181,000 1867, | 105,161 1870, | 202,511 1871, | 174,930 ================================

while the excess of births over deaths (in Great Britain alone) amounted, in 1856, to 309,000. Between 1815 and 1870, there emigrated from the United Kingdom to the United States, 4,472,672 persons; to the British North American Colonies, 1,391,771; to Australia, 988,423; to other points, 160,771; an aggregate of 7,013,637. (Statist. Journal, 1872, 115.) On the other hand, between 1861 and 1871, 543,015 persons either returned or immigrated to the United Kingdom. It is estimated, (according to Hübner's Jahrb. der Volkswirthschaft und Statistik, 263 ff.; VIII, 222, and the Rudolst. Auswandererzeitung) that in no year before 1844 were there more than 33,000 emigrants from Germany. On the other hand, in

==================================== in | At least. -------------------+-----------++--- 1844, | 43,000 1845, | 67,000 1846,- | 94,000 1847, | 109,000 1848,- | 81,000 1849, | 89,000 1850,- | 82,000 1851, | 112,000 1852, | 162,000 1853, | 156,000 1854, (maxim.) | 250,000 1855. | 81,000 1856. | 98,000 1857, | 115,000 1858-61, (average)| 4,620 1866, | 137,000 1867, | 151,000 | By Hamburg and | Bremen alone-- | 1867-71, (average)|33,355 & 48,296 1872, |57,621 & 66,919 1873, |51,432 & 48,608 1874, |24,093 & 17,913 ====================================

while the natural increase of population in Prussia alone (1843-55) amounted to almost 150,000 per annum; in the kingdom of Saxony (1834-49), to over 18,000; in Austro-Germany and the five German kingdoms together, 305,000. (Wappäus, Bevölkerungsstatistik, I, 133.) In New York alone, in 1852, 118,600 Germans arrived; in 1853, 119,500; in 1854, over 178,000. That, at present, emigration is, on the whole, so much more frequent than formerly, is accounted for by the largely improved means of communication. However, it was estimated a century ago, that Europe sent at least 100,000 persons per annum to the East and West Indies. Between 1700 and 1719, an aggregate of 105,972 persons emigrated to the Dutch East Indies; between 1747 and 1766, 162,598. (Saalfeld, Gesch. des Holländ. Ostindiens, II, 189.) It should not be ignored, however, that the readiness to forsake the fatherland, which only a short time ago was so usual in Germany (in England, it prevails chiefly among the Irish), justified the greatest solicitude for the roots of German national life. How little Germany really suffers from over-population, is shown especially by the circumstance that, for instance, in Prussia, it is precisely the most densely populated districts to which immigration is largest. Compare v. Viebahn, Zollverein. Statist, II, 242.

According to C. Negri, about 40,000 Italians emigrate every year at present; and it is said that there are, in Turkey, Egypt and Tunis, 70,000; in Peru, 14,000, and in Buenos Ayres, 84,000 Italians living. (I, Jahresbericht der Hamburg, geogr. Gesellsch., 1874.) In other Romanic and Slavic countries emigration is as yet insignificant. On the other hand, there were, in 1870, 214,574 native Scandinavians in the United States.]

A still smaller amount of capital would suffice for the purpose of emigration itself. Persons who settled in Canada (1823) cost the English nation £22 per capita, which amount provided them with cows, seeds, agricultural implements, help in building, and food for twelve months. According to the Edinburg Rev., Dec., 1826, only £15, 4s. were necessary for the same purpose. If it be borne in mind that many of these settlers afterwards caused five times as many relatives to come over at their own expense, the necessary outlay per capita would seem very small indeed; frequently not more than one year's maintenance in the poorhouse would have cost. Almost £1,000,000 are sent every year from the United States through banks and emigration bureaus, by emigrants, to the United Kingdom, to bring over their relatives. (Statist. Journal, 1872, 386.)]