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The Occupations of English Immigrants to the United States, 1836–1853
Abstract
This article examines the recent view that economic distress was not an important cause of English immigration before 1860. Demographic information is used to show that characteristics of males on suspect passenger lists (those that listed only laborers) matched those of laborers on other lists. Based on this result and other information, laborers appear to be the dominant group of immigrants. Support is thus provided for the view that distress was the most important cause of immigration, even though many other immigrants were not fleeing economic distress.
... The information on each linked immigrant includes date of arrival, country of origin, occupation at arrival, age at arrival, location and occupation in 1850 or 1860, literacy, and the characteristics of the community in which the immigrant lived in 1850 or 1850, such as its ethnic composition and its population growth rate between 1850 and 1860. The reliability of the occupation information in the passenger shi p lists, however, has been questioned by a number of researchers (Erickson 1989, Cohn 1992). Since thi s information is an important element of the story told here, it is worth exploring the reliability of these data in more detail. ...
... One difficulty is the often haphazard recording of occupations: some lists contain nothing bu t farmers or laborers, and whole pages of a ship's list sometimes contain nothing but ditto marks in th e column for occupation. Based on a comparison of the age and f amily structure of those on such "poor" lists with other immigrants on lists where occupation seems to have been recorded with greater care, though, Cohn (1992) concludes that the immigrants on the poor lists were probably in fact farmers and laborers. ...
This study examines the occupational mobility of antebellum immigrants as they entered the United States. White collar, skilled, and semiskilled immigrants left unskilled jobs more rapidly after arrival than farmers and unskilled workers. British and German immigrants fared better than the Irish; literate immigrants in rapidly growing counties and places with many immigrants fared best. These findings have implications for (1) the accuracy of estimates of immigrant occupational mobility, (2) the size of the human capital transfer resulting from antebellum immigration, and (3) the causes of the difficulty experienced by some immigrant groups in transferring their skills to the United States.
... There is a long standing interest in immigrant quality as reflected in the declared occupations of migrants (see, e.g., Erickson, 1994;Cohn, 1992;Wegge, 2002). While occupations provide direct evidence on the skill content of emigration, such studies rarely make comparisons across destination countries or over time. ...
This paper revisits the determinants of emigration from the United Kingdom to the United States, Canada and Australia/New Zealand from 1870 to 1913. In the absence of restrictive immigration policies, the flow of emigration to these destinations responded to economic shocks and trends. Emigrants to Australia and New Zealand were more skilled on average than those heading across the Atlantic, a feature that does not correspond well with skill differentials in the manner predicted by the Roy model. While assisted passages (subsidised fares) increased the volume of emigration to Australia and New Zealand they cannot account for its higher skill content.
... We caution that the Atkinson, et al. series begin circa 1920 and focus on the share of income earned by workers at the top of the income distribution, both of which may reduce the applicability to the Age of Mass Migration. 33 Cohn (1992) instead finds that, during the antebellum period, British migrants were drawn from both the richest occupations (farmers) and the poorest (laborers), with the skilled artisans underrepresented in the migrant flow. 34 Kosack and Ward (2014) use heights to assess the selection patterns of Mexican migrants into the US at the beginning of the twentieth century. ...
The United States has long been perceived as a land of opportunity for immigrants. Yet, both in the past and today, US natives have expressed concern that immigrants fail to integrate into US society and lower wages for existing workers. This paper reviews the literatures on historical and contemporary migrant flows, yielding new insights on migrant selection, assimilation of immigrants into US economy and society, and the effect of immigration on the labor market. (JEL J11, J15, J24, J61, N31, N32).
... For example, in his study on English migrants in the first half of the nineteenth century Raymond L. Cohn found that it were not primarily poor individuals, who would have profited most from higher earnings in the USA, but indeed the emigrants had incomes above average when compared with their originating population. 16 Similarly, Simone Wegge argues that wage gaps are not sufficed to explain labor migrations. People, who faced large transaction costs in converting their wealth into a form that could easily be transported as well as those who had difficulties in using their skills in the American labor market, had smaller incentives to migrate. ...
The paper investigates the determinants of migration from rural districts in the Austrian part of the Habsburg Monarchy to the USA in 1910 by combining information from passenger records of ships to the USA and economic and demographic data on district level from the Austrian census and information on wages from an Austrian survey in 1893. The analysis focuses on the effects of the level of wages and demographic pressure. We find support for a non-linear effect of wages on emigration and fail to find evidence for a negative effect of demographic pressure along Malthusian lines on wages.
... For example, in his study on English migrants in the first half of the nineteenth century Raymond L. Cohn found that it were not primarily poor individuals, who would have profited most from higher earnings in the USA, but indeed the emigrants had incomes above average when compared with their originating population. 16 Similarly, Simone Wegge argues that wage gaps are not sufficed to explain labor migrations. People, who faced large transaction costs in converting their wealth into a form that could easily be transported as well as those who had difficulties in using their skills in the American labor market, had smaller incentives to migrate. ...
The paper investigates the determinants of migration from rural districts in the Austrian part of the Habsburg Monarchy to the USA in 1910 by combining information from passenger records of ships to the USA and economic and demographic data on district level from the Austrian census and information on wages from an Austrian survey in 1893. The analysis focuses on the effects of the level of wages and "demographic pressure". We find support for a non-linear effect of wages on emigration and fail to find evidence for a negative effect of "demographic pressure" along Malthusian lines on wages.
... In the late nineteenth century, while many still had rural roots, the emigrants from any given country were increasingly drawn from urban areas and non-agricultural occupations. By mid-century emigrants from Britain, a country that had already undergone a half century of industrialisation, were mainly from non-farm occupations (Erickson, 1990, p. 25; Cohn, 1992, p. 385). This trend within countries was overwhelmed by the shift from old emigrant regions, the industrial leaders, to new emigrant regions, the industrial followers. ...
... Compared to their predecessors—which primarily comprised landlords and owner-cultivators, those who came after soybean became a major export crop were of a distinctly lower socioeconomic status—predominantly tenant farmers and wage laborers. This finding is strikingly similar to the international experience of earlier European immigrants to the New World led by farmers and artisans from rural areas intending to relieve the " land constraint " (seePomeranz, 2000), in contradistinction to their distinctly poorer successors, who came primarily to take advantage of the employment opportunities created by the early immigrants (Cohn, 1992;Hatton and Williamson, 1998). These two findings combined have an important implication for Chinese economic history. ...
The effects of commercialization and migration in traditional agrarian economies such as China's during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have been a subject of ferocious debate. Using data from Manchuria on soybean cultivation and exports, we employ difference-in-differences and instrumental variable approaches to demonstrate a significantly positive relationship between growing soybeans for export and the returns to migration. Those who migrated to Manchuria in response to high market prices, and to villages more suitable for cultivating soy prospered most; they owned approximately two-thirds more of the arable land and one-third more of houses than those who failed to do so. Evidence suggests that the positive welfare effect of commercialization-cum-migration was confined not only to the rich, who seek to relieve the “land constraint” at home, but possibly also to the poor.
... Part of the answer to this question lies in the observation that the majority of immigrants from these three countries came to the U.S. in mid nineteenth century to flee economic distresses in their native countries where the poor were suffering the most. Based on information from the passenger records from 119 ships that arrived at New York City between 1836 and 1853, Cohn (1992) examined the occupational distribution among British immigrants. The findings suggest that laborers appear to be the dominant group of immigrants, which according to Cohn, supports the view that distress was the most important cause of immigration. ...
This study examines the relation between risk exposures in early life and hazard of mortality among 11,978 Union Army veterans aged 50 and over in 1900. Veterans' risk exposures prior to enlistment-as approximated by birth season, country of origin, residential region, city size, and height at enlistment-significantly influence their chance of survival after 1900. These effects are robust irrespective of whether or not socioeconomic well-being circa 1900 has been taken into account; however, they are sensitive to the particular age periods that have been selected for survival analysis. Whereas some of the effects such as being born in Ireland and coming from big cities became fully unfolded in the first decade after 1900 and then dissipated over time, the effects of birth season, being born in Germany, residential region in the U.S., and height at enlistment were more salient in the post-1910 periods. Height at enlistment shows a positive association with risk of mortality in the post-1910 periods. Compared to corresponding findings from more recent cohorts, the exceptional rigidity of the effects of risk exposures prior to enlistment on old-age mortality among the veterans highlights the harshness of living conditions early in their life.
International migration has been a fact of life throughout the ages. But it is mass migrations that have changed the course of history and that hold a special fascination for social scientists and historians. None more so than the migration from Europe to the land-abundant, labour-scarce regions of the New World during the nineteenth century. In the century after 1820 some 55 million Europeans sought a new life in another continent and this experience has spawned a large literature. This rich literature spans a wide range of different approaches to the fundamental questions of who migrated, when and, above all, why and with what effect. Studies vary in scope, period, time and place, but they have increasingly become focused on specific streams of migrants, the communities they left behind and those they entered. These studies have greatly enriched our understanding of the characteristics of migrants and their specific circumstances.1 But the economic forces underlying mass migration have often taken a back seat to social, cultural and even political aspects. Research at the micro level on the particular, and sometimes the peculiar, group or community has been purchased at the cost of the economic and demographic fundamentals that more anonymously, but just as surely, drove the migrant flow.
Did nineteenth-century emigration from the United Kingdom act as a safety valve for its expanding work force? Charlotte Erickson’s evidence for 1831 and 1841, based on an extensive analysis of America-bound shipping lists for those years, convinced her that ‘there are reasons for doubting that direct emigration to the USA acted as a safety valve for the rural or urban poor of the British Isles during the decades before the Irish famine’.1 In concert with historians of late nineteenth- and twentieth-century emigration from Britain to Australia, Erickson concluded that it was those who were fearful of encroaching poverty, or loss of status, who were motivated to emigrate, rather than the most poverty-stricken, who lacked even the means to reach the port of embarkation.2
Drawing on an immense body of literature and research, Brian Jenkins analyses the forces that shaped mid-nineteenth century Irish nationalism in Ireland and North America as well as the role of the Roman Catholic Church. He outlines the relationship between newly arrived Irish Catholic immigrants and their hosts and the pivotal role of the church in maintaining a sense of exile, particularly among those who had fled the famine. Jenkins also explores the essential "Irishness" of the revolutionary movement and the reasons why it did not emerge in the two other "nations" of the United Kingdom, Scotland and Wales.
This study adds to a growing body of research on the contextual determinants of marriage choice and provides new information on ethnic intermarriage in the late 19(th) Century. Census microdata for 66 major cities in 1880 are used to estimate a multilevel model of assortative mating of Irish, German, and British immigrants. Results demonstrate that marital choices made by individuals are significantly affected by the local urban context where they live. In addition the very large disparity in endogamy between the British and other groups can mainly be attributed to the smaller size of the British population in these cities.
Over fifty million people emigrated from Europe between 1815 and 1930. Only a small fraction of these emigrants have been studied using data collected in their homelands. This paper presents a new sample of European emigrants who migrated from Germany in the mid-nineteenth century. The emigrants are linked to data describing the socioeconomic characteristics of their home villages. These data are promising for studying many issues in the migration literature, particularly migration behavior and the causes of emigration.
The effects of globalization and migration in traditional agrarian economies such as China’s during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have been a subject of ferocious debate. Using data from Manchuria on soybean cultivation and exports, a difference-in-differences approach was applied to demonstrate a significantly positive relationship between growing soybeans for export and the returns to migration. Those who migrated to Manchuria in response to high market prices, and to villages more suitable for cultivating soy prospered most; they owned approximately two-thirds more of the arable land and one-third more of houses than those who failed to do so.
Nineteenth-century assisted emigration has long been associated with the phrase ‘shovelling out paupers’. This view is challenged by the actions and attitudes of the sponsors of parish-assisted emigration who invested considerable time and energy in supporting the emigration of their poor. Close investigation of the policy that was applied at the local level for the rural counties of Bedfordshire, Northamptonshire and Norfolk suggests that assisted emigration was seen as a policy in which rich and poor interacted to secure mutual benefits. Assisted emigration was conceived as a way of helping individual paupers while simultaneously displaying a continued concern for the labouring population. Faced with the challenges of the New Poor Law, the farming class viewed assisted emigration as part of an older tradition of paternalistic help for the ‘deserving poor’. Sponsors were well aware of the ambivalence of the subject and sought to develop a conscious ideology of assisted emigration, which focused on the hope of a better life, for those who left and for those who remained.
This study examines the occupational mobility of antebellum immigrants as they entered the U.S. White collar, skilled, and semi-skilled immigrants left unskilled jobs more rapidly after arrival than farmers and unskilled workers. British and German immigrants fared better than the Irish; literate immigrants in rapidly growing counties and places with many immigrants fared best. These findings have implications for (1) the accuracy of estimates of immigrant occupational mobility; (2) the size of the human capital transfer resulting from antebellum immigration; and (3) the causes of the difficulty experienced by some immigrant groups in transferring their skills to the U.S.
Samples from the U.S. passenger lists are used to focus upon the emigrants from England to the U.S.A. during 1841. Probably as many as three-quarters of the English emigrants of that year made the U.S.A. their destination, though only a minority of Irish and Scottish emigrants sailed directly to U.S. ports. The English appear very largely to have spurned the unusual opportunities for assisted emigration to colonies that were available that year. The occupations of male emigrants are compared with occupations reported in the population census of 1841. Farmers, general labourers, and industrial workers, particularly those employed in textile industries, were overrepresented among the emigrants. Yet the movement was not predominantly an exodus of labourers from agriculture, nor from some of the most depressed occupations such as framework knitters and nailers. Various occupational groups are analyzed according to travelling companions, dependants and age, in an effort to distinguish between the more cycle-sensitive groups and those seemingly intent on permanent emigration.
The continuous record of immigration to the United States, initiated by the Act of March 2, 1819 and beginning with the fiscal year ending September 30, 1820, provides one of our longest annual series of official data. Like other long series, however, it has undergone considerable change in scope and in the basis of reporting since its inception more than a century and a quarter ago. A summary of changes in the immigration series is given in each annual volume of the Statistical Abstract of the United States and, in more detail, in the supplementary volume, Historical Statistics. The present account gives fuller reference to the published sources, indicates in more detail the changes that have taken place in the basis of reporting immigration, and assembles notes for the evaluation of the series.* This paper was prepared to supplement statistics on immigration in the forthcoming new edition of Historical Statistics of the United States compiled under the joint sponsorship of the Bureau of the Census and the Social Science Research Council.
In 1841 and 1842 emigration from the British Isles to the U.S.A. was larger than in any year before the great Irish Famine. Later in the century, depressed economic conditions in the U.S.A. reduced the flow of immigrants. In contrast, the increased immigration of 1841 took place under circumstances of depression in both the U.K. and the U.S.A. In this paper, samples of the passenger manifests of ships arriving in five ports in the United States during 1841 are analysed in the search for more information about the emigrants of that remarkable year. A new and more accurate estimate of immigrants according to nationality has been compiled. Profiles of the immigrants from each part of the British Isles are provided, according to their routes of emigration, the seasonal flow, their ages, sex, travelling companions and occupations. These are compared with the results of previous work on 1831, 1851 and the 1880s. The evidence points to some deepening of the emigration into more disadvantaged sectors of the population, as compared with 1831, even in this depressed year before improvements in transport had made a significant impact on the cost, time and travelling conditions of the journey. Yet, the very diversity of the emigration streams suggests that cyclical and technological problems can only partially explain the outflow.
Abstract This is a first attempt to use the original passenger manifests from immigrant ships entering U.S. ports to see what can be learned about emigration from the British Isles during the period of most rapid industrialization and urbanization between the Napoleonic Wars and the beginning of mass emigration in the late 1840s. Based on lists compiled during the years 1827 to 1831, the article demonstrates that these original lists contain more social and demographic information about migrants than was ever published by the U.S. government and also that the official statistics that were published were incomplete and exaggerated the fish share in the immigration through U.S ports. The English immigration is shown to have been predominantly a family movement in 1831, but most migrants chose to emigrate at favourable moments in the life cycle. Occupations and countries with low incomes were not well represented among English migrants through U.S. ports. As early as 1831, the majority of men among the English immigrants were industrial workers, though farmers (as distinct from farm labourers) were over-represented.
The first systematic estimates of mortality on immigrant ships are presented in the paper. From passenger lists of immigrant arrivals, a sample of 1077 ships that arrived at New York between 1836 and 1853 was obtained and analyzed. Immigrants died at a rate of about 10 per thousand boarded per month with a significantly higher rate for 1849. Mortality was found to vary by sex, port of origin, and season of arrival. No significant variation was found between mortality and the following variables: crowding, nationality of the immigrant, and year of arrival.
"International migration statistics in the nineteenth century are acknowledged to be deficient and biased, but there are few source-critical studies to determine the extent of underreporting and omissions. This article provides a critical analysis of the statistics of Dutch emigration to North America in the period 1835-1880, based on the method of nominal record-linkage of computer files derived from Netherlands emigration lists and U.S. ship passenger manifests. Published and unpublished official records in the Netherlands, U.S.A. and Canada are used to determine the extent of underreporting, the structural biases in the migration data and the 'true' annual Dutch immigration rate to the United States."
The Family Composition of European Immigration to the U.S. During the Early Mass Migration
- Cohn Raymond
The Background to Emigration from Britain in the Nineteenth Century
- Jones