Henry A. Gemery

The Earnings of Skilled and Unskilled Immigrants at the End of the Nineteenth Century

Most historical studies of immigration in nineteenth-century America have failed to distinguish among the labor-market experiences of different immigrant groups. Using a sample of some 4000 wage earners from turn-of-the-century Iowa, we examine the relative earnings of skilled and unskilled immigrants and suggest the factors which contributed to their very different post-immigration experiences. The results indicate that prior knowledge of a trade conferred upon immigrants an initial earnings advantage, but that unskilled immigrants managed subsequently to close some but not all of the gap by reaping greater returns to experience on the job.

Economic Opportunity and the Responses of “Old” and “New” Migrants to the United States

The hostile and patronizing attitudes of native Americans toward the increasing number of immigrants from southern and eastern Europe at the turn of the century raise a number of issues that bear on the history of U.S. immigration policy and on other matters. Utilizing Zellners SUR technique, a model of settlement patterns of ten immigrant nationalities is estimated, and the appropriate F-statistics are generated to test several of these issues: (1) Did “new” immigrants behave as purposefully as contemporaneous “old” migrants from northwestern Europe? (2) Did they react as did the old migrants to a variety of socioeconomic factors? (3) Were the new migrants more dependent on the cultural support of earlier migrated countrymen? The findings indicate diverse, but purposeful, behavior within both the new and the old migrant groups with few systematic differences between them.

The Atlantic Slave Trade: A tentative economic model

Two necessary conditions for the existence of New World slavery and the slave trade are an acute labour shortage and an elastic supply of coerced labour. Though the former condition has been the mainstay of hypotheses on slavery where high land/labour ratios were viewed as causal determinants, less attention has been given to the role of labour supply responses. This paper joins these conditions in a model which postulates that labour demand stemming from open resource pressures induced a politico–economic supply response in West Africa. The model shows a derived demand for labour evolving over time into a specific demand for slaves as entrepreneurs sought the lowest cost method of expanding the production of agricultural staples. Free and indentured labour were both characterized by inelastic supply, but the supply of slaves was elastic due to factors discussed within a vent for surplus framework. African governments and private traders responded to the new effective demand from the Americas with improved organization which widened the pre-existing market for slaves. The desire for imported goods, with firearms especially significant, plus various technical changes in transport, money, and credit all combined to ensure the further development of the slave trade and the continued maintenance of a longrun elastic supply pattern

Evidence on English/African terms of trade in the eighteenth century

Abstract Newly available data from the English customs records on Englands trade with Africa in the 18th century, when combined with data on Africas slave exports, allow for the construction of a terms of trade series. Englands terms of trade with Africa are found to have risen from the beginning of the century to 1720, fallen sharply in the 1720s, behaved in mixed fashion in the 1730s and 1740s, and thereafter fallen steadily and deeply to a figure about one-third that of the start of the century in the decade 1771–1780. A rise followed, until in 1800 a figure about one-half that at the beginning of the century had been achieved.

Continuity in West African Monetary History? An Outline of Monetary Development

Imported rather than indigenous moneys dominate the monetary history of West Africa, and represent a strong though not always recognized element of continuity. The role of imported currencies in that regions economic development is readily apparent from the works of Philip D. Curtin, A. G. Hopkins, Marion Johnson, Paul Lovejoy, Walter Ofonagoro, and other historians who have painstakingly reconstructed the monetary patterns of societies with few statistical records.1 Many questions on money imports during the pre-colonial and colonial periods have, however, remained unanswered by the historical work. In particular, the theorizing on money and monetary history in the developed countries has been little applied to the moneys most used in West Africa. Among the many questions that warrant examination are: what were the similarities and dissimilarities in the acquisition of the new moneys; what were the costs of these

Voyagers to the West: A Review Colloquium

Occasionally books appear that are broad enough in subject or methodology to afford scholars in various specialties a useful opportunity to look at the same material from different viewpoints. Like other documents, works of history tend to answer only those questions asked of them, and the juxtaposition of the questions important to readers of diverse scholarly backgrounds may be in itself illuminating. For this, the first in a continuing series of review colloquia, we invited a specialist in British population movements, a historical geographer, an economist who has done quantitative work in the field of colonial immigration, and an authority on the economy of British North America to consider Bernard Bailyns Pulitzer Prize-winning study.

Some additional evidence on settlement patterns of Scandinavian migrants to the United States: Dynamics and the role of family and friends

Abstract The settlement patterns within the United States of Scandinavian migrants have been carefully examined by Vedder and Gallaway. 1 Relying primarily on decennial United States census data for the period 1850 to 1960, they employed multiple regression techniques to explain the distribution for each census year of Scandinavian-born persons across the various states. Their results suggest that Scandinavian emigrants, regardless of nationality, reacted to a variety of economic and social forces in a manner consistent with the theory of the utility-maximizing household. They also observe a similarity of response across the four immigrant groups to the explanatory variables.