Mass Migration Under Sail :European Immigration to the Antebellum United States
Raymond L. Cohn

Raymond L. Cohn is Professor of Economics at Illinois State University

"...Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to be free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,.."
Emma Lazarus, 1883

Most of us are familiar to one extent or another with Lazarus's words written four years before she died aged 38. However, what Cohn is describing is something totally different from the hordes of poor immigrants disembarking from packed steamships on Ellis Island. Cohn by using and reworking available data and by the use of new data analyses immigration into the newly formed United States of America in the first half of the nineteenth century. Don't be put off by the fact that he is 'Professor of Economics' the book is presented in an easy reading likeable style. Yet at the same time his arguments are substantiated by hard cold evidence.

In the antebellum period some 5 million people emigrated to the United States 96 per cent came from Europe. Of this 4.8 million 42 per cent came from Ireland, 34 per cent from (what was to become) Germany and 15 per cent from Great Britain. The Irish portion might not be surprising but before the great potato famine most came from Ulster and were what could be termed Scots/Irish. The Germans came mostly from the south and south- west of the country. While more than half of the total antebellum migration occurred in the period 1846 - 1854 migration rates were increasing from 1830. Importantly due to logistical circumstances, this was permanent migration.

Before 1830 the immigrant was male, aged between 15 and 45, fairly wealthy and skilled; in the 1820s white collar workers and artisans were between 55 and 70 per cent of the immigrant total. After the middle of the 1830s the majority, rising to 70 per cent, were classified as farmers and unskilled. The influx of southern Irish in the 1840s and 50s saw a further deskilling of the total and a sizeable portion of females, often single and travelling alone, making the trip to the new land. Many of these females would find work as domestic servants in the big cities. The antebellum migrant from Britain and Germany was not only skilled but as a group they were more skilled than the donor country's workforce. This was not true of the Irish, especially of the later Irish, the migrant skill level was always less than the overall Irish skill level. However, it should not be thought that the abject poor emigrated to the USA during the potato famine; the penniless were economically forced to stay at home and to die in their thousands.

Part of the book's title is 'under sail' and looking back some two hundred years it is hard to visualize the privations faced by the migrants. Finding a ship was not easy, until the creation of the packet system, ships left port when they had a cargo. Passengers were carried as and when the captain decided. Fares were horribly expensive in the early days Liverpool to New York cost £7-12-0 minimum excluding provisions. The passage cost would fall throughout the period, another reason why immigration increased in the 1830s, so that the average antebellum fare was from £3 to £5. (£5 in 1830 is today worth £400 on RPI or £4000 on average earnings calculations). This high cost would determine the nature of the migrant, Simone Wegge is of the opinion that, "…laborers in Hesse-Cassel were so poor that their transportation to the United States cost a minimum of a full year's wages" (p119). The passage from Liverpool to New York, the most popular route, took on a good 45 days. Add to this an overland journey to the port, which in itself could take two weeks, the unfortunate migrants walked to the port or took slow horse powered transport and the total was a long period of time when the migrant earned no money. To be able to justify the trip there had to be confidence that there was to be a distinct improvement in one's lot. Cohn considers emigrant mortality; there were shipwrecks, epidemics of contagious diseases on board, such as Cholera and Typhus, and the chance of succumbing on land to a disease caught on board the boat. No doubt the establishment, by the USA of the hospital at Ward's Island helped to keep the latter to a minimum. Travellers to the United States were about five times more likely to die than non-travellers; while this sounds horrendous it was not a greater rate than for other ocean travellers. Perhaps the fact, that in the early part of the century, emigrants were youngish males helped to keep death rates low.

Why did the Europeans migrate? "In sum, migration is viewed as a consequence of individuals seeking to improve their economic well-being by moving within regional networks" (pp8-9). In this case this regional network was extended to include the new founded United States of America. Cohn deals comprehensively with the various factors to migration. Were the migrants pushed by conditions in their original country or were they pulled by conditions in their new country? Was a bit of both. Cohn deals with the Industrial Revolution and finds that in itself it made very little difference. Unlike population density, Britain and the south/southwest of Germany were for the time quite densely populated; this is a weighty factor when migratory reasons are considered. He considers farm size and the existence of partible or impartible inheritance. In the first case the inheritance, often land, is split between all the children while in the latter (a.k.a. primogeniture) normally the eldest son inherits the lot. The former system was in the nineteenth century present to a great extent in Ireland and south-western Germany and this system tends to reduce farm size and inhibit the chances of a decent living. Apart from the fact that they hoped to do better and the vast majority of them did exactly that, there are no simple hard and fast reasons why millions migrated.

I must take a little issue with Professor Cohn when he discusses England in the first half of the nineteenth century. He points out that the accepted division is that the south was orientated towards agriculture while the north was industrial. OK so far but what of his statement that "...not many individuals made large internal moves within England" (p41). I think this is overstated a little and 'large' is relative; what is a long way in Yorkshire is just down the road in New York. However, I am nit picking. However, I don't think I am nit-picking in desiring a bigger index than three miserable pages.

The book deals with the antebellum period, it would be interesting if Professor Cohn turned his attention to what effect, if any, did this migration have on relations between the northern and southern states and the conflict that became known as the American Civil War. It has been argued that the war between the states (the Civil War) was more a northern industrial revolution than a moral desire to abolish slavery. It is worth recalling that even Lincoln wanted to repatriate the freed slaves to their respective original country. I mention this because in the latter pages Cohn deals with Nativism and the rise of the Know-Nothing Party, not that this party was pro-slavery of course.

Professor Cohn has dealt expertly with and has produced an highly accessible description of one of the world's great migrations. A period when foreigners endured terrible hardships to improve their lives. These skilled migrants transformed a young nation and laid the foundations of one of the world's great superpowers.

Don Vincent