ABSTRACT
In the course of the century leading up to the First World War about 44 million people left Europe for the New World. This mass migration started small and grew very large as cheaper ocean transport, principally the steamship, opened up the frontiers of the Americas and Australasia to the masses of the Old World. More emigrants came from the British Isles (16 million) than from any other source, and more immigrants chose the United States (32 million) as their destination than any other point. These two labor markets had, of course, been linked since before the turn of the nineteenth century. In time, however, the evolving international labor market developed connections to a multitude of national labor markets. In the years after 1880 a flood of poorer migrants from southern Europe joined the established waves leaving Britain, Ireland, Germany and other northern European countries (Kenwood and Lougheed 1983: Ch. 3).
