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Immigration into Canada, 1851–1920*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2014

Duncan M. McDougall
Duncan M. McDougall*
Affiliation:
Purdue University
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Extract

The purpose of the paper is to provide more firmly based estimates of some aspects of Canadian population growth. In Part I estimates are derived of the natural increase in the Canadian population by decades from 1851 to 1931 based on survival rates derived from life tables. The figures on natural increase then permit the derivation of net migration estimates. In Part II new estimates of immigration are developed that, together with the net migration figures of Part I, yield estimates of emigration by decades. Part III tests some of the results by an examination of the limited information available on other aspects of Canada's economic development in the period.

The life table is a basic tool of population study. The most recent application of the life table to the problem of the reconstruction of Canadian population growth was made by Nathan Keyfitz. While the same method is used here, we feel that we have made more realistic assumptions in deriving a life table designed to represent the mortality characteristics of early Canadian populations.

Type
Articles
Information
Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science/Revue canadienne de economiques et science politique , Volume 27 , Issue 2 , May 1961 , pp. 162 - 175
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association 1961

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Footnotes

*

The author wishes to acknowledge the financial support of the Purdue Research Foundation. The Foundation does not, of course, share in any way the responsibility for the views or conclusions of the paper.

References

1 “The Growth of Canadian Population,” Population Studies, IV, 06, 1950, 47–63.Google Scholar

2 The mechanics of life table construction are laid out in simple form in Dublin, Louis I. and Lotka, Alfred J., Length of Life (New York, 1936), chaps. i and xiv.Google Scholar Our single survival rate was calculated from quinquennial survival rates based on the stationary population column with a correction factor applied to the 0–1 age group.

3 Children born within the decade and children immigrating to Canada who are less than ten years old at the next census cannot be distinguished by this method. Thus the net migration figure derived refers to those ten years of age and over.

4 On this point see the note by Thomas, Dorothy S. in Kuznets, Simon and Rubin, Ernest, Immigration and the Foreign Born (New York, 1954), 66–8.Google Scholar

5 Dublin, and Lotka, , Length of Life, 45.Google Scholar

6 The age, sex and, given the inevitable differences in definition, the rural-urban distributions were quite similar in the two countries in the latter half of the nineteenth century.

7 The Registrar General's Decennial Supplement, England and Wales, 1931 (HMSO, 1952), Part III, 27–30.Google Scholar

8 Canada, Dominion Bureau of Statistics, Life Tables for Canada and Regions, 1941 and 1931 (Ottawa, 1947).Google Scholar

9 US Dept. of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, United States Life Tables, 1890, 1901, 1910, and 1901–1910 (Washington, 1921), 66–7 and 72–3.Google Scholar The included states are Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Indiana, Michigan, and the District of Columbia.

10 We hold this in spite of the fact that the Canadian authorities are quoted by Ferenczi to the effect that from 1866 on the Canadian immigration figures include as far as possible only immigrants proper. According to the definition “immigrants are those who have never been in Canada before and who declare their intention to reside there permanently.” Ferenczi, Imre, International Migrations, I (New York, 1929), 357–9.Google Scholar

11 Davis, Marian Rubin, “Critique of Official United States Immigration Statistics” in Willcox, Walter F., ed., International Migrations, II (New York, 1931), 645–58.Google Scholar Kuznets, and Rubin, , Immigration and the Foreign Born, begin their series of immigration with the year 1908.Google Scholar See also Thomas, Brinley, Migration and Economic Growth (Cambridge, 1954), chap. iv.Google Scholar

12 See Thomas, Migration and Economic Growth, chap. vii.

13 Ferenczi, Migrations, Part II, Table 11, 241–50.

14 The immigration from regions of Europe into the United States is given in US Dept. of Commerce, Historical Statistics of the United States, 1789–1945 (Washington, 1949), Series B308–316, pp. 33–4.Google Scholar We distinguished four regions, (1) Scandinavia, (2) Germany and Poland, (3) Southern Europe, (4) Other Northwest, Other Central, and Eastern Europe. The percentages representing emigration to British North America as a percentage of emigration to the United States were derived from the following sources: for region (1) emigration from Sweden and Denmark, Ferenczi, Migrations, Table IV, 752, and Table III, 670; for region (2) 1850–1870, emigration of German citizens through Hamburg, ibid., Table IIIa, 695, and 1871–1924, emigration of German citizens, ibid., Table VIII, 700–1; for region (3) emigration of Italian citizens, ibid., Table XI, 828–31; and for region (4) from alien emigration through German ports, ibid., Table XII, 706–7.

15 Ferenczi, Migrations, Text table 7, 195.

16 For the period before 1881 and for the period 1900–8 see ibid., Table I, 360, and Table VI, 364–5. For 1881–99 see Canada, Dominion Bureau of Statistics, Canada Year Book, 1936, 186 Google Scholar, and for 1908–21 see Canada Year Book, 1942, 153.

17 Carrier, N. H. and Jeffery, J. R., External Migration, 1815–1950 (HMSO, 1953), Table D/F/G(1), 95–6.Google Scholar

18 US Dept. of Commerce, Historical Statistics, 1789–1945, Series B306–307, pp. 33–4.Google Scholar

19 The problems of time lags and deaths at sea were ignored.

20 Migrations, 196.

21 This is substantiated by Carrier and Jeffery who quote the United Kingdom Board of Trade statement in H.C. 112 of 1887 that “the passenger movement … dealt with has always been spoken of as emigration; but during the last 20 years especially it has become obvious that many passengers are dealt with who do not go away from the United Kingdom to settle abroad.” Carrier, and Jeffery, , External Migration, 140.Google Scholar

22 On April 1, 1912, the United Kingdom Board of Trade made adjustments to the manifests used in counting persons leaving by sea that permitted the authorities to identify permanent emigrants, persons leaving to take up residence abroad for at least a year. Ibid., 140. There is general agreement also that by 1912 the American authorities were counting immigrants only. Davis, , “Critique,” 651.Google Scholar

23 See n. 16 for sources of this series.

24 Ferenczi, , Migrations, 357–9.Google Scholar

25 Davis, , “Critique,” 652–6.Google Scholar See also Thomas, , Migration and Economic Growth, 42–50.Google Scholar

26 Earlier attempts beginning in 1892 by the new United States Bureau of Immigration with the co-operation of steamship lines serving Canada and the Canadian railways were not successful. Davis, , “Critique,” 652–3.Google Scholar See also Kuznets, and Rubin, , Immigration and the Foreign Born, 55–60.Google Scholar

27 US Dept. of Labor, Annual Report of the Commissioner General of Immigration, 1930 (Washington, 1930), Table 84, pp. 208–11Google Scholar, gives the series for 1908–30.

28 Ibid., 1931, Table 80, p. 215.

29 The American figures were for fiscal years ended June 30 while the figures for transatlantic migrations were calendar years. No adjustment was made for the difference.

30 We have made no attempt to estimate immigration from any country outside Europe, the British Isles, and the United States.

31 Canada, Report of the Royal Commission on Dominion-Provincial Relations (Ottawa, 1940), Book I, 61–2.Google Scholar Caves, Richard E. and Holton, Richard H., The Canadian Economy (Cambridge, Mass., 1959), 30–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

32 Caves, and Holton, , The Canadian Economy, 35.Google Scholar

33 See also comments by Kuznets, and Rubin, , Immigration and the Foreign Born, 59, on this same point.Google Scholar

34 Buckley, Kenneth, “The Role of Staple Industries in Canada's Economic Development,” Journal of Economic History, XVII, 12, 1958, 439–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Young, John H., “Comparative Economic Development: Canada and the United States,” American Economic Review, XLV, 05, 1955, Supplement, 80–93 Google Scholar, also expresses doubts about the gloominess of the period 1873–96.

35 Simon Kuznets, “Long-Term Changes in the National Income of the United State; since 1870” in idem, ed., Income and Wealth of the United States, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth (Cambridge, 1952), Table 3, p. 50, shows a rate ol growth of net national products for the period 1874–83 to 1879–88 of 30.7 per cent. Set also the evidence in Thomas, , Migration and Economic Growth, 109–13.Google Scholar