TILE LOSS av EMIGRATION. But opinion is by no means unanimous that such a. loss is an evil. Increasing population may or may not be a national gain. In certain regions there can he GO doubt that increase tends to overpopulation, but this be asserted of Europe generally. It is, how-ever, pointed out that emigrants are as a rule grown men in the active years of life. In of the arrivals in the I lifted Slates in 1900 01, 80.I per cent. were adult males be tween the ages of fourteen and forty-five, while in the population at large there were in 1900 only 47.67 per cent. between the ages of fifteen and forty-four. Emigration means a loss of able bodied workers. Ilow great is the loss? Various attempts have been made to estimate this. Gne method, that of the celebrated Ger man xtnjBxlieinu Engel, reckons the value of an olnignifil by the cost of his eilneation and rear ing. (niter writers insist that his value should be reckoned by his productive ea pa city, and claim that either the animal income of a labor ing man, or at least the excess of his production over his personal consumption, should be taken as a basis for calculating the capital which such income represents. Results will vary according
to circumstances and methods of calculation, but they vary from a capitalized value of $200 to $2000 per head, which with an emigration of 100,000 persons would mean an annual loss of $20,000,000 to $200.000.000. Considerable as these figures are, they shrink into insignificance when compared with the national wealth of Great Britain or of Germany or even of Italy, the only countries which furnish an annual emigra timi of 100,000 persons. Moreover, it is not universally conceded that these calculations are right in principle, that men as such have a value to the community which represents a capital sum.
Still, if emigration is regarded as a positive loss, it must, on the other hand, be granted that it has compensation in helping build up new markets for the mother country. In short, the conditions which surround emigration are so complex that any general rule of its value or harmfulness to the mother country must be so guarded as to he practically valueless.