The Effects of the 1904 North Atlantic
Fare War upon migration between
Europe and the United States
Drew Keeling
Department of History
University of Zurich
Prepared for the All-UC Economic History
and All-UC World History joint conference,
“Middlemen and Networks”
November 3-5, 2006
UC San Diego
This paper is a preliminary and incomplete draft. Please do not cite without contacting the author first
Comments are welcome at [email protected]
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THE EFFECTS OF THE 1904 NORTH ATLANTIC FARE UPON
MIGRATION BETWEEN EUROPE AND THE UNITED STATES
C O N T E N T S
1
2
4
5
5
The Historical Context of Transport and Migration
Time, Place, Companies, Fares, and Passenger Volumes
Roots, Routes and Repeat Transits
Kinship Networks and Migrant Self Selection
Conclusions and Implications
T E X T TAB LE S
Table 1
Table 2
Table 3
Table 4
Table 5
Table 6
Regional Sources of Immigration, 1903 and 1904
Expected vs Actual Change in Immigration, 1903 and 1904
Expected vs Actual Change in Steerage Passenger Flows, 1903 and 1904
Steerage Passengers shifting routes, July-Dec., 1904
Other Changes in Steerage Traffic Levels, July-Dec., 1904
Estimated Overall Quantitative Effects of the 1904 Fare War on Migration
REFERENCES
Primary and Reference Book Sources
Passenger list sample
Secondary Sources
A P P E N D I C E S
#1
#2
#3
#4
#5
#6
#7
Recessions, U.S. Immigration and North Atlantic Fare Wars, 1870-1914
Cunard Line, Liverpool-New York, Fares and Passengers, 1885-1914
Westbound Steerage Passengers and Weighted Average Fares, 1901-1913
Quarterly Steerage Fares to New York, 1903-06
Immigrant Passengers' Nationalities and Embarkation Ports, 1903-04
Steerage Flows, West and East, between UK and USA, 1900-04
Westbound Crossings by Migrant Type, 1900-14 and second half of 1904
1. THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT OF TRANSNATIONAL INTERMEDIATION, LONG
DISTANCE TRANSPORT, AND MODERN MASS MIGRATION
One of the biggest aspects of European overseas expansion in the modern era was the
large and voluntary long-distance relocation of Europeans abroad. This mass migration reached a
culminating peak in the early years of the twentieth century when over twenty million people left
Europe for other continents, about half of them bound for the United States.1
A range of “middlemen,” from colonization companies to promoters, contractors, and
agents, and the more informal but almost ubiquitous kinship-based "chain migration" networks,
have historically accompanied every episode of mass European relocation overseas. How the
costs imposed upon migrants by these intermediaries might have shaped the volume and
character of European mass emigration across the half-century ending with the outbreak of
World War I, has remained obscure however.
The lack of any significant sustained trend (down or up) in transatlantic steamship fares
during these decades limits the conceivable significance of transport costs upon mass movements
between the labor markets of Europe and North America.2 Migration historians have
nonetheless periodically voiced suspicions that transportation might have been a "third factor" in
between the stereotypical "push" and "pull" causes of migration, or that fare wars between
shipping companies "determined the extent and character" of the migration "in certain years."3
The best-documented fare war of the steamship era on the North Atlantic took place on
routes between the British Isles and the United States during the second half of 19044 . A careful
1 U.S. Historical Statistics, Willcox
2 See, for example, appendices 2 and 3.
3 Hvidt, “Agents,” p. 179, Hansen, “Immigration as a Field for Historical Research”, p.194.
4 The initial targeted trimming of fares on the first ports affected by the fare war occurred in April,1904
and final restoration to pre-fare-war levels on all routes came only in March, 1905, but the six month
period from July to December of 1904 - when cut rates were in full and open effect for steerage (third
class) passenger travel from all British and Scandinavian ports to United States - is the operative period
of the fare war used in this paper.
analysis of the available sources on shipping lines’ corporate strategy makes it clear that the fareslashing (to as low as one-third of normal levels) during this half year was not done in order to
try to influence either the volume or the socio-economic composition of the migration occurring
at those bargain travel prices. It is an open historiographical question, however, whether cut-rate
passage prices might have inadvertently had such effects, and this episode provides an
illustrative case by which to consider, more generally, the role of travel costs and migration
intermediaries on mass migration between Europe and America.
Of all European countries in the opening decade of the twentieth century, the United
Kingdom had the oldest and most-developed maritime infrastructure, the most technically
advanced ships with the most comfortable (or least uncomfortable) on-board accommodations,
plying the shortest routes to America. Its relatively literate island population had ready access to
major transatlantic ports, and a longer experience with mass migration to North America than
any other. Britain was also unique in being both a sizable source of overseas emigrants and a
major transit corridor for third country nationals (particularly from Scandinavian and Russia)
who often found it convenient to migrate to America by way of British embarkation ports.
The 1904 fare war differed from its predecessors in the 1870s, ‘80s and ‘90s, because it
came towards the end (not in the middle) of a relatively minor (not major) recessionary slump in
the United States, and it was accompanied by an increase, not a decrease, in steerage passenger
traffic along the effected routes. The more typical pattern of the preceeding thirty years had been
one in which temporarily slashed fares were associated with declines in the number of
transatlantic migrants journeying to the USA.
Immigrant employees, then and now, were heavily over-represented in marginal jobs and
in cyclical industries. Their job prospects were thus doubly cyclical, and migrant flows to
America tracked the ups and downs of the U.S. economy and labor market with magnified
amplitude. Because nearly all the costs of transporting those migrants across the Atlantic were
“fixed” (in the sense of not moving with changes in revenues), the effects of cyclical downturns
upon the profits of passenger shipping companies were magnified still further.5 Not
surprisingly, “fare wars” tended to break out during recessions, when the transport firms faced
heavy losses and competed more desperately than usual for shares of a much-reduced migrant
traffic.
The belief that steamship fares stimulated relocation across the late nineteenth century
North Atlantic thus mistakenly inverts both the “sign” and the “direction” of historical causation.
Instead of migration rising because fares fell, fares more often tended to fall in response to
plunges in migration volumes. The 1904 fare war did not fit this pattern, however, and this paper
addresses the reasons for that “exception to the rule.”
The dramatic slashing of transatlantic steerage fares on the principal transatlantic routes
connecting the United States and the United Kingdom, in June 1904, generated newspaper
headlines across the Atlantic basin. It was a culminating episode in a long-standing rivalry and
collusion between major British, German, and American passenger shipping corporations, and it
occurred as politicians and pundits in the United States were gearing up for the most heated and
prolonged immigration policy debate of the decade and half preceeding the First World War.
Early in the 1904 “fare war,” American immigration officials expressed concern that the
cheap rates were attracting “people of the lowest class” and that ports of entry would soon be
“swarming with all the riff-raff” of Europe. More complacent voices, however, considered the
“fear” of a “large influx” of “a loathsome mass of poverty, filth and disease” to be “greatly
exaggerated”.6 Embedded within the allegations of a decrease in migrant quality were
assumptions of an increase in migration quantity.
The anti-immigration “restrictionists” of the early 1900s in the United States voiced the
historically oft-heared complaint that contemporary immigrants, on the whole, lacked the
5 Keeling, “Costs”
6 New York Times, June 13, 1904, p.17, Liverpool Weekly Mercury, June 18, 1904, p. 19, The Nation,
June 16, 1904, pp. 465-66.
praiseworthy traits found in their more nostalgically remembered predecessors of prior eras.
When it came to the more specific issue of the “transportation interests” competing by means of
drastic fare reductions, however, the claim was not that the companies were deliberately
engineering a substitution of “desirable” by “undesirable” immigrants, but rather that, by
lowering the cost barriers to transoceanic movement, the passenger shipping industry was
enabling new, additional, and less welcome classes of newcomers to reach America who could
not previously afford it. The central contention, in other words, was that a lowered price of
reaching America during this fare war (and by vague and mostly incorrect inference, fare wars in
general) was producing a higher volume of Europeans resettling in the United States.
This hypothesis has found its way into the historical literature of the period without being
properly addressed or convincingly resolved there. The objective here is to use a comprehensive
array of statistical measurements to identify and explain the key quantitative effects of unusually
low transatlantic ticket prices during the second half of 1904 upon migration across the North
Atlantic.
There are two basic steps to the analysis which follows here. The first step is to measure
as accurately as possible the change (increase) in the flow of migrants along the routes impacted
by the 1904 fare reductions, during the period of time when the very low rates were in effect.
This measure needs to also be adjusted for factors (other than the low fares) affecting migration
along those routes during that time. The calculation amounts to deriving the difference between
the actual flows of migrants and the flows which would have been “expected” had there been no
fare war, but with all other factors unchanged. The result is thus an estimate of the changes in
migration during the fare war, and because of the fare war.
The second step is to break down this measure of changed migration flows according to
the likely reasons for the changes. One key distinction to try to gauge at this stage, for example,
is between migrants deciding to cross the Atlantic because of the low fares, in contrast to those
already-committed migrants who simply altered their routes in order to embark at ports where
rates to the United States had been slashed. The resulting quantitative estimates of the reasons for
increased or otherwise changed migration flows can then be interpreted in the light of more
general historical knowledge about the motives and patterns of the European migrants who came
to America on steamships.
Before proceeding with the analysis, however, it is first necessary to describe more fully
the sources and methods that will be followed. Two key components of the approach here are the
combining of traditional U.S. immigration statistics with passenger and fare date available from
shipping line archives, and the augmenting of these aggregate measurements with data from a
sample of detailed passenger arrival lists prepared by shipping officials and given to U.S.
immigration inspectors.
2. Time, place, companies, fares, and passengers
The fare war of 1904 and early 1905 is an important and not very well understood
episode in the history of the North Atlantic passage, often mentioned by migration and shipping
historians but rarely examined in depth.7 In the secondary historical sources treating the fare war
tangentially or superficially, there are contradictory indications as to when and where it occurred,
and who, amongst the transport firms involved, was allied against whom.8 A careful and
7 A classic account of the 1904 fare war’s origins, trajectory, and outcomes, can be found in Murken, chapters 8-15,
particularly chapter 12. Murken was the chief negotiating lawyer for the German HAPAG line, a key protagonist in
the fare war, and his elegantly lengthy German prose is interrupted by few footnote citations. The concise yet
incisive account by Vale provides further details, better citations, and a different perspective on the war’s
antecedents. More concerning the motives and tactics of the various shipping lines involved, and the outcomes and
“lessons” learned afterwards, particularly in the U.S, can also be found in Keeling, “Business,” in the relevant
portions of chapters 3-5.
8 There are two principal misunderstandings in the secondary literature of the fare war. Firstly, because
the formation of J. P. Morgan’s “Anglo-American shipping trust” during 1900-03, which paved the way for
the fare war, involved a long and complicated set of negotiations between Morgan and his eventual British
affiliates, on the one side, and the two giant German lines, on the other, there have been occasional
assumptions that these two blocs were the ones fighting the fare war. In fact, both were allied against a
third force, the fiercely independent Cunard Line underwritten by a generous and timely British
government subsidy. The second set of confusions arises from the fact that a key precipitating cause of
the fare war was the determination of the German lines to force, via their Morgan “combine” allies in the
UK, punishingly steep fare cuts upon the Cunard line, in order to pressure it to rejoin the cartel
thorough examination of the primary sources, such as contemporary newspaper accounts,9 make
it clear however that drastically reduced fares and “cutthroat competition” occurred essentially
on the routes from UK and Scandinavian ports to the United States10 from late Spring, 1904 to
early 1905, and that the principal antagonists were the group of British lines led by the U.K.’s
White Star11 acting largely as proxies for their two large German allies, HAPAG, and NDL,
versus the British owned-and-operated Cunard company.12
The focus of this paper is on the relatively narrow but important issues of whether, how,
and how much the 1904 fare war affected fundamental decisions of European migrants to cross
the Atlantic to (and in some cases, also back from) the United States. The proper way to begin
the analysis is by examining the passenger fares in the steerage class used by over 80% of
transatlantic migrants between Europe and America in the early 1900s. Detecting periods of
(“conference”) arrangement it had abruptly dropped out of in 1903. The shipping line “conference” system,
largely set up to allocate market shares of steerage (migrant) passenger traffic, survived in a weakened
form, but was only fully restored in 1908 when Cunard finally came solidly back into the (strengthened)
collaborative fold on a lasting basis.Some observers and historians have therefore assumed that the fare
war itself lasted from 1903-08, when in fact rock bottom steerage fares (half or less of the normal pre-war
level averaging about $25 from the UK to the USA) occurred only from mid 1904 through early 1905. See
Keeling, “Business,” pp. 125-27.
9 Wall Street Journal, June 2,1904, p. 5, New York Times, June 10, 1904, Liverpool Weekly Mercury,
June 11, 1904, p. 4, Frankfurter Zeitung, September 16, 1904 (I), p. 2, p. 6, Times (London), January 16,
1905, p. 6. See immediately following paragraphs for corroborating fare measurements.
10 The smaller UK-Canada traffic was not noticeably affected, possibly because fares there also were
reduced, at least to some extent. See Murken, chapter 11, and Times (London), January 16, 1905, p. 6.
11 the so-called “International Mercantile Marine [IMM],” set up by financier John Pierpont Morgan (see
the footnote two before this one) and consisting, at least for steerage passenger segment, of the
essentially British-run and US-owned White Star, Red Star, and American lines. The formation of IMM is
described concisely in Sears, and is also covered in leading biographies of J.P. Morgan, e.g. Chernow.
12 These four companies, White Star, Cunard, HAPAG and NDL were the four largest carriers of migrants
to America in the early 20th century, handling on average two thirds of the total Europe-US migrant traffic.
About two thirds of the relatively small number of Scandinavian migrants to the USA in these years
travelled by way of UK ports. See Keeling, “Business.” The fare cuts on the UK-US routes were thus
closely matched in magnitude (and for reasons not important here, slightly preceeded in time) by
reductions affecting the one third of Scandinavians going directly from “home” ports in Copenhagen,
Gothenburg, and Kristiania (Oslo). Passage fares on other routes between Europe and the USA were
also affected to a varying but overall much lesser extent. The fare trends are shown in Appendices 2-4,
especially appendix 4, below.
sustained very low fares, e.g. fares sustained at less than half of their 1900-13 level for at least
three months at a time, allows identification of the time, place, and companies involved in fare
wars.13
The fares charged to Europe migrants crossing the Atlantic by ship to U.S. entry points
(such as New York’s Castle Garden, or its successor, Ellis Island, which handled over two-thirds
of that massive influx in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries) have been a source of
frustration and confusion to historians. The fares were only publicized on an infrequent and
intermittent basis, the rates changed abruptly at odd intervals, and until recently, there have been
very few continuous time series discovered or developed. Historians have tended to try to draw
trends from only a few scattered observations, usually without convincing effect, or to ignore the
fares altogether, or to say how important they must have been, somehow, without really knowing
how or why they changed over time, or what the real net effect of such changes might have been
on migratory decisions, behavior, or outcomes.
Three basic time series of North Atlantic steerage fares are presented here in appendices
2,3, and 4. The first two comprise annual average fares and are included mainly for the purpose
of illustrating, firstly, the lack of any sustained secular trend14 and, secondly, the tendency of
changes in steerage fares to be positively rather than inversely correlated with changes in
passenger volumes, most of the time.
The quarterly data shown in Appendix 4 confirm the newspaper accounts of when and
where the fare war was concentrated. The Cunard line, the main target of the fare cutting, forced
to match the low rates of its direct UK competitors, and a good proxy for measuring trends of
overall fare levels from the U.K., cut its steerage prices sharply in late June of 1904 and did not
fully restore them until March, 1905. Fares out of the fare war’s “secondary theatre,”
13 The general existence of a “fare war” itself, e.g. the 1904 fare war, is evidenced by press coverage of the
aggressive competition between transport lines by successive rounds of price-cutting.
14 A slight upwards drift across the thirty years from 1885 to 1914 is roughly in line with the generally rising trend
of U.S. wages (the principal ultimate source for financing most migrant crossings in this period). See Keeling,
“Capacity.”
Scandinavia, moved in a very similar pattern, albeit about two and a half months earlier (up and
down). Prices of the third company shown in Appendix 2, the Holland America line, followed a
similar trend, but the drop in rates is much less. The continental lines such as Holland America
and the two large German companies made substantial fare cuts only on a selective basis -e.g. for
the minority of passengers from Russia and Austria Hungary who had viable ways of going to
America via Britain or on vessels of a British shipping company.15
After fares, the next most important “timing” factor is the U.S. business cycle. Migration
levels fluctuated as much as a factor of 4 in response to changes in the U.S. economy. There is
general agreement16 that the U.S. economy was in a mild recession from about October of 1903
through September of 1904. The best estimates17 indicate that migration decisions lagged
changes in economic output and job supply in the USA by about three months. That makes the
operative period of the recession, for migration flow purpose, calendar 1904 (January-December)
Allowing for a lag of at least a month or so for migrants to respond to cut-rate fares, even
with the considerable “advance notice” that applied in this case, and even for minor aspects such
as the choice of shipping line or embarkation port, the appropriate time period for measuring the
affect of the fare war on migration moves would begin in July,1904. It could theoretically then
run into the Spring of 1905, except that fares on some routes (see Appendix 4) had already
returned to “normal” by January, and there is clear evidence of the U.S. economic upswing
starting in the fourth quarter of 1904 impacting -with the expected three month lag- the in the
monthly migration numbers starting in January, 1905.
The basis for estimating the effects of the fare on migration is thus to compare the actual
migration flows from July through December of 1904, on the most affected routes (see Table 1)
15 The obscure and complex details of such circumlocutions described informatively though incompletely
in Murken are not material to the basic conclusion here that the fare war mainly affected North Atlantic
transit fares out of the UK and Scandinavia, with only a mild overall “echo” in other Europe ports.
16 in Jerome, pp. 100-02, Bratt, p. 245, and Miron and Romer, p. 336.
17 see Jerome, pp. 87-88, 91-93, and 121.
with the expected flow levels. The latter estimate, shown in Table 2, is made by taking the actual
levels of the second half of 1903 and adjusting them for the effects of the last six months of 1903
being in a non-recession period, whereas the last six months of 1904 to which 1903 is to be
compared, were all recession months. The effects of the fare war are thus to be estimated by
comparing the change (increase) in migration flows in the second half of 1904 over 1903, with
an adjustment for the expected drop due to a mild recession being in effect during the latter
period.
But the fare war affected more than just immigrants from the immigrants from UK and
Scandinavia compared in Table 2. Appendix 5 shows how, in essence, some migrants from
countries outside Britain and Scandinavia travelled through Britain rather than through their own
“home” embarkation ports. By tallying the change in the levels of all steerage passengers, not
just UK and Scandinavian migrants, in Table 3, a rise in these transit migrants is revealed (see
Table 4 described in the next section below. Not all of the difference excess of steerage
passengers from the UK over British migrants to the US comes from these transit migrants, but
most does ). As an convenient simplification, it is assumed that the one other major external
factor impinging on migration during the fare period, the political conditions in Russia18 exactly
offset the expected drop in these “non-immigrant” steerage passengers.
Summing up then, the methodology here is to take the computed excess of actual steerage
class passengers from UK and Scandinavian ports from July to December 1904 over the
expected level of those passengers (the 1903 actual volume with a small net adjustment for the
business cycle effects, all other extraneous factors, are assumed to cancel each other out). The
increase, shown in Table 3, comes to about 61 thousand passengers, or 74% over the “expected”
level. This is the estimated of the increase migration due to the fare war. It remains to estimate
the relative proportions of this increase attributable to the various likely reasons for the increase.
18 In Russia during late 1904 there was both an unpopular war (with Japan) an unpopular government
(leading to the Revolution of 1905) and a period of higher than “normal” pogrom violence against and
general oppression of Russian (mostly) Jews.
Table 1 Regional Sources of Immigration 1903 and 1904
Country / Region
of last
permanent residence
share of
Immigration
from Europe
full year 1903
2nd half
of
2nd half
of
1903
1904
2nd half of 1904
versus
2nd half of 1903
United Kingdom
Scandinanvia
12%
8%
44,888
30,403
82,183
26,258
37,295
-4,145
+83%
-14%
UK & Scandinavia
20%
75,291
108,441
33,150
+44%
Europe other than
UK & Scandinavia
80%
307,539
264,520
-43,019
-14%
27%
18%
21%
6%
9%
101,900
68,719
80,640
25,737
30,543
89,377
86,191
43,249
24,926
20,777
-12,523
17,472
-37,391
-811
-9,766
-12%
+25%
-46%
-3%
-32%
382,830
372,961
372,961
-3%
of which
Austria Hungary
Russian Empire
Italy
Germany
All Others
TOTAL EUROPE
Source: U.S. Bureau of Statistics data
Table 2 Expected versus Actual Change in Immigration from
UK and Scandinavia (July-Dec. 1904 versus July-Dec. 1903)
ACTUAL Immigration from
UK & Scandinavia in 1903
Immigration from
Europe other than
UK & Scandinavia
2nd half
of
2nd half
of
1904
2nd half of 1904
versus
2nd half of 1903
Source or
Calculation
1903
75,291
108,441
33,150
44%
from Table 1
307,539
264,520
-43,019
-14%
from Table 1
-6,534
-9%
EXPECTED comparable
change in Immigration
from UK & Scandinavia
( see Note below )
EXCESS of Actual over
Expected Immigration from
UK & Scandinavia in 1904
(
33,105
-
( - 6, 534 )
)
39,684
( 33,105 - ( - 6, 534 ) )
Expected comparable change in UK+Scan
Europe ex UK Scan, Calendar 1908 vs Calendar 1907:
-75%
UK, Scan, Calendar 1908 vs Calendar 1907:
-47%
62%
Table 3 Expected versus Actual Change in Steerage Passengers
from UK and Scandinavia (July-Dec. 1904 versus July-Dec. 1903)
Change
Amount
Source or Calculation
Actual Passengers, July - Dec. 1903:
83,189
Transatlantic Passenger Conferences Reports
Actual Passengers, July - Dec. 1904:
144,562
Transatlantic Passenger Conferences Reports
July-Dec04 less July-Dec03:
61,373
Net Expected Increase:
(see below)
0
74%
EXCESS of Actual Change in Steerage Passengers
from UK and Scandinavia (1904 versus 1903):
61,373
( 61,373 - 0 )
of which the EXCESS of Actual over expected change
in Immigrants last resident in UK & Scan.:
39,684
from Table 2
of which the EXCESS of Actual over expected change in Steerage
Passengers who were NOT Immigrants last resident in UK & Scan.:
21,689
( 61,373 - 39,684 )
Sources:
Note:
TABLE 4 STEERAGE PASSENGERS ('000s) SHIFTING
FROM OTHER ROUTES TO UK-USA DURING JULY-DEC., 1904
Part A: IMMIGRANTS to USA, officially listed as "last resident in the UK" but of
Continental "races" (other than "Hebrews") in fiscal 1905 less fiscal 1904
German
Polish
Lithuanian
1.00
.45
.35
Russian
Other
.15
.65
Subtotal:
2.60
Part B: ESTIMATED IMMIGRANTS to USA, officially listed as "last resident" in the UK but
NOT of British or Irish "race" (here including "Hebrews") shifting to UK-USA from other routes
[1]
[2]
14
6
Total "Hebrew" residents of UK among fiscal 1905 immigrants
"Hebrew" residents of Great Britain " " " "
IF they were at the same percentage of all Immigrants as during 1906-14
[3] = [2] - [1]
8
Difference
[4]
3
Other Continental European races resident in Great Britian
1905 less 1904 (from Part A above)
[5] = [3] + [4]
11
Total "UK,Scan Immigrant" Route shifts
Part C: ESTIMATE of STEERAGE PASSENGERS to the USA who were NOT officially
listed as "last resident in the UK," and shifting to UK-USA from other routes
19
Total Other Steerager route shifts
ESTIMATED TOTAL STEERAGE
PASSENGERS SHIFTING
FROM OTHER ROUTES:
30
SOURCES & NOTES:
Parts A and B: BI Annual Reports, Table V, Part C
Part C: Unexpected Increase in Steerage Passengers (who were not UK or Scan
Immigrants) on UK-US routes during July-Dec., 1904 of 21,689 less estimated 2,500
increase (see table 5 below) in migrants who were naturalized U.S. citizens
returning from short visits to families in Europe
TABLE 5 OTHER CHANGES IN STEERAGE TRAFFIC FROM UK & SCAND.
Westbound
III Class
A. HIGHER LATE SUMMER REPEAT RATE
18%
Passengers
% of
Total
Actual less Projected as % of Total Increase in Passengers
Late Summer repeat rate (above) times increase in Sept. and Oct. III class westbd
Sources: Passenger lists
60
11
of which citizens
3
Note: All the "summer repeat" passengers went west in September or October of 1904 and were recorded as having been previously
in America, and in1904. 77% of steerage eastbound to UK and Scandinavia, January-August, 1904, occurred during May-August.
B. TIMING SHIFT
going to America during July-Dec ‘04 instead of in Apr-Je1905
[1]
[2]
[3] = [1] x [2]
[4]
[5] = [4] - [3]
331,027 All westbound III during April-June, 1905
19% UK as % of all, April-June,1900-11:
62,513 "Expected" UK III westbound
60,778 Actual UK III westbound
1,735 Actual minus expected
= estimated shift from 2nd calendar quarter of 1905 to Fall '04:
1.7
= estimated shift from other future quarters to Fall '04:
2.3
4
NET =
Comment: This measures the quantity of migrants whose timing shifted from April-June, 1905 to January-March, 1905
(i.e those who left earlier than they otherwise would have within the 1905 fiscal year
in order to take advantage of the very low fares during the fare war).
Source: Voyage Database
Note: The "UK as % of All (row [2] above) excludes the atypical calender quarters 1904-II trhrough 1905-I and 1908-I-IV
See chart C-F1
C. INCREASES IN FIRST TIME IMMIGRATION
Relocations to America by steerage from UK & Scandinavian embarkation ports
made as a result of the low passage costs during the “fare war”
FIRST TIME MIGRANTS:
See Table 6 below’
15
TABLE 6: INCREASED STEERAGE TRAFFIC FROM UK &
SCANDINAVIA (in '000s) AND ESTIMATED REASONS
INCREASE IN STEERAGE PASSENGERS
ATTRIBUTABLE TO THE FARE WAR:
61
Table 3
CHANGED ROUTES:
30
Table 4
49%
INCREASED REPEAT MIGRATION:
11
Table 5
18%
ACCELERATED TIMING OF MOVES:
4
Table 5
7%
16
Table 5
27%
10
6
see below
16%
10%
accounted for by
ADDITIONAL FIRST TIME CROSSINGS
MADE BY IMMIGRANTS TO USA
LAST RESIDENT IN UK OR SCAN.:
First time crossers further subdivided into
"INDEPENDENT":
"DEPENDENT":
see below
Definitions (see Keeling, “Capacity” Appendix 16)
“Dependent Migratory Crossing”: one in which the relocation decision was essentially
made by someone else (usually a sponsoring or accompanying close relative)
“Independent Migratory Crossing”: all other first time crossings by European migrants to the USA
Breakdown of first-time migrants between independent and dependent
migrants as a percentage of the increased crossings due to the fare war
From Passenger list sample:
Independent:
Dependent:
Applied here:
61%
39%
16%
10%
3. Roots, Routes, and Repeat Transits
Most Scandinavian migrants to the USA travelled by way of Britain, but their
“third country” transit through Britain cannot explain steerage passengers from both Britain and
Scandinavian ports being higher than the level of migrants to America who were citizens or long
term residents of the United Kingdom or one of the Scandinavian countries (shown in Appendix
5). Nor can it explain the rise in this difference during the fare war. Two factors can explain it
however, and their magnitude is estimated in Table 4. The main reason for the difference is
immigrants over other nationalities travelling to UK ports and continuing from there as steerage
passengers to the US. This effect is captured in Part C of Table 4, after making a small
adjustment for another source of discrepancy: naturalized U.S. citizens returning to America
after short visits, using the cheap fares, to their home villages. Quite a number of these show up
in the passenger lists of the period. They have names like Olsen travelling with a number nonU.S.-citizen immigrant Olsen from a small village in Norway in the steerage. They classified as
here migrants despite their nationality because the purpose of their travel was clearly related to
migration, not to crossing the Atlantic to make a grand summer vacation tour of Europe as was
case for most U.S. citizens in the first class.
In addition, Parts A and B of Table 4 also show and estimate the magnitude of UK
immigrants who appear to have been actually only temporary residents staying a few weeks
enroute from Poland, Hungary, or the Jewish “Pale of Settlement.” There is separate evidence of
such misclassifications, and no other good explanation for the sudden surge (in the U.S.
immigration statistics) of “Hebrew residents of Great Britain” immigrating to America in late
1904 and early 1905. The great likelihood, and the assumption of Table 4, is that these were
actually Eastern European residents taking a little extra time (for various reasons) to get through
Britain to America.
Table 4 thus adds together two measures to arrive at the amount of the additional fare war
induced migration which is attributable to migrants from continental Europe going via Britain in
larger than usual volumes to take advantage of the low fares. The first measure computed in Part
C, is basically the excess of (a) actual steerage passengers less immigrants versus (b) what that
excess could be expected to be, absent the fare war. The second measure, Parts A and B involves
the same effect, but with transit migrants classified (e.g. by virtue of a weeks with a temporary
UK address) as residents of Britain. 1
Table 5 goes on to estimate two further reasons for increased passenger flow during the
fare war. The first reason is also suggested by a look at steerage eastward flows to Europe during
the fare war, shown in Appendix 6B. Monthly shipping figures reveal a big surge in July, 1904
shortly after the fares were slashed, of steeragers going from America to UK and Scandinavian
ports. Passenger list samples, which show big increases(in 1904 versus 1903) immigrants who
had been in America already the same year (1904) particularly in September, confirm that there
was increase above the normal “expected” level of short term summer visits to Britain and
Scandinavia made by migrants already resident in America. They took advantage of the low
fares to go back to their home villages in Europe and in some cases, to bring over additional
relatives to America on their return westward crossing later in the summer.
A second effect, estimated in Part B of Table 5, is that of migrants deciding to go sooner
to the US(e.g. during the Fall of 1904 and at very low fares) rather than later (e.g. the following
Spring). These three reasons - migrants changing of route, migrants already in the USA making
extra short term roundtrip excursions back to Europe, and European already intending to migrate
to America doing so sooner than planned due to the bargain ticket prices- account for most of the
61 thousand increase in steerage passenger crossings during the fare war. The remaining
unaccounted for increase, shown in Table 5, part 2, is thus assumed to be Europeans not
intending a move to the USA who made up their minds to make such a move because the fares
were so cheap.
1 Another possible route shift, that of British migrants to America going directly their rather than via
Canada, appears, based on both shipping and migration sources, not to have occurred to any
meaningful extent.
Table 6 summarizes the estimated magnitudes of these various reasons for migration to
increase as result of unusually low fares. Appendix 7 shows the same results in pie chart form.
4. Kinship Networks and Migrant Self Selection
This section is not done yet. There are two key points it will make.
1. It will reiterate that the main impact of the 1904 fare was on how (routes), how often (repeat
migration) and when (timing) to go to the USA not whether to go there rather than to stay in
Europe (or, in a negligible handful of instances rather than going to some other overseas
destination) in the first place.
2. It will explain why these effects (changed routes, increased circularity, accelerated timing, and
decisions to relocate in the first place) were bigger in the 1904 fare war than in prior fare wars.
Four main reasons
a) potential for route switching increased (massive Russian emigration only getting started in
1880s in 90s)
b) increased propensity for summer visit repeat migration
c) milder recession in 1904 than during prior recession plus fare war periods
d) lower overall effective costs of relocation (mainly higher wages and faster on land transit
times) made the steamship ticket a relatively more important component of that cost than before.
5. CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS
The fare war was a dramatic and significant episode in the business of transatlantic
migration.2 It had rather less powerful impacts upon the decisions made by migrants and the
outcomes of those decisions.3 Westward steerage passages from the affected ports in the British
Isles and Scandinavia nearly doubled, but the estimates here suggest that only about a quarter of
the increased traffic was made up of Europeans deciding to migrate to the United States because
of the lower fares. Overall, by contrast, roughly four out five European migrant transits to
America, on average during 1900-1914, were comprised of such “first time crossers.”4
It is instructive to speculate briefly on what might have happened with migration had the
low fares been sustained somehow. (This presupposes some rather drastic changes in the
ownership, regulatory or subsidy structure of passenger shipping, since the prevailing 1904 fare
2 Both sides were ultimately able to claim victory. The German lines eventually did get Cunard to rejoin
the conference (cartel) system which they led, and Cunard was able to largely dictate the terms of that reentry. These victories came at the questionable price of a year or more’s worth of net profit being (See
Keeling, “Business”, chapter 4)
3 Against the benefit of the reduced fares for migrants, which amounted to about 1-2 weeks average
earnings in America (per crossing), must be set the inconvenience of sometimes chaotic and
overcrowded conditions on the docks and on the ships, especially during the peak westbound weeks in
September.
4 See Appendix 7 below.
war level of steerage $10-15 was well below breakeven for the companies as actually
configured).
Does this episode, in other words, offer evidence for passage prices being a major operative
constraint on the volume and characteristics of those self-selecting to relocated to the USA?
For the six month period when the fare war was fully raging, the basic sensitivity of
decisions to leave Europe in response to changed to fare levels indicates that a 50% drop in fares
produced a roughly 25% increase in decisions to migrate (given that the overall passenger
increase was just below 100% of the pre-fare-war base period). It is theoretically possible that
these low fares if indefinitely sustained might have led to an ultimately greater than 25%
increase in migration, due to the replicative effects of “chain migration,” the growing tendency
for “circular” repeat crossings and so forth.
The basic economics of migrate-versus-don’t-migrate decisions in this period argue
against such a conjecture, however. At average wages, living costs, and employment rate levels
in America, the typical migrant could expect to save about $4 per week there. Fares reduced by
about $12 would thus reduce the time to “breakeven” on migration costs by less than one month.
At the margin, there were clearly Europeans on the brink of deciding to go off to America, and
for whom such an additional gain would tip the balance in favor of emigration. That seems to be
basically what happened with many of the 25% of new transatlantic relocaters from the UK in
the second half of 1904. The supply of such “fence-sitters” was also surely not exhausted by a
mere six months of available cut-rate fares. But, the supply was surely also finite, however. The
overall preponderance of evidence indicates that the great majority of migrants to the United
States, decided to do so on the basis of a time horizon of at least a year or two, and usually with
family connections enabling a much longer and more often that not permanent resettlement.
Given the existence of transatlantic migration networks stretching into many thousands of
European villages, and the proliferation of well-established mechanisms for intra-family
financing, such as prepaid tickets and remittances from America, it is certainly seems unlikely
that great numbers of potential migrants would have leaped at the chance to move overseas
because of being able to do by to borrow against one month less of expected future savings.
The conclusion that the fare war of 1904 had relatively modest (and probably not
sustainable) effects on decisions to migrate, is less surprising than it may at first seem. No one
could get to the United States in 1904 from Europe without spending a week at least crossing the
often seasickening Atlantic in a coal-powered metal boat. But half a century after the
introduction of regularly scheduled budget class transatlantic travel, the existence of
uncomfortable but reliable and relatively affordable transportation to and from North America
was largely taken for granted. Permanent or temporary innovations in amenities and or in price
of the service could have big effects on the routing, timing or circularity of migration between
Europe and the United States, but not whether or not to take the plunge and move overseas.
Ultimately, the 1904 fare war turns out to be something of an exception-which-proves-the
rule. During this era of open borders, generally “unfettered” labor markets, and mostly peaceful
globalization” across the North Atlantic, access or lack of access to flexible, risk-ameliorating
kinship networks was a more significant operative constraint on mass international migration
than the costs of relocation The most crucial middlemen intermediaries were those provided by
“in-house” networks, not supplied by the external “market.”
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1
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PASSENGER LISTS
8: four from 1903 and four of same vessels, in same months of 1904
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2
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3
FareWar-App1 Timeline, Timeline as of10/26/06
KEY ECONOMIC RECESSIONS, CHANGES IN IMMIGRATION
FLOWS TO USA, AND PASSENGER "FARE WARS", 1870-1914
Percentage Change in GDP &
US Immigration versus prior year
Share of
(fiscal year)
Periods of
of reduced
fares
Description of Fare Reductions
Fiscal
Years
GDP
Europe
UK
Germany
1874-75
-7%
-51%
-49%
-68%
UK
Ger
45%
30%
May 1874May 1875
1884-85
-7%
-34%
-30%
-36%
UK
Ger
30%
38%
1885
1884-85
"widespread rate cutting" by 1/4 to 1/3 [in UK] (Hyde p. 104)
Fares cut by 2/3 from Hamburg (Ottmüller, pp. 153-55)
1893-94
-13%
-50%
-42%
-54%
UK
Ger
19%
19%
1893-94
1893-94
"damaging rate war" (Hyde p. 106)
"cutthroat competition" and "rate war, " fares cut by over half in UK, also
reduced from German ports (Murken pp. 57-60)
"enormous reduction in fares"(by up to two thirds), mainly affecting Britain
and Scandinavia, with the result that, for shipping lines, "the hemorrage of
red ink threatened to drown everyone." (Flayhardt, pp. 166-69, 217)
Immigrants to USA from
Immigration
from Europe
1893-95
1904
(2nd 1/2 1904)
1908
-1%
-5%
3%
-11%
-39%
80%
3%
UK
Ger
10%
5%
June 1904Jan. 1905
UK
Ger
13%
5%
Sep.-Dec. 1907
(slight reduction)
"fierce rate-cutting war," "all the companies suffered severe financial loss." (Hyde p. 96)
Prices from Germany cut in half for a year, wiping out HAPAG's reserves
(Ottmüller, pp148-49). See also Mathies, pp. 90-91
"one of the fiercest rate wars in history" (Hyde p. 110)
Fare reductions mainly routes from UK and Scandinavia. To some extent, reductions
were also made for transit migrants from Russia and Austrian travelling
through Northern Continental and Adriatic ports (Murken)
Although "the economic crisis in the United States…[led to] the most serious
fall-off in passenger traffic in many years, a rate war failed to materialize"
[in 1908] (Aldcroft, Mercantile, p.354)
Sources: GDP from "How much is that?" (http://eh.net/hmit/), Immigration from Historical Statistics of the United States, U.S. Bureau of Statistics, "Monthly Summary"
FareWar-App2 Cun-85-14, Final Chart as of 10/26/06
£30
Fares-West
Fares-East
Passengers-West
Passengers-East
Steerage Fares in Pounds
£20
£15
60
Recession
of 1908
50
Recession
of 1903-04
Recession
of 1893-94
40
30
£10
20
£5
10
£0
1885 1886 1887 1888 1889 1890 1891 1892 1893 1894 1895 1896 1897 1898 1899 1900 1901 1902 1903 1904 1905 1906 1907 1908 1909 1910 1911 1912 1913 1914
0
Source: Cunard Voyage Accounts. Fares are Revenues / Passengers in steerage class, plus an adjustment westward for the U.S. head tax on immigrants.
Steerage Passengers ('000s)
£25
Steerage Fares and Passengers, Cunard Line,
Liverpool-New York route, 1885-1914
Westbound Steerage Passengers and
Weighted Average Fares, 1901-13
$50
700
600
$40
500
$30
400
300
$20
200
Weighted Average Fares (lefthand scale)
Annual Passengers (righthand scale)
$10
100
$0
0
1901
1904
1908
1911
Annual passengers on these lines ('000s)
Weighted average annual fares of these lines
FareWar-App3-Fares 1901-13, Fare War Appendix 3 (RIMH APP5) as of 10/26/06
1913
Data sources and comments: Annual fares and passengers shown here, and the additional statistics mentioned
below are from Keeling, "Capacity, "Appendices 4,5 and 6. The weighted average fare series shown was
compiled by adjusting the fares route length and then taking an overall average by weighting each line's fares, as
adjusted, by the number of passengers it carried each year. Passenger figures in the graph here are those of
steerage travellers westbound to New York, Boston, Baltimore, Philadelphia. Those ports accounted for 99% of
all steerage arrivals to the U.S. in the period. The lines and route included here took 51% of those steerage
passengers to the U.S. in the period. 1904, 1908, 1911 and 1913 were recession years in the U.S. (Jerome, pp.
100-119). In general, passenger flows were not negatively correlated with fares, as is often assumed. A major
exception to this occurred during The 1904 fare war in Britain was the one signifiicant exception but does not
show up in this graph because, overall, 1904 was a recession year and outside of Britain passenger volumes
declined. Quarterly fares between Liverpool and New York of the Cunard line, a leading protaganist in the 1904
fare war, are shown in Appnendix 3 which follows below. Fare discounting also occurred during the 1908
recession and in 1913. Except for the 1904 fare war, fare differences between routes were fairly constant over
the period. Fare differences across routes mainly reflected cost differences. Voyage costs were, for example,
proportional to route distance.
Average Quarterly Fare as % of "Normal level"
FareWar-APP4 Price comparisons, QTR (%) as of 10/26/06
AVERAGE QUARTERLY WESTBOUND STEERAGE FARES TO
NEW YORK, 1903-06, AS A PERCENTAGE OF "NORMAL"
125%
Quarters of Low fares from Oslo:
L'pool:
Rott'dam:
100%
75%
50%
Cunard, Liverpool
Holland America, Rotterdam
From Kristiania (Olso)
25%
0%
I
1903
II
III
IV
I
1904
II
III
IV
I
1905
II
III
IV
I
II
III
IV
1906
Source: See Appendix 3. These three routes are the only ones for which fare data is available on a more frequent than annual basis for this time period. Other routes,
particularly those from Adriatic ports were also affected by the fare war though none as severely as those out of the U.K. and Scandinavia. "Normal level" of fares:
Cunard, Holland America = average of 1903, 1904, I-II, 1905, II-IV, Oslo = average of 1903, 1904 I, 1905. Shown here as "100%." Two sets of annual fare figures
(those of Glasgow's Anchor Line and those for the two German lines, HAPAG and NDL) reflected in the graph of Appendix 3, are consistent with three quarterly
series shown here. On a year to year basis, averaging fares for all of 1904 and comparing them to 1903, precentage drops were roughly comparable for the three
series in the main fare war region (Cunard: -37%, Anchor: -32%, and Oslo: 30%) and for the two outside of it (Holland America:-13%, German: -3%)
Monthly Immigrant Passenger Crossings from Europe to the USA:
Nationalities and Embarkation Ports, 1903-04
Immigrants of UK or Scandinavian Nationality
Immigrant Passengers embarking in UK & Scandinavian Ports
Immigrants NOT of UK or Scandinavian Nationality
Immigrant Passengers embarking in ports outside of the UK or Scandinavia
100
80
60
40
1903
Sources: Bureau of Statistics, Transatlantic Passenger Conference
1904
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
20
Jan
Monthly Immigrant Crossings ('000s)
120
Monthly Passengers between USA and UK/Scand.
APPENDIX 6A: Monthly Steerage flows
from Scandinavia and the U.K. (westbound to the USA)
40,000
30,000
1904
20,000
1903
10,000
1900-02
0
Jan
Feb
Mar
Apr
May
Jun
Jul
Aug
Sep
Oct
Nov
Dec
Monthly Passengers between USA and UK/Scand.
APPENDIX 6B: Monthly Steerage flows
toScandinavia and the U.K. (eastbound from USA)
40,000
1904
30,000
1903
1900-02 average
20,000
1904
10,000
1903
1900-02
0
Jan
Feb
Mar
Apr
Source: Voyage database
May
Jun
Jul
Aug
Sep
Oct
Nov
Dec
APPENDIX 7A
Migrant Crossings from all of Europe
to USA, by migrant type, 1900-1914
Independent
Repeat
Sources: Table 6
Dependent
APPENDIX 7B
Estimated breakdown,
by migrant type or other reason,
of the increase in migrant crossings from UK
and Scandinavian embarkation ports to USA, as
result of reduced fares, July-December, 1904
Dependent
Repeat
Accelerated
Timing
Independent
Re-Routing
Source: Table 6