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.The data for the former countries are shown in Table 5.2.During the colonial period and, indeed, into the early national period,the percentage of German immigrants with skills became larger.In partic-ular, note the high skill level of those Germans who immigrated between1815 and 1820.Almost three-quarters were white-collar workers or arti-sans.Given the very high transportation costs at this time, mainly thefairly skilled were able to afford the cost of the transatlantic voyage.7 Yetit is also apparent that even the German immigrants arriving in 1709 were7During these years, about 40% of the German immigrants to Pennsylvania came asindentured servants.See Grubb,  End, Figure 1, p.799.These indentured servants hada high skill level.See Grubb,  German Immigration, pp.431 4.One reason is thatskilled workers earned more in the United States and could more quickly pay off the hightransportation costs.104 Mass Migration Under Sailtable 5.2.Male Immigrant Occupations, by Country of Origin,1709 1820 (percent of annual total in each group)Country/Years White Collar Artisans & Skilled Farmers UnskilledGermany1709 0.736.462.80.11733 3.949.047.101793 1807 6.259.130.44.31815 1820 9.863.822.63.8England1774 1776 4.458.112.0 25.5Sources: Calculated from Grubb,  German Immigration, Table 5, p.432, and Grubb,Immigration, Table 21, pp.107 9.Grubb s figures were reclassified to correspond to thecategories in Appendix 5.2.The figures for England are originally from Bailyn, Voyagers.highly skilled.Although few were in the white-collar group, more thanone-third were artisans or other skilled labor, a fraction that was at leastas large as the comparable percentage in either the U.S.or German laborforces.8 In addition, almost no immigrants were unskilled workers.Then,over the period to 1820, the consistent trend was for the percentage offarmers to decline and the percentages of white-collar workers and arti-sans and other skilled workers to increase.These data are consistent withother work of a more qualitative nature.Wokeck found that single malecolonial German immigrants came  from places that provided school-ing and were young people with some skill. 9 Their literacy rate rosefrom 60 percent to 80 percent between the 1730s and the RevolutionaryWar.Grubb indicates the literacy level of German colonial immigrantswas higher than among the entire German population.10 Similarly, Fertigfinds that literate German males were more likely to migrate.11The only comprehensive empirical estimate of the occupational struc-ture of the entire English colonial immigrant stream is for the end of thecolonial period and is also shown in Table 5.2.Bailyn estimated thatmore than 60 percent of all English immigrants during the 1774 6 period8Grubb,  German Immigration, p.434, also makes this argument with respect to theU.S.labor force.The earliest estimate of the skill level of the German labor force is for1849 (see Table 5.5), which shows that about one-third of the male labor force waswhite-collar or skilled.Presumably, this percentage was much smaller in the eighteenthcentury.9Wokeck, Trade, p.50.10Grubb,  Colonial Immigrant Literacy, p.65.11Fertig,  Transatlantic Migration, p.234.Who Were the Immigrants? 105were artisans or white-collar workers.12 Again, this percentage must havebeen much more than the comparable one for either the English or theU.S.labor forces.Thus, the late colonial English immigrant stream wasalso highly skilled.Both English and German immigration was composed partly of inden-tured servants and partly of immigrants who paid their own way.Morespecific information exists on the different groups of English immigrantsover the colonial period.Bailyn found that indentured servants whoarrived during the late colonial period fell into two categories.They wereeither young, single, skilled artisan adults, or young agricultural workers [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]