Social Change 761

The average European laborer was still shorter than the average middle-class
person.

Migration and Emigration

European migration was part of a worldwide movement of men and women

in what was becoming a global labor force. Migration—both permanent and

seasonal—within Europe continued to be significant. In France, in particu­

lar, many rural regions of marginal agriculture lost population to cities and

towns. Seasonal work took hundreds of thousands of laborers across bor­

ders for part of the year as construction and harvest workers. Some Italian

laborers known as “swallows” spent four weeks a year traveling to and from

Argentina to work the harvests.

Permanent migration to the city did not end the contact between the

migrants and their rural origins. Many industrial workers still went back to

their villages to help with the harvest, and many miners were also part-time

farmers. Thus, migration was a two-way street, at least when patterns of

movement involved relatively short distances. When migrants returned home

for visits, they brought with them not only stories about what they had expe­

rienced in the cities and towns where they now lived, but different ways of

speaking, knowledge of birth control, the habit of reading, a taste for sports,

and greater political awareness and interest.

Immigrants from Europe await a ferry for New York City, having passed through

the entry point at Ellis Island.