Le Nord : revue internationale des Pays de Nord - 01.06.1941, Side 124

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LE NORD
of 21,558 persons and in the period 1925—29 15,035. But that
is the end. The real solid world crisis sets in in America in 1929.
The States have sufficient difficulties at home and have no desire
to absorb further strangers. In 1929 President Hoover’s quota
act is introduced and in the period 1935—39 only a total of
2719 persons emigrate from this country to the U.S.A., or an
annual average of about 540 compared with almost 9600 in the
record years.
Formerly the U.S.A. were the main goal of Danish emigra-
tion. But some did go for instance to Canada and South
America. For various reasons it is hardly possible to obtain exact
statistics of Danish emigration, but if we put the figure at an
annual average of between 6 and 7000 until the restrictions were
introduced, the figure is probably not too high. This, of course,
meant no small relief to a relatively overpopulated country. If
this emigration could still flow freely our unemployment figures
would have been considerably smaller. But, as we all know, the
majority of countries which might need an increase of population,
have to a greater or lesser extent placed obstacles in the way of
immigration, some by direct prohibition, others by high licences
or by requiring the immigrant to be in possession of a relatively
large sum of money and by other means, such as for instance
the U.S.A., Canada, Argentina, Australia and other overseas
countries.
The problem has been much discussed in the press in this
country, not least since the Venezuela experiment of 1938, but
mostly from sentimental viewpoints which seldom lead to rational
conclusions. But the late chief of the emigration office, Mr. H. F.
Ulrichsen, writing in the Socialt Tidsskrift nos. 7—8, 1939, has
left a substantiated and most interesting account of the course
of the experiment, and has placed at the disposal of the author
the information which he subsequently collected.
It is absolutely necessary to return to this experiment, because
the emigration problem invariably in the first place presents itself
when we speak of adapting ourselves to a development which
permanently limits the markets of a population, i. e. makes that
country overpopulated for a long period. This is indeed the truth.
So far we have avoided the word; for the economists do not like
it. They claim that a country can only be relatively overpopulat-
ed. This is little more than a quibble, which we shall not partici-
pate in. In "The Balance of World Economy” it was shown