1074 



10,560 per year, whereas 51 percent were industrial and agricultural 

 laborers.^° Characteristic of many of the immigrants in the 1890's 

 among the unskilled was that of a young Irish boy who at 14 earned 

 his passage (£5) by tarring an English Lord's deer park in County 

 Kildai'G and upon landing at Castle Garden, N.Y., then the prinei'pal 

 port of entry for European immigrants, headed for Coudersport, Pa., 

 where he began life in America as a child laborer in a tannery.^^ 



Unskilled workers were the norm of immigration during the 19th 

 and early 20th centuries ; not until after World War II, when the man- 

 powei- needs of the Nation shifted, were restrictions placed on the un- 

 skilled and encouragement given to selected professionals in the pro- 

 fessional, technical, and kindred (PTK) category.*- And, not until 

 then did the brain drain problem emerge as an international issue. 



REVERSE TALENT MIGRATION 



A feature of human mobility in the American experience later to 

 be repeated elsewhere is scattered evidence of a reverse talent migra- 

 tion. Like the Saudi Arabian or African student of the 1960's, their 

 counterparts from a rough-hewed, developing America were often 

 tempted by the allure of a superior European cultural environment. 

 Other Americans left for political reasons. 



In its early history the Massachusetts Bay Colony experienced a 

 severe loss of its Harvard graduates. Eleven of the first 20 alumni im- 

 miofrated to England and remained there permanently.®^ 



Perhaps the most drastic loss of a leadership elite occurred during 

 the American Revolution when American Loyalists were dispossessed 

 of their property and fled with their sympathies to British Canada or 

 Mother England. It has been impossible to determine how many de- 

 parted, but the number has been estimated as high as 100,000. That this 

 represented a substantial brain drain was indicated by the colonial his- 

 torians Barck a,nd Lefler who observed that their departure deprived 

 tlie United States of a "goodly percentage" of the wealthy and cul- 

 tured classes.®* 



Students are particularly vulnerable to brain drain, as this study 

 Avill later demonstrate, and Amei'ican students of the past have not 

 been immune to the temptation of benefits of living in a more advanced 

 society. Dr. A. B. Zahlan, a physicist at the American University of 

 Beirut in Lebanon, has been working on a study of students from the 

 United States who went to Europe for their education between 1800 

 and 1900. The study remains in the primary stage, but Dr. Zahlan lias 

 accumulated sufficient evidence to conclude that "a significant fraction 

 of these American students , never returned home, but remained in 

 Europe." Erom this past American and the current Arab experience, 

 Dr. Zahlan generalize'^ : "There is a perennial risk that anybody who 



«> Hpnderson, op. cit.. p. 2, and Brinley Thomas, "'Modern' Migration,"' In Adams, The 

 Brain Drain, chapter 3 and p. 33. 



^ MS diary of Richard J. Whelan, October 1890. 



^ IMd.. pp. 29-33. and HohdersOn. op. cit, pp. ti!-3. 



s^Thomai^ D. Dublin, "The Migration of Phvsiciaus to the United States," The New 

 Ennland Jovrtwl of Medicine (Anr. 20. 1972). p. 875. 



*^ Oscar T. Barck. Jr., and Hugli Talmadge Lefler, Colonial America (New Yorlt : Mac- 

 mlllan. 1968). p. 651. 



