LAW OF POPULATION ILLUSTRATED 183 



If no field of emigration had been available, the 

 demand of the home labour market would alone have 

 determined the number of marriages, and consequently 

 of births, so that the natural increase would not have 

 exceeded what was required to provide for the supply 

 of that market. The marriages at home caused by 

 departure of emigrants leaving their several posts of 

 employment to be filled as a rule by younger men, 

 were sufficient, by the number of births which they 

 yielded, to replace the numbers who left the shores of 

 Sweden ; for a continuous emigration is maintained by 

 its own action in elevating the birth-rate. In the last 

 decade of our table, we see the emigration movement 

 sustaining a severe check, and the bulk of the natural 

 increase retained for the home labour market. The 

 same phenomenon is visible also in Norway. The 

 population of Sweden, which advanced by only 4*8 

 per cent, in the previous decade, made in this an 

 increase of 8'2 per cent. ; while the actual increase of 

 Norway was raised from a decennial date of 3 '3 per 

 cent, to one of 10*2 per cent. Whereas in the eight 

 years 188794 the emigration from Norway amounted 

 to 147,000 persons, it amounted for the nine years 

 1895-1903 to only 47,000. 



We have in these figures a convincing proof that a 

 season of prosperity had come to both countries, marked 

 by a greater advance in the home labour demand, accom- 

 panied with an elevation of the standard of comfort that 

 neutralised to a considerable degree the attractiveness 

 of a settlement in the United States of America. 



