Emigration was perceived by trade unions and other voluntary groups as a practical solution to unemployment and economic depression. The height of emigration corresponded with years of harsh economic depression, particularly in the late 1840s and early 1850s, the mid-1880s, and the period of 1906 to 1913. Extreme emigration in the period 1871–1931 counterbalanced the increase in population due to new births. This trend ended in the 1930s when the world trade depression saw emigrants returning home; the numbers leaving Scotland in the 1930s were at their lowest for a century.
