Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-94fs2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-07T16:34:14.620Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Ethnicity, Gender, and Social Mobility in 1910

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Sharon Sassler  and
Michael J. White
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The belief that the social class position an individual inherits at birth is not itself a prime determinant of subsequent personal achievement is a cherished part of American democratic tradition. Social historians attempting to measure whether the mobility opportunities so eagerly sought by immigrants were in fact realized have looked at the occupations of immigrant men and their sons. Evidence from such diverse areas as Boston, Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and New York City indicates that at the turn of the century many men did experience upward occupational mobility; some groups, notably blacks, did not fare as well as did white immigrants, and not all white immigrants experienced the same rates of occupational improvement (Bodnar et al. 1982; Lieberson 1980; Model 1988; Thernstrom 1964, 1973; Zunz 1982). This essay turns to the first decade of the twentieth century to explore some of the factors contributing to socioeconomic mobility.

Type
Articles
Information
Social Science History , Volume 21 , Issue 3 , Fall 1997 , pp. 321 - 357
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 1997 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Acker, J. (1980) “Women and stratification: A review of recent literature.” Contemporary Sociology 9: 25–35.Google Scholar
Blau, P., and Duncan, O. D. (1967) The American Occupational Structure. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Bodnar, J., Simon, R., and Weber, M. P. (1982) Lives of Their Own: Blacks, Italians, and Poles in Pittsburgh, 1900-1960. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Bose, C. E., and Rossi, P. H. (1983) “Gender and jobs: Prestige standings of occupations as affected by gender.” American Sociological Review 48: 316-30.Google Scholar
Chiswick, B. (1991) “Jewish immigrant skill and occupational opportunity in late-nineteenth-century America.” Explorations in Economic History 28: 64–86.Google Scholar
Cohen, M. (1982) “Changing educational strategies among immigrant generations: New York Italians in comparative perspective.” Journal of Social History 15: 443-66.Google Scholar
Cohn, R. L. (1995) “A comparative analysis of European immigrant streams to the United States during the early mass migration.” Social Science History 19: 63–89.Google Scholar
DeJong, P. Y., Brawer, Milton J., and Robin, Stanley (1971) “Patterns of female intergenerational mobility: A comparison with male patterns of intergenerational occupational mobility.” American Sociological Review 36: 1033-42.Google Scholar
Diner, H. R. (1983) Erin’s Daughters in America: Irish Immigrant Women in the Nineteenth Century. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Duncan, O. D. (1961) “A socioeconomic index for all occupations,” in Reiss, A. J. Jr. (ed.) Occupations and Social Status. Glencoe, IL: Free Press: 109-38.Google Scholar
England, P. (1979) “Women and occupational prestige: A case of vacuous sex equality.” Signs 5: 252-65.Google Scholar
Featherman, D. L., and Hauser, R. M. (1976) “Sexual inequalities and socioeconomic achievement in the U.S., 1962-1973.” American Sociological Review 41: 426-83.Google Scholar
Glenn, S. A. (1990) Daughters of the Shtetl: Life and Labor in the Immigrant Generation. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Glick, P. C., and Lin, S. (1989) “More young adults are living with their parents: Who are they?” Journal of Marriage and the Family 48: 104-12.Google Scholar
Goldin, C. (1980) “The work and wages of single women, 1870-1920.” Journal of Economic History 40: 81–88.Google Scholar
Goldin, C. (1981) “Family strategies and the family economy in the late nineteenth century: The role of secondary workers,” in Hershberg, Theodore (ed.) Philadelphia: Work, Space, Family, and Group Experience in the Nineteenth Century. New York: Oxford University Press: 277–310.Google Scholar
Goldin, C. (1990) Understanding the Gender Gap. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Griffen, C., and Griffen, S. (1978) Natives and Newcomers: The Ordering of Opportunity in the Mid-Nineteenth-Century City. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Guest, A., Landale, N., and McCann, J. (1989) “Intergenerational occupational mobility in the late-nineteenth-century United States.” Social Forces 68: 351-78.Google Scholar
Guest, A., and Tolnay, S. (1983) “Children’s roles in fertility.” Social Science History 7: 355-80.Google Scholar
Hareven, T. (1982) Family Time and Industrial Time. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hauser, R. (1982) “Occupational status in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.” Historical Methods 15:111-26.Google Scholar
Havens, E. M., and Tully, J. C. (1972) “Female intergenerational occupational mobility: Comparisons of patterns?” American Sociological Review 37: 774-77.Google Scholar
Hodge, W., Siegel, P., and Rossi, P. H. (1964) “Occupational prestige in the United States: 1925-1963.” American Journal of Sociology 20: 286–302.Google Scholar
Horan, P. M., and Hargis, P. H. (1991) “Children’s work and schooling in the late-nineteenth-century family economy.” American Sociological Review 56: 583-96.Google Scholar
Jacobs, J., and Greene, M. (1994) “Race and ethnicity, social class, and schooling in 1910,” in Watkins, Susan (ed.) After Ellis Island. New York: Russell Sage Foundation: 209-56.Google Scholar
Kessner, T. (1977) The Golden Door: Italian and Jewish Immigrant Mobility in New York City, 1880-1915. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Lamphere, L. (1987) From Working Daughters to Working Mothers: Immigrant Women in a New England Industrial Community. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Landale, N., and Guest, A. (1990) “Generation, ethnicity, and occupational opportunity in late-nineteenth-century America.” American Sociological Review 55: 280-96.Google Scholar
Landale, N., and Tolnay, S. (1993) “Generation, ethnicity, and marriage: Historical patterns in the northern United States.” Demography 30: 103–126.Google Scholar
Lieberson, S. (1980) A Piece of the Pie: Blacks and White Immigrants since 1880. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Model, S. W. (1988) “Italian and Jewish intergenerational mobility: New York, 1910.” Social Science History 12: 31–48.Google Scholar
Myers, D. (1995) “The changing immigrants of southern California.” Research Report LCRI-95-04R, University of Southern California.Google Scholar
Nakao, K., and Treas, J. (1994) “Updating occupational prestige and socioeconomic scores: How the new measures add up.” Sociological Methodology 24: 1–72.Google Scholar
Oppenheimer, V. K. (1970) The Female Labor Force Participation in the United States: Demographic and Economic Factors Governing Its Growth and Changing Composition. Berkeley, CA: Institute of International Studies.Google Scholar
Pagnini, D., and Morgan, S. P. (1990) “Intermarriage and social distance among U.S. immigrants at the turn of the century.” American Journal of Sociology 96: 405-32.Google Scholar
Perlmann, J. (1988) Ethnic Differences: Schooling and Social Structure among the Irish, Italians, Jews, and Blacks in an American City, 1880-1935. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Ryan, M. (1981) Cradle of the Middle Class: The Family in Oneida County, New York, 1790-1865. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Sassler, S. (1995) “Trade-ofFs in the family: Sibling effects on daughters’ activities in 1910.” Demography 32: 557-75.Google Scholar
Sassler, S. (1996) “Feathering the nest or flying the coop? Ethnic and gender differences in young adults’ coresidence in 1910.” Journal of Family History 21: 446-66.Google Scholar
Sassler, S. (forthcoming) “Women’s marital timing at the turn of the century: Generational and ethnic differences.” Sociological Quarterly.Google Scholar
Smith, J. E. (1985) Family Connections: A History of Italian and Jewish Immigrant Lives in Providence, Rhode Island, 1900-1940. Albany: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Sobek, M. (1996) “Work, status, and income: Men in the American occupational structure since the late nineteenth century.” Social Science History 20: 169–207.Google Scholar
Steinberg, S. (1981) The Ethnic Myth: Race, Ethnicity, and Class in America. Boston: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Stevens, G., and Cho, H. H. (1985) “Socioeconomic indexes and the new 1980 census occupational classification scheme.” Social Science Research 14: 142-68.Google Scholar
Strong, M., Preston, S. H., Miller, A. R., Hereward, M., Lentzner, H. R., Seaman, J. R., and Williams, H. C. (1989) User’s Guide: Public Use Sample of the 1910 United States Census of Population. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Population Studies Center.Google Scholar
Thernstrom, S. (1964) Poverty and Progress: Social Mobility in a Nineteenth-Century City. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Thernstrom, S. (1973) The Other Bostonians: Poverty and Progress in the American Metropolis, 1880-1970. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Tilly, L. A., and Scott, J. W. (1978) Women, Work, and Family. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.Google Scholar
Treiman, D., and Terrell, K. (1975) “Sex and the process of status attainment: A comparison of working men and women.” American Sociological Review 40: 174–200.Google Scholar
Walters, P. B., and Briggs, C. M. (1993) “Child labor and schooling in the early-twentieth-century South.” American Sociological Review 58: 163-81.Google Scholar
Watson, S. (1994) “Introduction,” in Watkins, Susan (ed.) After Ellis Island. New York: Russell Sage Foundation: 1–10.Google Scholar
White, M. J., Dymowski, R. F., and Wang, S. (1994) “Ethnic neighbors and ethnic myths: An examination of residential segregation in 1910,” in Watkins, Susan (ed.) After Ellis Island. New York: Russell Sage Foundation: 175–208.Google Scholar
White, M. J., and Sassier, S. (1995) “Ethnic definition, social mobility, and residential segregation in the United States,” in Goldscheider, C. (ed.) Population, Ethnicity, and Nation-Building. Boulder, CO: Westview: 267-97.Google Scholar
Zunz, O. (1982) The Changing Face of Inequality: Urbanization, Industrial Development, and Immigrants in Detroit, 1880-1920. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar