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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 February 2009
‘There is still a class of menials and a class of masters, but these classes are not always composed of the same individuals, still less of the same families; and those who command are not more secure of perpetuity than those who obey—At any moment a servant may become a master, and he aspires to rise to that condition’. This view of social mobility in North America by Alexis de Tocqueville in 1840 has been the predominant perception almost to the present. Only after the Second World War did two basically different arguments emerge. On the one hand, historians of social mobility in nineteenth-century American and European cities, such as Boston, Marseille, and Bochum came to the tentative conclusion that rates of upward social mobility were in fact higher in the United States than in Europe and that this was especially true for upward mobility from the working-class into non-manual occupations. In effect, their assessments corroborated the assertion which Tocqueville had made more than a century ago. The explanation for these differences, historians argued, was to be found in the values of the European working class: a strong traditional commitment to the occupational heredity, or the beginnings of class consciousness, kept European workers from using chances of social ascent into non-manual occupations much more than American workers. On the other hand, Seymour M. Lipset and Reinhard Bendix have claimed that social mobility becomes similarly high in all societies, once a certain degree of industrialization and economic expansion has been reached. The idea behind this argument is that rates of social mobility depend on economic development and changes of occupational structure, which both follow the same basic pattern in Europe and North America. Whilst the empirical evidence for this assessment depends on post-1945 studies of social mobility in America and Europe, there are grounds for projecting the argument back to the late nineteenth century. First, if economic development does lead to similar mobility rates, this effect should have emerged by the end of the era of industrialization. Secondly, studies of the trend of social mobility in the United States as well as in various European countries show the same long term stability of rates of social mobility since the late nineteenth century. Hence, if rates of social mobility were similar after the Second World War, and if the long term trend was similar too, mobility rates at the end of the era of industrialization cannot have differed much.
1 de Tocqueville, A., Democracy in America (New York: Knopf, 1945), II, 180f.–1Google Scholar learned much from debates on earlier versions of this paper at the Erasmus University Rotterdam (1977), at the Braudel Seminar in Paris (1979), in Lyon (1979), at the North-West Forum on German Social History in Manchester (1979), at the meeting of West German Americanists in Berlin (1980). I also received helpful suggestions from Bill Hubbard (Montreal) and D. A. Reeder (Leicester).
2 Thernstrom, S., The Other Bostonians (Cambridge, Mass., 1973), 259ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sewell, W. H., ‘Social mobility in a nineteenth century European city, Interdisciplinary Hist., vii (1976)Google Scholar; Crew, D., ‘Definitions of modernity: social mobility in a German town, 1880–1901’, Social Hist., vii (1973–1974), 66fGoogle Scholar; Crew, D., Town in the Ruhr. The Social History of Bochum 1860–1914 (New York, 1979).Google Scholar
3 Lipset, S. M. and Bendix, R., Social Mobility in Industrial Society (Berkeley, 1967), 13.Google Scholar
4 Blau, P. M. and Duncan, O. D., The American Occupational Structure (New York, 1967)Google Scholar; Hauser, R. M. et al. , ‘Structural changes in occupational mobility among men in the United States’, American Sociological Review, xl (1975)Google Scholar; Darbel, A., ‘L'érvolution récente de la mobilite sociale’, Economie et statistique, lxxi (1975), 18ffGoogle Scholar; Carlsson, G., Social Mobility and Class Structure (Lund, 1958), 94ffGoogle Scholar; Goldthorpe, J. H., Llewellyn, C., Payne, C., Social Mobility and Class Structure in Modern Britain (1980) 68ffGoogle Scholar; van Tulder, J. J. M., De beroepsmobiliteit in Nederland van 1919 tot 1954 (Leiden, 1952), 94ffGoogle Scholar; leining, G.K, ‘Struktur- und Berufsmobilität in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland’, Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie, XXIII (1971).Google Scholar
5 For the comparison of the access to the business elite and to higher education cf.: Kaelble, H., ‘Long-term changes of the recruitment of the business élite: Germany compared to the US, Great Britain, and France since the industrial revolution’, J. Social History, XIII (1979–1980)Google Scholar; Ringer, F., Education and Society in Modern Europe (Bloomington 1979).Google Scholar
6 An important effort to overcome the shortcomings of this definition of social classes was made by Kocka and the other members of the Bielefeld family history group. Cf. Kocka, J., The study of social mobility and the formation of the working class in the nineteenth century’, Le mouvement social, CXI (1980)Google Scholar, Kocka, J., Ditt, K., Moser, J., Reif, H., Schuren, R., Familie und soziale Plazierung (Opladen, 1980).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
7 Comparisons that include mothers, daughters, or more than two generations are not yet possible for lack of almost any research.
8 It is not fully clear what sort of downward mobility, i.e. mobility between which social classes, made the difference since the social class schemes used by the studies of American cities are much too wide. From some European studies we know that the mobility between small independent masters and shopkeepers and the working class was by far the most important part of downward mobility. No doubt the ‘downward’ character of this mobility often is ambiguous and unclear. Hence, one has to be careful with the argument that a clear difference between America and Europe exists in this respect.
9 Downward career mobility into the working class was 9 per cent on the average in American as well as in European cities (based on table 4, calculated from the averages for each city).
10 However, unskilled workers did not become skilled workers more often in America than in Europe. It is interesting that in spite of the peculiar continuity or even reactivation of artisan guilds in nineteenth-century Central Europe, skilled work was not more open for unskilled workers in the U.S.A. The proportion of unskilled workers who became skilled workers was 7 per cent in Bochum, Germany, 11 per cent in Graz, Austria, against 7 per cent in Boston, 4 per cent in Atlanta, 9 per cent in New Orleans, 11 per cent in Newburyport, 11 per cent in Poughkeepsie, 12 per cent in Warren (for sources see note to table 3). American skilled workers seem to have used other techniques to keep unskilled workers off the trade.
11 Moreover, it is unclear what a detailed comparison of upward career mobility would tell us—a comparison which shows between which exact occupational groups upward mobility took place. If mobility from the working class into the class of small masters and shopkeepers makes the difference between America and Europe, the ‘upward’ character of mobility would often be ambiguous and the argument of superior American rates even more unconvincing. Available studies usually do not allow to check this aspect.
12 The following remarks as well as table 5 compare the U.S.A. with industrializing Western Europe since the comparative discussion of the findings of social mobility was based upon cities in industrializing West European countries, too. No doubt, the definition of ‘industrializing West Europe’ in table 5 by countries rather than by regions is not very satisfactory. However, statistical information for a regional approach does not exist. Calculations which include all West European countries show basically the same difference between Europe and America though to a weaker degree. Only in the twentieth century when industrialization became more widespread in Europe, was the peculiar way of European occupational development statistically clear for the whole of West Europe. (Cf. Bairoch, P., Limbor, J.-M., ‘Changes in the industrial distribution of the world labour force by region, 1880–1960’, International Labour Review, IIC (1968), 326f)Google Scholar.
13 It would take too much space to print the data for all West European countries. Behind the overall numbers substantial variations exist. Some European countries come close to the American structure. However, one should take into account that the high proportion of the active population in commerce or transportation in some European countries such as Denmark, the Netherlands, Britain and Norway reflects a European division of labour. Hence, a single European country cannot be compared to the whole of the U.S.A.
14 Roughly comparable statistical information exists at least for white collar employees. It seems that at least at the end of the nineteenth century, the proportion of white collar employees in the total active population was somewhat higher in the U.S.A. (1900: 12 per cent; 1910:15 per cent) than in most European countries such as Belgium (1900:8 per cent 1910: 9 per cent), France (1911: 12 per cent). Germany (1895: 11 per cent; 1907: 13 per cent), Britain (1891: 6 per cent; 1911: 7 per cent), Italy (1900: 2 per cent). Cf. for the U.S.A. and Germany: Kocka, J., Angestellte zwischen Faschismus und Demokratie (Göttingen, 1977), 43CrossRefGoogle Scholar; for Belgium: The Working Population and its Structure (ed. Bairoch, P., Brussels, 1968), 149Google Scholar; for France: Toutain, J.-C., Lapopulation de la France de 1700 à 1959 (Paris, 1963), tableau 66Google Scholar; for Britain: Crossick, G. (ed.), The Lower Middle Class in Britain 1870–1914 (1977), 19Google Scholar; for Italy: Labini, L., Saggio sulle classe sociali (Rome, 1978), 157.Google Scholar Because of diverging definitions comparable data for the petty bourgeoisie could not be found.
15 One ought to stress that these data are not to be considered as representative for the U.S.A. and Europe.
16 For the European backwardness in mechanization cf. Samuel, R., ‘The workshop of the world: Steam power and hand technology in mid-Victorian Britain’, Hist. Workshop, III (1977), 48Google Scholar; Saul, S. B. (ed.), Technological Change, the United States and Britain in the Nineteenth Century (1970)Google Scholar; Habakkuk, H. J., American and British Technology in the Nineteenth Century (1962)Google Scholar; for the social implications of the rise of modern unskilled work cf. Stearns, P. N., ‘The unskilled and industrialization. A transformation of consciousness’, Archiv für Sozialgeschichte, XVI (1976)Google Scholar; for the comparison of specific industrial branches cf. Yellowitz, I., Industrialization and the American Labor Movement, 1850–1900, Kennikat Press 1977, 27, 69, 76ffGoogle Scholar; Yellowitz, I., ‘Skilled workers and Mechanization: the lasters in the 1800's, Labor Hist., VIII (1977)Google Scholar; Schröder, W. H., Arbeitergeschichte und Arbeiterbewegung (Frankfurt, 1978)Google Scholar, Vidalenc, J., La société francaise de 1815 à 1848 (2 vols, Paris 1970f).Google Scholar
17 For lack of retirement in the U.S.A.: Chudacoff, H. P. and Hareven, T. K., ‘Family transitions into old age’, in Transitions. Family and the Life Course in Historical Perspective (ed. Hareven, T. K., New York, 1978)Google Scholar; idem, ‘From empty nest to family dissolution: life course and transition into old age’, J. Family Hist., I (1979); for retirement in Europe: cf. Albers, J., ‘Die Entstehung der westeuropäischen Sozialversicherungssysteme im Kontext von Industrialisierung und Demokratisierung’ (unpubl. article, 1980) 46fGoogle Scholar; Stearns, P. N., Old Age in European Society (1977), 54ff, 142Google Scholar; Statistik des Deutschen Reiches, vol. CIII (Berlin, 1897), 3, 121Google Scholar (almost 90 per cent of the retired people [being heads of households] lived on their property or on pensions). Age specific upward and downward mobility: C., and Griffen, S., Natives and Newcomers (Cambridge, Mass., 1978), 59ffGoogle Scholar; Gitelman, H. M., Workingmen of Waltham (Baltimore, 1974), 67, 100fGoogle Scholar (also property of the old); Katz, M. B., The People of Hamilton, Canada West, (Cambridge Mass., 1975), 160ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar (also property of the old). For the debate on old age poverty in the U.S.A: Hareven, T. K., ‘The last stage: historical adulthood and old age’, Daedalus, cv (1976)Google Scholar; downward mobility and the lower middle class: Kocka, , Angestellte, 134ff, 299Google Scholar; Crossick, G., ‘The emergence of the lower middle class in Britain: a discussion’, in Crossick, G. (ed.), The Lower Middle Class in Britain 1870–1914 (1977), 30ff.Google Scholar
18 Among the urban studies of mobility between generations in America only the study of Indianapolis is based merely on marriage license files and, hence, shows high rates of downward mobility (cf. table 2).
19 For the more open attitudes of the American middle class toward social ascent cf. Lipset, S. M., The First New Nation, (New York, 1963)Google Scholar; Kocka, Angestellte.
20 Cf. Kaelble, H., ‘Social mobility in Germany, 1900–1960’, J. Modern Hist., l (1978)Google Scholar; Kaelble, H., ‘Long-term changes of the recruitment of the business elite: Germany compared to the U.S.A., Great Britain and France since the industrial revolution’, J. Social Hist., XIII (1979/1980).Google Scholar
21 Erickson, C., Invisible Immigrants (1972)Google Scholar; Walker, M., Germany and the Emigration 1816–1885 (Cambridge, Mass., 1964)Google Scholar; Moltmann, G. (ed.), Deutsche Amerikaauswan derung im 19. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart, 1976)Google Scholar; Runblom, H. and Norman, H. (eds.), From Sweden to America (Minneapolis, 1976).Google Scholar See also the comparison of the standard of living in a European city (Birmingham) and an American city (Pittsburgh) in the nineteenth century by Shergold, P. R., ‘“Reefs of Roast Beef”: the American worker's standard of living in comparative perspective’ (unpublished article, 1979).Google Scholar
22 Cf. for strong contrast between rural Europe and rural ‘frontier’ America: Eriksson, I. and Rogers, J., Rural Labor and Population Change. Social and Demographic Developments in East-Central Sweden during the 19th Century (Uppsala, 1978)Google Scholar; J. Kocka et. al., Familie und soziale Plazierung; Curti, M., The Making of an American Community. A Case Study of Democracy in a Frontier Community (Stanford, 1959)Google Scholar; Hippel, W., ‘Industrieller Wandel im ländlichen Raum’, Archiv für Sozialgeschichte, XIX (1979).Google Scholar