Ethnicity and occupational mobility: Chicago, 1870 and 1900

Abstract

With the recent influx of Southeast Asian, Haitians, Cubans, Mexi? cans, and Central Americans to the United States the issue of immigra? tion is once again arousing discussion. Such has been the case through? out our history, for the issue is even older than the founding of our country. There are several reasons given by those who favor a liberal immigra? tion policy. The economic history of the United States has been charac? terized by a relative labor scarcity and a plentiful job supply. The republican, antimonarchical viewpoints have been naturally sympa? thetic to foreign victims seeking to escape autocratic regimes. And even those native Americans afraid of a new influx were compromised by the fact of their own families' arrivals in the recent or more remote past. Antimigrationists, meanwhile, fear that living standards for older Americans will decline as large numbers of foreigners uneducated to American ways come to live among them. The lessened economic opportunities, especially in lower blue collar jobs initially filled by immigrants, is a compelling argument. Additionally, the attitudes of the more prosperous native children and grandchildren of immigrant par? ents make them less sympathetic towards migrants of the new age. Any discussion of migration cannot be divorced from the story of urban development, particularly in the nineteenth century. Sam Bass Warner [1968, 1972] found foreign-native intermixing to be a factor in urban riots as early as the 1840s. The hostile attitudes of native Ameri? cans towards foreigners goes back to precolonial days. [Jones; Dinner stein and Reimers] Since the quality of one's social status is determined to a large extent by his occupation, the immigrant soon realized the value of job mobil? ity. Thus was the immigrant's son imbued with the value of upward climbing via job status, and the use of education as a means to this end. [Thernstrom, 1964] Recent studies of occupational structures and changes have made use of newly-considered, disaggregated data of individual Americans and their families. The Federal Census bureau manuscripts are prominent in this rich vein of information. Stephan Thernstrom [1973] was able to *0034-6764/84/0401-50/$l .50/0.