Made in America? Immigrant Occupational Mobility in the First Half of the Twentieth Century

Abstract

Assimilation research largely assumes that Southern, Central, and Eastern European immigrants achieved assimilation due to job ladders within manufacturing firms in the first half of the 20th century. But this literature has never tested whether Italians and Slavs experienced upward mobility. Did manufacturing allow for the upward advancement of all European-origin groups? Using data sets containing employment histories from 1900 to 1950 in three manufacturing companies—A. M. Byers Company, Pullman-Standard Manufacturing, and the Ford Motor Company—this article offers the first empirical analysis of occupational mobility within factories among European-origin groups. Results suggest that organizational structures within firms through the formation of internal labor markets did little to counter other forces that kept immigrants from achieving upward mobility. Southern, Central, and Eastern European immigrants ended their careers within firms where they began—positions at the bottom of the occupational hierarchy—contrary to the implicit assumptions of assimilation research.