Social Mobility and Radicalism-Conservatism

T HE study of social mobility has been largely neglected by sociologists, despite its functional significance. One reason for this slight might be the long-term implications of such a program of study: it would necessitate the close charting of the statuses of a large number of individuals over a period of many years. Students of mobility generally compromise on more accessible but less penetrating data such as comparisons of the subject's occupation, education, etc., with those of the father and other kin. A similar procedure was followed in the study reported here. In addition to utilizing objective criteria, this work further attempts to get at the degree of social movement that the person "thinks" he has undergone. Coupled with the problem of mobility is that of political and socio-economic outlook. In those contemporary Western societies where mobility is a slow and difficult process, one might expect to find a gradual crystallization of attitudes negative to the general system. Marx posits the hypothesis that these attitudes will grow and eventually result in concerted mass action.' Following the tack of such philosophers, some students may have been prone to mistake minor class interstices for almost bottomless chasms. The exploration of differences in attitude intensity, relatively new to the social survey technique, has been given little play in social class studies. This investigation is directed toward finding not only group attitudes but also the degree of intensity with which these attitudes are held. This study uses a profile scale exactly one foot in length for each variable. These scales were designed to avoid "forcing" responses into predetermined categories. Each scale was given only two reference points. One end was indexed "The person with the highest (e.g., social poisition) in your town," and the opposite end was indexed "The person with the lowest (e.g., social position) in your town." Having thus been given the total community as a frame of reference, respondents were asked to indicate their own position on each scale by a pencil mark. A pre-test performed on 45 university undergraduates yielded a test-retest coefficient of correlation of .91. The final instrument consisted of nine scales in the following order: 1) Occupational Satisfaction; 2) Present Social Position in the Community; 3) Social Position in the Community in which Respondents lived in 1940; 4) Occupational Prestige; 5) Social Class Standing; 6) Satisfaction with Town; 7) Satisfaction with General Economic Opportunities within City; 8) Satisfaction with City's Industries; 9) Satisfaction with City's Government. The population decided upon was the city of Washington Court House, Ohio. Its population in 1950 was 10,460, of which 7 percent were Negroes. Although predominantly agricultural, its ecology bears some resemblance to that of the larger cities from which it still has relative isolation. The universe sampled consisted of all the white, voting-age adults within the city and its environs. A random sample of 300 cases with an equal number of males and females was taken. Two field workers gathered the data by the personal interview method during the early months of 1952. On one scale, the informant was asked to make an estimate of his social position for the year 1940 in the community within which he was then living. This scale is at best an estimate registering "felt," but not necessarily actual, mobility. Superficially, it would appear that a comparison of this scale with the present social position scale would indicate the degree of felt mobility. The coefficient of correlation between the two scales is .57. Their graphic outlines (Figure 1) were quite similar except that the results on the 1940 scale were skewed slightly toward the bottom. If the group as a whole felt that it had progressed, then a 12-year period should have produced a somewhat clearer differentiation between the two scales. But on the other hand, this does fit the theory of social mobility, for this concept connotes bi-directional fluidity. Since a radical shift in the entire group is not to be expected, the only way to approach felt mobility is to compare the retrospect estimates of extreme sub-groups. 1 Marx and Engels, "The Communist Manifesto," Handbook of Marxism (New York: Random House, 1935), p. 37.