(Only) White Men have Class

Abstract

The article examines the logic and functions of early 19th-century occupational classification systems and explores their implications for later systems. Efforts to collect occupational data in official censuses and surveys date from the late 18th century. Much of the existing literature on occupation statistics treats the data collection efforts of the late 18th and first half of the 19th centuries as a kind of “prehistory.” Many of the early efforts to collect occupational data were flops, turned up unexpected problems, and usually did not satisfy the goals of their creators, much less the more rigorous standards of 20th-century researchers. The article suggests that one must understand the origin of occupation statistics in the political debates of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The data were designed to capture the relevant work and social statuses of those groups active in the political realm. These groups were to be compared to one another, and all politically salient groups were to be compared to the rest of society—that is, in the American case, to the women, children, the free colored, and slaves.