Stephan Thernstrom – författare

Research on the frontiers of urban studies was the subject of a conference on nineteenth-century cities held in November 1968 at Yale University. These papers from the conference attempt to define what is coming to be known as the "new urban history." The cities studied range from small communities – such as Springfield, Massachusetts, and Poughkeepsie, New York – to giants like Philadelphia, Chicago, and Boston. While the majority of the contributions deal with American cities, four essays examine cities in Canada, England, France, and Colombia.The studies focus on the dimensions of mobility and stability in the social structure of nineteenth-century cities. Within this general frame, the essays explore such areas as urban patterns of class stratification, changing rates of occupational and residential mobility, social origins of particular elite groups, the relations between political control and social class, differences in opportunities for various ethnic groups, and the relationships between family structure and city life. In all these fields, the authors relate sociological theory to the historical materials; a complex yet readable, interdisciplinary portrait of the origins of modern city life is the result.

Out of Work chronicles the history of unemployment in the United States. It traces the evolution of the problem of joblessness from the early decades of the nineteenth-century to the Great Depression of the 1930s. Challenging the widely held notion that the United States was a labour-scarce society in which jobs were plentiful, it argues that unemployment played a major role in American history long before the crash of the stock market in 1929. Focusing on the state of Massachusetts, Professor Kevssar analyses the economic and social changes that gave birth to the prevalent concept of unemployment. Drawing on previously untapped sources - including richly detailed statistics and vivid verbatim testimony - he demonstrates that joblessness was a pervasive feature of working-class life from the 1870s to the 1920s. The book describes the ingenious, yet quite costly, strategies that unemployed workers devised to cope with the joblessness in the absence of formal governmental assistance. It also explores the many dimensions of working-class life that were profoundly affected by recurrent layoffs and the chronic uncertainty of work. Finally, it demonstrates that the fundamental contours of the Massachusetts experience were repeated, sooner or later, throughout the United States.

In the first comprehensive study of American working-class recreation, Professor Rosenzweig takes us to the saloons, the ethnic and church picnics, the parks and playgrounds, the amusement parks, and the movie houses where industrial workers spent their leisure hours. Focusing on the city of Worcester, Massachusetts, he describes the profound changes that popular leisure underwent. Explaining what these pastimes and amusements tell us about the nature of working-class culture and class relations in this era, he demonstrates that in order fully to understand the working class experience it is necessary to explore the realm of leisure. For what workers did in the corner saloon, the neighbourhood park, the fraternal lodge hall, the amusement park, and the nickelodeon had a good deal of bearing on what happened inside the factories, the union halls, and the voting booths of America's industrial communities.

In a departure from the longstanding emphasis on the frontier in American historical writing, Hal Barron employs a range of sources to reconstruct the social and economic history of a nineteenth-century rural community - Chelsea, Vermont -which was profoundly affected by population loss and economic stagnation at a time when most of the country was experiencing geographical expansion and economic growth. The author's lucid, accessible account explores the hard choices faced by the people of Chelsea as the economic vitality drained out of their community and shows how they dealt with these choices. Using new methods of social history to place Chelsea in the larger context of nineteenth-century American culture and society, this book provides an innovative contribution to the history of rural America.

In the historical literature of the American Civil War, the president, the generals, and the cabinet secretaries have won the war of words. Of the hundreds of men who served in the House of Representatives during this struggle, only a handful typically appear in general discussions of the period. Yet without a deeper understanding of the contributions of the members of Congress to the successful prosecution of the war we cannot fully appreciate the desperate nature of that conflict and its significance in the building of the nation. This book explores important aspects of the Civil War from the perspective of Capital Hill. It is an effort to reconnoiter some of the possibilities for understanding the congressmen, their relations with one another, and their interaction with President Lincoln. Designed as an exploration rather than as a full-scale history of the Civil War Congress, this book reveals a legislature in which the average length of service was very short, although a relatively small core of national public figures provide continuity.

Of all the terms that Americans define themselves as members of society, few are as elusive as 'middle class'. This book traces the emergence of a recognizable and self-aware 'middle class' between the era of the American Revolution and the end of the nineteenth century. The author focuses on the development of the middle class in larger American cities, particularly Philadelphia and New York. He examines the middle class in all its complexity, and in its day-to-day existence - at work, in the home, and in the shops, markets, theaters, and other institutions of the big city. The book places the distinct language of class - in particular the term 'middle class' - in the context of the concrete, interwoven experiences of specific anonymous Americans who were neither manual workers nor members of urban upper classes.

By the early 1850s, St Louis was one of the fastest-growing cities in America. In this book, Jeffrey Adler analyzes the forces that determined the role of western cities in the national economy. He devotes particular attention to the ways in which Yankee merchants forged ties that linked St Louis to the New York and Boston markets. Northeastern businessmen fuelled the ascent of St Louis and made the city a Yankee colony in the West. During the mid-1850s powerful political and cultural forces altered the sources of urban growth in the West. As a result, the economy of St Louis collapsed. Yankee merchants stopped migrating to the city and ceased investing in local businesses. This book demonstrates that the sectional crisis abruptly transformed St Louis's role in the national economy, redirecting the flow of capital and migrants away from St. Louis and toward a smaller western city - Chicago.

This book examines return migration to Italy from the United States from 1870 to 1929. Many imigrants did not intend to settle permanently in the United States, but to make money in order to buy land in Italy. The book documents the flow from America back to Italy of individuals and remittances and discusses the strategies used by returnees in investing American savings. The Italian government and Italian society in general took a great deal of interest in return migration. Initially, Italy opposed mass emigration. In time, the government promoted emigration and return migration as the best way of creating savings, which would in turn promote the modernization of the Italian economy, especially in the south. Eventually, return migration and remittances were regarded by many Italians as the best way to solve the thorny southern question.

By the early 1850s, St Louis was one of the fastest-growing cities in America. In this book, Jeffrey Adler analyzes the forces that determined the role of western cities in the national economy. He devotes particular attention to the ways in which Yankee merchants forged ties that linked St Louis to the New York and Boston markets. Northeastern businessmen fuelled the ascent of St Louis and made the city a Yankee colony in the West. During the mid-1850s powerful political and cultural forces altered the sources of urban growth in the West. As a result, the economy of St Louis collapsed. Yankee merchants stopped migrating to the city and ceased investing in local businesses. This book demonstrates that the sectional crisis abruptly transformed St Louis's role in the national economy, redirecting the flow of capital and migrants away from St. Louis and toward a smaller western city - Chicago.

Before the Civil War, millions of migrants streamed westward into and through the Midwest, challenging the stability of the fledgling communities throughout that region. The Politics of Community examines the impact of westward migration on political development and behaviour in Ohio, the most populous midwestern state during the nineteenth century. After 1815, the political participation of wave after wave of migrants posed continual challenges to the stability of the state's political system and especially to the conduct of politics within the communities. As a result, Ohio's politicians, jurists, and voters reassessed many of their basic political assumptions and altered their political institutions and rules to take account of the substantial number of transient voters. Professor Winkle explores the influence of migration on rules of suffrage, conduct of elections, patterns of voting, recruitment of political leaders, and local party organizations, as they all emerged before the Civil War.

This 1982 book examines the changes in hospital care in New York that occurred around the turn of the twentieth century. It represents a fundamental departure from traditional medical history, which has usually emphasised 'progress' through science and technology. Professor Rosner identifies the economic, political and demographic pressures that brought about a reshaping of the health care system, and analyses the dramatic reorganisation of hospitals that took place. He also discusses major scientific advances such as the discovery of anaesthetic properties of ether, nitrous oxide and chloroform, and the consequent increase in surgical solutions to medical problems.

Fifty years ago, enactment of the Wagner National Labor Relations Act gave American organized labour what it has regarded ever since as one of its greatest assets: a legislative guarantee of the right of workers to organize and bargain collectively. Yet although the Wagner Act's guarantees remain substantially unaltered, organized labour in America today is in deep decline. Addressing this apparent paradox, Christopher Tomlins offers here a critical examination of the impact of the National Labor Relations Act on American unions. By studying the intentions and goals of policy makers in the context of the development of labour law from the late nineteenth century, and by looking carefully at the course of labour history since the act's passage, Dr Tomlins shows how public policy has been shaped to confine labour's role in the American economy, and that many of the unions' problems stem from the laws which purport to protect them.

Recent years have witnessed a growing interest in the social history of crime an-long a variety of disciplines. This book examines the rapid spread of uniformed police forces throughout late nineteenth-century urban America. It suggests that, initially, the new kind of police in industrial cities served primarily as agents of class control, dispensing and administering welfare services as an unintentioned consequence of their uniformed presence on the streets. This narrowed role hampered their ability to control crime, and, as modern social services developed and the police came increasingly to concentrate on crime control, they acquired a functional speciality at which they had never been particularly successful.

This book explores the values and aspirations of early settlers in the American Far West. It compares those who settled in the Willamette Valley in the 1840s, the Utah Valley in the 1850s, and the Boise Valley in the 1860s. The Oregon and Utah settlers tried with differing degrees of success to resist the modernizing trends represented by Idaho, but ultimately adopted their individualistic, commercial, and acquisitive values. How did Americans move away from a culture centering on family and kin and from attitudes that valued and protected the land, not for its commercial worth, but as the base of support for future generations? What led to the present tendency to pursue individual pleasure and material well-being at the expense of communal and broader societal well-being? These two questions are central to this comparative study of the three groups who pioneered the Western frontier.

This happy combination of literary essay and exceptionally well-written history, providing insights into a past still important in the twentieth century, will quickly take an honored place on the shelves of Harvardiana.Bernard Bailyn writes on the origins of Harvard and the foundations of Harvard’s persistent character, structure, and style of governance, and contributes another chapter on the unhappy ending to the administration of the beloved President Kirkland, who presided over but could not control a period of profound change. Oscar Handlin describes the shifting relationships and power struggles among faculty, administration, and students over the years (“Making Men of the Boys”) and Harvard’s evolution from an ingrown community of teachers and students into a large, complex institution with worldwide prestige. Donald Fleming has chapters on the presidency of Charles William Eliot (“the greatest man in the history of Harvard”) and the colorful personalities of Harvard (not only “Copey” and Santayana and Charles Eliot Norton, but also “Old Sophy,” who kept a pet chicken in his room in Holworthy). Stephan Thernstrom examines the growing diversity of the student body as to finances, geography, religion, and racial background from the eighteenth century to the 1980s.The subjects are of continuing interest not only to members of the Harvard community, who will treasure this memento of Harvard’s 350th anniversary, but also to historians of higher education and ordinary readers, who will enjoy the new information, original personalities, and thoughtful perspectives the book offers.

From Acadians to Zoroastrians-Asians, American Indians, East Indians, West Indians, Europeans, Latin Americans, Afro-Americans, and Mexican Americans—the Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups provides the first comprehensive and systematic review of the many peoples of this country. It should excite all Americans about their nation.Informative and entertaining, this volume is an indispensable reference work for home, library and office. It establishes a foundation for the burgeoning field of ethnic studies; it will satisfy and stimulate the popular interest in ancestry and heritage. It is a guide to the history, culture, and distinctive characteristics of the more than 100 ethnic groups who live in the United States.Each ethnic group is described in detail. The origins, history and present situation of the familiar as well as the virtually unknown are presented succinctly and objectively. Not only the immigrants and refugees who came voluntarily but also those already in the New World when the first Europeans arrived, those whose ancestors came involuntarily as slaves, and those who became part of the American population as a result of conquest or purchase and subsequent annexation figure in these pages. The English and the Estonians, the Germans and the Gypsies, the Swedes and the Serbs are interestingly juxtaposed. Even entries about relatively well-known groups offer new material and fresh interpretations. The articles on less well-known groups are the product of intensive research in primary sources; many provide the first scholarly discussion to appear in English. One hundred and twenty American and European contributors have been involved in this effort, writing either on individual groups or on broad themes relating to many.The group entries are at the heart of the book, but it contains, in addition, a series of thematic essays that illuminate the key facets of ethnicity. Some of these are comparative; some philosophical; some historical; others focus on current policy issues or relate ethnicity to major subjects such as education, religion, and literature. American identity and Americanization, immigration policy and experience, and prejudice and discrimination in U.S. history are discussed at length. Several essays probe the complex interplay between assimilation and pluralism—perhaps the central theme in American history—and the complications of race and religion.Numerous cross-references and brief identifications will aid the reader with unfamiliar terms and alternative group names. Eighty-seven maps, especially commissioned, show where different groups have originated. Annotated bibliographies contain suggestions for further reading and research. Appendix I, on methods of estimating the size of groups, leads the reader through a maze of conflicting statistics. Appendix II reproduces, in facsimile, hard-to-locate census and immigration materials, beginning with the first published report on the nativities of the population in 1850.

Embedded in the consciousness of Americans throughout much of the country’s history has been the American Dream: that every citizen, no matter how humble his beginnings, is free to climb to the top of the social and economic ladder. Poverty and Progress assesses the claims of the American Dream against the actual structure of economic and social opportunities in a typical nineteenth century industrial community—Newburyport, Massachusetts.Here is local history. With the aid of newspapers, census reports, and local tax, school, and savings bank records Stephan Thernstrom constructs a detailed and vivid portrait of working class life in Newburyport from 1850 to 1880, the critical years in which this old New England town was transformed into a booming industrial city. To determine how many self-made men there really were in the community, he traces the career patterns of hundreds of obscure laborers and their sons over this thirty year period, exploring in depth the differing mobility patterns of native-born and Irish immigrant workmen. Out of this analysis emerges the conclusion that opportunities for occupational mobility were distinctly limited. Common laborers and their sons were rarely able to attain middle class status, although many rose from unskilled to semiskilled or skilled occupations.But another kind of mobility was widespread. Men who remained in lowly laboring jobs were often strikingly successful in accumulating savings and purchasing homes and a plot of land. As a result, the working class was more easily integrated into the community; a new basis for social stability was produced which offset the disruptive influences that accompanied the first shock of urbanization and industrialization.Since Newburyport underwent changes common to other American cities, Thernstrom argues, his findings help to illuminate the social history of nineteenth century America and provide a new point of departure for gauging mobility trends in our society today. Correlating the Newburyport evidence with comparable studies of twentieth century cities, he refutes the popular belief that it is now more difficult to rise from the bottom of the social ladder than it was in the idyllic past. The “blocked mobility” theory was proposed by Lloyd Warner in his famous “Yankee City” studies of Newburyport; Thernstrom provides a thorough critique of the “Yankee City” volumes and of the ahistorical style of social research which they embody.

Black and Hispanic students are not learning enough in our public schools, and their typically poor performance is the most important source of ongoing racial inequality in America today—thus, say Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom, the racial gap in school achievement is the nation's most critical civil rights issue and an educational crisis; it's no wonder that "No Child Left Behind," the 2001 revision of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, made closing the racial gap in education its central goal.An employer hiring the typical Black high school graduate or the college that admits the average Black student is choosing a youngster who has only an eighth-grade education. In most subjects, the majority of twelfth-grade Black students do not have even a "partial mastery" of the skills and knowledge that the authoritative National Assessment of Educational Progress calls "fundamental for proficient work" at their grade. No Excuses marshals facts to examine the depth of the problem, the inadequacy of conventional explanations, and the limited impact of Title I, Head Start, and other familiar reforms. Its message, however, is one of hope: Scattered across the country are excellent schools getting terrific results with high-needs kids. These rare schools share a distinctive vision of what great schooling looks like and are free of many of the constraints that compromise education in traditional public schools. In a society that espouses equal opportunity we still have a racially identifiable group of educational have-nots—young African Americans and Latinos whose opportunities in life will almost inevitably be limited by their inadequate education. When students leave high school without high school skills, their futures—and that of the nation—are in jeopardy. With successful schools already showing the way, no decent society can continue to turn a blind eye to such racial and ethnic inequality.