Economic History Association

Enterprise and Culture: Jewish Immigrants in London and New York, 1880-1914 Author(s): Andrew Godley Reviewed work(s): Source: The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 54, No. 2, Papers Presented at the Fifty-Third Annual Meeting of the Economic History Association (Jun., 1994), pp. 430-432 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Economic History Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2123925 . Accessed: 12/07/2012 09:18
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Summaries of Dissertations

Enterprise and Culture: Jewish Immigrants in London and New York, 1880-1914
The case againstthe Victorian entrepreneur has reacheda stalemate in recentyears.'The weightof successive case studies suggests that Britishbusiness leaderswere, at least in some measure, more concernedwith maximizingfamilialstatus than companyprofits, in contrast to their Americancounterparts.Thus, Britishculture stands accused of an anti-industrial and antientrepreneurial bias. Yet the strict neoclassical school of cliometricians assumes away the very cultural differences so importantto historians in explainingBritishentrepreneurs'supposedrationalityat the turnof the century. If the case studies are inconclusive,but the neoclassicalapproachfails to embracethe central problemof culture, then perhapsit is time to change tack. More specifically,it may be to adoptmethodologiesused in other disciplinesto controlfor the effects of appropriate diversity among differentpopulationgroups. Medical researchers,in particular,have been concerned with the influenceof environmental factors on the etiology of disease and, in order to quantifythese factors, have had to use control populations,typically immigrants but in several locations. from the same ethnic background This dissertation seeks to apply the same principle and thus quantify immigrant responsiveness to labor marketincentives to offer their services as entrepreneurs. The initial hypothesis was that an immigrantpopulationin the two labor markets of the United States and United Kingdomwould have the same supplyfunctionfor entreprewould vary uniformlywith neurship.Thus, changes in the supply of entrepreneurship the price paid to the entrepreneurs for supplyingit, the real profitearnedby them. If a divergence in the labor marketbehaviorof the control populationoccurredthat could not be explainedby economic indicators,then the analysis would focus on nonpecuniary incentives, such as host-society values, status; and so on. control population.Between 1880 Testing such a hypothesis requiredan appropriate and 1914,approximately 2? milion East EuropeanJews migratedwestward, of which 2 million settled in the United States and 150,000in the United Kingdom. Principal immigrantsettlements were in the two metropolises,New York City and London. In were noted for their upwardly both countries these East EuropeanJewish immigrants mobile aspirationsand theirpropensitytowardentrepreneurship. It was this population of Jewish immigrantsthat was chosen as the control population, and the principal immigrantcenters of London and New York were chosen as the labor marketsto be studied. Data for the Jewish immigrantsin New York were adaptedfrom a study of Jewish immigrantsocial mobility that used the original census manuscripts.2Data for the Jewish immigrants in London came from the occupationalinformation containedin the marriagerecords of the synagogues in London's City and East End. These recordsto MarryAccordingto along with a relatedcertificate,the Chief Rabbi'sAuthorization on occupationand nativityfor a representaJewish Means-gave detailed information tive cross section of the immigrant populationonce the age bias had been compensated for. A samplewas selected, andthe proportion of the malework force in entrepreneurial occupations was calculatedand comparedwith that in New York. The Jewish immigrant in London comprised 14.2 percent of the male entrepreneurs work force in the 1880s,whereas in New York City they comprised 18.0 percent. Both
' This dissertation was completed in 1993 at the Department of Economic History, London School of Economics, under the supervision of Paul A. Johnson. 2 Thomas Kessner, The Golden Door: Italian and Jewish Immigrant Mobility in New York City, 1880-1915 (Oxford, 1977), and Thomas Kessner "The Selective Filter of Ethnicity," in D. Berger (ed.), The Legacy of Jewish Migration: 1881 and Its Impact (New York, 1983).

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cities' economies grew duringthe period, althoughit is noticeablefromcensus datathat the proportionof entrepreneursin the work force among the two base populations the proportionof entrepreneurs remainedconstant. Yet among the Jewish immigrants among the increased over time. By the period 1907to 1914the share of entrepreneurs had increasedto 18.0percent, whereas in New York City it London Jewish immigrants work had increasedby 16.3to 34.3 percentof the East Europeanmale Jewishimmigrant in New York that was force. This representsa net increasein the shareof entrepreneurs Thus, although morethanfourtimes greaterthanthatof the LondonJewishimmigrants. the exceptionality of the East European Jews' upward mobility relative to the host populationsin both cities is noteworthy,for the purposes of my dissertationI focused on the divergence in the-labor marketactivity shown by the widely differingrates of work forces. in the two Jewish immigrant increase in the share of entrepreneurs by Jewish Before proceeding with an analysis of the supply of entrepreneurship assumptionof the immigrantsin London and New York, I examinedthe fundamental homogeneityof the control population.The principaldifficultyhere is that if migration would is in some way a self-selectingexercise, then perhapsthe most able or advantaged choose to go to New Yorkfor the higherwages ratherthanto Londonand consequently occupation.Althoughsuch a propositionis be more likely to choose an entrepreneurial of the reality of international theoretically attractive, it is a gross oversimplification labor markets at the time. Because these markets were highly segmented, migration tended to follow chains especially when subsidized. Testing for this is normally relatively straightforward,but it is complicated in this case in that specific data in Londonand New Yorkand among concerningemploymentamongJewishimmigrants Jews in Russia are unavailable.Given the segmentednatureof those labormarkets,the trendsin employmentamongthe wider work forces were deemed unsuitableto be used were as proxies. Thus, in orderto determinewhetherEast EuropeanJewish immigrants attractedmore to New York than to London, the deviationsfor the long-termtrends in the two migrationstreams were comparedwith those in the two labor markets(using of gross domesticproductper capitaas a condensedformof labormarket measurements attraction).The two migrationstreamswere much more alike than the deviationswere similarityof the two migration responsive to the economic indicators.The fundamental streams in their patterns of settlement was mirroredin the similarities of the two literacy,and wealth. Of course, the two streams'regionalandoccupationalbackground, groupswere different,but it would appearlikely that the differenceswere confinedmore to where relatives had moved ratherthan to any inherentability or propensitytoward entrepreneurship. similar,so the price elasticity of If the two immigrant populationswere fundamentally would also be similar.Thus, the markeddivergence in the supply of entrepreneurship of the two immigrantpopulations would need to be the supply of entrepreneurship explained by appropriatechanges in the price paid to Jewish immigrantsto supply entrepreneurship,the real profit earned. Yet when the two local economies are examined, the trends in real profit earned by Jewish immigrantsin New York and London suggest that profitswere increasingmore in Londonthan in New York. Indeed profitsin New York clearly fell between 1880apd 1905relative to wages, whereas they increased slightly in London between 1880 to 1889 and 1907 to 1914. This finding as suggested contradictsthe expected behaviorof the prices paid for entrepreneurship in the two immigrant by the differentrates of increasein the supplyof entrepreneurship labor markets. The proposal that nonpecuniarymotives may have been importantat the marginin was considered. Attention was focused on determiningthe supply of entrepreneurship the behavior of the Jewish immigrantsin London-the minority-and here a more labor marketshowed that a class of workers detailed analysis of the Jewish immigrant callingthemselvesjourneymenbecamevery significant,risingto one in threeof the male

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work force by 1910.These Jewishjourneymenwere more assimilatedthan the average Jewish immigrant,though less advantagedthan either Jewish immigrant entrepreneurs or white-collarprofessionals.Yet they were notjourneymen.They were skilledworkers in the immigrant workshoptrades, but they had neithercompletedapprenticeshipsnor acquiredthe craft skills of the genuinejourneymentailors, cabinetmakers,and bootmakers. They were maximizingtheir status by adopting a term borrowed from the British craft culture-a term that had no Yiddish equivalent, and a culture that was absent in the entrepreneurial meltingpot of New York. Thus, the apparentconfusionof responsiveness to market forces would appear to be resolved when nonpecuniary motives are taken into consideration.The London Jewish immigrantsappearedto be absorbinghost culturalvalues (relatedto the high status of craft occupationsamongthe host workingclasses) and choosing such occupations. In New York, in the absence of any dominantcraft culture, Jewish immigrants were optingfor entrepreneurial occupations at the margin.The conclusion, therefore, is that the control populationof East EuropeanJewishimmigrants were indeedreflectinghost culturalvalues, as well as price signals, in their supply of entrepreneurship, and that these culturalvalues varied, with the culturalvalues associated with the Britishlabor marketbeing relatively antientrepreneurial.
ANDREWGODLEY,University of Reading

China's First Modern Corporationand the State: Officials, Merchants, and ResourceAllocation in the China Merchants'Steam Navigation Company, 1872-1902
This dissertationis an analysis of the role of the state in the developmentof China's first modem corporationin the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.' Using previously unexplored business records and archival materials (such as the newly available Sheng Hsuan-huaiArchives in Hong Kong, the China Merchants'Company Archives, the Archives of John Swire and Sons, Ltd., and the H. B. Morse archives), I examine in detail a majorcase of state involvementin the developmentof the modem Chinese business corporation, the China Merchants' Steam Navigation Company (Lun-ch'uanchao-shang chu), emphasizingthe interactionsbetween officialpolicy and the activities in the commercialsphere.2 The China Merchants' Company was a unique hybrid experiment undertakenby Ch'ing officials and Chinese merchants to counter the in-roads of Western steam shippingin China's coastal trade. The company was China's first modem and public joint-stock company (kung-ssu),and its use of this organizational form markeda new departurein Chinese business practice.3Yet government-merchant cooperationin the
' This dissertation was completed in 1992 in the History Department at the University of California, Davis, under the supervision of Kwang-Ching Liu, Susan Mann, Don Price, Gary Hamilton, and Ted Margadant. Financial support for this project was provided by the American Council of Learned Societies and the Davis campus of the University of California. 2 The Sheng Hsuan-huai Archives in Hong Kong include a wealth of relevant materials, including his letters and papers as Director of several of China's first business corporations. The China Merchants' Company Archives in Nanking preserve some 242 files or volumes of company records, an unusually complete record for a late Ch'ing enterprise. 3 The literal meaning of the name of Lun-ch'uan chao-shang chu is "Bureau for Recruiting Merchants (to Operate) Steamships." However, Sheng Hsuan-huai was constantly reminding Li