ECONOMIC CLASS, SOCIAL STATUS, AND EARLY SCOTTISH CHARTERED ACCOUNTANTS

Accounting Historians Journal, The, Dec 2004 by Lee, Tom

Table 2 provides an additional analysis of the economic class origins of the immigrants to the US.

Although the data in Table 1 reveal that the US immigrants were considerably more lower middle class and working class in origin than were the founders and early new members of the three bodies, they were nevertheless part of an exercise in upward social mobility within the context of their family histories. Table 2 provides these data by comparing the economic class origins of the grandfathers and fathers of the immigrants. As before, there are missing observations for a small minority of grandfathers. Overall, as per the total column, there are small increases between generations with respect to upper middle class (40% to 47%) and lower middle class (23% to 34%), accompanied by small decreases in upper class (4% to 1%) and working class (33% to 18%). Each of the three bodies exhibits the same tendency over time. The biggest change appears in the SAE data. For example, a 26 percentage point increase in upper middle class and lower middle class men accompanied a 22 percentage point decrease in working class individuals. In Glasgow, the equivalent figures were 15 and 12 percentage points, and in Aberdeen nine and nine percentage points respectively. Thus, although the migrants represented a group of Scottish chartered accountants with distinctly different economic class origins from the founders, they also reflect the upward social mobility generally evident in late Victorian society in Scotland.

One further analysis of immigrant background was undertaken and this relates to when immigration took place (Table 3). Two groups appear in the tabulation - those who left within a year of qualification as chartered accountants, and those who took longer to leave for the US. The purpose of this study is to provide a broad indication that economic class bias was a determining factor in immigration - i.e. those chartered accountants from lower middle class and working class backgrounds being pushed and pulled to the US more quickly than those from upper class and upper middle class origins.

The overall situation appears in the total columns. These suggest that immigrants from upper class and upper middle class backgrounds tended to delay post-qualification immigration longer than did those men from lower middle class and working class origins. Sixty percent of the latter categories left Scotland for the US within one year of qualification, whereas 60% of the former categories left after one year of that event (many after several years). The same pattern appears with each of the three bodies. For the SAE, the equivalent data were 53% and 73%, the IAAG 64% and 49%, and the SAA 50% and 75%. These data are obviously subject to an arbitrary cut-off of one year of post-qualification experience, but suggest that the pressure to immigrate to the US was greatest among men from lower middle class and working class backgrounds in each of the three bodies. This further suggests not only the consequences of oversupply of Scottish chartered accountants at this time but also the post-qualification employment problems faced by men with economic class origins different from the élite leadership of the profession.