Tom Lee
UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA

ECONOMIC CLASS, SOCIAL STATUS, AND EARLY SCOTTISH CHARTERED ACCOUNTANTS

Abstract: A recent study by Jacobs [2003] examines economic class bias in the contemporary recruitment practices of public accountancy firms. The study bases its argument on a historical review that suggests such bias has its origins in early Scottish chartered accountancy. This paper challenges the Jacobs thesis by examining the notion of economic class in relation to the social status of professions, and provides archival evidence of the effects of the recruitment practices of Scottish chartered accountants from mid 19th century until the beginning of the First World War. This evidence demonstrates a dual effect. The first is a considerable change during this period in the economic class origins of the general community of chartered accountants in Scotland and the second is relative stability in the economic class origins of their leadership. Scottish chartered accountancy immigrants to the US provide a clear example of the general community effect. They also reveal how economic class was not a significant factor in the success of their American professional ca-reers. The data also highlight differences in these matters between chartered accountants from each of the three Scottish bodies and suggest generalizations about early Scottish chartered accountancy are inappropriate. Overall, therefore, and contrary to the argument of Jacobs, the early Scottish chartered accountancy bodies did not maintain their social status in terms of the economic class origins of their general memberships. Instead, they coped with the economics of a growing market for their services by increasingly recruiting men from lower middle class and working class backgrounds while maintaining their social respectability as a professional grouping with leaderships almost exclusively of upper class and upper middle class origins.

Acknowledgments: This has proved to be an exceedingly difficult paper to write because of the complexities and ambiguities associated with the notions of economic class and social origins, and the data preparation problems of categorizing these matters. I am therefore exceedingly grateful for the detailed and expert advice I received from the paper’s two reviewers and the editor. As always, my failures are not theirs.

INTRODUCTION

The purpose of this paper is to examine the issue of “class” and its relationship through time to the organization of a maturing profession. Scottish chartered accountants in the middle of the 19th century are the initial focus of the study and their history to the beginning of the First World War provides evidence of the existence of class in a professional project intended to achieve both control over markets for services and social closure.

Motivation for the study comes from research by Jacobs [2003] on contemporary social closure practices by public ac-countancy recruiters in the UK. Jacobs uses a general review of the early history of Scottish chartered accountants to build his argument about the longevity of recruitment bias in this professional grouping in order to maintain its social status. In contrast, the present paper examines empirical data describing the economic class origins of the founders of Scottish chartered accountancy and compares these with data relating to subsequent members, including an important subset that developed public accountancy careers in the US. The various analyses reveal a clear change in the economic class origins of Scottish chartered accountants between 1854 and 1914 despite relative stability in the economic class profile of their leaders during the same period. The overall picture provided is of a professional group sufficiently flexible to accommodate growing demand for economic services without diminishing its social status. Further analyses identify the relative success of Scottish immigrants in the American profession and their leadership in its early development and maturation. This reveals a lack of obvious connection between economic class origins and professional success in such a context. Overall, the paper challenges the Jacobs thesis that early Scottish chartered accountants successfully maintained their economic class origins through several generations by means of social closure practices.

The paper contains several sections to present this history of economic class, social status, and professional success. It starts with a brief comparative discussion of class and status from a sociological perspective before considering the relation-ship of these concepts to professions. The next section uses the structure of the Victorian economic class system as a back-ground to review the early history of the Scottish bodies of chartered accountants as perceived by Jacobs [2003]. A further section contains various empirical analyses of available data concerning the economic class origins of Scottish chartered ac-countancy founders, post-foundation members, and immigrants to the US. These comparisons also contain data on the leaders of the Scottish bodies and contrast their economic class origins with those of other members over time. There is also an empirical contrast of the success of Scottish chartered accountancy immigrants in America with their economic class origins. Interpretations and conclusions form the final section of the paper.

CLASS AND STATUS

The purpose of this section is to compare and contrast the connected concepts of economic class and social status and argue for the use of the former as an analogy for the latter as occurs in various studies of the sociology of the public accountancy profession. The discussion focuses initially on the work of Weber [1962].

Weber [1962] reviews class, status, and power inequalities in communities organized to facilitate the distribution of goods and services. In particular, he describes the organization of these communities in terms of three related characteristics of power. He perceives classes as an economic order, status groups as a social order, and parties as a political order. In other words, Weber regards class as a form of sociological shorthand to describe individual economic interests with respect to the possession of goods and opportunities to earn income within economic markets. It is a sociological description of the economic situation in which individuals find themselves. In contrast, Weber sees status groups as factual sub-sets of a community, in which status exists through social honor and perceptions of cultural factors (e.g. breeding) rather than because of economics. According to Weber, class and status are therefore not equal or equivalent and one may precede the other in sociological terms. More specifically, in a particular organized community, social status may be more important to its members than economic class – as, say, with respect to the honor of an impoverished gentleman. The Weber perspective of class therefore contrasts with that of Marx [1867] in which the focus is on economic class as a social power struggle resulting from the production of economic goods and services. Class according to Marx is determined at birth and relates to prevailing attitudes, beliefs, and behavior. Unlike Weber, there appears to be little or no room for social mobility in the Marxian perspective of organized communities. Thus, because of the complexities of the contrasts inherent in the Weberian and Marxian philosophies, the remainder of this paper focuses on the ideas of Weber. In particular, they relate more easily than those of Marx to the notion of a profession in contemporary society.

CLASS, STATUS, AND PROFESSIONS

In a detailed examination of the maturation of professions in the UK since 1880, Perkin [1989, p. 2] recognizes a horizontal hierarchy of professions within a “vertical swathe” of economic class that extends from landowner to laborer and from merchant to artisan. Consistent with Weber, he does not accept professions as a ruling class. Instead, he observes professionals permeating society from top to bottom within a hierarchy of inequality. The professional ideal according to Perkin is merit. This compares with the equivalent ideals of independence for the landowner, risk for the entrepreneur, and survival for the laborer. Such ideals are separate from but related to the economics of markets for goods and services and, thus society according to Perkin [1989, pp. 4-5] is a three-sided Weberian pyramid of economic class, social status, and political power that continuously changes through time. What professions attempt to achieve within this context is foster a community understanding of the indispensable nature of their members’ intellectual capital, control of markets for their services, and conversion of capital and control into economic wealth, social status, and power. As such, Perkin’s model is consistent with the Weberian philosophy of professionalism. In particular, because of its root dependence on intellectual capital, Perkin argues that the professional ideal relates potentially to everyone in an educated society and is therefore not as limited or limiting as the ideals of property ownership and industrial capital. There is therefore room for social mobility in the Weber model.

Macdonald [1995] provides a complementary analysis of professions and economic class to that of Perkin and focuses on the sociological arguments of Larson [1977]. In particular, he notes a relatively recent historical change in perceptions of professionals. This relates to a transition from the traits approach of researchers such as Carr-Saunders and Wilson [1933] and the functionalist approach of those such as Durkheim [1982] with an emphasis on ethics, to the power relations perspective of Larson based on ideas of Weber (and Marx) and rooted in issues of economic class and social status. Modern studies of professions such as Larson are therefore dependent on the general notion of what professionals do rather than what they say they do with respect to translating intellectual capital into economic rewards, social status, and power. Such studies emphasize the argument of Weber that social actions are the most important ingredients in observations of professions. Modern writers such as Macdonald therefore see professions as projects in collective social mobility, with a hierarchy of élite and non-élite members and a persistent focus on the objective of social respectability. In particular, Macdonald [1995, p. 32] describes the professional project as two-pronged. The first prong concerns a sequence of economic order, market monopoly, and relations with the state. The second prong deals with connections between social order, status and respectability, and the prevailing culture. When the two prongs combine, the project achieves market control, social closure, and appropriate social status.

As Jacobs [2003] correctly argues, the work of Bourdieu [1988] is relevant to a review of professions. Professionals have what Bourdieu called habitus or the habit of shared beliefs and dispositions that generate the economic, cultural, and social capital necessary to maintain their power in society through time. What is essential to the survival of professions with social power is their capacity to sustain habitus through reproduction and recruitment from relevant economic classes. In this sense, Bourdieu uses economic class as an analogy for social status or what he describes as “symbolic capital,” with the latter “filtered through the prisms of class domination” [Fowler, 1997, p. 20]. More specifically, Bourdieu is consistent with Weber regarding the unique characteristics of economic class and social status but also recognizes that in Western society, economic class is an important ingredient in the more complex notion of social status. This is particularly true of Victorian society in which fluidity in economic class achieved mobility in social status. “The calico-printer and the cotton-master becomes, within two generations, the baronet and the big-wig” [Wilson, 2002, p. 60]. Walker’s [1988] study of early Edinburgh chartered accountants is precisely in this genre.

Bourdieu’s [1988] major study of class reproduction in professions concerns the strategy of French intellectuals to maintain habitus by recruitment of faculty and students predominantly from élite schools and universities. However, when these recruitment sources were insufficient to supply the numbers required to maintain habitus, the results were recruitment from non-élite sources, potential breakdown in the structure of shared beliefs and dispositions, perceived devaluation of the academy’s economic, cultural, and social capital, and active in-volvement in the French revolution of the late 1960s. In other words, Bourdieu demonstrates that socially dominant groups may seek to defend the habitus of the Weberian social hierarchy built on the supporting pillars of economic class, social status, and political power. This appears at variance, although is not entirely inconsistent, with the process described by Perkin [1989] in relation to professions of a fluid social structure in which changes in class and status take place. Lee [1999] provides a recent accounting illustration of habitus in the history of the American Accounting Association. Since the Association’s foundation in 1916 to the present day, graduates from a small number of élite doctoral programs in the US have provided the Association’s leadership and received all of its honors despite a widespread recruitment from all economic classes. Such a history is not unlike that of the early Scottish chartered accountancy bodies.

VICTORIAN CLASS SYSTEM AND PROFESSIONAL PROJECTS

Studies of the Victorians reveal the economic class system to be one of their unique innovations [Wilson, 2002]. Class is the means by which they perceived individuals climbing a social hierarchy, with education as much as economics a vital ingredient in the resultant re-distribution of individuals in society. Wilson characterizes the Victorian class system as fluid and anyone with money, luck, and panache could penetrate it. This was particularly true of professions where education created intellectual capital to convert into economic and social rewards, and power. Victorian professions are therefore relevant illustrations of Weber’s pyramid in action, with economic class, social status, and political power interacting through time.

The Victorian period also witnessed considerable change in the economic structure of Scotland. There was economic prosperity from the 1850s until the 1870s, a brief recession in the 1870s, and then further industrial expansion in “North Britain” from the 1880s as it became the “world’s workshop” during the growth of Empire [McCaffrey, 1998; Devine, 2000]. In this period, demand for public accountancy services expanded to include corporate audits in areas such as banking, insurance, railways, local governments, as well as industries such as steel and shipbuilding. Investigation, liquidation, and reconstruction services also added to traditional areas such as court-related services, arbitrations, and actuarial work. Walker [1993] illus-trates these changes in the leading Edinburgh firm of chartered accountants, Lindsay, Jamieson & Haldane, in which there were eight clerks in 1857 and fifty-four in 1887.

Institutional public accountancy in Scotland in the second half of the 19th century also changed significantly as illustrated by Walker [1988] with respect to the Society of Accountants in Edinburgh (SAE) and Kedslie [1990] in relation to the SAE and its equivalent bodies, the Institute of Accountants and Actuaries in Glasgow (IAAG) and the Society of Accountants in Aberdeen (SAA). These writers based much of their analysis on the concept of economic class as an analogy for social status. They observed, for example, that many of the early SAE members had origins above that of a mid 19th century public accountant and typically were categorized with lawyers in terms of economic class. IAAG members, on the other hand, were usually associated with the mercantile community in mid century – this group having considerable social status in the West of Scotland. For Edinburgh and Glasgow accountants at this time, therefore, it was vital in their professional projects not only to convert their expertise into monetary rewards, but also to maintain their so-cial status with, respectively, lawyers and merchants. As part of these projects, they attempted social closure through examination and training, and established credentials that signaled a structured social inequality [Macdonald, 1984].

The SAE and IAAG managed their professional projects in different ways, and it is clear that SAE leaders regarded their members as socially superior to IAAG members [Shackleton, 1995]. The SAE saw no need to restrict the number of apprentices contracted to individual members whereas the IAAG did. The IAAG, on the other hand, and in contrast to the SAE, had no indenture entry fee. The SAE attempted persistently to persuade the IAAG to change this policy. In 1890, the IAAG and the SAA opened their memberships to experienced accountants without the required education and training always insisted on by the SAE. As a result, Dundee accountants preferred to join the IAAG rather than the SAE until the merger of these bodies into the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland in 1954. These differences reflect the difficulty of judging issues such as economic class and social status outside the historical and geographical contexts in which they took place. For this reason, the following section briefly examines contextual matters of history in both the US and Scotland that are relevant to this study.

AMERICAN AND SCOTTISH PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENTS

The history of the public accountancy profession in the US appears in numerous writings and does not require detailed coverage in this paper. Writers such as Miranti [1990] and Previts and Merino [1998] are the sources for the following comments.

American public accountants were slow to professionalize and organize compared with their British counterparts. Despite considerable economic expansion in the US throughout the 19th century, visiting British accountants provided much of the early public accountancy services needed to protect the interests of UK investors in industries such as iron and steel, mining, brewing, and railways. These temporary assignments led to the identification of long-term opportunities to provide professional services and, in the last decades of the 19th century, professional bodies (e.g. the American Association of Public Accountants) and firms (e.g. Barrow, Wade, Guthrie & Company) appeared with significant British chartered accountancy input. Expansion of this early professional provision, however, created employ-ment opportunities that exceeded the number of available American-born accountants with sufficient skills and led to continuous recruitment over several decades of young chartered accountants from the UK. Scottish men formed an important element in this migration and many were influential in the early history of the American public accountancy profession [Lee, 2002a and b].

These American events coincided with a period in Victorian Scotland when there was a limited supply of recruits with economic class origins consistent with those of the founders of chartered accountancy. Thus, economic and social incentives associated with upward social mobility encouraged many lower middle class and working class families to make considerable sacrifices for sons to achieve economic wealth and social respectability as chartered accountants. Walker [1988, p. 255], for example, reports that approximately six of every ten SAE members between 1855 and 1914 were upwardly mobile and approximately one in every 25 were downwardly mobile. Kedslie [1990, p. 80] reveals a similar trend between 1854 and 1904 in the overall figures for the Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Aberdeen bodies.1 Her data suggest that, whereas at foundation nearly two-thirds of chartered accountants had fathers of independent means or professional background, this proportion fell post-foundation to less than 50%. Conversely, lower middle class and working class recruits increased from approximately one in every ten to two in ten. Entry hurdles such as fees and training periods obviously may have deterred some but did not put off many others. In addition, apprenticeships were relatively inexpensive means for established Scottish chartered accountants to provide client services in an expanding but highly competitive and unstable market in Victorian Scotland. The economic necessity to be profitable appears to have overtaken any concern there may have been regarding diminished social status and habitus -at least as long as the professional leadership reproduced satis-factorily.

A third factor to consider in this historical context is the over-supply of chartered accountants in Scotland by the beginning of the First World War [Walker, 1988, pp. 40-51]. New apprentices with aspirations for upward social mobility provided cheap labor but were often surplus to requirements when apprenticeship contracts expired. There was always a large enough pool of newly qualified chartered accountants from which existing partners could select a new or replacement partner with the appropriate background – i.e. what the SAE described in its rules as individuals of “good character.” Walker’s [1988, p. 44] figures reveal the consequence of oversupply. Between 1855 and 1914, 23% of members admitted to the SAE immigrated overseas. This movement persistently increased from two percent of new members in the first decade to 37% between 1905 and 1914. Twenty-nine percent of this migration was to the US and, given the relatively low social status of American public accountancy at this time compared to the UK, it is reasonable to suggest immigration was due more to the lack of opportunity in Scotland than the lure of prospects in America. According to research for the current study, approximately one in 20 of nearly 3,000 members of the three Scottish bodies resided in the US by 1914.

JACOBS’ THESIS

None of these detailed contextual aspects of the professional projects of the three Scottish bodies of chartered accountants
who does provide definitions. For this reason, Kedslie’s data can only be described in this paper in general terms and have not been used in later analyses to provide specific coverage of the 1880 to 1914 period for the IAAG and SAA.

appears in Jacobs’ [2003] study. He purports to explore the relationship between economic class and professions and alludes to the notion of public accountants maintaining their social status by means of recruitment practices. In this respect, Jacobs follows the common approach of using economic class as an analogy for social status and ignores the historical reality of Scottish chartered accountants recruiting from the lower middle class and working class while maintaining an upper class and upper middle class leadership. He argues that the current recruitment forms of the largest public accountancy firms favor middle class applicants, with particular regard to generic and transferable skills such as leadership. He further states that the profession’s habitus remains in this way, based on a middle class environment. Of relevance to this paper is his argument that this social bias is long-standing and has its origins in the social closure practices of the early Scottish chartered accountants. In particular, he cites Walker’s [1988] work on the SAE’s early members and the search by it for “competent and respectable accountants” and “gentlemen of professional standing” [Jacobs, 2003, p. 573]. He therefore implies that Walker demonstrates the establishment and perpetuation of a viable middle class through an explicit system of inheritance and transfer of position from one generation to the next.

These arguments are unsustainable in terms of Weber’s so-cial theory as it applies to professions and inconsistent with the empirical evidence of social historians. Public accountants according to the Weber model of organized communities are not an economic class but, instead, a collective group that weaves through the vertical structure of class. Their social status relates to the groups with which they are best associated at particular points in time – landowners and lawyers in the SAE case and merchants and manufacturers in the IAAG case, both during the mid 19th century. In addition, the empirical evidence of the economic class origins of Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Aberdeen chartered accountants from 1854 to 1914 presented in the following section reveals that, for a variety of reasons, the social closure predicted by the professional project as defined by Larson [1977] was not achieved with respect to general membership. The use of entrants from lower economic class origins as cheap labor in an expanding market for public accountancy services eventually resulted in an over-supply of chartered accountants in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. However, as previously explained, this coincided with a corresponding lack of supply in the US and many Scottish chartered accountants achieved professional success in that country irrespective of their economic class origins. The remainder of this paper is devoted to outlining and analyzing this evidence.

The analysis uses a social status classification constructed by Walker [1988, pp. 269-281]. It uses economic occupations which range from independent means (in this paper termed “upper class”), through the professions, manufacturers, commerce, and farmers (termed “upper middle class”), to distribution and processing, and white collar (termed “lower middle class”), and finally to skilled manual, and semi and unskilled labor (termed “working class”). Walker’s index was informed by contemporary classifications such as that of Heiton [1859] who described the residents of Edinburgh in terms of a social caste system, thus conflating the concepts of economic class and social status. Heiton’s work is relevant in this context as it reflects the attitude of Victorian Scots to the related notions of class and status and is therefore appropriate for a study of class changes in Scottish public accountancy in the last half of the 19th century. In other words, Walker’s index describes economic occupation but also signals contemporary perceptions of social status.

The data in Table 1 reflect the stated situation for the SAE, IAAG, and SAA combined. The first column describes the economic class origins of the grandfathers of the founders of the Scottish bodies. The remaining columns reveal the paternal origins of founders, founder council members (1854 and 1867), post-foundational members (1855-79), US immigrants (1875-1914), council members (1914), and office bearers (1854-1914). The data come mainly from on-line databases in the Scottish Records Office supplemented by contemporary records and texts. The 1855-79 data, however, are amendments of earlier research by Stewart [1977] that proved erroneous in certain cases. Percentages reported are proportions of actual observations from databases. Missing observations are greatest for founders’ grandfathers (85 or 34%) due mainly to problems of identification when identical names appear multiple times on specific birth dates prior to 1852.

Overall, Table 1 reveals two effects. The first relates to members of the three bodies and the second to their council members and officers. With respect to members, there were some changes in economic class origins up to 1879 followed by a considerable change from then until 1914 with respect to the US migrants. More specifically, 94% of founders’ grandfathers were upper class or upper middle class compared to 88% of founders’ fathers. The most obvious change was between upper class and upper middle class with the proportion of the former reducing by 18 percentage points and that of the latter increasing by 12. The paternal origins of post-foundational members tend to mirror the foundational pattern with 84% being upper class or upper middle class. There was also some substitution from upper class to upper middle class and a small increase in lower middle class and working class representation. This last effect is particularly noticeable for the migrant group. Overall, a majority (52%) of migrants to the US came from lower middle class or working class origins and this reflects a considerable change in recruitment practices from the foundational positions. If the migrants are representative of the total memberships of which they were a part then, in the period 1880 to 1914, the SAE, IAAG, and SAA were unable to reproduce the economic class origins of their founders. This conclusion is not true, however, for council members and officers. Table 1 reveals that almost all foundational council members (93%), 1914 council members (92%), and 1854-1914 officers (97%) came from upper class and upper middle class backgrounds. Such stability is inconsistent with the general membership changes and reflects the achievement of economic class reproduction among the leadership of the three bodies. Appendix 1 supports these conclusions in more detail.

Appendix 1 provides detailed analyses of the figures in Table 1. This detail relates to each of the SAE, IAAG, and SAA and includes SAE membership numbers from 1880 to 1914. The latter come from data reported by Walker [1988, p. 256]. The various analyses reveal differences between the three bodies and are reminders of the importance of recognizing variations in local conditions when making sociological comparisons.

The SAE data in the first section of Appendix 1 provide a complete analysis of economic class for the period from 1854 to 1914. There was some downward social mobility between grandfathers and fathers of SAE founders. Forty-five percent of classifiable grandfathers were upper class compared to 26% of fathers. The upper middle class category increased from 50% to 66%. The lower middle class and working class representation was 5% for grandfathers and 8% for fathers. This pattern repeats for members in the period 1855 to 1879 – 89% were either upper class or upper middle class, with a switch from the latter to the former. For the period 1880 to 1914, however, there was a sizeable minority of lower middle class (27%) and working class (9%) members of the SAE, with the upper class category falling to 4%. These figures almost mirror those for the US immigrant group from 1875 to 1914, revealing that the latter was a representative subset of the overall group in the case of the SAE. For council members and office bearers, the pattern was different from the general membership of the SAE and consistent with the overall results in Table 1. The foundation council members were entirely from upper class and upper middle class origins and the configuration was more consistent with that for founders’ grandfathers than fathers. The same is true for SAE officers between 1854 and 1914 with one-half upper class and one-half upper middle class. The 1914 council retained its élite origins as it consisted almost entirely of upper middle class individuals (93%). Thus, as in the overall data in Table 1, the SAE data reveal an increasing lower middle class and working class element in its general membership whereas its leadership was consistently upper class and upper middle class throughout the period 1854 to 1914. The Edinburgh data confirm the long-term inability of the SAE to reproduce in economic class terms with respect to its general membership while maintaining its élite leadership and habitus.

Complete and comparable data were unavailable for mem-bers of the IAAG and the SAA. As reported earlier in footnote 1, Kedslie [1990] reports economic class data for the period 1854 to 1904 for each of the three Scottish bodies but does not use the classification of Walker [1988] adopted for this study. Appendix 1 therefore omits data on members for these bodies from 1880 to 1914, although Kedslie’s [1990, pp. 87-88] data reveal similar patterns to those of Walker. The IAAG and SAA data in Appendix 1 also reveal similar trends over time to those for the SAE. The grandfathers and fathers of the Glasgow and Aberdeen founders were predominantly upper middle class (73% and 78%, and 67% and 67%, respectively), consistent with the commercial and industrial élite of these cities. The IAAG foundation council mirrors this situation with 78% from the upper middle class. In Aberdeen, on the other hand, there was a lower working class element of 33%. As far as the 1855 to 1879 membership for the IAAG is concerned, there was a small increase of 11 percentage points from the foundational position with respect to lower middle class and working class individuals. In Aberdeen, the equivalent change was more marked with 33% from these categories. The US migrants reveal a definite inability of the IAAG and SAA to reproduce their memberships in economic class terms. With the IAAG, 59% of migrants were lower middle class and working class in origin. The equivalent figure for the SAA is 43%. Meanwhile, there was stability in the leadership of both bodies in economic class terms. In the case of the IAAG, 87% of the 1914 council was upper class or upper middle class. With the SAA, the figure was 88%. Overall, between 1854 and 1914,

TABLE 2 Economic Origins of Scottish Chartered Accountant Migrants 1875-1914

Society of Accountants Institute of Accountants Society of Accountants Total n
in Edinburgh & Actuaries in Glasgow in Aberdeen p
Economic Migrants Migrants Migrants Migrants Migrants Migrants Migrants Migrants o
Class 1875-14 1875-14 1887-14 1887-14 1889-14 1889-14 1889-14 1889-14 0
c
Grandfathers Fathers Grandfathers Fathers Grandfathers Fathers Grandfathers Fathers
Upper 8 4 3 4 1 ‘Si
Upper Middle 39 58 41 41 39 57 40 47
Lower Middle 20 27 23 38 31 22 23 34
Working 33 11 33 21 30 21 33 18
Total 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100
Number 90 165 23 278 161
No data 6 33 5 44
Total 96 48 198 99 28 14 322 161

the officers of both bodies were predominantly upper class and upper middle class (100% for the IAAG and 88% for the SAA). The IAAG and SAA data in Appendix 1 therefore also confirm the overall impression in Table 1 of an increasing working class component in general membership, and of leadership reproduction.
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 under-taken 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.

TABLE 3

Economic Class Origins of Scottish Chartered Accountant Migrants and Time of Immigration

Society of Accountants Institute of Accountants Society of Accountants Total o
in Edinburgh & Actuaries in Glasgow in Aberdeen 0
Economic Left Within Left After Left Within Left After Left Within Left After Left Within Left After
Class a Year a Year a Year a Year a Year a Year a Year a Year ‘Si
Upper 7 3
Upper Middle 47 66 36 49 50 75 40 57
Lower Middle 42 17 41 33 20 25 39 26
Working 11 10 23 18 30 21 14
Total 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100
Number 19 29 66 33 10 4 95 66

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 immigra-tion 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 conse-quences 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.

SUCCESS OF IMMIGRANTS

In order to determine whether class as defined by economic origins was a determining factor in the career success for the Scottish chartered accountant immigrants in the US, an index of “success” was constructed based on their association with public accountancy firms and institutions in the US. There are four levels of career success identified from data reported in earlier studies [Lee, 2002a and b]. Success at a “national” level relates to an immigrant having a partnership in a national firm (or a senior executive position in a national corporation) and involvement with a national or local public accountancy body. “Local with national/local” success describes a partnership in a local city firm (or a senior executive position in a local corporation) and involvement with a national and/or local public accountancy body. “Local” success describes a partnership in a local city firm (or senior executive position in a local corporation) only. All three categories described thus far include a small number of immigrants who completed their US careers in Canada following transfers within American national firms. All other cases are titled “no” success and refer to either lack of success (predominantly due to illness and early death) or returns to the UK. Those who returned typically pursued a local career as general practitioners of chartered accountancy or became accountants in industry. There were therefore few im-migrants who clearly failed in their public accountancy careers, and only a handful relinquished their membership of the Scottish chartered accountancy bodies prior to retirement. Table 4 reports the data reflecting these distinctions.

TABLE 4

Economic Class Origins of Scottish Chartered Accountant Migrants and US Success

Economic National Local/ Local No Success Tota
Class Success National Success or Return
Success
Upper 2 7 1
Upper Middle 44 36 48 53 47
Lower Middle 35 43 33 30 34
Working 19 14 19 17 18
Total 100 100 100 100 100
Number 43 14 64 40 161

The figures in Table 4 show clearly that, for the immigrant community as a whole, career success in the US varied. A little more than one-third (36%) achieved “national” or “local with local/national” success, 40% had “local” success, and a further 25% had “no” success. These proportions are almost identical for those of the SAE and IAAG immigrants (see Appendix 2). In the case of the SAA, on the other hand, although a comparable proportion of the group (29%) achieved “national” success, there are material differences in the remaining categories. No SAA immigrant achieved “local with local/national” success, only 28% had “local” success, and 43% had “no” success. No explanation of these differences is obvious.

Table 4 also reveals that, within the success categories of the immigrant group as a whole, there are no significant differences as compared to the economic class composition of the group. For example, 52% of all immigrants had lower middle class or working class backgrounds. This proportion for these categories appears in each of the career success categories -54% in “national,” 57% in “local with local/national,” 52% for “local,” and 47% for “no” success. These results therefore suggest that, overall, economic class was not a significant determinant of career success for these immigrants to the US. However, when the data for individual chartered accountancy bodies are examined (Appendix 2), it is clear that some differences exist and these are not easy to explain.

In the case of the SAE, 62% of its immigrants were from upper class or upper middle class backgrounds. These propor-tions repeat approximately with respect to the “national” and “local” success categories. However, with “local with local/na-tional” and “no” success, the proportions are much higher at 80% and 75% respectively. This may be a function of small numbers in the analysis although it may also reflect the ability of these immigrants to either perform well at both local and national levels (for those that stayed) or to return to the UK and restart a career there. A similar type of difference appears with the IAAG data. Forty-one percent of Glasgow immigrants were upper class or upper middle class and these proportions appear approximately in all success categories with the exception of “local with local/national” (22%). Again, the ability of men in these classes to perform at local and national levels is a possibility. In the case of the SAA, the upper class and upper middle class representation in the group is 57%. Confusingly, none of the success categories mirror this proportion, with two higher and two lower. The effect of small numbers should not be ignored here.

CONCLUSIONS

The previous analyses reveal the danger of generalizations regarding economic class structure within the context of a ma-turing profession. Following the arguments of Weber and Perkin, this study examines what three Scottish chartered ac-countancy bodies achieved in their professional projects rather than what they implied they would achieve in terms of their social closure practices. Despite differences in detail, each of the three bodies had entry hurdles in place that suggested an attempt to reproduce in terms of economic class in order to maintain social status and habitus. In practice, however, each body had to cope with the realities of the labor market. Growing demand for economic services, coupled with entry hurdles, resulted in changes to the structure of economic class origins of Scottish chartered accountancy memberships. Overall, there was a gradual switch in economic class origins through time -i.e. from the founders’ grandfathers in the last half of the eighteenth century to the fathers of US migrants in mid 19th century. The change reflected fewer upper class and upper middle class men and more from lower middle class and working class backgrounds in the memberships of the SAE, IAAG, and SAA. The change was relatively insignificant prior to 1879 but accelerated thereafter. The most complete data available relates to the SAE but similar effects are also evident with the IAAG and SAA.

In parallel with this membership effect, there is equally clear evidence of the maintenance of the social status and habitus of the Scottish chartered accountancy profession as a whole by means of relative stability in the economic origins of the leaders of the three bodies. With respect to foundation councils, councils in 1914, and officers between 1854 and 1914, more than nine of every ten individuals were from upper class and upper middle class backgrounds. This contrasts sharply with the economic class origins of members who immigrated to the US as a result of over-supply of chartered accountants in Scotland and professional opportunities in the US. Immigrants in this study represented the changing economic class order in the three Scottish bodies and were predominantly from lower middle class and working class backgrounds (particularly in the case of the IAAG). Migrants from the upper class and upper middle class typically delayed immigrating after qualification longer compared to men from the lower middle class and working class – thus suggesting possible employment discrimination in chartered accountancy in Scotland. However, economic class origin does not appear to have been a significant factor in the overall professional success of the total immigrant group in the US. Differences with respect to each of the three bodies suggest upper class and upper middle class immigrants had back-grounds more likely to achieve success at local and national levels or return to the UK. More research needs to be done in this area.

Overall, this study emphasizes the importance in historical study of archival data to support or reject specific research propositions. It also reveals differences in local professional conditions as adjacent as Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Aberdeen. And it demonstrates the relevance of observing actual conse-quences of actions in a professional project rather than relying solely on the possibilities associated with these actions (in this case, the introduction of entry hurdles). It also reveals the complexity of explaining and commenting on social structures based on notions of economic class and social status.

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