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Determinants of the School Attendance of Boys in Early Chicago

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

David W. Galenson
David W. Galenson*
Affiliation:
University of Chicago and a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research
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Extract

Historians of education have long been interested in determining who attended school in the nineteenth-century United States. In a period of rapidly increasing expenditures on education, not all residents shared equally in the benefits. Knowing who attended school is a crucial first step toward an assessment of the opportunities education afforded to nineteenth-century Americans, as well as measurement of the returns the new investment produced for the American economy as a whole.

Type
Articles
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 35 , Issue 4 , Winter 1995 , pp. 371 - 400
Copyright
Copyright © 1995 by the History of Education Society 

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References

1 This paper extends the analysis of Galenson, David W., “Educational Opportunity on the Urban Frontier: Nativity, Wealth, and School Attendance in Early Chicago,” Economic Development and Cultural Change 43 (Apr. 1995): 551–63. As in that paper, the analysis here will be restricted to the school attendance of boys.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 For references to many of these, see Rury, John L., “American School Enrollment in the Progressive Era: An Interpretive Inquiry,” History of Education 14 (Mar. 1985): 49–50.Google Scholar

3 The importance of family characteristics as determinants of school attendance requires the restriction of the statistical analysis to children living with their parents. Family relationships were not recorded in the 1860 census manuscripts. In this study, a family head is defined as the first person with a particular surname listed in a household. A person is defined as the wife of the family head if a female of the same surname, of at least 18 years of age, is listed immediately after a male family head, and is within 18 years of his age. An individual is defined as the child of the family head if he or she is listed in the same household, with the same surname, and was at least 18 years younger than the head.Google Scholar

4 For example, Kaestle, Carl F. and Vinovskis, Maris A., “From Fireside to Factory: School Entry and School Leaving in Nineteenth-Century Massachusetts,” in Transitions: The Family and the Life Course in Historical Perspective, ed. Hareven, Tamara K. (New York, 1978), 136–37; Perlmann, Joel, Ethnic Differences: Schooling and Social Structure among the Irish, Italians, Jews, and Blacks in an American City, 1880–1935 (Cambridge, Eng., 1988), 258. The census's indication that a child had attended school will be taken as evidence that the child must have been enrolled in a school sometime during the previous year. The terms “school enrollment” and “school attendance” will consequently be used interchangeably in this paper.Google Scholar

5 Newburyport is in Essex County, but it was not included in the Essex County sample presented here; Kaestle, and Vinovskis, , “From Fireside to Factory,” 138.Google Scholar

6 Based on national samples for 1860 and 1870, Lee Soltow and Edward Stevens noted that children in the Northeast tended to enter school earlier, and to leave earlier, than those in the Northwest; The Rise of Literacy and the Common School in the United States: A Socioeconomic Analysis to 1870 (Chicago, 1981), 120–21. The early age at school entry may have been a distinctive New England characteristic at the time. In 1859, Chicago's superintendent reported that he had surveyed the school boards of forty major cities on the question of whether they believed children under 6 should attend school. Nearly every response, he stated, was negative. “By the present school law of this State, children are admitted to the public schools at five years of age. In St. Louis, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Louisville, Washington, Charleston, New Orleans, and most other cities out of New England, the age of admission is limited to six years instead of five.” In contrast, he noted, “In Boston, children are often received as young as four years.” Wells, W. H., Fifth Annual Report of the Superintendent of Public Schools (Chicago, 1859), 22–23.Google Scholar

7 Galenson, David W., “Economic Opportunity on the Urban Frontier: Nativity, Work, and Wealth in Early Chicago,” Journal of Economic History 51 (Sep. 1991): Table 3, p. 587. In a separate logit analysis (not reported here due to space constraints), the presence of a resident servant in a household both significantly reduced the probability that a boy aged 6–8 would attend school and reduced the negative estimated impact of the father's high white-collar occupation on attendance. This analysis could not consider the impact of nonresident servants, but it does suggest that the presence of servants constituted an alternative to school attendance at young ages for sons of some professional fathers.Google Scholar

8 May, Dean and Vinovskis, Maris A., “A Ray of Millennial Light: Early Education and Social Reform in the Infant School Movement in Massachusetts, 1826–1840,” in Family and Kin in Urban Communities, 1700–1930, ed. Hareven, Tamara K. (New York, 1977), 62–99; Kaestle, Carl F. and Vinovskis, Maris A., “From Apron Strings to ABCs: Parents, Children, and Schooling in Nineteenth-Century Massachusetts,” in Turning Points , ed. Demos, John and Boocock, Sarane Spence (Chicago, 1978), S39–S80.Google Scholar

9 “If we had the means to provide schools, for children of four or five years … it would undoubtedly be a great relief to parents, and, in many instances, would be far better for the children than to remain at home. The time may come when we can afford to indulge in the luxury of Infant Schools, but it is manifestly unjust in the present crowded state of our rooms, to receive children at five, and thereby exclude those who are old enough to receive the full benefit of school discipline and instruction.” Wells, , Fifth Annual Report, 23.Google Scholar

10 In a separate logit analysis (not reported for lack of space), older siblings in the household were divided into those at school and those at work (i.e., with recorded occupations). Having older siblings in the labor force statistically significantly reduced the probability that a boy aged 5–9 would attend school, and had negative but statistically insignificant effects on attendance for boys 10–14 and 15–19. In contrast, having older siblings in school had a substantial and statistically significantly positive impact on attendance for boys at all ages.Google Scholar

11 It might also be noted that sons of families with no wealth have higher estimated probabilities of attendance in Tables 3, 4, and 5, in both the youngest and oldest age groups, than sons of families with wealth up to $500. This is probably a result of the misspecification of the equations in Tables 3–5 due to the neglect of contextual variables. Thus in all cases in which measures of ward or neighborhood are included (see Tables 6, 7, and 8), the estimated impact of no wealth on attendance is statistically insignificant and/or negative. This disappearance of the positive estimated impact of a family's lack of recorded wealth when contextual variables are included suggests that although poor families tended to live in neighborhoods in which attendance rates were high, the poverty of his own family did not in itself raise the probability of a boy's school attendance.Google Scholar

12 Studies that considered the effect of a child's ethnicity, but not his nativity, include Curti, Merle, The Making of an American Community: A Case Study of Democracy in a Frontier County (Stanford, Calif., 1959), 397–404; Vinyard, JoEllen, The Irish on the Urban Frontier: Nineteenth Century Detroit, 1850–1880 (New York, 1976), 113–15, 387; and Soltow, and Stevens, , The Rise of Literacy and the Common School in the United States, 137–41. Studies that also considered the child's nativity as a determinant of attendance include Kaestle, Carl F. and Vinovskis, Maris A., Education and Social Change in Nineteenth-Century Massachusetts (Cambridge, Eng., 1980), 89; Katz, Michael B., Doucet, Michael J., and Stern, Mark J., The Social Organization of Early Industrial Capitalism (Cambridge, Mass., 1982), 268–70; Perlmann, , Ethnic Differences ; Rury, John L., Education and Women's Work: Female Schooling and the Division of Labor in Urban America, 1870–1930 (Albany, N.Y., 1991), 225; Jacobs, Jerry A. and Greene, Margaret E., “Race and Ethnicity, Social Class, and Schooling,” in After Ellis Island: Newcomers and Natives in the 1910 Census , ed. Watkins, Susan Cotts (New York, 1994), 224–25; Herscovici, Steven, “Ethnic Differences in School Attendance in Antebellum Massachusetts: Evidence from Newburyport, 1850–1860,” Social Science History 18 (1994): 471–96.Google Scholar

13 Several recent studies have found that the wealth of immigrants in the mid-nineteenth century was positively related to the duration of their residence in the United States; Pope, Clayne L., “Households on the American Frontier: The Distribution of Income and Wealth in Utah, 1850–1900,” in Markets in History: Economic Studies of the Past, ed. Galenson, David W. (Cambridge, Eng., 1989), 168–72; Ferrie, Joseph P., “The Wealth Accumulation of Antebellum European Immigrants to the U.S., 1840–60,” Journal of Economic History 54 (1994): 12.Google Scholar

14 The objection might be made that the regressions of Table 5 control family wealth. Yet the census's recording of wealth is obviously incomplete; for discussion see Conley, Timothy G. and Galenson, David W., “Quantile Regression Analysis of Censored Wealth Data,” Historical Methods 27 (1994): 149–65. It might also be noted that the increase with age of the impact of the child's nativity on school attendance is consistent with this economic explanation. In comparing immigrant families with children born abroad or in the United States, the older the children, the greater the mean difference in duration of residence in the United States, and consequently the greater the predicted difference in family wealth from this source, and the greater the resulting difference in the probability of school attendance.Google Scholar

15 Chicago's superintendent of schools discussed this problem in 1862, when he recommended the establishment of an unclassified school like that of Oswego. In support, he quoted the Oswego School Report: The Unclassified School has now been in operation one year. Its design is to accommodate a class of pupils whom it was difficult to accommodate in regularly classified schools. It often happens that when pupils come here to live from abroad, and apply for admission to our schools, it is difficult to locate them satisfactorily, from the fact that they are deficient in some branches, which would require them to enter at a lower point than their proficiency in other branches would require. In such cases, they are sent to this Unclassified School, and their whole time and attention directed to the branches in which they are deficient, until qualified in these to enter at a point where their proficiency in other branches will warrant their commencing.” Wells, W. H., “Report of the Superintendent,” in Eighth Annual Report of the Board of Education, for the Year Ending December 31, 1861 (Chicago, 1862), 36.Google Scholar

16 For example, discussions of these effects are contained in Vinovskis, Maris A., The Origins of Public High Schools: A Reexamination of the Beverly High School Controversy (Madison, Wis., 1985).Google Scholar

17 The differences in the estimated coefficients across wards are in fact so large that it might be suspected that they are simply a result of differing degrees of interest or diligence by different census enumerators in recording children's school attendance. Yet a single assistant marshal, H. Hoyne, enumerated both Wards 1 and 2, which have substantially different estimated coefficients in the first two equations of Table 6. Similarly, George Kellogg enumerated both Wards 3 and 4, which have very different estimated coefficients in the second and third equations of Table 6. And A. P. Sharp enumerated both Wards 8 and 9, which have very different coefficients in the first equation of Table 6.Google Scholar

18 The ward map in existence in 1860 was not intended to reflect neighborhoods; Einhorn, Robin L., Property Rules: Political Economy in Chicago, 1833–1872 (Chicago, 1991), 256–57.Google Scholar

19 White, Michael J., Dymowski, Robert F., and Wang, Shilian, “Ethnic Neighbors and Ethnic Myths: An Examination of Residential Segregation in 1910,” in Watkins, , After Ellis Island, 185–88.Google Scholar

20 In all cases, the neighborhood variables were constructed using the 200 families enumerated closest to a given family within the same ward. The number of families in the neighborhood was chosen to approximate the households that would contribute to one school. In 1860 Chicago's public schools had an average of 554 students per school; Wells, W. H., “Report of the Superintendent,” in Sixth Annual Report of the Board of Education, for the Year Ending February 1, 1860 (Chicago, 1860), 33. The families in the sample used in this study had a mean of 2.95 children.Google Scholar

21 Galenson, , “Economic Opportunity on the Urban Frontier,” 584–86, 600–601.Google Scholar

22 On property ownership and persistence, ibid., 585–86. For a study of the association between persistence and political influence in the mid-nineteenth century, see Winkle, Kenneth J., The Politics of Community: Migration and Politics in Antebellum Ohio (Cambridge, Eng., 1988).Google Scholar

23 Einhorn, , Property Rules, 250.Google Scholar

24 Wells, W. H., Third Annual Report of the Superintendent of Public Schools of the City of Chicago, for the Year 1856 (Chicago, 1857), 7–8.Google Scholar

25 For example, compare Galenson, , “Economic Opportunity on the Urban Frontier,” with Herscovici, Steven, “The Distribution of Wealth in Nineteenth Century Boston: Inequality among Natives and Immigrants, 1860,” Explorations in Economic History 30 (July 1993): 321–35.Google Scholar

26 On the early history of Catholic schools in the city, see Sanders, James W., The Education of an Urban Minority: Catholics in Chicago, 1833–1965 (New York, 1977), 20–21.Google Scholar

27 Sanders, James W., “The Education of Chicago Catholics: An Urban History” (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1971), 22.Google Scholar

28 Ibid., 24.Google Scholar

29 Ibid., 53. On the early growth of parochial schools, also see Walch, Timothy, “Catholic Education in Chicago: The Formative Years 1840–1890,” Chicago History 7 (Summer 1978): 87–91.Google Scholar

30 Wells, , Sixth Annual Report, 40.Google Scholar

31 Sanders, , “The Education of Chicago Catholics,” 23. Also see Skerrett, Ellen, “The Catholic Dimension,” in McCaffrey, Lawrence J. et al., The Irish in Chicago (Urbana, Ill., 1987), 24; Townsend, Andrew J., “The Germans of Chicago” (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1927), 196.Google Scholar

32 Wells, , Sixth Annual Report, 33, 40. On the growth of the public school system during the 1850s, also see Wood, David Ward, Chicago and Its Distinguished Citizens (Chicago, 1881), 112–15.Google Scholar

33 On Wells see Herrick, Mary J., The Chicago Schools: A Social and Political History (Beverly Hills, Calif., 1971), 39–47.Google Scholar

34 Wells, , Sixth Annual Report, 20.Google Scholar

35 Ibid., 27.Google Scholar

36 For example, see Schultz, Stanley K., The Culture Factory: Boston Public Schools, 1789–1860 (New York, 1973), 252–77; Kaestle, Carl F., Pillars of the Republic: Common Schools and American Society, 1780–1860 (New York, 1983), 72, 80–81, 99–100.Google Scholar

37 Quoted in Digby, Drew, “Neighborhoods, Religion, and Collaboration in Antebellum Chicago Public Schools” (paper presented to Economic History Workshop, University of Chicago, May 1994), 13.Google Scholar

38 Listings of Chicago's public schools in 1860 with their locations and boundaries are given in Wells, , Sixth Annual Report, 58–60, 93–95. The political conditions that led to this distribution of public schools have not been explored in detail. On the role of immigrants in early Chicago politics, see Funchion, Michael F., Chicago's Irish Nationalists, 1881–1890 (New York, 1976), 18–19; Fanning, Charles, Skerrett, Ellen, and Corrigan, John, Nineteenth Century Chicago Irish: A Social and Political Portrait (Chicago, 1980), 2–4; Green, Paul Michael, “Irish Chicago: The Multiethnic Road to Machine Success,” in Ethnic Chicago , ed. Jones, Peter d'A. and Holli, Melvin G. (Grand Rapids, Mich., 1981), 213.Google Scholar

39 Wells, , Sixth Annual Report, 29.Google Scholar

40 Harrington, Edward T., “The Diocese under Bishop John Bernard Fitzpatrick,” in Lord, Robert H. et al., History of the Archdiocese of Boston (New York, 1944), 2: 589–600.Google Scholar

41 Sanders, James W. observed that in the mid-nineteenth century the Catholic church was more active in building parochial schools in Chicago than in Boston or New York, and discussed possible reasons for this, in two papers: “Boston Catholics and the School Question, 1825–1907,” in From Common School to Magnet School: Selected Essays in the History of Boston's Schools, ed. Fraser, James W., Allen, Henry L., and Barnes, Sam (Boston, 1979), 43–75; and “Roman Catholics and the School Question in New York City: Some Suggestions for Research,” in Educating an Urban People: The New York City Experience , ed. Ravitch, Diane and Goodenow, Ronald K. (New York, 1981), 116–40.Google Scholar

42 Kaestle, , Pillars of the Republic, 107.Google Scholar