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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 January 2016
Virtually from the beginning “collective biography,” or “prosopography,” has been seen as one of the most powerful and useful techniques of the “new” quantitative history. As Lawrence Stone succinctly described that technique, it is “ … the investigation of the common background characteristics of a group of actors by means of a collective study of their lives.” It is not case, of course, as Stone also makes clear, that the new quantitative historians invented collective biography. In fact, the approach was used by historians and other social scientists well before the advent of quantitative history. Even so, the technique has frequently been employed by quantitative historians and may even be seen by some as virtually a hallmark of that approach to historical studies.
1 Stone, Lawrence, “Prosopography,” Daedalus (Winter 1971), 46Google Scholar.
2 Mowry, George E., The California Progressives (Chicago, 1963), 87Google Scholar. Mowry’s study was published originally in 1951.
3 Ibid., 87-88.
4 Chandler, Alfred C. Jr., “The Origins of Progressive Leadership,” in Morison, Elting E., ed. The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt, 8 vols. (Cambridge, 1954), VIII: 1462Google Scholar.
5 Ibid., 1462-65.
6 George E. Mowry, California Progressives, 87.
7 Hofstadter, Richard, The Age of Reform: From Bryan to F.D.R. (New York, 1956), 135–37Google Scholar. It can be argued that the use of this concept was foreshadowed in Hofstadter, Richard, The American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made It (New York, 1948), 176–85Google Scholar.
8 Mowry, George E., The Era of Theodore Roosevelt, 1900-1912 (New York, 1958) 86Google Scholar.
9 Ibid., 88.
10 Ibid., 105.
11 In addition to covariation and a theoretical or conceptual rationale, two other scientific criteria for justifying causal inferences are widely accepted. One is the temporal priority of the presumed cause in relation to the presumed effect. The second is elimination of the possibility of a spurious relationship, that is, elimination of the possibility that the presumed cause and the presumed effect are both caused by some third factor, also temporally prior, and are not themselves directly related in causal terms. Some of the issues touched upon here are suggested in Doherty, Robert W., “Status Anxiety and American Reform: Some Alternatives,” American Quarterly, XIX (Summer 1967), 329–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In more abstract terms, the views expressed in this paragraph also draw upon the so-called “covering law” formulation originally advanced by C. G. Hemple and its various alternative statements. Stated in crude terms, this formulation states that to constitute an adequate explanation, a statement must include or draw upon at least one “covering law” that subsumes the configuration of phenomena presumed to be causally related. Hemple, Carl G., “The Function of General Laws in History,” in Gardiner, Patrick, ed., Theories of History (New York, 1959), 344–56Google Scholar.
12 See, for example, Berthoff, Rowland, “The American Social Order: A Conservative Hypothesis,” American Historical Review, LXV (April 1960), 495–514CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Donald, David, Lincoln Reconsidered (New York, 1961), 19–36Google Scholar; Gusfield, Joseph R., Symbolic Crusade. Status Politics and the American Temperance Movement (Urbana, 1963), especially 13-35 and 166–88Google Scholar; and Hoogenboom, Ari A., Outlawing the Spoils: A History of the Civil Service Movement, 1865-1883 (Urbana, 1961), vii–xGoogle Scholar. General texts which present the status revolution concept include Blum, John M., et al., The National Experience. A History of the United States (New York, 1963), 522Google Scholar; Chase, John Terry, et al., The Study of American History (Guilford, Connecticut, 1974), II: 266Google Scholar; Garraty, John A., The American Nation: A History of the United States, 3rd ed. (New York, 1975), 621Google Scholar. Graebner, Norman A., Fite, Gilbert C., and White, Philip L., A History of the American People (New York, 1970), 856–57Google Scholar; Hicks, John D., Mowry, George E., and Burke, Robert E., A History of American Democracy, 3rd ed. (Boston, 1966), 530–31Google Scholar; Williams, T. Harry, Current, Richard N., and Freidel, Frank, A History of the United States Since 1865 (New York, 1961), 272–73Google Scholar.
13 This issue was first raised to our knowledge in Skotheim, Robert, “A Note on Historical Method: David Donald’s ‘Toward A Reconsideration of Abolitionists,’” Journal of Southern History, XXV (August 1959), 356–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Although Skotheim was specifically concerned with a study of abolitionists, his comments were equally relevant to the works of Chandler and Mowry. Richard B. Sherman was apparently the first to point specifically to the absence of a control group in the Chandler, and Mowry, essays in “The Status Revolution and Massachusetts Progressive Leadership,” Political Science Quarterly, LXXVIII (March 1963), 59–65Google Scholar. More recently the same criticism has been made by Folsom, Burton W. II, “Collective Biography as a Research Tool,” Mid-America, 54 (April 1972), 117–21Google Scholar.
14 Mowry, George E., The Progressive Era 1900-1920; The Reform Persuasion (Washington, 1972), 34Google Scholar. David P. Thelan made the same point perhaps even more strongly: “The social origins of Wisconsin legislators between 1897 and 1903 clearly suggest that no particular manner of man became a progressive. Such variables as occupation, education, nativity, age, and previous legislative experience fail to differentiate the average progressive from the average conservative. The theories that progressivism was motivated by status or class tensions felt by the urban gentry, the businessmen, the workers, the farmers, or the incipient politicians are challenged in Wisconsin by the fact that members of these groups were as likely to become conservatives as progressives.” Thelan, David P., “Social Tensions and the Origins of Progressivism,” Journal of American History, LVI (September 1969), 332–33Google Scholar. See also Filene, Peter G., “An Obituary for ‘The Progressive Movement,’” American Quarterly, XXII (Spring 1970), 28–30Google Scholar and Folsom, Burton W. II, “The Collective Biography as a Research Tool,” Mid-America, 108–22Google Scholar.
15 The essays considered are the following: Hays, Samuel P., “The Politics of Reform in Municipal Government in the Progressive Era,” Pacific Northwest Quarterly, 55 (October 1964), 157–69Google Scholar; Potts, E. Daniel, “The Progressive Profile in Iowa,” Mid-America, XLVII (October 1965), 257–68Google Scholar; Sherman, Richard B., “The Status Revolution and Massachusetts Progressive Leadership,” Political Science Quarterly, 59–65Google Scholar; Tager, Jack, “Progressives, Conservatives and the Theory of the Status Revolution,” Mid-America, XLVIII (July 1966), 162–75Google Scholar; and Thelan, David P., “Social Tensions and the Origins of Progressivism,” Journal of American History, 323–41Google Scholar. The results of each of these studies were interpreted explicitly as a refutation of Hofstadter’s status revolution concept.
Findings of another study, Kerr, William T. Jr., “The Progressives of Washington, 1910-1912,” Pacific Northwest Quarterly, 55 (January 1964), 16–27Google Scholar, also have been seen as disproving the status revolution concept although Kerr’s study is not presented in those terms. (See Folsom, Burton W. II, “The Collective Biography as a Research Tool,” 120–21Google Scholar.) Wilensky, Norman M. in Conservatives in the Progressive Era. The Taft Republicans of 1912 (Gainesville, 1965), 32–51Google Scholar, as well, did not propose to test the status revolution concept, but his findings also have been seen as evidence to support a refutation of Hofstadter’s thesis. See David P. Thelan, “Social Tensions and the Origins of Progressivism,” 333, and see also Fox, Bonnie R., “The Philadelphia Progressives: A Test of the Hofstadter-Hays Theses,” Pennsylvania History, 34 (October 1967), 372–94Google Scholar and Warner, Hoyt L., Progressivism in Ohio, 1897-1917 (Columbus, 1964), 22–23 and 46Google Scholar.
16 George E. Mowry, The Progressive Era, 34.
17 Filene, Peter G., “An Obituary for ‘The Progressive Movement,’” 20–34Google Scholar.
18 George E. Mowry, The Progressive Era, 32.
19 See for example, Hodge, Robert W. and Treiman, Donald J., “Class Identification in the United States,” American Journal of Sociology, 73 (March 1968), 535–47CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; and Jackman, Mary R. and Jackman, Robert W., “An Interpretation of the Relation Between Objective and Subjective Social Status,” American Sociological Review, 38 (October 1973), 569–82CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.
20 In this regard we do not wish to be taken as in complete agreement with Robert F. Berkhofer in his discussion of David Donald’s use of the status anxiety formulation to explain the abolitionist movement and the behavior of abolitionists. Berkhofer argues, if we interpret him correctly, that if the status revolution formulation is to be accepted as an explanation of behavior it must be shown that the historical individuals in question consciously interpreted their situation, whether accurately or inaccurately, as characterized by economic and social change which was reducing or threatening their status. In other words, for the status anxiety formulation to be accepted as an explanation of behavior, it must be shown that historical individuals were aware of and concerned about their social and economic status and perceived, rightly or wrongly, their status as declining or threatened. (See Berkhofer, Robert F. Jr., A Behavioral Approach to Historical Analysis [New York, 1969], 64–67Google Scholar). In our opinion, however, this view imposes an impossible burden of proof upon the historian, and, of greater importance, it is not, we think, in accord with accepted knowledge of human psychology and behavior. Human beings do, after all, develop anxiety neuroses, hypertension and other apparently psychologically induced disorders, such as ulcers and colitis, without necessarily being aware of factors in their environment that contribute to the development of those maladies and without even being aware that they are afflicted. Moreover, it also appears that individuals develop attitudes on the basis of particular experiences, act on the basis of those attitudes in contexts to which the originating experiences are irrelevant, and continue to act on the basis of those attitudes long after the experiences which produced them are forgotten. In short, it seems to us plausible that as a consequence of reordering of status relations individuals developed attitudes and behavior patterns that can be described as progressive and acted on the basis of those attitudes without necessarily recognizing that status change, or the threat thereof, had contributed to their development.
21 Hofstadter, Age of Reform, 137.
22 Ibid., 148; emphasis added.
23 It is possible to debate the degree to which the status revolution concept was original with Hofstadter. It is apparent that he was influenced by work in the other social sciences. In The Age of Reform, Hofstadter cites Lipset, Seymour M. and Bendix, Reinhard, “Social Status and Social Structure: A Re-examination of Data and Interpretations: II,” British Journal of Sociology, II (September 1951), 230–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Greenblum, Joseph and Pearlin, Leonard I., “Vertical Mobility and Prejudice: A Socio-PsycRological Analysis,” in Bendix, Reinhard and Lipset, Seymour M., eds., Class, Status and Power: A Reader in Social Stratification (Glencoe, 1953), 480–91Google Scholar; and Bettelheim, Bruno and Janowitz, Morris, “Ethnic Tolerance: A Function of Social and Personal Control,” American Journal of Sociology, LV (September 1949), 137–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Bell, Daniel, nonetheless, credits Hofstadter as the source of the status revolution formulation in Bell, Daniel, ed., The New American Right (New York, 1955), 15, 88, 170, and 219Google Scholar.
24 Hofstadter, Richard, “The Pseudo-Conservative Revolt,” in Bell, Daniel, ed., The New American Right, 33–55Google Scholar and “Pseudo-Conservatism Revisited: A Postscript,” in Bell, Daniel, ed., The Radical Right. The New American Right Expanded and Updated (New York, 1964), 97–103Google Scholar.
25 Potter, David M., “Explicit Data and Implicit Assumptions in Historical Study,” in Gottschalk, Louis, ed., Generalization in the Writing of History (Chicago, 1963), 178–94Google Scholar.