Mobility and Occupational Structure on the Late Nineteenth-Century Urban Frontier: The Case of Denver, Colorado

Abstract

AMERICANS HAVE TRADITIONALLY believed that social and geographic mobility is a valuable and characteristic feature of their society. During the past decade in particular, scholars have sought to test this belief by determining the level of occupational and geographic mobility that obtained in nineteenthcentury America and thereby unmask the social experiences of the mass of anonymous Americans. Using quantitative methods, they have begun to exploit the evidence contained in such basic sources as the manuscript schedules of the United States census and city directories. Although of interest to all students of American history, the study of mobility has been of special concern to historians of the city and the frontier. Urban scholars study mobility because of its bearing on social structure and social processes in the community, while historians of the frontier employ the concept of mobility as a means of testing empirically Frederick Jackson Turner's hypothesis that the frontier encouraged rapid