The Development of Race and Occupation in the US Censuses

Abstract

Starting in the second half of the nineteenth century, the US census underwent a transition analogous to its UK counterpart. It was transformed from a rough headcount to one of the world’s most developed information-collection tools. Around 1900, the census became an object of intense elite lobbying. During the 1930s and 1940s, these trends accelerated as census data were linked to the distribution of resources during the New Deal and associated with social mobilization. This shift toward interventionism occurred in three stages. First, during the 1840s and 1850s, congressional struggles and individual conflicts refracted a brooding social divide that pitted the traditional southern planter aristocracy against the emerging northern industrial bourgeoisie. The planters were generally hostile to the collection of information because they saw it as threatening their paternalistic labor control. The industrialists, in contrast, were more interested in information. Second, roughly between 1870 and 1920, the influence of the planters declined, while the influence of the elite lobbies linked to the northern industry increased. These lobbies attempted, with limited success, to recast the census as a document relevant to their political and intellectual concerns. Third, the 1930 and 1940 censuses became tightly linked to social policies and lobbying and became objects of social mobilization. Concerns over immigration declined, and the census refocused on a dichotomous understanding of race through the categories of white and black.