Gray, Robert Q. The Labour Aristocracy in Victorian Edinburgh. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976. Pp. 220. Tables, maps. £8.00 All Rights Reserved © Urban History Review / Revue d'histoire urbaine, 1977 Ce document est protégé par la loi sur le droit d’auteur. L’utilisation des services d’Érudit (y compris la reproduction) est assujettie à sa politique d’utilisation que vous pouvez consulter en ligne. https://apropos.erudit.org/fr/usagers/politique-dutilisation/ Cet article est diffusé et préservé par Érudit. Érudit est un consortium interuniversitaire sans but lucratif composé de l’Université de Montréal, l’Université Laval et l’Université du Québec à Montréal. Il a pour mission la promotion et la valorisation de la recherche. https://www.erudit.org/fr/ Document généré le 5 avr. 2021 22:12 Urban History Review Revue d'histoire urbaine Gray, Robert Q. The Labour Aristocracy in Victorian Edinburgh. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976. Pp. 220. Tables, maps. £8.00 Mark J. Stern Numéro 2-77, october 1977 URI : https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/1019580ar DOI : https://doi.org/10.7202/1019580ar Aller au sommaire du numéro Éditeur(s) Urban History Review / Revue d'histoire urbaine ISSN 0703-0428 (imprimé) 1918-5138 (numérique) Découvrir la revue Citer ce compte rendu Stern, M. J. (1977). Compte rendu de [Gray, Robert Q. The Labour Aristocracy in Victorian Edinburgh. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976. Pp. 220. Tables, maps. £8.00]. Urban History Review / Revue d'histoire urbaine,(2-77), 131–133. https://doi.org/10.7202/1019580ar https://apropos.erudit.org/fr/usagers/politique-dutilisation/ https://www.erudit.org/fr/ https://www.erudit.org/fr/ https://www.erudit.org/fr/revues/uhr/ https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/1019580ar https://doi.org/10.7202/1019580ar https://www.erudit.org/fr/revues/uhr/1977-n2-77-uhr0908/ https://www.erudit.org/fr/revues/uhr/ 131 and those of the Pocahontas area and the South on the other. The city was the gateway to the south-eastern states, a position of fundamental importance both for its own development and that of the vast area beyond the Ohio. It was the foremost example among cities in its population range of the multi-terminal metropolis, so thatthe growth and special character of its various parts were strongly affected by the expansion of its railroad pattern. Finally, there was a particular kind of interaction between growth and avenues of commerce arising first from earlier modes of transportation, but more decisively from its unique topography - no American city has been more profoundly shaped by its geological history than has Cincinnati. The Railroad and the City is an excellent, highly illustrated chapter in the history of railroad technology; a story told in terms of its interaction with the evolution of a particular city. Alan F. J. Artibise Department of History University of Victoria * * * Gray, Robert Q. The Labour Aristocracy in Victorian Edinburgh. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976. Pp. 220. Tables, maps. £8.00. Quantitative methods have proven themselves to be a descrip- tive tool in urban research. However, the real test facing its practitioners in North America is to integrate quantitative methodology with an insightful and provocative theoretical grounding. In pursuing this task, British historians have set a standard that researchers on this side of the ocean will be hard put to equal. John Foster's book on Class Struggle and the Industrial Revolution (1974) and the book under review both have proved that social theory and quantitative research can complement each other. 132 Gray1s book focuses on the city of Edinburgh, but within the confines of the ancient city it ranges over a wide spectrum of human activity. After a brief description of the city's physical development, Gray takes on the following topics: the character of the industrial structure and the place of the labour aristocracy within it, the relative position of various important trades with regard to wages and the standard of living, cultural and social aspects of the labour aristocracy and their relation to the middle-class conception of "respectability", and the political transition of the Edinburgh working class from Liberalism to Labourism. Theoretically, Gray relies heavily on the work of Antonio Gramsci, both in his use of the concept of hegemony and in his analysis of ideology whose "essentially incoherent and fragmented character" is at the heart of Gray's analysis. In conclusion, Gray takes dead aim on Foster's analysis of the role of the labour aristocracy. For Foster, this elite was a key element in the process of "liberalization" which diffused the revolutionary crisis of the forties. While Gray does not deny the accomodationist aspect of the labour aristocracy, he sees this as only one pole of the group's ambiguous and complex class position. The accommodation they reached with the ruling ideology, Gray takes pains to show, was a "negotiated version" of the original, and at the same time as the labour aristocracy was reaching this accommodation, it was providing the links between trade unionism and socialism. In terms of methodology, Gray's most exciting innovations are in his chapter on wages and the standard of living. He makes extensive use of company pay records from the key trades of the Edinburgh economy in order to trace wage differentials and their movement over time. These sources provide insights into the economic structure of capitalism that are not available from census and assessment records. In conclusion, Gray's study, along with the work of Foster and Gareth Stedman Jones, provides a model of the interaction of social 133 structure and consciousness in 19th century Britain with which the North American experience can be compared. Furthermore, considering the flow of Scottish immigrants to this continent, Gray1 s work may provide a more direct insight into the development of industrial capitalism in North America. Mark J. Stern York University * * * Esslinger, Dean R. Immigrants and the City: Ethnicity and Mobility in a Nineteenth Century Midwestern City. Port Washington, New York: Kennikat Press, 1975. Pp. 156. Tables, maps. $9.95. Immigrants and the City is a study of immigrant mobility in South Bend, Indiana, between 1850 and 1880. As it grew in size from 1,378 to 7,070, South Bend shifted from a commercial to a small industrial city with a predominantly native-born population. Esslinger studies the minority: all immigrants (at first English, Irish, and German, later Polish) and their children. The work is primarily quantitative, supplemented by material from newspapers and other local historical sources. Esslinger traces the geographic origins of the population, the extent of population persistence, residential patterns, occupational mobility, and community leadership. He finds that only about one-fifth of the foreign population remained in the city during intervals of ten years and that industrialization had little effect on persistence. Residential patterns were not segregated, though by the end of the period more clustering by ethnicity and occupation had become evident. The Polish immigrants remained in semi-skilled factory work while the Irish, English, and Germans more often entered skilled work or non- manual occupations. Native-born sons of foreign men had more