The Triumphant White Collar

How do people feel about the social structure they have set up for themselves? Social scientists are forever asking the question, and are usually discontented with the answers they get.

Back in the booming '20s, according to Sociologists Maethel E. Deeg and Donald G. Paterson in the current Occupations magazine, a survey quizzed U.S. young people on how they ranked certain occupations in "social prestige." The young people rated the occupations in this order: 1) bankers; 2) physicians; 3) lawyers; 4) school superintendents; 5) civil engineers; 6) army captains; 7) foreign missionaries; 8) elementary school teachers; 9) farmers; 10) machinists; 11) traveling salesmen; 12) grocers; 13) electricians; 14) insurance agents; 15) mail carriers; 16) carpenters; 17) soldiers; 18) plumbers; 19) motormen; 20) barbers; 21) truck drivers; 22) coal miners; 23) janitors; 24) hod carriers; 25) ditch diggers.

This lineup, the sociologists felt, was not entirely satisfactory. It proved that U.S. youngsters had a "whitecollar complex" which led to "widespread vocational dissatisfaction in the 'lower' occupational levels." Some sociologists hoped that the depression of the '30s and World War II would lower the prestige of clean hands and white collars, lift the prestige of overalls and tool kits.

Last year Deeg & Paterson hopefully repeated the survey. Nothing much had changed. Physicians now rate tops in "social prestige," displacing bankers, but the same "clean hand" occupations still hold the top eight places. Farmers have dropped three ranks, soldiers two. Manual workers in general are still in the social cellar.

Deeg & Paterson observed, in passing, that such sociological distinctions are viewed more realistically in the U.S.S.R. Soviet students, asked what occupation they rated highest, answered promptly: "The peasant."

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