THEIR FATHERS' TRADES.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXVI, Issue 77, 5 August 1913, Page 4

THEIR FATHERS' TRADES.

Professor S. J. Chapman and Mr W. Abbot contribute an article to the Journal of the Royal Statistical So-J ciety on "The Tendency of Children to enter their Fathers' Trades." The authors collected figures from even-: ins continuation schools in Lancashire' in which "the scholars had already be-j bun to earn their livings. From; some 2,415 correct returns obtained,' dealing with 4,196 males, percentages of the callings adopted by the children of men in every one of the important trades were worked out. In every case it was found that the largest of recruits to any trade was drawn from families already connected with it. Of the sons of textile workers, for instance, 61.7 per cent, follow the trade of their fathers; of metal workers, 33.3 per cent.; of miners, 36 par cent. ; of clerical workers, 49.1 per cent. "The relative pull of the father's trade on his children, in comparison with the pull of any other given trade of about the same grade," say the authors, "would tend to be roughly three to one, on the assumption that all trades were of equal magnitude, and growing at the same rate."