Jewish Immigrant Entrepreneurship in New York and London, 1880-1914: Enterprise and Culture (review)

The focus of Andrew Godley's book is the link between culture and economic behavior. Specifically, it is the daunting phenomenon of Britain's failure to maintain its entrepreneurial dominance in the twentieth century that leads Godley to search for a new way to end the "intellectual stalemate" (p. 12) and breathe new life into the long debate about the causes of Britain's decline. Although cultural and social theories have long been linked to the economic explanation of the decline, Godley hopes to find empirical proof for the role of culture, substituting for the vaguely defined standard cultural explanations. Ultimately, his solid and clear analysis of quantifiable data of entrepreneurship among East European Jewish immigrants—the control group in the study—yields stimulating observations regarding divergent cultural predispositions towards entrepreneurship in American and British societies.

A major part of the study is an exploration of Jewish immigrant propensity for entrepreneurship. However, Godley is not interested in merely revisiting the familiar territory of Jewish economic mobility into the ranks of the middle class. Nor does he wish to explore the mobility of Jews vis-à-vis other immigrant groups. Instead, he compares the rates of mobility of Jews in New York and London. The puzzling differences between the choices made by Jewish immigrants regarding the entrepreneurial trajectory in the two cities constitute the heart of his thesis.

Godley's selection of Jewish immigrants in New York and London is based on obvious similarities. Most notable is the primacy of clothing manufacture in the two cities and the industry's role as major employer to sizable numbers of the two Jewish populations. Using census returns and available studies for the New York case, Godley documents the pronounced movement of Jews into the world of business: by 1914, one in every three Jewish immigrants in New York was an "entrepreneur." London numbers, however, are more modest. Wary of the limitations of the census in the case of London, Godley uses the less conventional source of marriage records kept by London synagogues. Analyzing relevant data regarding Jewish grooms and their occupations, he found that in 1914 only one in every five Jews opted for the entrepreneurial route. He states the difference in even more dramatic terms: the number of Jewish entrepreneurs in New York increased by 17 percent, from 18 percent in 1880, to 34 percent in 1914, while London entrepreneurs increased only by 4 percent, from 14.2 percent in 1880s to 18 percent before 1914. Why the difference, despite, paradoxically, London's edge in entrepreneurial profits? Godley dismisses the possibility that variation between the two immigrant populations was responsible. He points to the same "push" factors, to equal levels of literacy, and to absence of discernable differences in wealth, talent, or skill. Economic explanations of profitability prove to be equally unconvincing. Godley, therefore, turns to culture to seek an explanation for this divergent economic behavior.

The findings concerning entrepreneurial choices made by the two groups suggest two different models of culture encountered by the immigrants, maintains Godley. The concluding pages of the study explore the relationship between the immigrants and their assimilation to the host cultures of New York and London. Specifically, Godley is interested in identifying the unique cultural model that England offered its Jewish immigrants. Assimilation, Godley seems to imply, is a natural process in which the immigrants became the consumers not only of Western clothing or the English language, but also of cultural and social norms of the host society. Thus, for example, assimilation into the capitalist system in America proceeded unrestrained, and immigrants readily embraced values of individualism and free enterprise. The British version, however, differed significantly. Godley finds a puzzling major presence of assimilated Jewish grooms who defined themselves as "journeymen." This category, no longer viable in the structure of American mass production during the period under discussion...