Chapter 15
Clerical Workers
If we view the evolution of those occupations called“clerical" over a long time span, from the Industrial Revolution to the present, we are soon led to doubt that we are dealing with the continuous evolution of a single stratum. The clerical employees of the early nineteenth-century enterprise may, on the whole, more properly appear as the ancestors of modern professional management than of the present classification of clerical workers. While it is probable that some of the clerks of that time corresponded roughly to the modern clerical worker in function and status, it is for various reasons more accurate to see the clerical workers of the present monopoly capitalist era as virtually a new stratum, created in the last decades of the nineteenth century and tremendously enlarged since then. It is very important that this be understood, because if it is not, and if one ascribes to the millions of present-day clerical workers the “middle class" or semi-managerial functions of that tiny and long-vanished clerical stratum of early capitalism, the result can only be a drastic misconception of modern society. Yet this is exactly the practice of academic sociology and popular journalism.
The place of the handful of clerks in the early industrial enterprise—and there were generally fewer than a half-dozen in even the largest firmswas semi-managerial in terms of the present distribution of functions. Lockwood says of the mid-nineteenth century in his book on British clerical labor that “many of the clerks mentioned at the earlier period were probably performing duties which would nowadays be classified as managerial.'"1 And, in fact, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, "clerk" or “chief clerk" was the title of the manager in some British industries, railways, and public services. It was not uncommon for clerks to be paid by the manager out of his own salary, thus attesting to their position as assistant managers or at least assistants to the manager, and some would be favored with annuities upon the closing of a works or inheritances upon the death of the owner (Matthew Boulton, the pioneer machine builder, included such a provision in his will). Managers and owners filled clerical posts with their relatives, since clerks often rose into managerships or partnerships.² Klingender, writing of the period 1840 to 1860 in Britain, says: “As long as the requirements of banking, commerce, or industry did not exceed the resources of family concerns or small partnerships, there could not be an extensive development of clerical labour. In this early stage there was an almost feudal relationship between the small number of clerks to be found in such offices and their employers. The clerk was more a family servant than a wage labourer." Lewis Corey, writing about the United States, says: “The clerk was an honored employee 150 years ago, and still more so in earlier times. His position was a confidential one, the employer discussed affairs with him and relied on his judgment; he might, and often did, become a partner and marry the employer's daughter. The clerk was measurably a professional and undeniably a member of the middle class."4
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