Changes in the Canadian Business and Legal Elites, 1870-1970*

D A V I D S M I T H / University of Toronto

L O R N E T E P P E R M A N / Universityof Toronto

Cet article examine les origines sociales et les activitks de deux Clites canadiennes au dix-neuvikme et vingticme sikcle, B savoir 1'Clite des affaires et du droit. I1 fournit une explication provisoire des transformations qui ont eu lieu quant B I'accb B la richesse, B I'autoritC, au prestige et A I'influence au cows des cent dernieres annCes. En tant que travail d'exploration, cet essai rCv&le le besoin d'aborder l'histoire de la stratification au Canada d'une faqon jusqu'B maintenant nCgligCe, B savoir par l'analyse historique des institutions jouant un rMe dans la stratification.

This paper examines the social origins and activities of two Canadian elites, those of business and law, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It attempts a pro- visional explanation of the changes in access to wealth, authority, prominence, and influence that have occurred in the last hundred years. As an explanatory study, this paper suggests the need for an approach to the history of stratification in Canada that has not received much attention heretofore; namely, the historicat analysis of stratifying institutions.

In this paper, we compare the origins and activities of two elite groups in Canadian society at two points in time. This is a comparative cross-sectional study of stratification, rather than a longitudinal one, and it lacks the 'atten- tion to process and unanticipated consequence that is the hallmark of good historical research. One question that will receive particular attention in this paper is the changing nature and importance of corporate directorships in the elite world. It has been common, after Porter, to identify the directorship as the locus of important resources (authority, influence, wealth, and promi- nence) and consequentisal decision-making; but one must ask whether this always has been the case. If the directorship has only lately gained ascend- ancy, at the expense of what other statuses and resources has it done so? How was the elite composed, and how did it operate when the directorship was a relatively unimportant position in Canadian society? Finally, what are the consequences of this increased importance of the directorship to the sociological study of elites and stratification? These questions will form the skeleton for an otherwise general and preliminary exploration of Canadian elites presented below.

A grant from the School of Graduate Studies enabled Mr Smith to participate in this research. We are grateful for comments on earlier drafts of this paper by Craig McKie and the assessors of The Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology. 97

Rev. canad. SOC. & AnthJCanad. Rev. Soc. & Anth. 11 (2) 1974

In comparing two kinds of Canadian elites at two points in time, we sought to achieve comparability by defining “elites” arbitrarily as men and women who were recognized for their authority, prominence, wealth, or influence in contemporary Canadian society. The burden of this judgment was passed on to those who compile books about elites: the editors of biographical dic- tionaries of important people. Our sources were, for the nineteenth century (roughly 1840-1 870), the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, Volume x (1972) which describes many of the most “important” people who died between 1871 and 1880; and for the twentieth century (roughly 1940- 1970), the Who‘s Who ( 1970) that describes the most “important” Cana- dians alive in 1967-1 969.

From each of these sources, we randomly sampled 50 people who were described as lawyers - that is, primarily active in the legal-judicial sphere - and 50 people described as principally businessmen, merchants, or indus- trialists. This provided a total sample of 200 persons, 100 from each century, and 100 from each sector of the occupational structure. Selective biases may have entered into the choice of these persons for inclusion in biographical dictionaries, and furthermore, these dictionaries may have stressed or under- played specific characteristics of these elites for reasons we cannot ascertain. We shalI, however, treat our sample as though it is representative and un- biased.

We were faced with the dilemma of whether to include as variables such methodologically troublesome but important elite characteristics as wealth, prominence, influence, and authority. This problem was more serious in respect to the twentieth-century than to the nineteenth-century samples, for in the nineteenth-century source the authors of each biography generally made and communicated a judgment about each of these characteristics. On the other hand, we realized that a study of elites that neglected the measure- ment of differential wealth, prominence, influence, or authority was useless, and decided it was better to commit ourselves to possibly erroneous judg- ments than to neglect these variables. Accordingly, we devised criteria for assessing these characteristics in each individual case.

Generally, Who’s Who provided much less information from which to infer wealth than did the biographical dictionary providing our nineteenth- century data. As regards the estimation of prominence, authority, and in- fluence, the two sources were reasonably equal in quality and comprehen- siveness. However even the amount of difference that existed between sources might be troublesome if our aim were to judge whether twentieth-century elites were more or less wealthy, prominent, or powerful than nineteenth- century elites. Since our aim is not to make such estimates, and our analysis will reduce the dangers of systematic error by standardization of scores within samples, we are satisfied that our data are adequate for the explora- tion that was intended. By great “authority,” we meant “holding high execu- tive positions in large and important corporations.” People had less authority if they held no executive positions, or held such positions in relatively small 98

corporations. “Authority” was scored on a three-point scale, from low to high, in this admittedly subjective manner. With the variable “wealth,” we summarized information about a number of items relating to wealth: philan- thropy, land speculation or ownership, the ownership or majority stock con- trol of large businesses, the receiving or leaving of a large inheritance or donation, and so on. Those sampled were scored on a three-point scale as before, according to how many of these “wealthy” characteristics they were known to have. Where other information was lacking, we estimated “wealth” from the probable remuneration these people received from their work. Thus, business executives were judged wealthier than clergymen or journal- ists, all other things being equal.

“Prominence” was taken to mean “national celebrity” that cut across strict sectoral or occupational lines. This was intended to distinguish “promi- nence” from “influence,” which we defined to mean prominence and im- portance within a specific region and sector of activity, especially within the individual’s own situs. We judged a man to be prominent if the biographer declared him prominent, or if we recognized his name, or if he was called to serve on committees or boards or in an advisory capacity to policy-makers in roles having a high component of “public relations” and legitimization. Among lawyers, for example, H. Carl Goldenberg and Bora Laskin would be rated as having great prominence transcending mere sectoral influence (which they no doubt also enjoy). E.P. Taylor and K.C. Irving would exemplify businessmen with similar great prominence. By contrast, the chair- man of the Board of the Royal Bank or of Canadian Pacific Railways no doubt has a great deal of “authority” and a great sectoral influence, but rela- tively less public prominence. Finally, the top local executives of foreign owned “branch plant” industries or crown corporations would have great authority but reljatively less prominence or sectoral influence as individuals.

The inferences we drew from our data are presented in a manner that may often seem unequivocal. The device of bold presentation was adopted only to give our statements brevity, and not to mislead. We have set out to explore some data that have many shortcomings, and our conclusions must necessarily be flawed by the data. But it seemed worthwhile to induce good research with explorations that are unavoidably limited.

E L I T E R E C R U I T M E N T A N D S O C I A L I Z A T I O N

The characteristics of people recruited into the elite have changed in the past century, as the degree of similarity among them has increased in some re- spects.‘ Whereas the nineteenth-century elite was largely foreign-born, the modern elite is more often Canadian-born, despite the number and impor- tance of multinational corporations in the Canadian economy. Although

1 In the description that follows, we shall for reasons of brevity exclude most of the relevant tabulations. The differences referred to in the text are, however, all statis- tically significant and the tables may be obtained on request. 99

Quebec and the Maritimes once contributed disproportionately to the Cana- dian elite, especially in law, this contribution has since diminished consider- ably. Ontario is now grossly overrepresented as a Canadian birthplace of legal elites, while western Canada is slightly overrepresented, Quebec slightly underrepresented, and the Maritimes much underrepresented.

In keeping with this regional shift in recruitment, there has been a decline in the proportion of Roman Catholics in the elite, particularly in the legal elite. Conversely several Protestant denominations are overrepresented in this elite, as are the Jews. A large change in recruitment may be seen in the reduction of French Canadians in the contemporary elite, as exemplified by the drop in the number of elite persons born in Quebec or embracing the Catholic religion. This has been accompanied by a shift toward unilingual English usage among members of the present elite. Both in law and in busi- ness, French-speaking members of the elite are usually bilingual, but ap- parently few Anglophone members of the elite are bilingual.

Just as elite persons have become increasingly uniform, being mainly Canadian-born Protestant anglophones of Ontario and Quebec, so the social- ization experiences prior to elite induction have become more similar. There has been a great increase in the importance of advanced education over the last hundred years. This change is most notable in the business sector, for lawyers have always prepared for legal work with advanced training, where- as in the nineteenth-century only one-fifth of the business elite did so. Today, two-thirds of the business elite have received post-secondary educational training. Nearly half of the present elite have also served as officers in the military, which partly reflects the occurrence of the Second World War dur- ing their early adulthood. That these elite men served as officers may derive from either their advanced education or, perhaps, a high parental social status, or both. Finally, major corporate businesses and large law firms may prefer to recruit their members from among those who have gained leader- ship experience as officers in the armed services.

T H E FOCUS A N D S P E C I A L I Z A T I O N O F E L I T E A C T I V I T I E S

The activities of both business and legal elites have shifted geographically to Ontario and, somewhat less, to the Prairies and British Columbia. Quite clearly, national legal activities have moved to Ontario, probably to Toronto and Ottawa; they formerly resided largely in Montreal, Halifax, and Quebec city. The Maritimes have lost most of their original importance as a centre of any elite activities.

Elite activity has also become more functionally specialized. In the past hundred years, business elites have left the realm of civic activity, particu- larly overt political activity, and have concentrated almost entirely on mer- cantile affairs. The legal elite, always more diverse in its activities than the business elite, has likewise diminished its political activity and has entered mercantile activity to a marked degree. This exodus from political life, most 100

TABLE I PERCENTAGES OF ELITE PERSONS WHO HAVE HELD SPECIFIED POSITIONS, BY TIME OF ELITE INCUMBENCY AND SITUS*

Business Law

Position held 19fhcent. ZOfhcent. 19thcent. 20thcent.

Political appointment 48 .O 10.0 44.0 16.0 Elected representative 60.0 8 . 0 60.0 10.0 Judicial position 16.0 4.0 46.0 20.0 N = 50 50 50 50

* All of the differences in this table are based on statistically significant cross- tabulations, such thatp 5 .05.

notable among businessmen, is apparently associated with a general decrease in elite prominence. Few businessmen in the sampled contemporary elite have held either elected or appointed political office, as Table I indicates. This is in strong contrast to the nineteenth-century businessmen, almost half of whom served in an appointed office, and many more of whom held an elected office. The elite lawyers have also largely given up holding judicial positions. While this was always a very marginal activity of nineteenth- century businessmen, it is virtually nonexistent among twentieth-century businessmen, so this change of activity in the business elite is perceptible if slight.

One would expect a decrease in the number of honorary distinctions awarded to twentieth-century elites, in keeping with their decreased public service; however we find only a slight decrease in the number of awards given to contemporary business elites. By contrast, there has been an increase in the number of distinctions awarded to elite lawyers, for most of these have received the honorary designation “Queen’s Counsel.” However none of the elite lawyers has received any other distinction, and this contrasts strongly with the nineteenth-century legal elite. The awards these contemp- orary elite lawyers have received are very much related to their professional practice.

Not only has elite activity tended to focus more narrowly upon corporate concerns, as opposed to public or civic responsibilities, but it has also be- come more restricted to activity within groups. In contrast to the nineteenth century, almost all elite businessmen today sit on at least one board of direc- tors, and many sit on five or more such boards. This increase, displayed in Table 11, is somewhat less marked among elite lawyers, but is still noticeable. If corporate authority is wielded by groups today rather than by individuals, it is fitting that leisure time should also be spent in group activities, where one may make connections and discuss corporate policy with other elite persons. Among both business and legal elites, there has been a remarkable increase in participation in voluntary and fraternal organizations, although this increase has been most notable among businessmen.

In keeping with what Burnham (1962) called the “managerial revolu- tion,” there has been an apparent decline in the proportion of elite members 101

~ ~- ~~~~

TABLE I1 NUMBER OF CORPORATE DIRECTORSHIPS, BY TIME OF ELITE XNCUMBENCY AND SITUS (PERCENTAGE)

Number Business Law corporate - directorships 19th cent. 20th cent. 19th cent. 20thcent.

None 56.0 4 . 0 78 .O 56.0 One, two 20.0 40.0 20.0 28.0 Three, four 16.0 36.0 0.0 4.0

N = 50 50 50 50 Five or more 8 . 0 20.0 2 . 0 12.0

X’ = 32.284 with df = 3 p = ,001

Xz = 8.044 with df = 3 p = .045

TABLE 111 NUMBER OF BUSINESSES OWNED OR CONTROLLED, BY TIME OF ELITE INCUMBENCY AND SITUS (PERCENTAGE)

Number of Business Law businesses owned or controlled 19th cent. 20th cent. 19th cent. 20th cent.

None 24.0 72.0 88.0 100.0 One two 60.0 28.0 8 . 0 0.0 Three or more 16.0 0.0 4 . 0 0.0

N = 50 50 50 50

Xz = 25.818 with df = 2 Xz = 6.383 with df = 2 p = .001 p = .041

who own or control the firms they manage. Three times as many members of the present business elite as members of the nineteenth-century elite do not own or control any business firm. The change among elite lawyers has been similar but less marked, as lawyers were never as involved as business- men in business ownership and management. At present, none of the nine- teenth-century legal elites appear to own or control a business, although this may reflect a failing in our data and not an accurate description.

The stratification of business firms has tended toward the concentration of larger and larger holdings. Just as corporations recruit and control indi- viduals, so larger corporations recruit and control smaller corporations within the “spheres of influence” that Levine (1972) described in a recent analysis of American banks and industries. As Levine and others before him have suggested, banks and other financial firms may act as the foci of eco- nomic conglomerates. While all elites probably have some indirect connec- tions with such influential corporations, we would also expect some to have direct connections with these in their capacity as corporate directors. Ac- cordingly our data show that the business elite has considerably increased its number of affiliations with such corporate financial giants. The direct connections of business elites with banks have doubled in the past century, while the number of connections of these men with “trading companies” has decreased. There has been little change in the number of such affiliations 102

among elite lawyers, however. Although nineteenth-century elite business- men occasionally worked at a lower level in these conglomerates to gain experience, this tradition has now disappeared, and contemporary elite busi- nessmen take part in these corporations only at the upper management and directorship levels. The few lawyers that have similar affiliations are likewise engaged only at the top organizational levels.

The data examined thus far suggest two major changes that have taken place between 1870 and 1970. First, the similarity of characteristics and ex- periences has increased among elites, whether they be in law or in business. Within a given elite, we have seen a growth of organizational control over the processes of entry and socialization into the elite. As Canada has become a corporate society, the Canadian elite has come to fill corporate roles and conform to corporate expectations in its behaviour.

Second, the activities of legal and business elites have become more sharply differentiated, one from another. If a boundary between business and law existed in the nineteenth century, it was a line easily crossed. Today, career patterns in business are more distinct and segregated from career patterns in law, although persons with legal training may still choose to enter a business career. Not only have business and law become more mutually exclusive in the twentieth century, but they are much more exclusive of public service and of political and literary activity than they once were. If ever it did, a business or legal career does not require such extra-professional activity today; such “outside” activity may even be discouraged as part of professional socializa- tion.

Generally, then, the Canadian business and legal elites seem to exemplify trends typical of socioeconomic development : namely, bureaucratization and corporate control, and a division of labour that promotes specialization and a “professional” outlook. From this standpoint, our findings are unremark- able, but they suggest the need to consider the changes in recruitment and activities that elite positions may have acquired in the past century, and the relevance of this change for sociological studies of elites and stratification.

D I R E C T O R S H I P S A N D R E W A R D S

The characteristics of nineteenth-century elites that brought the maximum wealth, influence, authority, and prominence reflected what might be called, after Weber, patrimonial characteristics.2 Elites were at that time and at earlier times born to rule; they accordingly ruled and received their expected rewards. The nineteenth century “born rulers” were white males, landowners or business owners, and hence self-employed. They usually originated in

2 See Parsons (1964: 346-354), for a discussion of this concept by Weber. Typically patrimonial authority is traditional, inherited, and supported by retainers; i t draws little distinction between the rights and resources of an “office” and the rights and resources of the office-holder. Land-granting practices by the governor and “Family Compact” in early nineteenth-century Upper Canada provide a good example of patrimonial authority being exercised. 103

TABLE IV BETA WEIGHTS OF VARIABLES PREDICTINGJ~ WEALTH, INFLUENCE, AUTHORITY AND PROMINENCE AMONG NINETEENTH-CENTURY ELITES

Beta weightst predicting

Predictor variables$$

Male sex No. fraternal memberships Productive landowner Self employed Religious fraternity

member Elected position held Legal judicial influence Craft occupation Philanthropist No businesses owned Public opinion influence No directorships Judicial position held Honorary distinctions Total no. occupational

Political influence Mercantile influence Legal occupation

~-

activities

Variance exdained (73

Wealth Influence

.300*** .380**

.238** .319***

.190** .217**

.525*** .422** - .163* - .193*

.296***

.144

.171 - .175*

- .123

.166

.209 - -

.340**

.206* -

- - - .236* - .228* - -

66.0 57.7

Authority

.294* * *

.203* ,160*

- .211**

.204

-

- -

- 153

.248**

.I59

.226** -

58.7

Prominence

- - .164

.350**

.252* - .206*

- .205* .178 -

- 41 .O

t By stepwise multiple regression terminated when the last variable introduced contributed less than 1 per cent to the RZ (variance accounted for by the prediction equation).

$ All beta weights were tested for significant difference from zero, using a t-test. *** indi- cates significance at p = .001; ** significance at p = .01; * significance at p = .05; no asterisks significance at p = . lo. Variables not entered, or significant on entry at p > .lo, were excluded from these tables.

$$ Nominal or dichotomous variables are included in the regression as “dummy variables” in the manner that is customary and described, for example, in Draper and Smith (1966).

upper-class families. These class origins are suggested tangentially by some of the characteristics these men did not have: they were rarely craftsmen or lawyers during their careers, and did not bclong to such middle- and working- class Protestant lodges as the Masons and Orangemen. These patrimonial elites saw political and judicial power as an obligation and right bound up with leadership of their community, and so they served their communities in elected political office or as justices of the peace. In this respect, mid- nineteenth-century Canada was still very much like England 50 years earlier, before the English Parliament extended the vote and began to break down thc patrimonial elite control over home communities and so-called “rotten boro~ghs” .~

Today, however, the route to great authority is by way of employment in a corporate organization or in many such organizations in sequence. This is suggested in our data by the high positive beta weights associated with the variables “total number of occupational activities” and “number of director-

3 It may be argued that the English patrimonial system did not really receive its death blows until the time of the First World War. as Ford Maddox Ford implies in his novel Parade’s End, or Barbara Tuchman suggests in The Proud Tower, among

104 others.

TABLE V BETA WEIGHTS OF VARIABLES PREDICTING WEALTH. INFLUENCE, AUTHORITY, AND PROMINENCE AMONG TWENTIETH-CENTURY ELITES

Beta weights predicting

Predictor variables Wealth Influence Authority Prominence

Male sex No. fraternal memberships Productive landowner Self employed Religious fraternity member Elected position held Legal judicial influence Craft occupation Philanthropist No. businesses owned Public opinion influence No. directorships Judicial position held Honorary distinctions Total no occupational

Political influence Mercantile influence Legal occupation

activities

Variance explained (z)

- -

.233* - ,169

- -

.275*

.251**

.275**

.227

-

- .301**

- -

.231*

.270** 51.7

- - -

.206* - -

.349***

.258**

.373***

- .I97 .280**

- 48.5

- ,2005

- .341*** -

- - .287**

- .364*** .161

- .171

.370**

.247**

.205 -

58.3

- .275**’ -

- .245*

- .247*

- .240* .225 .246*

.575*** - -

- .249* 43.4

ships,” and with the negative beta weight attached to “self-employment.” Men of great authority apparently then come to enjoy influence in the politi- cal sphere without holding elected political office.

What is most marked about the twentieth-century elites is the importance of specialized activites in obtaining elite rewards. These activities extend throughout an elite career, although particular activities have more signifi- cance at some periods of a career than at others. That these activities are specialized is implied by the finding that different combinations of activities predict different twentieth-century elite rewards. By contrast, the same set of activities and characteristics predicted all nineteenth-century rewards.

There are apparently more roads to wealth in the twentieth century than in the nineteenth century, although our data are not wholly adequate to deal with these in the detail they demand. Law has seemingly become as good a road to wealth as the ownership of a large business firm as Table v would indicate; while the holding of a larger number of corporate directorships, more characteristic of elite businessmen than lawyers or business owners, is yet a third effective way to wealth. Our data imply that public service in an elected office or judicial appointment is not the way to become wealthy. It should finally be noted that there is a great discrepancy between the relative ability to predict nineteenth- and twentieth-century wealth; we do much better in explaining variance in the former. There are many reasons for this, among them the greater difficulty of obtaining data pertinent to wealth from Who’s Who, and the greater variety of ways in which wealth can be obtained and used in a non-patrimonial, less conspicuous elite system. 105

106

As with wealth, so with influence is there a reduction in our ability to pre- dict or “explain” twentieth-century influence as compared with nineteenth- century influence. The “number of directorships held” continues to exert a positive impact on influence, as it does on other elite resources; but the “total number of occupational activities” does not. “Philanthropy,” indicat- ing wealth, predicts the amount of influence, and influential activity in the political and judicial spheres also strongly predicts overall influence. For reasons difficult to explain, honorary distinctions (in this case, Queen’s Counsel awards) predict influence strongly. In all, influence, which is a mainly informal and uninstitutionalized resource, is the hardest of all re- sources to measure and explain in the twentieth century.

The regression analyses suggested that variables predictive of wealth, authority, influence, and prominence have changed in the last hundred years, and that they have changed in different ways. However, some common threads run through these data that indicate the directions additional investi- gation might take. For the attainment of most resources, there has been an increased importance of mercantile influence, the holding of many director- ships, and membership in the legal profession. Similarly there has been a marked decline in the importance of holding elected position (or generally, being active in the political sphere), being self-employed (or owning a busi- ness), and being a male.‘

Of these scveral changes in the past century, the change in importance of the directorship for elite rewards is most consistent and most marked; it is therefore critical that we bctter understand this change and its conse- quences. We have already examined the direct importance of a directorship in achieving elite rewards through regression analysis. By path analysis, we also examined the indirect influences the directorship appears to have in the attainment and maintenance of elite positions.5 A complete discussion of the results of our path analysis is avoided here, for the sake of brevity.

First and most important, the holding of many directorships is a strong predictor of “mercantile influence,” which we found in the regression analy- sis to predict both wealth and authority reasonably well. Thus, the director- ship is not only a direct influence on the acquisition of wealth and authority, but also an influence on the attainment of “mercantile influence,” which in turn also increases the attainment of wealth and authority. It should be noted that the path from “number of directorships” into “mercantile influence” was nearly as great a century earlier. However, mercantile influence had no statis- tically significant effect on wealth and authority in the nineteenth century, as our regression analyses have shown. Thus the number of directorships one

4 The nineteenth-century importance of maleness was probably as much related to the inheritance of family resources and the resources of wealthy inlaws as it was to the exclusion of females from opportunities for advancement.

5 See Schulte, Craven, and Wellman (1972) for a brief discussion of path analysis and the interactive path analysis (IPA) program with which these subsequent path analyses were computed.

held apparently did not exercise an indirect influence on wealth and authority via “mercantile influence” before this century.

Second, the holding of many directorships seems to have exerted an in- direct influence on wealth and authority by discouraging “nonprofessional” activities of a political or judicial nature. In our twentieth-century sample, the number of directorships held is negatively related to the holding of judi- cial positions, and only slightly, though positively, related to the holding of elected positions. This differs only slightly from the arrangement of these variables in the nineteenth-century sample. In the patrimonial elite, one’s number of directorships had no influence on the holding of judicial position, and had a slight negative influence on the holding of elected position.

If the holding of directorships has been, at best, independent of and more usually, “opposed” to political and judicial activities, this will apparently have led those seeking the wealth and authority conferred by directorships away from “non-professional” public service. Since the ability of the director- ship to confer great rewards has increased in the past century, so the willing- ness of legal and business elites to participate in public-service activities has accordingly diminished.

Finally, the role of directorship has changed with the “managerial revolu- tion” of which we spoke earlier. In the nineteenth-century, self-employment as a variable predicted wealth very strongly and authority slightly; it also predicted the number of directorships one held, since directorships were probably obtained by owning the company on which one sat as a director. In the twentieth-century sample, self-employed persons were more likely to be lawyers than businessmen; self-employed status no longer directly in- fluenced one’s amount of wealth or authority; and self-employment was slightly negatively related to the number of directorships one held. Thus ownership of one’s own services and other “means of production” had be- come in the twentieth century, if not a liability, at least non-advantageous in the attainment of wealth and power. Not only had self-employment lost its direct effect on the attainment of elite resources, it had also lost its indirect effect via the attainment of directorships.

D I R E C T O R S H I P S A N D U N I T S O F A N A L Y S I S

If our findings are valid, and the most important and pervasive change in the structure of the elite has been the increased importance of, and changed routes to, the directorship, it implies a need for change in the focus of future research in stratification. Particularly, they suggest that future research should be most usefully conducted as a historical study of important corporations. The “directorship” is a corporate role, and as such is chiefly defined by the corporation and its environment, and less so by its temporary role incumbent. Since corporations are more than the sum of their individual members, a study of important individuals in the Baltzell or Warner tradition cannot

107

account for the importance of either the individuals or the corporations con- taining them. Since the definition of roles is a developmental process, a cross- section of roles at a moment in time cannot explain the structural relation among corporations, among roles, or among individuals filling these roles. While it is almost definitionally true that any system over time is a result of the interweaving of individual careers, yet these careers are themselves con- ditioned by momentary states of the system. Thus, as we have already noted, elite careers have in the past century tended to reflect the societal trends to bureaucratization, specialization, and the like. Corporations create the careers that compose them through selective recruitment, socialization, con- trol, and reward. If the relationship between system and component career reduces itself to a chicken-and-egg kind of problem, there is little reason to believe that individuals or individual careers commonly exert a large influ- ence on the system over the short run.

Thus a stratification system is most usefully considered to be an evolving set of corporate subsystems. To understand the stratification of Canadian society, we must increase our knowledge of the ways particular corporate institutions became powerful and used their power. If the appropriate focus for stratification research has shifted from an individual to corporate focus, sociological theorizing must reflect these changes in the scale of society. An interpersonal, psychological, or even cultural approach to the explanation of stratification may be perfectly sound in the context of a small social system; it is probably possible to reproduce the stratification system of a small group by aggregating the dominance relations obtained among pairs of persons. How- ever this is not possible for total corporate societies; therefore the utility of information about individuals, even elite individuals, can only be very limited in the study of modern societies.

What is most remarkable about the changes that seem to have occurred in the Canadian legal and business elites in the last hundred years is that they have taken only a century. In three generations, the most fundamental changes in stratification have taken place: the change from amateurism to specialization, and from patrimonialism to corporatism. In these respects, Canada may well have experienced one of the fastest recorded transforma- tions from a traditional to modern society. It is to be hoped that further re- search of an historical kind will establish the validity of this generalization and others offered in this paper.

R E F E R E N C E S

Burnharn, James 1962 The Managerial Revolution. Harrnondsworth, England: Penguin Books. Canadian Who’s Who 1970 1967-1 969 edition. Toronto: Who’s Who Publishers. Draper, Norman, and Harry Smith 1966 Applied Regression Analysis. New York: John Wiley. La Terreur, Marc, ed.

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1972 Dictionary of Canadian Biography, Volume x. Toronto: University of

Levine, Joel 1972 “The sphere of influence.” American Sociological Review 37 ( 1 ) : 14-27. Parsons, Talcott, ed. 1964 Max Weber: The Theory of Social and Economic Organization. New York:

Schulte, S., P. Craven, and B. Wellman 1972 “Interactive Path Analysis ( IPA-APL) : A computer program.” Toronto:

Toronto Press.

Free Press.

Centre for Urban and Community Studies, University of Toronto, mimeo.

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