Organized markets for European immigrant servants in North America began in Jamestown around 1620 and ended in the ports of Philadelphia, Baltimore, and New Orleans around 1820. For two centuries these markets survived, even flourished, in spite of numerous wartime interruptions, political revolutions, depressions in the transatlantic shipping market, cyclical recessions in the American economy, and competition from both slave and native-born free labor. During the eighteenth century roughly half of the European emigrants to British North America entered servitude to pay for their transatlantic passage (Galenson 1981; Grubb 1992b).

Lodging was once common. In 1900 about one-quarter of U.S. households contained a lodger or lodging family. Almost as many more took one in at some point in the life of the household. Since then, rising incomes have enabled more people to maintain their own household. Today, lodging is quite rare and is confined largely to the poor.

A good deal has been written about lodging, mostly by social historians concerned with its implications for daily life. We have been told that lodiging was part of the immigrant experience, that it helped even out household income over the life cycle, that it augmented the clout of women within the household, and that in larger cities it supported a subculture among single men and women (Modell and Hareven 1973).

The fall in the labor force participation rate of older men in the United States has been dramatic. In 1860 approximately 76% of men 65 and older were in the labor force. Today less than 20% work. Much of the decline has been explained in terms of a shift from agricultural occupations to manufacturing or industrial occupations, where participation historically has been lower at older ages. Participation rates, however, appear to have been constant in both farm and urban households through 1930, thus challenging the thesis that industrialization and urbanization were causes of the fall in the participation rate of older men.

The essays by Hans Marks and Don Kalb represent important contributions to a growing literature on class formation. Much of the current attention to class formation flows from the contemporary concern with larger processes of identity formation (Hanagan 1989; McNall 1988; Tilly 1992). Scholars such as Ira Katznelson and Adam Przeworski have emphasized the contingent character of class identity while, at the same time, reminding us of the need to understand why millions of people in the late nineteenth century chose to band together and fight under banners labeled proletarian (Katznelson 1986; Przeworski 1977).

Recapturing people's experiences as part of understanding specific social and cultural processes leads us to the art of differentiating. We need to ask by whom, when, and why certain developments are defined. All historical sources bring knowledge, often in absolute and definite terms. But sometimes sources depart from the dominant societal discourse. How is one to evaluate the explanatory value of the different sources of interpretation placed hierarchically? This article takes on the evaluation of different discourses surrounding the process defined by historical demography as “rising illegitimate fertility.” Although it will imply a reevaluation of proletarianization processes as well, the central focus will be on illegitimacy.

Class is certainly a key concept of social history just as civilization is for the figurational sociology of Norbert Elias and his followers. Each of these traditions needs to come to terms with the other. Notwithstanding fundamentally divergent assumptions, interests, and styles, both traditions would gain from a closer examination of each other's concepts, subjects, and methods.