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Patterns of Business Growth and Survival in a Medium-Sized Community

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2011

Sidney Goldstein  and
Kurt Mayer
Sidney Goldstein
Affiliation:
Brown University
Kurt Mayer
Affiliation:
Brown University
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Extract

Since 1951 the population, social structure, and economy of Norristown, Pennsylvania, have been the focus of study of an interdisciplinary research seminar at the University of Pennsylvania. Under the over-all theme of technological change and social adjustment, a variety of investigations have been conducted to discover the ways in which the processes of industrialization and urbanization in the twentieth century have operated dynamically to bring about changes in the social and economic structure of the Norristown community.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 17 , Issue 2 , June 1957 , pp. 193 - 206
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1957

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References

* The research for this study was done under the sponsorship of the Behavioral Research Council at the University of Pennsylvania. Financial assistance given by the University's Faculty Committee on the Advancement of Research is gratefully acknowledged.

1 For a fuller description of the patterns of population growth and composition of Norristown, sec Goldstein, Sidney, “Migration, Dynamic of the American City,” American Quarterly, VI (Winter 1954), 337–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 From 1929 to 1932 employment in Norristown area industry is estimated to have dropped 24 per cent. In the same period, the number of employees in United States manufacturing decreased by 33 per cent. See James H. Soltow, “Manufacturing in Norristown, Pennsylvania, in the Twentieth Century,” dittographed, Behavioral Research Council, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 1954, p. 38.

3 Goldstein, Sidney, “Repeated Migration as a Factor in High Mobility Rates,” American Sociological Review, XIX (October 1954), 536–41Google Scholar, and “Migration and Occupational Mobility in Norristown, Pennsylvania,” American Sociological Review, XX (August 1955), 402–08Google Scholar.

4 For other studies of business survival using city directories, see Problems of Small Business, Temporary National Economic Committee Monograph No. 17 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1941)Google Scholar.

5 Goldstein;, Sidney “City Directories as Sources of Migration Data,” American Journal of Sociology, LX (September 1954), 169–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 These yean were 1920, 1923, 1925, 1927, 1929, 1931, 1933, 1935, 1937, 1939, 1941, 1943, 1944. 1947. 1949. and 1951.

7 See Ulmer, Melville J., “Industrial Patterns of the Business Population,” Survey of Current Business, XXVIH (May 1948), 10–15Google Scholar; and Churchill, Bettv C., “Recent Business Population Movements,” Survey of Current Business, XXXIV (January 1954), 11–16Google Scholar.

8 Recent research carried on at Yale University suggests that the growth of large cities requires a minimum distance from a major metropolitan center. Cf. Isler, Morton and Pushkarev, Boris, “A Presentation of the Yale Project on the Regional City of the Atlantic Seaboard,” paper read at the annual meetings of the Eastern Sociological Society, New York, March 24–25, 1956Google Scholar.

9 Cf. James H. Soltow, “Manufacturing in Norristown, Pennsylvania, in the Twentieth Century.”

10 Mayer, Kurt, “Small Business as a Social Institution,” Social Research, XIV (September 1947), 332–49Google Scholar, and “Business Enterprise: Traditional Symbol of Opportunity,” The British Journal of Sociology, IV (June 1953), 160–80Google Scholar.

11 Turnover rate is defined here as the combined birth and death rates, i.e., the total number of births and deaths in a given year per 1,000 businesses in existence at the beginning of the year.

12 Mayer, “Business Enterprise: Traditional Symbol of Opportunity,” p. 172. Business turnover data for the United States as a whole are not available prior to 1940. Since 1940, the Business Structure Division, Office of Business Economics, United States Department of Commerce, has been undertaking a series of studies of current business growth, turnover, and survival patterns in the United States. These have been reported in the Department's monthly publication, Survey of Current Business.

13 Survival rate is defined here as the percentage of businesses surviving a given number of years. See Tables 3 and 4.

14 Hutchinson, R. G., Hutchinson, A. R., and Newcomer, Mabel, “A Study in Business Mortality,” American Economic Review, XXVIII (September 1938), 497–514Google Scholar. See also Problems of Small Business, Temporary National Economic Committee Monograph No. 17 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1941)Google Scholar, for a summary and discussion of numerous other studies of business mortality.

15 R. G. Hutchinson et al., “A Study in Business Mortality,” p. 511.

16 Ibid., p. 511.