This article uses new linked full-count census data for Canada to document intergenerational occupational mobility from 1871 to 1901. We find significant differences among Canadian regions and language groups, with linguistic minorities experiencing notably lower rates of intergenerational mobility. International comparisons place Canada midway between other economies in the Americas and the most mobile European societies. Decompositions of overall mobility show that the Canadian experience shared the New World feature of high mobility from manual occupations, but also the Old World feature of greater persistence in white-collar jobs.

Over the last four decades, historians and social scientists have become increasingly interested in the way in which information about stature might be used to explore the impact of environmental factors on the physical growth and well-being of past populations. A particular problem encountered by many researchers is that height data is only available for selected populations, typically military recruits or those admitted to correctional institutions. Evidence from Australian military and prison records demonstrate how the two social groups, soldiers and prisoners, differed from each other and from the wider population in terms of age, birthplace, occupation, and stature. Different patterns of observable characteristics conceal additional differences in intergenerational experience. We trace male prisoners and soldiers born between 1870 and 1899 in Tasmania to their birth records and thence to the marriages of their parents. This allows us to contrast social and occupational change from father to son for both prisoners and soldiers. We conclude that evidence arising from these institutionalized populations can be used to estimate wider societal trends, although caution needs to be exercised.

Historians and social scientists routinely, and inevitably, rely on sources that are unrepresentative of the past. The articles in this special issue of the journal illustrate the widespread prevalence of selection bias in historical sources, and the ways in which historians negotiate this challenge to reach useful conclusions from valuable, if imperfect sources.

Linked historical records typically are unrepresentative of the population from which they are drawn even if the method of linking is restricted to time-invariant matching criteria. An example drawn from Canadian census records illustrates the nature of bias that may afflict even a carefully linked sample. The use of potentially time-varying match criteria doubles the size of a linked sample at a modest cost in terms of additional bias. This trade-off is attractive for some research purposes if care is taken in the uses to which the data are put. Reweighting to mitigate the effects of bias in visible characteristics is desirable.

Military enlistment is highly selective for reasons of both labor demand and supply. An early-twentieth-century evolution of military technology that shifted the demand for workers of different stature illustrates the importance of labor demand beyond the commonly discussed influences originating with labor supply. English-born soldiers in the Anglo-Boer War (1899–1902) were taller, on average, than those of World War I (1914–18), yet these differences cannot be attributed to standard of living or business cycle influences on the labor market. Rather, we argue, the mechanization and bureaucratization of warfare increased the relative value of shorter people permitting a decline in the average height of soldiers. Technological change over the period of these two wars affected labor demand in a way that must be recognized before using this evidence to test hypotheses about changes in population health.

In nineteenth century Britain atmospheric pollution from coal-fired industrialization was on the order of 50 times higher than today. We examine the effects of these emissions on child development by analysing the heights on enlistment during WWI of men born in England and Wales in the 1890s. We find a strong negative relationship between adult heights and the coal intensity of the districts in which these men were observed as children in the 1901 census. The subsequent decline in atmospheric pollution likely contributed to the long-term improvement in health and increase in height.

We use newly compiled evidence on inter- and intra-continental shipping costs to investigate the relationship between transportation and trade for trans-Atlantic iron markets from 1870–1913. Although we find a surprisingly weak connection linking ocean freight rates to British exports, after controlling for endogeneity and measuring all costs associated with inter-continental pig iron shipments and the intra-continental assembly of raw materials, the importance of transportation strongly asserts itself. The cost to transport pig iron across the Atlantic, and the cost to transport iron ore and coking coal within North America, were important determinants of the volume of British exports.

The distribution of property in any community reflects a variety of cultural, economic and social influences including, not least, a legal framework that defines property and the rights to use and transfer it. Legal change, in turn, has the capacity to reshape distribution and the complex matrix of culture, society and economy that surrounds access to property. The articles that have been brought together for this special issue of Continuity and Change document and analyse the gendered patterns of ownership in a variety of times and places. Each of the contributors has encountered some difficulty in determining the relevant legal framework, the extent to which laws were enforced, who owned what, patterns of inheritance and the meaning of ownership itself. The authors respond by examining a range of sources with imagination, ingenuity and methodologies that originate in different disciplines. The precise shape of the research of course depends on the circumstances of the particular historical context.

This article examines patterns of property-holding in an Ontario town before and after legislation in 1872 and 1884 that permitted married women to hold property in their own name. The experience of Guelph follows that of other North American urban communities in which women substantially increased their share of urban property during this period. Single and widowed women achieved most of the gains although married women also increased their holding of real property. Indicators of long-term change derived from assessment records, census manuscripts, wills, mortgages and property transfers support the hypothesis that the legislation was instrumental in the rise of female ownership. The effect of the law was felt through various channels of causation, including a change in inheritance practice that favoured women.

The diversity of paths to industrialization is illustrated by the example of the cabinet- and furniture-manufacturing industry in Ontario, Canada. Complex and unpredictable demand combined with smaller markets and lower incomes than those in the United States and the relative abundance of wood to limit mechanization and the size of enterprise in the Canadian industry. Small and unpowered workshops remained competitive throughout the nineteenth and into the twentieth century, creating a distinctive industrial experience that reflects the unique interaction of local demand and supply.

Handloom weaving with a mixture of wool and cotton yarn was common in late nineteenth-century Canada. The hand technology survived using industrial inputs and part-time female labor whose opportunity cost was relatively low in rural areas. The demand for homespun was income-sensitive and reinforced by the cold Canadian climate. The patterns of weaving by men and women differed, but both produced for the market in addition to home consumption. Cloth constituted a significant share of farm production, especially in low-income areas.

The technology of charcoal iron manufacture in late nineteenth-century Canada is examined in this paper. Use of a super-heated and hard-driven furnace blast contributed to a resurgence of production after 1890. A lag in the diffusion of these techniques is explained by the small size of the Canadian market. Contrasts are noted with charcoal iron smelting in several regions of the United States.