Disintegration of the Market-Town Social Block of Szekszárd at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

Abstract

At the turn of the twentieth century, the society of Szekszárd was divided into two broad socio-economic groups with identities distinguished by occupation. A “market-town block” was composed of small producers whose existence was based on physical labor: farmers, artisans, and the lowest ranks of the tradesmen, as well as the poor peasantry, day-laborers taking a part in small production, and the small-town workers. The other grouping consisted of people working in state and private administrative jobs, as well as of intellectuals, who began to appear in this community from the eighteenth century onward. Starting in the final decades of the nineteenth century, disintegrative processes—including social mobility and migration—can be detected quite clearly in the market-town block, and these are investigated with the aid of sources from the Orphans' Ward. The models of mobility in the traditional market-town structure emerge clearly from these data.