ABSTRACT
Detailed investigation of recruitment and self-recruitment to the Edinburgh Chartered Accountant profession during the second half of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries reveals that the rate of upward social mobility to the occupation was dependent upon several intraprofessional developments and general socio-economic changes in the geographical source of potential recruits. The emergence of a new profession as an additional career option for sons provided opportunities for increased upward mobility. The high rate of growth in the membership of the new profession of chartered accountancy certainly provided greater opportunities for upward social mobility when compared to the local, slow growing, ancient professions. The process of professionalization and the meritocratization of the system of vocational preparation and entry had highly significant, short-term impacts on the social origins of recruits and on the rate of upward mobility to the profession.
