The Tradition of Opportunity and the Aspirations of Automobile Workers

Industrial workers face a patent disparity between the promises of the tradition of opportunity and the realities of their own experience. Caught between tradition and reality, the automobile workers who were studied confine their aspirations to those limited alternatives which seem possible for men with their skills and resources. They have not surrendered their identification with the tradition of opportunity, however, and they reconcile their limited aspirations with the cultural imperative to aim high and persevere by redefining "getting ahead," by focusing their ambitions on their children, and by verbally retaining the illusion of small business ambitions.