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This paper deals with a formerly quiet French-Canadian country town, now transformed into one of the leading Canadian centres of textile manufacture. Specifically, it describes the present competitive position of various classes in the town and relate the relevant facts to traditional life-objectives and expectations. Since but one case is presented, the treatment cannot be considered comparative in the full sense. A similar analysis could be made profitably in any community undergoing this type of change. The paper makes explicit use of the concept of position and implicit reference to the concept of status. Position is an individual's place in a competitive system. Status is an attribute of a person in society. Subjectively, it consists of his own definition of his place within a system of recognized duties and privileges; objectively, it is the recognition that the person occupies in fact, such a place. In a well integrated system of life, status and position tend to correspond. Each type of position in the existing competitive system would, in the logically ideal case, be defined as a status.

The relationship between social class structure and political institutions and behaviour has been one of the dominant interests of social scientists since the time of sociologist Karl Marx. More specifically social class structure has been the main source of theory for the explanation of voting behaviour and it is probably the most frequently investigated area empirically. The connection between some indicator of social class and voting behaviour has been amply demonstrated in many studies in many societies. However, the way in which occupation, education or income has its effect on voting has rarely been considered. The purpose of this article is to consider this large array of indicators of status and conditions of living and working, of intervening variables of social involvement, personality characteristics and attitudes. The article will demonstrate which variables should be pursued for further theoretical development and research, and which should be abandoned. The data are drawn from a larger study of voting behaviour, collected at the time of the 1968 Canadian federal election, in the province of Ontario.