The Emergence of the Middle Class
Social Experience in the American City, 1760–1900

This book traces the emergence of the recongnizable 'middle class' from the 1760–1900.

Stuart Mack Blumin (Author)

9780521376129, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 29 September 1989

452 pages
22.9 x 15.3 x 3 cm, 0.725 kg

"Historians have used the category ['middle class'] both to describe and explain social relations, but the criteria for class membership has remained vague. Stuart Blumin makes an admirable intervention into this fuzziness in his extended exploration of different facets of 'increasingly distinctive class experiences' in antebellum cities." Labor History

Of all the terms that Americans define themselves as members of society, few are as elusive as 'middle class'. This book traces the emergence of a recognizable and self-aware 'middle class' between the era of the American Revolution and the end of the nineteenth century. The author focuses on the development of the middle class in larger American cities, particularly Philadelphia and New York. He examines the middle class in all its complexity, and in its day-to-day existence - at work, in the home, and in the shops, markets, theaters, and other institutions of the big city. The book places the distinct language of class - in particular the term 'middle class' - in the context of the concrete, interwoven experiences of specific anonymous Americans who were neither manual workers nor members of urban upper classes.

List of tables and figures
Preface
1. The elusive middle class
2. 'Middling sorts' in the eighteenth-century city
3. Toward white collar: nonmanual work in Jacksonian America
4. Republican prejudice: work, well-being, and social definition
5. 'Things are in the saddle': consumption, urban space, and the middle-class home
6. Coming to order: voluntary associations and the organization of social life and consciousness
7. Experience and consciousness in the antebellum city
8. White-collar worlds: the postbellum middle class
Epilogue
Notes
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Modern history to 20th century: c 1700 to c 1900 [HBLL], History of the Americas [HBJK]