Social Class, Occupation, and Social Change

© Pine Forge Press, an Imprint of SAGE Publications, Inc., 2011 Middletown: 1890 and 1924 In 1924 Robert S. Lynd and Helen Merrell Lynd began studying the small town of Muncie, IN. In 1929 they published their researched in a study titled Middletown. They reconstructed life in Middletown in 1890 through historical research and documented the way in which industrialization had affected the town’s class structure. The gap between the business and working classes grew during this 34-year period. © Pine Forge Press, an Imprint of SAGE Publications, Inc., 2011

© Pine Forge Press, an Imprint of SAGE Publications, Inc., 2011 Middletown: 1890 and 1924, cont. The Lynds suggested the gap between the business and working classes was a consequence of moving from a small market town to a town where machine production was ascendant. They argued this gap flowed from three causes: a larger population more machinery an increasing emphasis on money © Pine Forge Press, an Imprint of SAGE Publications, Inc., 2011

© Pine Forge Press, an Imprint of SAGE Publications, Inc., 2011 Middletown Revisited Six years after the publication of Middletown, the Lynds returned for a restudy of Muncie, IN, and found the following: Industrialization had more firmly taken root. The population was larger, and the relationships between business owners and their employees and customers had become more impersonal. Large national corporations were now located in Middletown, and many of their employees tended to be less skilled due to increased mechanization. © Pine Forge Press, an Imprint of SAGE Publications, Inc., 2011

Middletown Revisited, cont. They also found: Members of the burgeoning capitalist class who acquired great amounts of wealth as a result of the industrialization taking place in Middletown were able to pass this wealth onto the next generation. The second generation of owners were more self-consciously upper class. The second generation, born into wealth, did not have the same motives of the ambitious first generation. © Pine Forge Press, an Imprint of SAGE Publications, Inc., 2011

The National Upper Class Though there were regional upper classes dating to colonial times, there had never been an aristocracy in the U.S. of the type known in Europe. In the decades following the Civil War, the number of millionaires increased substantially. Families such as the Carnegies, Vanderbilts, and Rockefellers gained admission to the highest reaches of the American class structure despite initial resistance by the old money elite © Pine Forge Press, an Imprint of SAGE Publications, Inc., 2011

The Industrial Working Class Many new industrial workers were immigrants. Working conditions were dismal. Organized labor activity was vibrant and at times violent during the period from the Civil War to World War I. Eventually state legislatures began passing laws prohibiting child labor, improving safety conditions, and providing for compensation of injured workers. © Pine Forge Press, an Imprint of SAGE Publications, Inc., 2011

The Industrial Working Class, cont. Two tendencies prevent stark polarization between the capitalist class and the working class during the early part of the 20th century. 1. Racial and ethnic antagonisms and division over wages within the working class. 2. The expansion of the middle class with the belief by workers that they or their children might one day achieve upward social mobility. © Pine Forge Press, an Imprint of SAGE Publications, Inc., 2011

© Pine Forge Press, an Imprint of SAGE Publications, Inc., 2011 The New Middle Class The new Middle Class was composed of salaried white-collar workers including salespeople, office workers, professionals, and managers. With increases in technology, corporations no longer needed a mass of workers involved in production but rather a workforce able to manage, design, and sell. Over time the line dividing the less compensated blue collar workers and the white collar workers with greater social prestige and material advantage became less predictive of these outcomes. © Pine Forge Press, an Imprint of SAGE Publications, Inc., 2011

© Pine Forge Press, an Imprint of SAGE Publications, Inc., 2011

© Pine Forge Press, an Imprint of SAGE Publications, Inc., 2011