[6.10-6.11] Development of the Middle Class & Era of Reform

Wealth was concentrated

Urban mansions Jp Morgan, Vanderbilt

The Rise of White-Collar Workers

3M

3x

White-Collar Jobs

Growth Rate

Workers employed in 1910 in managerial, clerical, and technical positionsNearly three times as many white-collar workers as in 1870

These workers formed a new, expanded middle class alongside businesspeople, doctors, lawyers, and clergy. They decorated homes with mass-produced furniture, musical instruments, family photographs, books, and periodicals.

The Business of Amusement

  • Circuses emerged full blown thanks to Barnum and Bailey

    • Phineas T Barnum – master showman

    • James A Bailey – joined with Barnum to create “The Greatest Show on Earth”

  • Colorful “Wild West” shows

    • William E “Buffalo Bill” Cody and Annie Oakley

  • Baseball emerged as the national pastime

    • Professional league formed in 1870s

  • Basketball was invented in 1891

  • The trend toward spectator sports over participative sports was exemplified by the growth of football everyone wants to watch and listen

  • Boxing gained new and gloved respectability in 1892

  • 2 crazes swept America in the 1890s – croquet and the modern-style bicycle

Middle-Class Leisure and Culture

Home Entertainment

  • Mass-circulation magazines and popular newspaper

  • Parlors for relaxation and browsing

  • Memorabilia collected during leisure time

Challenges to Industrial Capitalism

Lester Frank Ward

  • Dynamic Sociology (1883): Societies progress when government intervenes to help citizens and protect from "rapacity of the favored few"

Henry George

  • Progress and Poverty (1879): Advocated single tax on land ownership to address wealth inequality

Edward Bellamy

  • Looking Backward (1888): Envisioned federal government taking over large firms, redistributing wealth equally

Richard T. Ely

  • Applied christian ethics to economics, advocated union of captial and labor in cooperative enterprise