Social class in American history
Social class is an important theme for historians of the United States for decades. The subject touches on many other elements of
For most of American history, social class barriers were fundamentally rigid, with various private and public institutions enforcing rules based on
Colonial period
Historians in recent decades have explored in microscopic detail the process of settling the new country and creating the social structure.
Southern colonies
The main themes have been the class system of the plantation South. These include the plantation masters and their families, as typified by the Byrd family. The plantation elite in gen regions of the Chesapeake, with some attention to South Carolina as well. The region had very few urban places apart from Charleston, where a merchant elite maintained close connections with nearby plantation society. It was a goal of prosperous merchants, lawyers and doctors in Charleston to buy lands and retire as country gentlemen. Charleston supported diverse ethnic groups, including Germans and French, as well as a free black population. Beyond the plantations yeoman farmers operated small holdings, sometimes with a slave or two. Missionaries commented on their lack of religiosity. The plantation areas of Virginia were integrated into the vestry system of the established Anglican church. By the 1760s a strong tendency to emulate British society was apparent in the plantation regions. However the growing strength of republicanism created a political ethos that resisted imperial taxation without local consent. Led by Virginia, the Southern Colonies resisted the British policy of taxation without representation, and supported the American Revolution, sending wealthy planters such as George Washington to lead the armies and Thomas Jefferson to declare the principles of independence, as well as thousands of ordinary folk to man the armies.[2]
19th century
New England
New England was settled by community groups, that transplanted their social structure from England. In New England there was a flattening--owning land was a reality for most families, and the system of powerful landlords that pervaded English rural life was not carried over. There was no aristocracy. The strong religious base of the Puritans made the social order revolve around the local Congregational church. Education was a high priority; Harvard College was founded in 1636 and provided most of the ministers and lawyers. By 1700 a rich merchant class grew up in Boston, Salem and other seaports, linking the local economy to the entire British Empire. By 1750 land shortages were causing problems, as
Frontier
Historian
The Plain Folk of the South
In his study of Edgefield County, South Carolina, Orville Vernon Burton classified black society into the poor, the yeoman middle class, and the elite.[6] A clear line demarcated the elite, but according to Burton, the line between poor and yeoman was never very distinct. Stephanie McCurry argues, yeomen were clearly distinguished from poor whites by their ownership of land (real property). Yeomen were "self-working farmers," distinct from the elite because they worked their land themselves alongside any slaves they owned. Ownership of large numbers of slaves made the work of planters completely managerial.[7]
Minorities
African Americans
The study of slavery as a social and economic system dates from
The post-slavery era has been dominated by political studies, especially of
Asian Americans
Asian Americans had small communities in New York City before 1860. Their greatest growth came on the Pacific Coast, during the
Japanese immigration was a major factor in the history of Hawaii, and after its annexation in 1898 large numbers moved to the West Coast. Anti-Japanese hostility was strong down to 1941, when it intensified and most Japanese on the West Coast were sent to relocation camps, 1942–44. After 1945 the trickle of immigration from the Philippines, India and Korea grew steadily, creating large communities on the West Coast. Asian immigration grew rapidly after 1965, with a large community that has very high educational achievement levels and high incomes.[10]
Hispanics
In 1848 after the Mexican–American War, the annexation of Texas and the Southwest introduced a Hispanic population that had full citizenship status. About 10,000 Californios lived in the southern part of California, and were numerically overwhelmed by migrants form the East by 1900 that their identity was almost lost. In New Mexico, by contrast, the Mexican population maintained its highly traditionalistic and religious culture, and retained some political power, into the 21st century. The Tejano population of Texas supported the revolution against Mexico in 1836, and gained full citizenship. In practice, however, most were ranch hands with limited political rights under the control of local bosses.
Industrial Northeast
The industrialization of the Northeast dramatically changed the social structure. New wealth abounded, with the growth of factories, railroads, and banks from the 1830 to the 1920s. Hundreds of small cities sprang up, together with 100 large cities (of 100,000 or more population by 1920). Most had a base in manufacturing. The urban areas came to have a complex class structure, compounded of wealth (the more the better), occupation (with the learned professions at the top), and family status (the older the better). Ethnic-religious groups had their separate social systems (such as German Lutherans and Irish Catholics). The New England Yankee was dominant in business, finance, education, and high society in most Northern cities, but gradually lost control of politics to a working class coalition led dominated by bosses and immigrants, including Irish Catholics. Hundreds of new colleges and academies were founded to support the system, usually with specific religious or ethnic identities. Heterogeneous state universities became important after 1920.
Ethnicity and social class
The most elaborate and in-depth studies of social class have focused on the working class, especially regarding occupation, immigration, ethnicity, family structure, education, occupational mobility, religious behavior, and neighborhood structure.[11] Before 1970, historians emphasized the success and the painful processes of assimilation into American culture, as studied by Oscar Handlin. In recent decades the internal value systems have been explored, as well as the process of occupational mobility. Most of the studies have been localized (because of the need for the exhaustive use of censuses and local data) so that generalizations have been difficult to make. In recent years European scholars have become interested in the international flows so that there are now studies following people from Europe to America over their lifetimes.
Labor historians have moved from a focus on national labor unions to microscopic studies of the workers in particular industries in particular cities. The consensus has been that the workers had their own political and cultural value system. The political values were based on a producer's ethic, that is the working class was the truly productive sector of society, and expressed a version of republicanism that was similar to the middle class version.
20th century
The Progressive Era, with its emphasis on factualism and scientific inquiry produced hundreds of community studies, mostly using descriptive statistics to cover issues of poverty, crime, migration, religiosity, education, and public health. The emergence of systematic social science, especially sociology, shifted the center of class studies into sociology departments. The most representative example was the Middletown books by Robert Lynd and Helen Lynd, which gave a microscopic look at class structures in a typical small city (Muncie, Indiana). After 1960 localized studies gave way to national surveys, with special emphasis on the process of social mobility and stratification.
A classic theme was trying to see if the middle class was shrinking, or if the opportunities for upward mobility had worsened over time. After 1960 a growing concern with education led to many studies dealing with racial integration, and performance in schools by racial and gender groupings.
The disposable income of the American upper class was sharply reduced by high income tax rates during the 1930s, 40s, and 50s. During this period corporate executives had relatively modest incomes, lived modestly, and had few servants.[14]
See also
References
- ^ Katherine S. Newman (1988). Falling from Grace: Downward Mobility in the Age of Affluence. University of California Press. p. 4.
- ^ Jack P. Greene, and J. R. Pole, eds. A Companion to the American Revolution (2004), pp 195–234
- ^ Robert E. Mutch, "Colonial America and the debate about transition to capitalism." Theory and Society 9.6 (1980): 847-863. [https://www.academia.edu/download/50523259/bf0016909220161124-5872-1xcfb8f.pdf online
- ^ Richard Hogan, Class and community in frontier Colorado (University Press of Kansas, 2021.)
- ^ Owsley, Frank Lawrence (1949). Plain Folk of the Old South.
- ^ Orville Vernon Burton, In My Father's House Are Many Mansions: Family and Community in Edgefield, South Carolina (U. of North Carolina Press, 1985)
- ^ Stephanie McCurry, Masters of Small Worlds: Yeoman Households, Gender Relations, and the Political Culture of the Antebellum South Carolina Low Country (1995)
- ^ Matthew O. Hunt, and Rashawn Ray. "Social class identification among Black Americans: Trends and determinants, 1974–2010." American Behavioral Scientist 56.11 (2012): 1462-1480.
- ^ Courtney S. Thomas, "A new look at the Black middle class: Research trends and challenges." Sociological Focus 48.3 (2015): 191-207.
- ^ Stanley Sue, and Sumie Okazaki. "Asian-American educational achievements: A phenomenon in search of an explanation." in The New Immigrants and American Schools (Routledge, 2022) pp. 297-304.
- ^ Stephan Thernstrom, The Other Bostonians: Poverty and Progress in the American Metropolis, 1880–1970 (1973)
- ^ Sean Wilentz, The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln (2005)
- ^ Wilentz, Sean. "On Class and Politics in Jacksonian America" Reviews in American History, Vol. 10, No. 4, The Promise of American History: Progress and Prospects (Dec., 1982) pp. 45–63
- ^ "How top executives live (Fortune, 1955)". Fortune. CNNMoney. 1955. Archived from the original on November 29, 2012. Retrieved November 20, 2012.
Further reading
- Barr, Donald A. Health disparities in the United States: Social class, race, ethnicity, and the social determinants of health (JHU Press, 2019).
- Beckert, Sven, and Julia B. Rosenbaum, eds. The American Bourgeoisie: Distinction and Identity in the Nineteenth Century (Palgrave Macmillan; 2011) 284 pages; Scholarly studies on the habits, manners, networks, institutions, and public roles of the American middle class with a focus on cities in the North.
- Beeghley, L. The Structure of Social Stratification in the United States (Pearson, Allyn & Bacon; 2004).
- Bolton, Charles C. "Planters, Plain Folk, and Poor Whites in the Old South." in Lacy K. Ford, ed., A Companion to the Civil War and Reconstruction, (2005) 75–93.
- Brown, David. "A vagabond's tale: poor whites, herrenvolk democracy, and the value of whiteness in the late antebellum South." Journal of Southern History 79.4 (2013): 799-840. [1]
- Coombs, Harriet. " 'Poor, deluded, ignorant masses': revisiting the poor non-slaveholding whites of the antebellum south." American Nineteenth Century History 23.3 (2022): 285-302.
- Flynt, J. Wayne, Dixie's Forgotten People: The South's Poor Whites (1979). deals with 20th century.
- Gilbert, D. The American Class Structure: In An Age of Growing Inequality (Wadsworth, 2002)
- Newby, I. A. Plain Folk in the New South: Social Change and Cultural Persistence, 1880–1915 (1989). concentrates on the mill workers in the Carolinas and Georgia
- Owsley, Frank Lawrence. Plain Folk of the Old South (1949), the classic study
- Seal, Andrew. "Making Blanket Statements: Rethinking the History and Politics of American Social Class." Journal of American Studies 53.1 (2019): 280-286. online
- Staton, A. Renee, William Evans, and Christopher Lucey. "Understanding social class in the United States." in Social class and the helping professions (2012): 17-34. online
- Thernstrom, Stephan. Poverty and Progress: Social Mobility in a Nineteenth Century City (1964)
Primary sources
- Hartmut Keil and John B Jentz, eds. German Workers in Chicago: A Documentary History of Working-Class Culture from 1850 to World War I (1988), primary sources (in English translation)
- Robert S. McElvaine. ed; Down & Out in the Great Depression: Letters from the "Forgotten Man" (1983)