6.9 Development of the Middle Class

The rise of industrial capitalism produced a new and influential social class that came to define the cultural values of the Gilded Age. The middle class expanded dramatically as industrialization created new forms of employment in management, education, commerce, and the professions. Clerks, accountants, engineers, teachers, and salesmen occupied positions that bridged the gap between labor and capital. Their work demanded literacy, discipline, and adherence to a new ethos of respectability and self-control. The middle class became the principal carrier of the ideals of order, morality, and progress that characterized late nineteenth-century society.