How Did ‘The Rise of the Middle Class’ Contribute to Cultural, Political and Economic Change in the Mid-Nineteenth Century?

The Rise of the Middle Class

The mid-19thcentury marked a period of significant transformation worldwide. The period is associated with the emergence of the middle class, which materialized between 1840 and 1880. In this period, the workers in American cities held hard jobs with low pay. The aristocracy and working-class social cohort caused cultural, political, and economic changes. Comprising people from different occupations, such as trade and specialized labour, the middle class witnessed the rise of unparalleled proportions aided by industrialization, urbanization, and education. By 1890, the top one percent of wealth-holders owned a quarter of America’s assets (Kopczuk & Saez, 2004).

Even though labour exploitation was implemented at that stage of modernization and industrialization, not only was misery a key part of it. To satisfy the increasing demand for administrative staff, as more factories and offices were opened, the distinctive cultural identity with such a set of elements as education, refinement, and respectability emerged. The emergence of neutral gender clerical professions of a middle class of educated office workers was empowering. It channelled extra money to consume more products in an expanding range of consumer goods and recreational pursuits. On the political front, the middle class championed liberal causes and democratic ideals as part of the wider struggle for suffrage, electoral reform, and an extension of civil rights. The contribution of the middle class motivated society to be ideologically changed. It fueled political reform movements and market dynamism. This essay aims to describe how the society’s culture, politics, economy, and the power of the middle class were interconnected and how they forever influenced the society of that era. This exploration will cover gender relationships, family life, social spaces, and economic activities to reveal their complexity and impact on society.

The Composition and Characteristics of the Middle Class

The middle-class society took a new shape in the mid-19th century. It emerged as a dominant force in the social and economic scale-up. The course involved small business owners and artisans running little factories and stores(Archer, 1988). This group had people who valued respectability. They tried to instil this value into society’s new lower middle class. Besides that, the class comprised bankers, lawyers, doctors, engineers, teachers, and other white-collar workers. The difference between the middle and working classes was education, skill, and enterprise, which were guarantors of financial success rather than inherited wealth and status like an aristocracy or manual labour like the working class. It struggled to preserve or elevate its status and that of the offspring since they lacked the safety net of immense riches and were terrified of falling into the ranks of wage labourers.

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Factors contributing to the growth of the middle class

The development of the middle class during this period was due to the convergence of several factors. With more sophisticated production machinery and increasing urbanization, industrialization opened new avenues of entrepreneurship and employment in manufacturing, commerce, and services(Bengtsson & Prado, 2019). Urbanization, which drew the crowd from the suburbs to the cities for work, also contributed to the expansion of the middle class in the cities. Furthermore, led by education and literacy, social mobility grew, allowing individuals to pursue careers like law, medicine, or academia.

Characterized by its fluidity and upward mobility, the middle class allowed individuals to ascend the social ladder through education, merit, and enterprise. They prioritized orderliness, morality, hard work, education, and politeness. Success in life was a result of their education and hard work. The middle class offered opportunities for self-improvement and advancement based on talent and effort rather than social status predetermination by birth(Gromkowska-Melosik & Boron, 2023). Consequently, children from middle-class families did not labour in industries. They went to school and spent their leisure time playing games and toys to help them develop the morals and abilities they would need to succeed. Members of the middle class started limiting their child count. It took money and care to raise children “correctly” because they were no longer economically valuable to the family. Which is why having fewer of them made sens