Philadelphia gentlemen: the making of a national upper class

Description

This proper Philadelphia story starts with the city's golden age at the close of the eighteenth century. It is a classic study of an American business aristocracy of colonial stock with Protestant affiliations as well as an analysis of how fabulously wealthy nineteenth-century family founders in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, supported various exclusive institutions that in the course of the twentieth century produced a national upper-class way of life. But as that way of life became an end of itself, instead of an effort to consolidate power and control, the upper-class outlived its function; this, argues Baltzell, is precisely what took place in the Philadelphia class system. Philadelphia Gentlemen emphasizes that class is largely a matter of family, whereas an elite is largely a matter of individual achievement. The emphasis in Philadelphia on old classes, in contrast to the emphasis in New York and Boston on individual achievement and elite striving, helps to explain the... Introduction to the Transaction Edition -- Preface to the first edition -- Introduction -- The American metropolitan upper class and the elite -- The Philadelphia upper class and the elite in 1940 -- The structure and function of an upper class -- Pre-Civil War first family founders -- Post-Civil War first family founders -- Proper Philadelphia public servants, professionals and men of letters -- The old family core of the 1940 Philadelphia elite -- Neighborhood and the class structure -- Region and the class structure -- Parallel upper-class structures -- Education and status ascription -- Social clubs and the class structure -- A primary group of prestige and power -- Summary and conclusion.