Hey there and welcome back to Heimler’s History. So we’ve been going through Unit 6 of the AP U.S. History curriculum and in the last few videos we’ve been considering the social effects of industrialization and immigration. All while that stuff was going on, a new and burgeoning middle class started to develop in America and that’s what we’re going to talk about in this video. So if you’re ready to get them brain cows milked middle-class style, let’s get to it. So during the Gilded Age, the way business was conducted changed significantly in many industries. One of the most significant innovations had to do with how large corporations structured themselves. What I mean is, a large corporation basically divided itself into three layers: the executives on top, the laborers who worked the factories on bottom, and a new managerial layer in the middle. These middle managers kept the day-to-day operations of the company going, and since they got dressed up in their suits and never got their hands dirty with manual labor, they were referred to as white-collar workers. And right along with the growth of the managerial staff came a host of other workers to support them, folks like accountants and legal services and health care, and many other kinds of clerical workers. Men and women both filled these roles, although on the clerical side, women’s roles began to grow. When the typewriter came around, many women learned the new skill of typing and all of the sudden you had thousands of women typing away and earning wages in the new industrial economy. And just as a side note, women were being hired in droves to teach school children as well during the late 1800s. And so all of these folks taken together made enough money that they weren’t consigned to the lower, working class. But they didn’t make enough money to be considered among the elite upper class. And so, baby, you got yourself the rise of the middle class. Now the wages of the middle class tended to rise more sharply than did the working class and they had a shorter working day. And so what are these people going to do with all this excess income and time? Well, what does anybody do with excess time and money? They buy stuff and play. So along with the rise of the middle class came an big increase in leisure time activities. This was the period when Coney Island was built in New York, which at the time of its opening was the largest amusement park in the United States. It boasted three massive amusement parks filled with the latest technology like electric lights and roller coasters. And while Coney Island was the largest of the breed, many other similar parks were being built around the country. Additionally, P.T. Barnum’s circuses gained wide popularity during this time, as well as many new spectator sports like baseball and American football. Okay, so we’ve talked about the middle class, let’s just dip our toes into a phenomenon going on in the wealthy class, namely philanthropy inspired by Andrew Carnegie’s Gospel of Wealth. I mention this in the video on the middle class because as a man with a filthy buttload of money, Carnegie saw it as his duty to reinvest his money into society in order to provide more opportunity for those less fortunate than he was, thus providing the occasion for some among the lower classes to have a chance at a more comfortable, middle class life. Now, by definition, the Gospel of Wealth was Carnegie’s idea that for those like him with extraordinary riches, it was their God-given duty not to hold on to that wealth and pass it to their children; rather, it was the duty of the rich to invest their money into society in order to produce a more just and equitable future for the many. His ultimate goal was to reduce the societal distance between the rich and the poor. Now Carnegie believed that hard work led to wealth, and so under the auspices of the Gospel of Wealth he wasn’t interested in providing handouts for the poor. Rather, he believed that using the money to create opportunities for the poor to better themselves was the best way to help them better themselves. And that philosophy is clear when you see what he did with it. He invested his money in cultural institutions like free public libraries and universities and concert halls, and many more institutions like these. And it wasn’t only Carnegie who believed these things. Another millionaire named Phoebe Apperson Hearst, who was also a radical philanthropist and a crusader for the women’s suffrage movement, likewise gave her money away. And one of the most worthy causes in her eyes was education. In her mind, the poor ought to be educated at the exact same level as the upper class folks, and with her fortunes she established schools that aimed to do just that. And in many cases, the results of the Gospel of Wealth actually did create the opportunity for some folks to rise into the middle class. Okay, that’s what you need to know about Unit 6 Topic 10 of the AP US History Curriculum. If you need help getting an A in your class and a five on your exam in May, like this one, then go ahead and subscribe, and you know me: I shall oblige. Heimler out.