A Dynamic Businessman’s Aristocracy

Abstract

Chapters 5 and 6 both examine the Gilded Age of the late nineteenth century. The single most momentous change to hit the upper class during this period was the enlargement and enrichment of the city’s elites. These pressures had existed to a degree before the Civil War, but rapid economic growth heightened their intensity and made them the central feature of upper-class life in the second half of the nineteenth century. Families like the Vanderbilts and Rockefellers accumulated fortunes that dwarfed those of the Astors and Lorillards from earlier in the century, widening the income gap within the upper class as well as between it and middle- and lower-class New Yorkers. As a result of the structural instabilities caused by the dynamic urban economy and the lack of a titled American ruling class, along with the cultural strains caused by the nation’s democratic ethos, the upper class of New York City has throughout its existence been prone to thoroughgoing social and cultural changes. The intensification of these demographic and economic pressures in the second half of the nineteenth century raised concerns within that upper class about the sources of its legitimacy and the need for more coherent and restrictive social and cultural codes.