The middle-class city

"The classical historical interpretation of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in America sees this period as a political search for order by the middle class, culminating in Progressive Era reforms. In The Middle Class City, John Hepp, examines transformations in everyday middle-class life in Philadelphia between 1876 and 1926 to discover the cultural roots of his search for order. By looking at complex relationships among members of that city's middle class and three largely bourgeois commercial institutions - newspapers, department stores, and railroads - Hepp finds that the men and women of the middle class consistently reordered their world along rational lines."--Jacket.