8 The Origins of Cultural and Community Studies: Robert and Helen Lynd’s Anatomy of Middletown

 General presuppositions and/or theoretical affiliations and influ- ences: functional perspective within ; Thorstein Veblen, Karl Marx.  Model/paradigm(s): modern small town America.  Concepts: making a living, setting up a home, training the young, leisure, religious life, community life; business control (the X family), ideology; middle class, colour line.  Empirical environment(s): American Midwest (Muncie, ), 1920–35.

While the institutional analysis of Thorstein Veblen and the Chicago sociologists’ approach of human ecology was influenced by social Darwinism, this does not apply to the work of the social scientists Robert and Helen Lynd. Their analytical tools were derived from American cultural anthropology – although Robert S. Lynd (1892– 1970) was a professor of at Columbia University and his partner Helen Merrell Lynd (1896–1982) was a social philosophy professor at Sarah Lawrence College. Today their studies of Muncie, Indiana, a typical small city in the American Midwest, are celebrated as sociological classics (Lynd, 1929; 1937); yet when the Lynds themselves, both from the Midwest, began their field research, they did not call themselves sociologists but rather cultural anthropologists. An approach was used whereby the most familiar territory was studied with the same objectivity as

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A. Hess, Concepts of Social Stratification © Andreas Hess 2001 80 Concepts of Social Stratification if it were on some exotic far-away tropical island. In other words, the researcher would study the Midwest as if he or she were acade- mic outsiders, anthropologists who had come to study strange and foreign habits. With such a change of perspective, the Lynds departed radically from the institutional analysis of Thorstein Veblen and the human ecology approach of the Chicago School. The Lynds also differed in their focus of research. Where Veblen was occupied with the larger American social structure and Burgess and Park studied the emerging urban environment in the United States, the Lynds undertook the first community study that was meant to be representative of small town America. To understand the full impact of the Middletown studies, one has to bear in mind the time in which it was conducted. Veblen’s work spanned the final two decades of the last century and the first two decades of this century and the Chicago School dealt mainly with the rise of the American city in that same period. The Lynds’ Middletown studies extend beyond that. They give us not only a representative picture of small town America, but also an insight into a very peculiar time in American history and the change that took place therein. To be more precise: the first Middletown study was completed in 1925, a time when the economy was still boom- ing. In contrast, the second study was produced a decade later and in very different circumstances: America had experienced the Stock Market Crash, it had suffered the Depression, and it was undergoing a slow recovery under the direction of Roosevelt’s . The Middletown studies are thus not only representative of the transfor- mation of small town America, they also capture the elements of the most important social transformation that took place in 20th-century America. As stated in the opening chapter of their first study, Middletown was supposed to be ‘A Study in Modern American Culture’ and the general idea was to follow ‘a dynamic functional’ approach (Lynd, 1929: 6). By identifying and studying six different forms of activities (making a living, setting up a home, training the young, leisure, and religious and community life), the Lynds hoped to collect suffi- cient data that would in the end offer a complete picture, one in which every aspect of the different activities would prove to con- tribute (or serve as a function) in upholding and sustaining a common culture. Robert and Helen Lynd’s Anatomy of Middletown 81

Before addressing these different activities, the Lynds felt it neces- sary to provide a background history of the town, thus clarifying precisely why they had selected that particular town (1929: 7–9). At the time of the first study, Muncie had a population of c. 35,000. It was regarded as representative of contemporary American life due to its compactness and homogeneity. The town had also been selected because it had an industrial culture; yet at the same time it was not a single plant town and this provided an environment for a proper study to be made of the process of transformation. It had no other outstanding peculiarities or features; it was not a satellite town for example. Muncie was also representative of the Mid-West in its ethnic mix – if one can use such a definition for a town where approximately 92 per cent of the population was considered to be ‘native white’ (obviously referring to the population of European stock, born in America), and only 6 per cent were classified as ‘Negroes’, the rest being of ‘foreign stock’, referring to non-indiginous Americans. The first settlement took place in 1820; when Middletown became a county government in 1827 it had 6000 inhabitants. The 1880s saw the booming of natural gas industry and along with the boom, industry (mainly glass and iron mills) came to town and the population rose to 20,000. When the boom came to an end, some industry stayed, some left. By then, agriculture and agricultural pro- duction had already changed radically: with the aid of advanced farming technology and methods it was now possible to produce the same output with fewer people. The people who were set ‘free’ moved to the city to find employment – more often than not in an already developed industry. As has been stressed, Robert and Helen Lynd were cultural anthropologists yet their analysis parallels that of Marx in stressing the importance of the material aspects in life. Thus their opening chapter deals firstly with ‘getting a living’ (1929: 21–89). Like Marx, the authors commenced by identifying two classes in Middletown, the working class and the business class. The distinction between two classes is, according to the authors, the out- standing feature of Middletown. But here the parallels with Marx end, as the Lynds’ concept of the two classes is very different to that of their predecessor. Their definition of the classes follows different, anthropologically based distinctions: the working class is seen as making a living through production, while the business class is made up of people selling ‘things, services, and ideas’ (1929: 22). 82 Concepts of Social Stratification

Although the Lynds mention the gradual differentiation of the two classes, it could be estimated that the working class in Middletown was approximately two and a half times the size of the business class. Within the category of making a living, another remarkable feature was seen as important: that of the apparent division along gender lines. In contrast to a Marxist or Weberian perspective, the cultural anthropological approach here proved advantageous in highlighting this division. It is shown that making a living was predominantly a male domain. Yet, the number of working-class women seemed to be increasing. The explanation for the recent development of employ- ing more women could be explained by the demand for unqualified, cheap labour. This fact is supplemented by the data concerning age groups. With the increasing prevalence of machine technology the demand for not only women, but for young workers in particular, increased. The background of these young workers was mainly rural; according to the Lynds, about half of the workers hailed from the farms and were recruited mainly from small towns. The reason for this is that agriculture in itself became an industry which freed-up masses of farm workers for productive industrial labour in the more modern agglomerates such as Middletown. The Lynds also investigated and discussed the implications and the changing significance of work. What they found was that an increasing gap developed between what people produced and what their actual needs were. First, job satisfaction became almost impos- sible with the tendency toward specialisation and intensification of modern industry. To consider work in modern industry as a voca- tion becomes a rare phenomenon and applies only to a fraction of the work force. Secondly, in a situation where life is considered and defined as solely based around work, a dilemma arises: working class incomes do not necessarily guarantee a satisfactory life outside work; one needs money to consume and participate in modern recreation. Hence the majority of the working class seem to be caught up in a ‘Catch 22’ situation: they have to work to make a living; at the same time they cannot fully enjoy life outside work, as their income restricts them in terms of what they can afford. Almost needless to say, those who are unemployed, are rarely in a position to enjoy the benefits of recreational and/or community life at all. Robert and Helen Lynd’s Anatomy of Middletown 83

Of course, work or ‘making a living’ necessarily has an impact on housing – the second activity that the Lynds choose to analyse (1929: 93–178). It should not be surprising that housing follows the estab- lished patterns found within the distinction between the working and the business class. In the case of the working class majority, the Lynds observed a stronger tendency towards decentralisation. One rarely finds working-class activities overlapping in any one particular area. In contrast, the workers lived in one part of the city, worked in another and spent their leisure time in yet another part. Additionally, the Lynds observed that the homes of the business class were usually larger than those of the working class – although business families were usually smaller. Also not surprisingly, the working class homes were not only smaller but also less well equipped: at the time the study was conducted, a quarter of all working-class dwellings still lacked running water, and electricity was a relatively late introduc- tion. In relation to percentage income, the working family also paid more for their housing. The Lynds estimated that a fourth of the entire family income went towards housing – for either renting or buying a home. It is hardly surprising that owning your home thus became the workingman’s dream. It is interesting to note that this dream paralleled other statistical findings: the Lynds found for exam- ple, that the working class was much more mobile than the business class: on average the working class family moved more often than the business family. One of the crucial elements of maintaining a community and making it function was the training of the young (1929: 181–222). The Lynds’ study revealed that fewer young people were trained according to their individual needs, wishes or expectations. Much more emphasis was given to ‘objective’ aims – like ‘the habits of industry’ or ‘the ideals of a nation’. The Lynds concluded that train- ing the young had nothing to do with learning or developing the individuals’ intelligence, but more so with the wishes and needs of local business. Young people learned not for their own lives but rather to develop ‘character and good will’ – prerequisites for indus- trial labour and discipline. Thus, there seemed to be an increasing gap between what was still taught in schools (such as foreign lan- guages, literature or history) and the non-use by wage-earning adults of what they had once learned in school. 84 Concepts of Social Stratification

Two other activities that the Lynds regarded as functional within the community were ‘using leisure’, and ‘religious practices’ (1929: 225–312; 315–409). Although these were dealt with in indi- vidual chapters, the two must be seen as interconnected. The Lynds observed that the patterns of using leisure had changed radically; in particular church and neighbourhood activities seemed to be in decline. These ‘old fashioned’ activities were replaced by new ones. As they became more widely available, two inventions in particular had a revolutionary impact on leisure activities: the automobile and the radio. It was these two inventions which pushed Middletown into modernity. The result of this was that neighbourhood activities tended towards decline; the car gave people the opportunity to get out of town and spend their leisure time elsewhere – particularly on weekends – and this soon became somewhat of a problem for the Protestant churches. The radio made the people of Middletown feel that they were part of national events; it made them feel connected to what was happening on a national level. The people of Middletown no longer only depended upon regional coverage. Another new pattern which had only partially to do with new inventions, was the standardisation of leisure activities – and again the Lynds observed that some of these activities followed the main lines of distinction between the two classes. Economic distinctions were paralleled in leisure activities: not everyone was allowed into the golf club. Taking the main difference between the two classes into account, it was surprising that these differences were only marginally reflected within community activities such as politics (1929: 413–34). The Democratic Party and the Republican Party were the two main par- ties in Middletown – the Republican Party being dominant. The Lynds saw the explanation for this in the general attitude of the people of Middletown who were generally suspicious of politics. If there was any political activity, it tended to come mainly from the business class which saw its interests best represented by the Grand Old Party. Forms of dissent were regarded with suspicion and were blamed on either Catholics, Negroes or Jews. As the Lynds noted, it was civic loyalty and patriotism which kept people at bay. If there was any sense of belonging at all, then it was not a proletarian class consciousness as Marx once predicted, but precisely the opposite: according to the Lynds, the stirrings of a common conscience could Robert and Helen Lynd’s Anatomy of Middletown 85 only be observed within the business class – a problem that would be investigated in much more depth in the second Middletown study. When the Lynds returned to Muncie to conduct their follow-up study, they were confronted with a Middletown that had been affected by events which had also affected and shaped the whole of America. The country had suffered the Stock Market Crash and the depression that followed; it witnessed Roosevelt taking over presi- dential power in 1933 and it saw the beginning of the New Deal. By the mid-thirties, the economy was still in a fragile state, but it was gen- erally felt – and Middletown was no exception to this feeling of opti- mism – that recovery was on its way. Middletown in Transition attempted to grasp the two momenta of continuity and change – both were represented by studying the same main activities which had been studied in the first study. New information was added where necessary and new chapters were introduced where the researchers felt that they had encountered new phenomena which needed to be separately addressed (Lynd, 1937: 3–6). The Lynds’ methodology had changed somewhat. Their first study was written from a cultural anthropological viewpoint, the second study revealed that over the years the Lynds had been influenced by other theories – in particular . Yet – as we shall see – this encounter with Marxism did not lead the Lynds to revise their perspec- tive completely. Rather, one has to understand that this encounter took place under the peculiar historical conditions of the depression and its recovery. These events radicalised the Lynds’ thoughts – and shaped their analysis in that they applied Marxism to American cir- cumstances. In the Lynds’ case this encounter proved to be beneficial in so far as it contributed to enriching both, cultural anthropology and Marxism. As it turned out, theoretical concepts of both approaches could enlighten each other – at least where the empiri- cal findings themselves suggested a merging of conceptual tools. The influence of Marx became particularly obvious in a new chap- ter called ‘The X Family’. The subtitle ‘A Pattern of Business-Class Control’ already suggested that some things had changed. To recount briefly, in the previous study the Lynds shed light upon the major difference between what they saw as working class and busi- ness class; yet surprisingly no one really seemed to have been in control of either Middletown’s business or political affairs. To be 86 Concepts of Social Stratification sure, there were some links between the business class and the Republican Party; yet these contacts did not amount to the forma- tion of a ruling class in Middletown. Conducting their second study, the Lynds were now confronted with a very different situation – a situation where an emerging elite, symbolised by the wealthy and powerful X-family, could be observed (1937: 74–101). How did the Lynds explain the rise of the X-family? The family had always been in Middletown; involved first in the gas industry, the family then managed to build up some capital and over the years eventually became millionaires. Yet, as the Lynds observed, their social and economic influence did not translate directly into political power. This was only made possible by the Depression and the beginning of the New Deal. The X-family not only owned all the main banks, law firms, industrial plants, retailing, and housing but also influ- enced Middletown’s schools and welfare system – nothing func- tioned and no recovery could be made without them. In the times of the Depression they were the ones who gained the most; they were also the ones the New Deal politics had to rely on for recovery – despite the fact that the X-family had been closer to the Republican Party than to Roosevelt. In other words: independent of the political change on the national level, the X-family had become the symbol of increasing class stratification – and thus a symbol of America’s New Deal elite. Yet, as the Lynds rightly suggested, they could only develop into an elite because their activities were seen to be in the public interest. In other words: what was good for the X-family was also good for the general public. For the Lynds this popular view could be explained through the Protestant work ethic. The Lynds did not explicitly refer to Max Weber, but the words the Lynds used to characterise the X-family, could have been written by him. The following quote almost reads like Max Weber’s theory of the Protestant spirit – applied to America:

Half a dozen other family names in Middletown are associated with the city’s industrial development, but none of them so com- pletely symbolises the city’s achievements. Of the original five brothers … two of the brothers remain today, both men in their seventies, alert, capable, democratic, Christian gentlemen, trained in the school of rugged individualism, patrons of art, education, religion, and a long list of philanthropies, men who have never Robert and Helen Lynd’s Anatomy of Middletown 87

spared themselves in business or civic affairs; high exemplars of the successful, responsible manipulators of the American formu- las of business enterprise. In their conscientious and utterly unhypocritical combination of high profits, great philanthropy, and a low wage scale, they embody the hard-headed ethos of Protestant capitalism with its identification of Christianity with the doctrine of the goodness to all concerned of unrestricted busi- ness enterprise. In their modesty and personal rectitude, com- bined with their rise from comparative poverty to great wealth, they fit perfectly the American success dream. (1937: 75f; emphasis in the original) Apart from the rise of a new elite, symbolised by the X-family, the most radical changes took place in leisure activities (1937: 242–94). In their first study, the Lynds had already found that leisure activi- ties had changed. What they found on their return to Middletown was beyond their expectations. Two developments were particularly worrying: first, more leisure activities than ever before were centred around economic values. In this respect the Lynds are right in stress- ing the parallels to work patterns; secondly, and related to this devel- opment, leisure meant different things to the working class and the business class. While the working class used leisure time as the time to enjoy life, the business class – because of its different ‘working’ patterns – had no such needs; hence it could even put leisure time to use for business activities. The Lynds also stressed that both classes seemed not to have learned from the Depression: as has been pointed out, during the time of the first Middletown study, leisure time was recognised as having already become standardised and more commercialised; after the Depression leisure activities seem to become even more standardised and commercialised. In particular the importance of the automobile was highlighted by the Lynds: If the automobile is by now a habit with the business class, a comfortable, convenient, pleasant addition to the paraphernalia of living, it represents far more than this for the working class; for the latter it gives the status which his job increasingly denies, and, more than any other possession or facility to which he has access, it symbolises living, having a good time, the thing that keeps you working. (1937: 245) 88 Concepts of Social Stratification

But it was not the car and the more active forms of spending one’s leisure time, it was the radio which became the passion of Middletowners. During the Depression people opted for the cheap alternatives of going to libraries and reading; after the Depression the slow economic recovery meant that almost half of Middletown’s household were now able to buy radios. Middletown even got its own broadcasting station. According to the Lynds this had two effects: the radio ‘carried people away from localism and gives them direct access to the more popular stereotypes in the national life’ and ‘in the other direction, the local station operates to bind together an increasingly large and diversified city’ (1937: 264). Discussing the influence of the radio, one must of course mention ideology, or what the Lynds have called ‘the Middletown Spirit’ (1937: 402–86). Compared to the radio which was somewhat new, the values which helped to maintain a sense of continuity within the community were much older. To gain a fuller understanding of this Middletown spirit, it is worthwhile quoting at length from the 15-page-long list of values which the Lynds drew up (1937; all fol- lowing quotes are from 403 to 418). The Inhabitants of Middletown believed ‘in being successful’, ‘in being an average man’, ‘in having character is more important than “having brains” ’, ‘in having “common sense” ’, in ‘that evolution in society is “from the base and inferior to the beautiful and good” ’ – all what an observer would consider to be typical American values. Against their actual experience of the Depression and the emerging New Deal they also believed ‘that “the natural and orderly process of progress” should be followed’. Middletown’s inhabitants argued against any radical measures, because ‘ “radicals” (“red”, “communists”, “socialists”, “atheists” – the terms were fairly interchangeable in Middletown) wanted to interfere with things and “wreck American civilization” ’. The common person’s philosophy was rather that ‘in the end those who follow the middle course prove to be the wisest’ and ‘that it’s better to stick close to the middle of the road, to move slowly, and to avoid extremes’. After all, ‘the strongest and best should survive, for that is the law of nature’. Opposed to being open-minded, they held on to their opinion ‘that “American ways” were better than “foreign ways” ’ and to prejudices like ‘that most foreigners are “inferior” ’, ‘that Negroes are inferior’, and ‘that individual Jews may be all right but that as a race one doesn’t care to mix too much with Robert and Helen Lynd’s Anatomy of Middletown 89 them’. Optimistically the people of Middletown concluded ‘that American business will always lead the world’ and ‘that economic conditions are the result of a natural order which cannot be changed’. Furthermore, the hopes of the business class seemed not to have been shattered by a radicalised working class – as the Lynds’ list clearly demonstrated: ‘the rich are, by and large more intelligent and industrious than the poor’, ‘the captains of industry are social benefactors’, ‘capital is simply the cumulated savings of these people with foresight’, ‘capital and labor are partners and have basically the same interests’, ‘labor organization is unwise and un-American’ are mentioned as strong and profound values. Why change when ‘the family is a sacred institution and the fundamental institution of our society’, ‘men should behave like men, and women like women’, ‘a married woman’s place is first of all in the home’, ‘too much education and contact with books and big ideas unfits a per- son for practical life’, ‘America will always be the land of opportu- nity’, ‘socialism, communism, and fascism are disreputable and un-American’, ‘radicalism makes for the destruction of the church and family, looseness of morals, and the stifling of individual initia- tive’, ‘nobody would want to live in a community without churches’, ‘Protestantism is superior to Catholicism’ – all of these things having a place in Middletown? From holding on to these val- ues, it was but a small step to maintain that ‘foreigners, internation- alists, and international bankers, people who are not patriots – for city, state, and nation, non-Protestants, Jews and Negroes – (are) “not quite our sort” ’. The Lynds discussed the various values which were voiced and came to the conclusion that in relation to other groups, be they inside or outside the community, the fences were simply put up higher (1937: 458–65, 470–5). The researchers explained this atti- tude as stemming from a general sense of insecurity and the need for protection. Still astonishing though for the Lynds was the lack of any real opposition in Middletown – something that seemed to be odd in the face of the recently experienced Depression. The working class in particular seemed to be paralysed, inactive and opposed to any major radical reform. Raising working class consciousness seemed not to be an issue. The business class remained unopposed and unchallenged. If any class consciousness existed at all, it was not to be found in the working class, but – quite contrary to Karl 90 Concepts of Social Stratification

Marx’s prediction – rather in a small group within the business class, close to the X-family. Yet there was one major revelation in the second Middletown study – a finding which might not explain the silence of the work- ing class, nor the class consciousness of the new elite – but which – according to the prediction of the Lynds – would shape the future class structure not only of Middletown but the entire American soci- ety: the emergence of a middle class, consisting of ‘“small” white collar folk’ (1937: 455–58). It was only through the emergence of this new middle class that a line could be drawn between the upper class and the lower class – a sociological finding that is more in accordance with the multi-layer theory of class, status and power groups of Max Weber than with the two-class system as proposed by Karl Marx. A second finding, which also had to do with stratifica- tion, was equally important. Not only was Middletown divided along class lines but also another important division became appar- ent – the colour line. Whereas the Lynds barely mentioned ethnicity in their first study, they now stressed that ‘… the cleft between the white and the Negro populations of Middletown is the deepest and mostly blindly followed line of division in the community’ (1937: 463). The Lynds also pointed out that most of the discrimination directed against the black minority stemmed from the working class. The Lynds saw the explanation for this being in the competition for dirty jobs – traditionally done by the poorer white working class. For the first time, they now had to compete with African Americans. In their résumé, entitled ‘Middletown Faces Both Ways’, the Lynds raised the question of whether or not Middletown had learned from the crisis (1937: 487–510). The answer to this question was a strict ‘no’. The very fact that the main value system and the ideology had not changed, was for the Lynds proof enough that the city was not well prepared for the difficult times ahead – particularly in the light of predictable conflicts in the future, which the Lynds saw resulting from Middletown’s increased competition within its system of social stratification. The Lynds followed Marx in particular in maintaining that ideology especially – as a part of the social relations of produc- tion – did not follow the continuous development of the forces of production. Rather it remained unchanged: the city is uneasily conscious of many twinges down under the surface, but it resembles the person who insists on denying and Robert and Helen Lynd’s Anatomy of Middletown 91

disregarding unpleasant physical symptoms on the theory that everything must be all right, and that if anything really is wrong it may cure itself without leading to a major operation. The conflicts under the surface in Middletown are not so much new as more insistent, more difficult to avoid, harder to smooth over. (1937: 490)

The Lynds concluded that ‘… Middletown tries to forget and to dis- regard the growing disparities in the midst of which it lives’ (1937: 491). Furthermore, the Lynds concluded that that which the New Deal offered and indeed made possible, was little more than the opportunity to organise and mediate change – only so that everything could remain the same and leave a deeply stratified society untouched. Hence, the Lynds did not see it as contradictory that a conserva- tive and formerly Republican Middletown voted by 59 per cent for Roosevelt. Rather it confirmed a position that could be described as ‘controlled change’ in an attempt to avoid radical reform – almost in the sense that Simmel had written about it. To this extent the business class would even compromise and try to come to terms with the government bureaucracy that would inevitably come to Middletown with the New Deal.