Historians have largely neglected to explore the ways in which emerging constructions of middle-class manhood were contingent on defining and structuring class difference. Using the YMCA's efforts with railroad and industrial workers from the 1870s to the end of World War I as a case study, the author argues that definitions of class difference were an integral part to new articulations of middle-class manhood. YMCA officials hoped that workingmen would abstain from political radicalism and industrial unrest once they adopted an ideal of Christian manhood. Bringing an ideal of Christian manhood to the workers, the YMCA presumed, could engender a workforce that would set examples of sacrifice and service and exude goodwill and selflessness. While YMCA officials took part in the remaking of middle-class men's notions about the meaning of manhood, they also constructed and affirmed class differences through their cultural practices.
Bederman, G.1989. “The women have had charge of the church work long enough”: The men and religion forward movement of 1911-1912 and the masculinization of middle-class Protestantism. American Quarterly41: 432-465.
2.
Bederman, G. 1995. Manliness & civilization: A cultural history of gender and race in the United States, 1880-1917. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
3.
Blake, C. N. 1990. Beloved community: The cultural criticism of Randolph Bourne, Van Wyck Brooks, Waldo Frank, & Lewis Mumford. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
4.
Blumin, S. M. 1989. The emergence of the middle class: Social experience in the American City, 1760-1900. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
5.
Boyer, P. 1978. Urban masses and moral order in America, 1820-1920. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
6.
Brandes, S. D. 1976. American welfare capitalism, 1880-1940. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
7.
Bristow, N. K. 1996. Making men moral: Social engineering during the Great War. New York: New York University Press.
8.
The Bureau of Motion Pictures & Exhibits, Industrial Department . 1920. Use of industrial and educational motion pictures in the Y.M.C.A. practical program. New York: International Committee Y.M.C.A. Industrial Department Bureau of Motion Pictures. Motion Picture Pamphlets, box 2, YMCA Industrial Department Records, YMCA Archives.
9.
Calhoun, C. 1992. Habermas and the public sphere. In Habermas and the public sphere, edited by C. Calhoun, 1-48. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
10.
Cavallo, D. 1981. Muscles and morals: Organized playgrounds and urban reform, 1880-1920. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
11.
Clawson, M. A. 1989. Constructing brotherhood: Class, gender, and fraternalism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
12.
Curtis, S. 1991. A consuming faith: The social gospel and modern American culture. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
13.
Doggett, L. L. , W. H. Ball, H. M. Burr, and W. K. Cooper. 1905. Life problems: Studies in the native interests of young men. New York: International Committee of Young Men's Christian Associations, YMCA International Committee Pamphlet Collection, Kautz Family YMCA Archives (Social Welfare History Archives, University Libraries, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN) [hereafter YMCA Archives].
14.
Eley, G. 1993. Nations, publics, and political cultures: Placing Habermas in the nineteenth century. In Culture/power/history: A reader in contemporary social theory, edited by Nicholas B.Dirks, GeoffEley, and Sherry Ortner, 297-335. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Grubbs, F. L., Jr. 1968. The struggle for labor loyalty: Gompers, the A.F. of L., and the Pacifists, 1917-1920. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
19.
Habermas, J. 1989. The structural transformation of the public sphere: An inquiry into a category of bourgeois society. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
20.
Halttunen, K. 1982. Confidence men and painted women: A study of middle-class culture, 1830-1870. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
21.
Harris, F. , ed. 1929. Service with fighting men: An account of the American Young Men's Christian Associations in the world war. New York: Association Press.
22.
Hilkey, J. 1997. Character is capital: Success manuals and manhood in gilded age America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
23.
Hopkins, C. H. 1951. History of the Y.M.C.A. in North America. New York: Association Press.
24.
Industrial men . 1919. Association Men44 (January): 389.
25.
Kimmel, M. 1996. Manhood in America: A cultural history. New York: Free Press.
26.
Kocka, J. 1980. White collar workers in America, 1890-1940: A social-political history in international perspective. London: Sage.
27.
Laclau, E. 1979. Political ideology in Marxist theory. London: Verso.
28.
Lears, T.J.J. 1981. No place of grace: Antimodernism and the transformation of American culture, 1880-1920. New York: Pantheon.
29.
Lears, T.J.J. 1983. From salvation to self-realization: Advertising and the therapeutic roots of the consumer culture, 1880-1930. In The culture of consumption: Critical essays in American history, 1880-1980, edited by R. W. Fox and T.J.J. Lears, 1-39. New York: Pantheon.
30.
Lystra, K. 1989. Searching the heart: Women, men, and romantic love in nineteenth-century America. New York: Oxford University Press.
31.
McBride, P. 1975. Culture clash: Immigrants and reformers, 1880-1920. San Francisco: R and E Research Associates.
32.
McLeod, D. I. 1983. Building character in the American boy: The Boy Scouts, YMCA, and their Forerunners. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
33.
Montgomery, D. 1987. The fall of the house of labor: The workplace, the state, and American labor activism, 1865-1925. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
34.
Moore, J. F. 1930. The story of the railroad “Y.”New York: Association Press.
35.
Murray, R. K. 1955. Red scare: A study in national hysteria, 1919-1920. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
36.
Music in industry . 1919. Service, May, 1-2.
37.
Our retiring secretary . 1907. The Monthly Bulletin, January, 2.
38.
Pierce, L. L. 1912. How best to unify the metropolitan work. In Second conference of metropolitan general secretaries, 6-9 December 1912, Niagara Falls, New York, box 3, Conference Papers, YMCA General Secretaries Association, YMCA Archives.
39.
Polenberg, R. 1987. Fighting faiths: The Abrams Case, the Supreme Court, and free speech. New York: Penguin.
40.
Preston, W. J., Jr. 1966. Aliens and dissenters: Federal suppression of radicals, 1903-1933. New York: Harper Torchbooks
41.
Przeworski, A. 1985. Capitalism and social democracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
42.
Quandt, J. 1970. From the small town to the great community. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
43.
Rader, B. G. 1987. The recapitulation theory of play: Motor behaviour, moral reflexes and manly attitudes in urban America, 1880-1920. In Manliness and morality: Middle-class masculinity in Britain and America, 1880-1940, edited by J. A. Mangan and J. Walvin, 123-134. New York: St. Martin's.
44.
Ramirez, B. 1978. When workers fight: The politics of industrial relations in the Progressive Era, 1898-1916. Westport, CT: Greenwood.
45.
Rockefeller, S. C. 1991. John Dewey: Religious faith and democratic humanism. New York: Columbia University Press.
46.
Rodgers, D. 1978. The work ethic in industrial America, 1850-1920. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
47.
Rotundo, E. A. 1993. American manhood: Transformations in masculinity from the revolution to the modern era. New York: Basic Books.
48.
Rubin, J. S. 1992. The making of middlebrow culture. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
49.
Russett, C. E. 1989. Sexual science: The Victorian construction of womanhood. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
50.
Satisfying the industrial worker . 1918. Service, September, 6.
51.
Singleton, G. H.1975. Protestant voluntary organizations and the shaping of Victorian America. American Quarterly27 (December): 549-560.
52.
Stearns, P. N. 1990. Be a man! Males in modern society. 2d rev. ed.New York: Holmes & Meier.
53.
Stearns, P. N. 1994. American cool: Constructing a twentieth-century emotional style. New York: New York University Press.
54.
Susman, W. I. 1984. Culture as history: The transformation of American society in the twentieth century. New York: Pantheon.
55.
Thompson, E. P. 1980. The making of the English working class (Reprint with a new preface). London: Penguin.
56.
A time for leadership . 1918. Service, November, 1.
57.
Tone, A. K. 1997. The business of benevolence: Industrial paternalism in progressive America. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
58.
Towson, Charles R.1898. Railroad Men11 (February): 151.
59.
Towson, Charles R.1913. Jim, there's money in it!Association Men39 (November): 71.
60.
Towson, Charles R.1913. The good work of good will. Association Men39 (February): 236-237.
61.
Towson, Charles R.1918. A needed supplement to industrial housing—Part I. American Architect, May, 621.
62.
Towson, Charles R.1919. A summary of industrial progress. Service, July, 1.
63.
Warburton, G. A. n.d. The Railroad Secretaryship, box 1, Promotional Materials, 1900-1910, YMCA Railroad/Transportation Department Records, YMCA Archives.
64.
Warburton, G. A. 1912. The secretary's self culture. In Second conference of metropolitan general secretaries, 6-9 December 1912, Niagara Falls, NY, box 3, YMCA Railroad/Transportation Department Records, YMCA Archives.
65.
What can the association substitute for the saloon?1919. Service, June 2.
66.
Wiebe, R. 1967. The search for order, 1877-1920. New York: Hill and Wang.
67.
Wilson, R. J. 1968. In quest of community: Social philosophy in the United States, 1860-1920. New York: Oxford University Press.
68.
Wyllie, I. G. 1966. The self-made man in America: The myth of rags to riches. New York: Free Press.
69.
Wynn, N. A. 1986. From progressivism to prosperity: World War I and American society. New York: Holmes and Meier.
70.
Yearbook of the Young Men's Christian Associations of the United States and the Dominion of Canada for the Year 1889. 1889. New York: International Committee Young Men's Christian Associations.
71.
Yearbook of the Young Men's Christian Associations of North America. 1905-06. New York: International Committee of Young Men's Christian Associations, 245.
72.
Wynn, N. A. 1920-21. New York: International Committee of Young Men's Christian Associations, 208, 216.
73.
YMCA Industrial Department . 1916. Among industrial workers (ways and means): A handbook for associations in industrial fields. New York: International Committee Young Men's Christian Associations.
