White Collar: The American Middle ClassesIn print for fifty years, White Collar by C. Wright Mills is considered a standard on the subject of the new middle class in twentieth-century America. This landmark volume demonstrates how the conditions and styles of middle class life--originating from elements of both the newer lower and upper classes--represent modern society as a whole. By examining white-collar life, Mills aimed to learn something about what was becoming more typically "American" than the once-famous Western frontier character. He painted a picture instead of a society that had evolved into a business-based milieu, viewing America instead as a great salesroom, an enormous file, and a new universe of management. Russell Jacoby, author of The End of Utopia and The Last Intellectuals, contributes a new Afterword to this edition, in which he reflects on the impact White Collar had at its original publication and considers what it means to our society today. "A book that persons of every level of the white collar pyramid should read and ponder. It will alert them to their condition for their better salvation."-Horace M. Kaellen, The New York Times (on the first edition) |
Contents
1 | |
WHITE COLLAR WORLDS | 61 |
STYLES OF LIFE | 213 |
WAYS OF POWER | 287 |
Acknowledgments and Sources | 355 |
Afterword | 365 |
Index | 381 |
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Common terms and phrases
alienation American become Big Bazaar big business bureaucratic cent centralized century chance claims clerks collar competition consciousness corporation course decline economic Emil Lederer enterprise experience fact factory farm farmer feel firm foremen groups Hans Fallada Hans Speier hierarchy higher ideology income increased independent individual industrial intellectual interests involved Kitty Foyle labor lawyer less live lower machines managerial demiurge managers Marxism mass media Max Weber means ment Mills nomic occupational old middle class operations organized owners party personality market personnel political position prestige production profes professional psychological R. H. Tawney rationalization retail salaried employees salesman selling shift skills small business small businessmen small entrepreneur social status strata stratum success technical tion United urban vidual wage wage-workers white-collar employees white-collar unions white-collar workers Wright Mills