Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 60-05, Section: A, page: 1633.

Director: Jean-Christophe Agnew.

This dissertation explores the relationship between the middle class and the material culture of the United States at the turn of the twentieth century, particularly as mediated by the marketing of goods and design services. Though material culture did not "create" the middle class, I argue that it did identify the growing group on a national scale. If the organization of industrial work created the managerial and professional positions that defined the economic status of the middle class, then the establishment of similar modes of organization in other spheres, from specialized "tools" for dining to the separation of the functions within a zoned city, defined the culture and community of that middle class.

In four case studies, I consider how objects were both physically transported and culturally represented as desirable. The four topics are silverplate flatware, bathroom fixtures, mass-produced foursquare dwellings, and early zoning plans. As these examples span the scales of material culture from small objects and fixtures to architecture and finally urban planning, they range chronologically from the 1870s through the 1920s. The chapters also chart four different approaches to the distribution of designed goods and design services, whether direct sales from the manufacturer by mail or a drawn-out chain of sales through several intermediary steps of wholesalers and retailers.

With the broad distribution of goods and design ideals arose a movement to quantify a quality of life known as the "standard of living." This standard was more a measure of shared aspiration than actual financial status or living conditions. I consider how this "measure" was defined or created in different ways by different groups: by consumers to identify themselves as part of a group or community; by corporations and distributors through advertising; and by social scientists in their examinations of the effects of industry on daily life in the United States. The cultural processes of establishing a standard of living paralleled the commercial processes of marketing and distribution. Both linked the production and consumption of American material life, and both supported the flourishing of the American middle class.