class system

[calimac]

The massive biography of Churchill by Roy Jenkins has been my bathroom reading for a while now, and on page 591 I find a passing comment that Churchill "was the most clearly upper-class Prime Minister since the end of Balfour's premiership thirty-five years before."

This citation of the fabled British class system seems a good point to kick off a consideration of whether the U.S. has a class system. This question usually receives one of two automatic answers, either "Of course it doesn't" or "Of course it does." Clearly there is some fundamental disagreement here.

ETA: Discussion in the comments leads me to clarify that by a "class system" is not meant the distinct but permeable socio-economic strata that exist everywhere and which in Marxist theory are called classes. When the question is asked, "Does the U.S. have a class system?", what spawns it is a look at a British or European class system. As whswhs helpfully points out, these kind of classes are what in France are called the "estates", they are not easily permeable, and as for whether they exist in the U.S., read on.

Actually, the former is correct - we don't have one - and the reason the other answer is often given is that the U.S. is so totally and utterly lacking in a class system that most Americans have no idea what one looks like, and mistake other things for a class system, the same way that they mistakenly take Jefferson's "all men are created equal" to mean some kind of imposed identical regimen out of Vonnegut's Harrison Bergeron.

Here are some things the U.S. has that are sort of like a class system, but aren't the same thing:

1. An ethnic/racial caste system. This is, if anything, even more toxic than a class system. It's present in Britain as well (check the history of the insult term wog). The difference is that the victims of such a caste system are perceived as outsiders, unwelcome invaders, while within a class system, the lower classes are looked down upon but are also vital and welcomed parts of the system. For an example without racial differences, compare how the 18th-century British intelligentsia, like Dr Johnson, considered the English poor with how they considered the Scots and Irish.

2. Aristocracies of wealth and fame. The difference between celebrity and a class system is that it has no permanence or even stability. Celebrities rise out of nowhere, and if they lose that wealth or fame, disappear almost as quickly. Celebrity has the smells of bewilderment - how'd I get here? I'm the same person I was when I was obscure - and of fear - if my next film tanks, will the glamor vanish? - about it. Upper class is secure: you're born that way, and even if you lose your money you stay that way, and it has nothing to do with being famous.

3. An old-boy network. This is the closest to a class system, because its advantages are often inherited (legacy college admissions) and it confers the stable insider status of an upper class, and where there is a class system it's often congruent with upper and upper-middle classes, but it's still different because it is more personal and not status-oriented. It requires not just unearned advantages but the ability to make friends and influence people.

So what made Winston Churchill upper-class? It wasn't his fame; film stars were famous but lowly tradesmen on the class system. It wasn't his wealth; Churchill was not well-off by upper-class standards, and had to work to earn his living: the proper upper-class income came as unearned rent from tenant farmers. But whatever happened to him economically, it didn't change his class status. This phenomenon was brought to my attention by an early biography of Tolkien. Tolkien's childhood was very short of money, but, it was explained, his family wasn't poor or working class but impoverished middle-class, a very different status.

For one thing, his mother scraped together enough money to send him to a good school, which the lower classes rarely did in those days. So we can ask of Churchill, did his upper-class status come from connections, an old-boy network? Not really. Churchill did attend a top private school, but he didn't do well there, made few lasting friends, and unlike most of his fellows destined for great things did not go on to university, but to a military academy. His arrival on the Parliamentary ladder was definitely assisted by his father having been a famous parliamentarian before him, but that only puts you on the ladder; it doesn't send you up further. Compare Churchill's steady rise and success in the 1905-15 Liberal government with the failure of his colleague Herbert Gladstone, despite the fact that Gladstone's filial resonance with the Liberals would be far greater than that of Churchill, whose father was their chief scourge. Churchill rose because he was a better politician than Herbert Gladstone, not because of who his father was. And Churchill's Prime Ministerial predecessors, Neville Chamberlain and Stanley Baldwin, were equally second-generation politicians who'd gotten started as their fathers' sons, but they weren't upper-class at all (nor were the Gladstones, for that matter).

What made Churchill upper-class was simply that he was the grandson of a Duke. His family was one of the most socially distinguished in Britain, and his grandfather the Duke owned the biggest private home in the country, Blenheim Palace. They weren't as wealthy as they used to be, but they had the smell of old money, and of old privilege.

We really don't have that kind of distinction in the U.S., and not just because the upper tier is cut off, as there is virtually nothing of British or other nobility here. The British upper class is more than the nobility, but having an old noble title in your family guarantees membership. (If nobility carried class status in the U.S., then a distinctive high place would be held by people like former senator Malcolm Wallop, who is the grandson of the Earl of Portsmouth, or A.J. Langer, the actress who played Rayanne on My So-Called Life, who married into the British nobility and is now in line to inherit the title of Countess of Devon. But these facts are just curiosities.) We do have old money in the U.S., and there is something of a social as well as economic cachet if your name is, say, Vanderbilt or Rockefeller, but there is no comparison with the extent or intensity of such cases in England in the past.

The real characteristic of a class system is that it has an almost racial lasting taint. I first realized this years ago in reading a book on 15th century English history. The Earls of Suffolk were descended from successful wool merchants who had been raised to the nobility, but because of that origin, the other nobility, who were landed gentry mostly dating back to the Conquest, looked down on them as jumped-up tradesmen for generations. This treatment and the Suffolks' resentment of it explains a lot about English history of the period.

I'll put it this way: During the 2000 Presidential campaign between Bush and Gore, there was a lot of discussion of how both candidates were the sons of successful politicians, and the question of how much they'd earned their successes and how much had been handed to them on a platter. Those are old-boy network questions. But I never saw anybody raise this point or consider any significance to it: that Bush's grandfathers were a Wall Street merchant banker and a major magazine publisher, while Gore's grandfathers were both Appalachian dirt farmers. If the U.S. had a class system, this would have been considered one of the major differences between them and worthy of significant discussion. It wasn't, so we don't.

Comments

[barondave.livejournal.com]

I always wondered: How does one become a noble in the first place? Helping your king in battle a thousand years ago seems the best way, but I don't see how that makes one superior socially. (Hey, I must be an American...)

[irontongue.livejournal.com]

We have different social classes in the United States; whether and how this amounts to a "class system" is an entirely different question.

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

Depends what you mean by "class system," doesn't it? The modern use of the term derives more than anything else from Marxism. But Marx's definition of a class system applied more than anything else to the industrial capitalism of his time—in which a large share of the industrial capitalists, the people he called "bourgeois" (though they were nothing like the lawyers and rentiers from whom the Bourbon noblesse du robe were recruited), were self-made men, often from relatively poor families. Hence, in that widespread usage of the word, the hereditary aspect is not a key feature.

I see the United States as having roughly five significant socioeconomic groups with different interests: 1. civil service employees, academics, and employees of nonprofits; 2. employees of large corporate businesses; 3. self-employed people and small business owners; 4. employees of small businesses; 5. people dependent on the social safety net, such as it is. The main current political divide in the United States looks to be 3 and 4 against 1, 2, and 5. But I won't ask you to call that "class" if you don't want to.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

How did you come to help your king in battle as a major vassal in the first place? Because you were already a member of the upper gentry, a significant landowner with plenty of vassals of your own that you could call up as troops for your king's army. That was the whole point of the feudal system: that on any level, you could call down to lower levels for adequate military support.

So, in the medieval system, the granting of a title of nobility more confirmed upper-class status than conferred it. Even as late as the 19th century, when titles of nobility had become more of a social cachet and lost their feudal significance, people would occasionally turn down the offer of a title on the grounds that they didn't have the money to support the lifestyle associated with the nobility.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Whatever you want to call Marxist socioeconomic strata, they aren't a class system in the sense that the British have, or had, a class system. That traditional system is what's pointed to when the question "does the U.S. have a class system?" is asked. That Marxist socioeconomic strata exist in all societies, assuming you want to look at things from a Marxist perspective, is so obviously true that nobody would ever bother to ask if we have it. This is tied into the various things that I listed as "sort of like a class system, but aren't the same thing."

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

If the U.S. had a class system, this would have been considered one of the major differences between them and worthy of significant discussion. It wasn't, so we don't.

Meh. If the U.S. had a class system as rigid as that in the UK, perhaps. That classes are more permeable over time doesn't mean they don't exist.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

We have people who are richer or more powerful than other people. My point is, indeed, exactly that this doesn't constitute a class system.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Because they are so easily permeable, they're not classes in the same sense. The differences are too great. In a traditional class system, that Appalachian dirt would still cling to Gore, and Bush wouldn't have been able to assume his Texas dirt as an affectation.

[irontongue.livejournal.com]

We have social and economic classes in the United States: working class, lower class/poor people, middle-class, upper class. There are economic, cultural, and social differences among the classes.

These classes were formed and are now enforced by different processes from those in Great Britain, to the extent that it's not clear to me whether we have a class system. But if you're saying there aren't different social classes, I've got approximately five miles of shelving in the economics, history, public health, and politics sections of a large university library to point you to. Or just try the card catalog.

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

I think when most people say "class system," they're thinking of something more or less along Marxist lines. At least here in the United States; and even in the United Kingdom, people seem to talk about "working class" as if it meant something (whereas in the aristocratic theory you're pointing to, the factory owner and the bootblack are both "commoners"). I think the Marxist terms, or at least some sort of Marxist Lite version, may have become the dominant meaning of "class."

At least when one speaks of the French ancien régime, the usual term for what you're talking about seems to be "estate." That term even has English precedents:

The rich man in his castle,
The poor man at his gate,
God made them high and lowly,
And ordered their estate.

It might convey your intended meaning more accurately.

The closest thing the United States has to a system of "estates" seems to be legacy admissions at certain (often highly regarded) universities. There is a significant element of hereditary privilege there, though diluted by the ability of nonlegacy students to get in.

[barondave.livejournal.com]

Yes, but how did you get to be a member of the upper gentry when clearly your hereditary wealth/power started someplace? Whence the noble families?

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Slow accretion, mostly. When an estate became available (the heirs all died off, or it was confiscated due to treason, or - at a later date - the dissolution of the monasteries), it was granted by the king to some lucky person, but this was usually a case of "to him who hath, more shall be given."

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

*Shrug* The classes aren't *that* permeable. You notice that the Gores have had to assimilate to the markers of the American upper class -- he doesn't have anything resembling an Appalachian working class accent, dress style, haircut, or spouse. The fact that there is class mobility does not prove that there is no class distinction.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

As I was saying to whswhs, we obviously have socio-economic strata. Nobody would even raise the question of whether they exist, so your citation of numerous library books is an entire red herring. This is, however, not a class system. The context of the question, which I didn't make explicit enough, is to point to the British, or some other similar, class system, and ask if it exists here. It does not, and it so thoroughly does not exist here that people point to other things that do exist here and mistake them for a class system.

[irontongue.livejournal.com]

I agree that we do not have a British-style class system.

I believe we have social _classes_ that are related to but not 100% congruent with socio-economic strata, classes that are defined by attitudes, culture, etc. My citation is in no way a red herring.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Yes, "estates" are the kind of classes being discussed here.

Please see #3 under my list of "things the U.S. has that are sort of like a class system, but aren't the same thing" for legacy admissions.

However, the British system is not a two-valued one of aristocracy vs. commoners. There are various levels, some of great subtlety, and even at minimum there are three, what was formerly called the tradesmen class and is now the middle class being between the gentry (itself a multi-level class including, but not limited to, the aristocracy) and the working class.

Also, in British usage "commoner" is a technical term, including everyone who is not royalty nor nobility. That includes much of the aristocracy as well. So you can divide the upper class this way, from top level down:

1. Royalty
2. Nobility
3. Aristocracy who are not nobility
4. Gentry who are not aristocracy

Groups 3-4 of these are commoners. Even some people with the title "Lord" are commoners.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Doesn't the fact that Al Gore has entirely shed his grandfather's class markers prove the permeability of the classes?

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

It is a red herring because you are arguing against something I didn't say. I get pretty tired of enormous fusillades against unoccupied positions, and a boast of how long your library shelves are is a perfect example.

[irontongue.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry. I must have misunderstood the following, which appears to argue against the existence of _classes_ in the United States, as well as against a British-style class system:

We have people who are richer or more powerful than other people. My point is, indeed, exactly that this doesn't constitute a class system.

Because I thought you were arguing against the existence of social and economic classes, I was attempting to point toward a large body of documentation of their existence.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

The "social classes" you are talking about here are the sort of thing I discuss in items 1 and 2 of "some things the U.S. has that are sort of like a class system, but aren't the same thing." I should have described them a little more broadly.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

It's not a class system like a European class system. This is because, as I pointed out in #2 of "some things the U.S. has that are sort of like a class system, but aren't the same thing," people go up and down, in and out, of these groups.

[voidampersand.livejournal.com]

America has multiple class systems, that strongly resemble the ones in Europe, because they are European class systems that never went away. You can see this most clearly in New England and Virginia (British), Louisiana (French and Spanish), and Texas and New Mexico (Spanish). Also, there is a new American class system that controls most of the capital and industrial base as well as the real estate. Yes, it is a bit more permeable than the remnants of the English feudal system. In that sense it more resembles the feudal system when it was vital and growing, in the Middle Ages. That really was the point of the American Revolution, you know, not to erase the class system from this land, just to keep it open for gentlemen of means to get in.

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

Are there actually privileges or immunities (to use the phrasing of the Constitution) that apply to British tradesman and not to the British working class? Or is this an informal difference that can be overcome by a combination of making money and the methods Eliza Doolittle used?

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Neither. Commoners/nobility is a legal distinction. Other class distinctions are social rather than legal in nature, but they're not easily permeable.

However, there are legal effects. For instance, before the early 20C, Members of Parliament were not paid. This made it practically impossible for anyone below the level of gentry to serve, though there were no laws preventing them.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

The English class system never really established itself in this land, even in colonial times. Hardly anyone from the upper classes wished to settle here. In many places, especially New England, almost all the white settlers were yeomen. In other places, such as Philadelphia and Virginia, there were strong socioeconomic strata, but these were more homegrown than imported inheritable classes, and the general informality of American style (compared with English) and the possibility of moving out into new country gave enormous flexibility and permeability to the socio-economic system.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I should add that there were wealth-based voting restrictions, but these differed among constituencies. Generally they cut through the middle of or just below the tradesman class.

[yarram.livejournal.com]

I fail to see the distinction between British "estate", Hindu/Indian "caste", and US "class" -- they are all socioeconomic structures that rank people from "most valuable" to "least valuable", no matter how metaphorically and no matter how socially mobile. The case of the Gores is actually rather telling - in order to change class, they literally had to erase the evidence of having once been members of an inferior class, right down to their dress and speech mannerisms. One of the marks of class systems is that, in order to be admitted to a different class, one is required to assimilate to that class. (For a illustration of this from an immigrant vs. citizen perspective, see Dissimilation (http://shweta-narayan.livejournal.com/95168.html) by shweta_narayan.)

Certainly, class systems are culture-bound, but they all tend to function similarly: to reinforce existing social and power structures within and between cultures. So while it's reasonably fair to say that the British system of "estates" is not found in the US, it performs similar functions as "class" does in US culture. They simply happen to use entirely different criteria for membership. For that matter, it's entirely possible for a Dalit to be a millionaire (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/may/06/india.ameliagentleman), further illustrating how different the criteria can be in different cultures.

So I find myself puzzled by your assertion, unless I am misreading you, and you are in fact attempting to say "the form of class system found in Britain referred to here as 'estate' is different from the ones found in the USA." Which, well, yes... viz. Different Cultures, Therefore Different Rules.

[yarram.livejournal.com]

See my comment below - in short, assimilation reinforces and entrenches class distinctions.

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

In the United States, it's all but impossible for someone who's not at least moderately wealthy to run for Congress, or for the governorship of a state or the mayoralty of a substantial city. The costs of campaigning are simply too high. Even campaigning on borrowed money is only possible if you have enough personal wealth to make lenders feel confident. And yet you don't want to count that as evidence of an American class system. I think that treating the dependence of participation in the British political system on personal wealth as evidence of a British class system could be seen as wanting to have it both ways.

But I think your emphasis on hereditary descent as essential to class might not be the right place to draw the line. It's possible to have legally marked class distinctions, which carry differences of rights and duties, but which are not rigidly hereditary. Consider Rome, where a freedman's son was a citizen, a citizen could become a knight, and, less often, a knight or even a citizen could become a senator. The basic requirement for senatorial or equestrian status was simply possession of a designated level of wealth; in the case of senators, actual senatorial status came with election to the lowest of a series of magistracies, the cursus honorum. Change of social standing was built into the Roman system. But the state still made distinctions among people at different levels.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

The difference is, those who ran for office in pre-20C UK pretty much had to be upper-class or gentry. Those who run for office in the US today only need be wealthy. That's a fundamental difference. As I explained in the post, money is not a class marker, it's a wealth marker. So no, it's not class.

And in fact, that requirement of personal wealth is far from universal, even now. Meg Whitmans who run on their own wealth are relatively uncommon; borrowing is somewhat more so, but more for small-scale than large-scale campaigns, because you can't borrow that much money if you're not rich; many candidates run on infused donations from outside campaign committees which invest in their candidacies.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

The difference is the permeability of the socio-economic structure and the manner of treatment. Gore could erase his Appalachian background, and nobody cared that he had one. But a Dalit can become a millionaire, but is still a Dalit. (A British bounder can become a millionaire too, but is still a bounder, and a nobleman can become poor, but is still a nobleman.) The tragedy of Shweta's story is that she was convinced to try to erase her ethnicity, which couldn't be erased. You will not that I said that the US has an ethnic/racial caste system, and I used the word "caste" deliberately: it can't be erased.

In the US, we seem to care deeply about people's racial and ethnic background, but that aside, we don't care about their grandfather's socio-economic status. The British do, or did. That's the difference. You may find that trivial, but please note that I never said we don't differentially value people. This is all about bases for that value that are beyond the control of the individual.

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

But I don't see that you have explained in what sense running for office in 19th century Britain was restricted to the gentry. Was there even a legal category of "gentry"? You seemed to be saying not. You say that MPs not being paid "made it practically impossible for anyone below the level of gentry to serve"—but surely there were ways to acquire sufficient money so you could invest it and live on the interest and rents, without being wellborn (see Kipling's "The Mary Gloster"). Such wealthy men could have paid their own expenses, and thus afforded to run for parliament, and you say that no law prevented them. Or are you saying that if they did in fact acquire and invest such wealth, and run for office, they would make themselves gentry by doing so? Because, if so, that would say that the "gentry" were not a closed descent-based group after all, I think.

I'm confused by all this. It sounds as if you were arguing in a circle in some way.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

1) It was very difficult at that time for anyone without landed income to accumulate enough funds to live on while serving in Parliament. The problem was that even a business or professional man with enough work to earn that kind of income would find that Parliamentary duties interfered with his ability to continue working steadily, and thus earning sufficiently.

2) Anyone who did own sufficient property to live on rents was pretty likely to be gentry already.

3) The tradition that only gentry served in Parliament was strong enough that there was something vaguely unseemly about lower classes even running.

3) Nevertheless, especially towards the end of the 19th century, a number began to manage it. Lawyers, whose time was more flexible and more geared to parliamentary hours than that of other professionals. Some businessmen in a large enough way that they either could pay to have their factories run without them, or who had retired. The earliest Labour members lived on group subventions from their supporters.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

My father used to tell me of his mother sitting them down to a rather humble dinner in their rather humble house (my grandfather being a musician by profession, and not well off), with the reminder - "Don't forget you're gentry!"

[papersky.livejournal.com]

I think you should look at post-war Britain and the way the class system changed before making sweeping statements that are true about the thirties and before. You can change class in Britain now -- at the price of assimilation to the class you change to, and (after a generation) being economical with the truth about your grandparents. The British class system remains "branded on the tongue", but accents can be changed, and what accents mean has changed too. Furthermore, class has become unmentionable and an elephant in the room in the UK these days, in much the same way as it is in the US.

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

That seems to say, then, that gentry vs. lower ranked commoners was not an actual legal barrier, and hence not a difference of class in your sense?

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

No, it doesn't say that, because, as I said earlier, class distinctions were not entirely legal in nature. They were primarily social. Such legal distinctions as there were operated primarily as underlays to the social ones, and to back them up.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I believe that in several places I've indicated that my generalizations about the English class system applied to the past.

[scribblerworks.livejournal.com]

I think it is interesting that the very few cases where scions of nobility did settle in the American colonies (I believe there are a few such families scattered in the Delaware/Maryland/Virginia/Georgia coastal regions) those families only have the status of being colonial settlers. Sure they were able (because of family wealth) to purchase large estates originally, but are their names still as prominent as, for instance, the names of families sprung from the Robber Barons of the 1800s? Nope.

That is another indicator that family heritage in and of itself does not retain "status" in America, particularly if succeeding generations do, comparatively, nothing. There is name recognition, but no special status.

[scribblerworks.livejournal.com]

This is an interesting discussion, and one that has crossed my mind - experientially.

Although my parents were born outside the United States, I was born here (in Michigan) and always felt my upbringing was thoroughly American. But I think some "class" issues affected some of the family atmosphere in some way. But not in ways that fit any of your definitions.

Some family history to explain what I see:
My father had a "mixed" background: his father was born in Michigan, the son of a minister/small farmer. Grandpa went West in Canada, and began a career in the petroleum industry: he did well enough to live comfortably, and sent my father to college during the Depression. My grandmother seems to have come from an upper middle class Canadian background, but believed her ancestors were lower nobility. I got the impression that my grandfather was amused by this belief, but didn't really care if it was true or not (how very American of him!), since it was my grandmother he loved, not her heritage.

However, my grandmother's belief affected her demeanor, how she carried herself and how she behaved toward other people. I suppose I could call her attitude one of noblesse oblige with an emphasis o the obligation (to be courteous to others, it's just proper).

My mother's side was Scottish. I don't know much about her mother, except that she had come directly from Scotland. My grandfather was from Nova Scotia, also a minister, of modest/middle class background, I think. He did his ministry in Trinidad, and as a white pastor in a largely black society, his position had a degree of social status. My mother went to boarding school in Nova Scotia, she went to college (unusual in her generation), and returned to Trinidad after graduation (where my parents met). But one of the things about their position in Trinidad was that there were some household servants.

Anyway... the point of explaining that background is this: when I was growing up, I evaluated our "social position" as modestly upper middle class. My father was frugal and a good steward of his money, so there was hardly ever extravagant spending. He did all the maintainence around the house (rarely did he call plumbers, but did things like snaking the line himself). He painted the house himself every couple of years. He weighed the cost of everything carefully and chose the most balanced way forward (expense versus purpose of expenditure - sometimes enjoyment was a consideration, and so we would go to a fancy restaurant, that sort of thing). So MY perception of "class" issues socially was entirely economical. And I was always aware that that could be fluid, so those who were poorer than us were just that: poorer monetarily, and therefore not to be scorned - one could end up there easily oneself. However, the inherited social demeanor from both sides apparently created "social graces" that many perceive to belong as "upper class".

This long explanation is background: I've had two very different people tell me that they perceived me as being "upper class". I think, mostly on the grounds of demeanor. One of them (someone I knew in childhood) was indeed from a poorer family and considered us to be well-off. (I put it down to my father's frugality and good stewardship.) The other considered my behavior to be aristocratic. My reaction was "Huh?" I knew my father's frugality (there were things that were not purchased because we couldn't afford them). So to be considered well-off struck me as incongruous. Yet, there is something that apparently set us off from others.

This leads me to think that Americans are not drawn to "class" the way, for instance, European societies have been structured. But rather there is a combination of celebrity (based, mostly, on some form of "having done something" -- although that still doesn't explain Paris Hilton) and elitism. But Americans are not really very comfortable with elitism, even though we're constantly creating new sorts of "Elites". I think that discomfort is because the elitism is NOT based on the "traditional" evaluations of aristocracy - birth and wealth, easy to peg.

This is a rambling consideration, sorry. Just my musings off the top of my head.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Your last point is the one I made in the beginning: the U.S. has elites, but it doesn't have an elite class.

If your family had been upper class, your father wouldn't have done his own repairs. Belloc:

Lord Finchley tried to mend the Electric Light
Himself. It struck him dead: And serve him right!
It is the business of the wealthy man
To give employment to the artisan.

[scribblerworks.livejournal.com]

Regarding my dad and repairs -- yes, possibly. But I think he actually took pleasure in doing the work. He was an electrical engineer, designing power stations. But though I wasn't all that aware of it, he had stress at the office. "Doing stuff" was a form of recreation for him: I think he liked applying his mind to whatever the problem was and dealing with it. He liked making things, and wiring things. So, in a way, he was his own artisan.

:D

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

The nineteenth century saying was "From shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations."