From Congregation Town to Industrial City : : Culture and Social Change in a Southern Community / / Michael Shirley.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter New York University Press Archive eBook-Package Pre-2000
• VerfasserIn: Shirley, Michael,
• Place / Publishing House: New York, NY : : New York University Press, , [1994]; ©1994
• Year of Publication: 1994
• Language: English
• Series: The American Social Experience ; 3
• Physical Description: 1 online resource

In 1835, Winston and Salem was a well-ordered, bucolic, and attractive North Carolina town. A visitor could walk up Main Street from the village square and get a sense of the quiet Moravian community that had settled here. Yet, over the next half-century, this idyllic village was to experience dramatic changes. The Industrial Revolution calls forth images of great factories, mills, and machinery; yet, the character of the Industrial Revolution went beyond mere changes in modes of production. It meant the radical transformation of economic, social, and political institutions, and the emergence of a new mindset that brought about new ways of thinking and acting. Here is the illuminating story of Winston-Salem, a community of artisans and small farmers united, as members of a religious congregation, by a single vision of life. Transformed in just a few decades from an agricultural region into the home of the smokestacks and office towers of the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company and the Wachovia Bank and Trust Company, the Moravian community at Salem offers an illuminating illustration of the changes that swept Southern society in the nineteenth century and the concomitant development in these communities of a new ethos. Providing a rich wealth of information about the Winston-Salem community specifically, From Congregation Town to Industrial City also significantly broadens our understanding of how wholesale changes in the nineteenth century South redefined the meaning and experience of community. For, by the end of the century, community had gained an entirely new meaning, namely as a forum in which competing individuals pursued private opportunities and interests.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- List of Illustrations -- Maps -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- ONE. The Congregational Community of the Moravians -- TWO. The Congregation and a Changing Economy -- THREE. Manufacturing and Community in Salem -- FOUR. Community Culture in Antebellum Salem -- FIVE. The Community at War -- SIX. Postbellum Winston and Salem: The Emergence of a Business Class -- SEVEN. Workers in an Industrial Community -- EIGHT. The Industrial Community: Drawing the Lines of Class and Race -- Conclusion -- APPENDIX A. Rules and Regulations -- APPENDIX B. Occupational Classifications for Population Sample from 1850 Census -- APPENDIX C. Occupational Classifications for Population Sample from 1880 Census -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index