ABSTRACT
In modern metropolitan America, the club serves to place the adult members of society and their families within the social hierarchy. These voluntary associations to which members are elected by ballot provide an intricate web of primary group milieux which give form and structure to an otherwise impersonal urban society composed of secondary groups. The social club in America has done a great deal to keep alive the gentleman in the courtly sense. The primary function of the Philadelphia and Rittenhouse clubs is the ascription of upper-class status. The continuing strength of the British aristocracy has been partly due to the fact that an hereditary nobility was always balanced by an ample supply of new titled men of merit. The familistic simplicity of a great deal of upper-class life along the Main Line and Chestnut Hill sides of the river is reflected in small tennis and swimming clubs with unpretentious old Pennsylvania farm houses serving as club houses.
