ABSTRACT
This chapter shows how the Social Register became an index of the inter-city upper class which emerged in the last part of the nineteenth century in America. It places the more detailed study of the upper class and the elite in Philadelphia within a national, rather than local, context, both historically and structurally. Human society is an historical process wherein each generation sifts to the top particular individual types-warriors, prophets, priests, merchants, bankers, or bureaucrats-whose talents are needed in any given period; these individuals, in turn, and within limits, make the decisions which shape the course of history. As an upper class is intimately connected with history, the validity of the Social Register as an upper-class index depends on the relationship of its members with past elites. But an elite has no group existence or history-only individual members have a past; elite members are making history while some of their heirs will become members of some future upper class.
