ABSTRACT
The social revolution brought in a large social stratum of the middle classes which, in urban and industrial districts, was composed of medium-sized merchants, larger shopkeepers, clerks, and professionals like bankers and lawyers. This group might aspire to escape to a gentrified country house, but characteristically settled for new suburban houses to rent. Their values were less represented in ostentatious consumption; they deprecated the idleness of many of the rich who lived off rental income, dallied in foreign travel and conducted a decadent social life. With political radicalism and the spread of trade unionism between the 1790s and 1820s, social classes were being forged in increasingly oppositional social relations, created by the new modes of economic production, ideas induced by the French Revolution and by growing social distance. Industrial employers and urban elites saw in traditional forms of play and recreation challenges to the order and discipline needed for continued economic development.
