Making Men, Making Class: The YMCA and Workingmen, 1877–1920. By Thomas Winter. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2002. Pp. vii, 208. $40.00, cloth; $17.00, paper.

Extract

To comprehend how republican Victorians in the Gilded Age became liberal moderns in the Progressive Era we must grasp the tensions between gender and class in shaping identity. Thomas Winter in Making Men, Making Class aids in our understanding of this fundamental shift by providing a study of the middle-class men who ran the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA). YMCA secretaries, Winter argues, attempted “to transcend class lines and unite men on the basis of manhood [which] ultimately led them to articulate new definitions of manhood structured by class difference” (p. 7). Making Men is the story of YMCA leaders' desire to quell working-class radicalism by promoting an idea of manhood rooted in hard work, loyalty to employers, and Christian fellowship.