The People of Hamilton, Canada West: Family and Class in a Mid-nineteenth-century City (Harvard Studies in Urban History)

In this brilliant book, Michael Katz creates with vigor and sensitivity a decade in the life of a small Canadian city. He writes with the verve of a historical novelist, but in the process fulfills completely his reputation as one of the continent’s most exciting younger historians. One is totally captivated by his recreation and his analysis.Katz makes it clear that his book is a “mixture of hard data and rash speculation,” but he has, in fact, amassed extraordinarily complete data which he uses to make a series of important statements about the people who lived in Hamilton, the structure of their inequality, their social and physical mobility, their growing up and growing rich, or not. He blends history, sociology, and psychology in a unique fashion when he describes growing up in the nineteenth century, either as a member of the entrepreneurial class in a small but thriving commercial city, or as one less favored.This book will profoundly affect the future direction of social history because of its focus, its methods, and its style, and because the author asks a series of extraordinarily provocative questions. What connections, for example, can we assume between the structure of the family and attitudes and emotions of the people within it? Can we assume that growing up within a nineteenth-century extended family produced a different set of attitudes or a different personality in a child than life within a nuclear family? What inference can we draw from the stability of the distribution of wealth across time? For several years I had the benefit of the help, comments, and criticism of a somewhat amorphous yet cohesive "project group" at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. The members of that group-students, colleagues and assistants-know how much I owe them. Particular thanks go to my assistant of several years, John Tiller, as well as to Contents Introduction Chapter one. The people of a Canadian City, 1851-52 Chapter two. The structure of Inequality, 1851 and 1861 Chapter three. Transiency and Social Mobility Chapter four. The Entrepreneurial Class Chapter five. Growing Up in the Nineteenth Century: Family, Household, and Youth Conclusion Appendix Notes Index