LITMIR.BIZ

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      The Vanderbilts, Astors, and Whitneys were among those sound, able persons, as was Franklin Delano Roosevelt—as was John Pierpont Morgan, who, according to Kit and Frederica Konolige, saw the Episcopal Church as “another agency for the improvement of America and the American aristocracy.” By the 1950s, reported Vance Packard, corporation executives were ten times as likely as other Americans to identify themselves as Episcopalians; furthermore, three-quarters of social weddings reported in the New York Times took place in Episcopal churches.

      What of it, aside from the potential for class snobbery and reactionary defense of privilege? The question is plausible: little more than that. Superficial acquaintance with nineteenth-century novels could give the impression of a moat between rich and poor, dug and maintained by the rich for their exclusive benefit, impassable except in tales where the factory owner’s son weds the daughter of the head housekeeper or some such. It would be more to the point to note how impermanent is “class” identity in America, given the constant migration upwards and downwards between various classes—the general direction nonetheless being upward—with so-called social lines marked as often by automobiles as by attitudes.