Making Men, Making Class: The YMCA and Workingmen, 1877-1920

by Thomas Winter

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the United States transformed from an essentially agrarian society into an urban, industrialized economy. In Making Men, Making Class , Thomas Winter explores the impact of these profound changes on constructions of manhood, using the YMCA's new efforts to reach out to railroad and industrial workers as a case study.

Starting in the 1870s, the leaders ("secretaries") of the YMCA sought to reduce political radicalism and labor unrest by instilling new ideals of manliness among workers. By involving workingmen in a range of activities on the job and off, the YMCA hoped to foster team spirit, moral conduct, and new standards of manhood that would avoid conflict and instead encourage cooperation along the lines of a Christian, pious manliness. In their efforts to make better men, the secretaries of the YMCA also crafted new ideals of middle-class manliness for themselves that involved a sense of mission and social purpose. In doing so, they ended up "making" class, too, as they began to speak a language of manhood structured by class differences.

208 pages, Paperback

First published May 15, 2002

Reviews

[Rogue Reader · Rating 4 out of 5]

Whys and hows of the YMCA's mission to evangelize among the working class so temperance, labor stability, evangelism. Well written and a pleasure to read.

[Lance · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are not many histories of the YMCA out there, but this is certainly one of the most engaging, though a bit limited in scope. Winters does a great job using archival research to explicate how masculinity was formulated at the intersection between class and gender, particularly as the YMCA sought to influence railroad and industrial workers. According to Winters, there was a fundamental contradiction between the YMCA's idea of a classless "brotherhood" and the subjugation of lower class workers imbricated within professional, middle class notions of masculinity. Though Winter's observations are useful in the particular contexts he observes, occasionally his interpretations make rather large and unwarranted leaps. Readers should understand that the YMCA developed into a large transnational organization with diverse perspectives . . . Winters is only looking at one slice. Neither the YMCA, nor their notions of masculinity, functioned as a monolith. Winter's history is much more useful in dialogue with other histories ... though I suppose you can say that of any historical work.