White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America

by Nancy Isenberg

Puritans never opposed commerce or the acquisition of wealth, but they were clearly conflicted when it came to social mobility. The government enacted sumptuary laws, penalizing those who wore rich silks or gold buttons in an attempt to rise above their class station. Overly prosperous people aroused envy, and Puritan orthodoxy dictated against such exhibition of arrogance, pride, and insolence. In the 1592 tract On the Right, Lawful, and Holy Use of Apparel, the English Puritan clergyman William Perkins had shown how appearance demarcated one’s standing in the Great Chain of Being, God’s class hierarchy. Unsanctioned displays of finery were disruptive, an infraction on the same order as masters who treated servants too leniently. Both were perceived as early indicators of a society falling from grace.