As the United States industrialized, the terms middle class and working class came widely into use. Americans adopted these broad identities not only in the workplace but also in their leisure time. Professionals and corporate managers prospered; they and their families enjoyed rising income and an array of tempting ways to spend their dollars. Celebrating these new technological wonders, Americans hailed inventors as heroes. The most famous, Thomas Edison, operated an independent laboratory rather than working for a corporation. Edison, like many of the era’s businessmen, was a shrewd entrepreneur who focused on commercial success. He and his colleagues helped introduce such lucrative products as the incandescent lightbulb and the phonograph, which came widely into use in American homes.

Even working-class Americans enjoyed cheaper products delivered by global trade and mass production, from bananas and cigarettes to colorful dime novels and magazines. Edison’s moving pictures, for example, first found popularity among the urban working class. Consumer culture appeared, at least, to be democratic: anyone should be able to eat at a restaurant or buy a rail ticket for the “ladies’ car” — as long as she or he could pay. In practice, though, this was not the case, and consumer venues became sites of struggle over class inequality, race privilege, and proper male and female behavior.