A History of Modern Europe - From the Renaissance to the Present

544 Ch. 14 • The Industrial Revolution

Evening prayer in a Viennese middle-class household.

whom were concerned only with wealth and status. Virtue could also be

found among the men and women of the middle class.

The English middle class also viewed religion as a way of “moralizing”

workers by teaching them self-respect. By the mid-nineteenth century, more

than 2.6 million children attended Sunday schools, many created by the

working-class communities they served. They provided the children of work­

ers with educational, social, and recreational opportunities not otherwise

available. Indeed the middle class did not have a monopoly on “respectabil­

ity” and the virtues of hard work and discipline.

The Ambiguities of Liberalism: Voluntarism versus

State Intervention

Clubs, societies, and other voluntary associations became part of middle­

class life. Some, organized exclusively for leisure activities, manifested an

upper-class sense of social distinction, such as the exclusive clubs of west

London and the Anglophile Jockey Club of Paris. French bourgeois increas­

ingly joined sociable “circles,” and German university students formed duel­

ing fraternities (Burschenschaften). Middle-class women formed their own

clubs, among the few public opportunities open to them.