Good old Otto McFeely, revered long-ago newspaper editor, is said to have christened Oak Park the “Middle-Class Capital of America.” He had a point. Geographically situated in the middle of the Midwest, Oak Park remains a bastion of middle-classness — though the middle class of late has seen better days.
I grew up here in the 1950s and ’60s and now think of that era as the “Golden Age of the American Middle Class.” Post-Depression and Post-War prosperity, it was a confident era for the country. Confident enough to declare a “War on Poverty.” Confident enough to handle the cultural revolution of the late ’60s, which achieved progress on several civil-rights fronts.
But the country changed. “Middle class” became synonymous with materialism, complacency, conformity. Boomers craved more meaning, freedom, and social justice — all good things. But so was prosperity. Though the affluence wasn’t spread widely enough, economic inequality between the rich and the rest was narrower by the mid-1970s than it had ever been.
Appalled by this level of equity, the Republicans went reactionary. With the election of Ronald Reagan and over the ensuing 46 years, the gap between the top 10% and the rest of us has grown ever wider.
Ben Franklin must be spinning in his grave.
Franklin was the great champion of the middle class in the 18th century. In fact he pretty much invented it. He liked to identify himself as “B. Franklin, printer,” a reference to his proudly chosen trade. As his horizons widened, he continued to print and publish and became America’s greatest cultural influencer.
I recently read Walter Isaacson’s excellent book Benjamin Franklin – An American Life and highly recommend it to everyone as preparation for the nation’s 250th anniversary. As a scientist Franklin was, in his day, considered on a par with Isaac Newton. England’s David Hume called him America’s “first philosopher.” He negotiated the peace treaty with Great Britain and France following the Revolution, and prevented either from gaining undue influence over the newly independent nation. He then coaxed, cultivated, compromised and convinced congressional delegates to sign onto the only Constitution that could birth the fragile coalition known as the United States of America — a document that somehow survived slavery and the Civil War and may someday move us beyond the perfidy of the autocrat currently attempting to bury it.
Franklin also contributed the best correction in the history of editing, when he adjusted “the greatest sentence ever written” (according to Isaacson), the one that famously begins, “We hold these truths to be …,” replacing Jefferson’s initial word choice, “sacred,” with something more forceful and enduring.
We hold these truths to be “self-evident.”
The greatest achievement of the American Revolution, Isaacson says, was the creation of a viable middle class, layering a much-needed buffer between wealthy landowners and the less well to do, which didn’t yet exist anywhere in the world.
As the most prominent proponent of that class, Franklin forged — through words and deeds — this country’s core character: industriousness, frugality, humility, common-sense practicality, and the pursuit of self-improvement in order to serve the common good.
“He devised legislatures and lightning rods, lotteries and lending libraries,” Isaacson writes. “He sought practical ways to make stoves less smoky and commonwealths less corrupt. He organized neighborhood constabularies and international alliances. He combined two types of lenses to create bifocals and two concepts of representation to foster the nation’s federal compromise. … All of this made him the most accomplished American of his age and the most influential in inventing the type of society America would become. Indeed, the roots of much of what distinguishes the nation can be found in Franklin: its cracker-barrel humor and wisdom; its technological ingenuity; its pluralistic tolerance; its ability to weave together individualism and community cooperation; its philosophical pragmatism; its celebration of meritocratic mobility; the idealistic streak ingrained in its foreign policy. … He was egalitarian in what became the American sense: he approved of individuals making their way to wealth through diligence and talent, but opposed giving special privileges to people based on their birth. …
“He saw middle-class values as a source of social strength, not as something to be derided. His guiding principle was a ‘dislike of everything that tended to debase the spirit of the common people.’ Few of his fellow founders felt this comfort with democracy so fully, and none so intuitively.”
Our country today, sadly, is characterized more by “haves and have-nots.” The middle class has been “hollowed out” and is seldom cited with admiration or even respect. But I’m proud to live in this Middle-Class Capital of America where we embrace diversity and strive to reduce white privilege. Franklin, I think, would approve.
As we approach our nation’s 250th birthday — battling an unwanted return to aristocratic authoritarianism for the first time since Franklin and his contemporaries rejected it — there is an urgent need for a more expansive and inclusive middle class while reviving its vision of community improvement and responsible citizenship.
Another truth that is, as Ben Franklin once put it, self-evident.
