Ignorance

For a tourist first visiting the city to learn about the history of American, corporate, textile capitalism, it would be quite easy to overlook the many facets of daily life, which underlined the socioeconomic stations in life experienced by different social groups.

Roughly speaking, the city’s economy could be subdivided into three  major socioeconomic groups, such as:

a) Corporate industrialists and investors, movers and shakers, who provided the financial and technical wherewithal to maintain the vast and distributed, industrial machinery producing the city’s textile wealth.

b) Owner-operated private businesses such as: doctors, dentists, insurance companies, electricians, plumbers, painters, contractors, body shops, lawyers, grocery stores, ma and pa variety stores and more.

c) Operatives, laborers, handymen and unskilled or semi-skilled workers, who did much of the grunt-work, which the first two categories (above) produced. This group was far and away the largest single category of workers within Spindle City.