The growth of voluntary associations in America, 1840-1940

Journal of Interdisciplinary History

Volumn 29, Issue 4, 1999, Pages 511-557

  Gamm, Gerald ^a   Putnam, Robert D ^b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF ROCHESTER   (United States)

^b HARVARD UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0000244169     PISSN: 00221953     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1162/002219599551804     Document Type: Review

References (166)

1. Arthur M. Schlesinger, "Biography of a Nation of Joiners," American Historical Review, L (1944), 24.
2. Alexis de Tocqueville (ed., J. P. Mayer; trans., George Lawrence), Democracy in America (Garden City, 1969; orig. pub. 1835-1840), 514.
3. Theda Skocpol, "The Tocqueville Problem: Civic Engagement in American Democracy," Social Science History, XXI (1997), 463.
4. Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 513 (emphasis added).
5. Putnam, "Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social Capital," Journal of Democracy, VI (1995). 65-78;
6. Putnam, idem, Bowling Alone: Civic Disengagement in America (New York, 1999).
7. Although not strictly a random sample, we selected our research sites to be broadly representative. In the case of large and medium-sized cities, we selected the sample to maximize diversity along several dimensions and then searched for city directories for each city in the sample. In just two cases (Brooklyn and Minneapolis) were we unable to locate directories with associational listings covering at least the period 1870 to 1920. In the case of smaller cities and towns, we were more constrained. The choice of small cities was made only after a long search - in the Library of Congress, university research libraries, and state and local historical societies throughout the country - for small-city directory series that covered as long a time span as possible.
8. Because Sunday schools are not listed consistently in city directories, we have omitted them from our analysis in the rest of this article. (By contrast, churches and synagogues seem to have been listed comprehensively by directory compilers in virtually all our sites.) Henceforth, we report not the total number of associations in any city but the number of associations per 1,000 people. When we illustrate multi-city data in figures, we compute averages across all sites that are available for a given decade, rounding off-year directories up or down to the nearest census year. We use the actual city-directory years, without any rounding, in the regression analyses.
9. The Living Church Annual: The Churchman's Year Book & American Church Almanac, 1930 (Milwaukee, 1930);
10. Gamm, Urban Exodus: Why the Jews Left Boston and the Catholics Stayed (Cambridge, Mass., 1999). See also Appendix B.
11. Peter R. Knights, The Plain People of Boston, 1830-1860: A Study in City Growth (New York, 1971), 134-135;
12. Stephan Thernstrom, The Other Bostonians: Poverty and Progress in the American Metropolis, 1880-1970 (Cambridge, Mass., 1973), 285-288.
13. This search was conducted by Jonathan Leeman, who led the effort to compile a massive body of reports to supplement the city-directory data. This article analyzes evidence from the reports that include the fullest sets of membership numbers.
14. David Hackett Fischer, Paul Revere's Ride (New York, 1994); Schlesinger, "Biography."
15. Roger Finke and Rodney Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990 (New Brunswick, 1992);
16. Donald G. Mathews, "The Second Great Awakening as an Organizing Process, 1780-1830: An Hypothesis," American Quarterly, XXI (1969), 23-43;
17. Nathan O. Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity (New Haven, 1989);
18. Charles C. Cole, Jr., The Social Ideas of the Northern Evangelists, 1820-1860 (New York, 1954);
19. Anne M. Boylan, Sunday School: The Formation of an American Institution, 1790-1880 (New Haven, 1988).
20. Mary P. Ryan, Cradle of the Middle Class: The Family in Oneida County, New York, 1790-1865 (Cambridge, 1981), 105.
21. See also Mary P. Ryan, idem, Civic Wars: Democracy and Public Life in the American City during the Nineteenth Century (Berkeley, 1997);
22. Schlesinger, "Biography"; Carl Bode, The American Lyceum: Town Meeting of the Mind (New York, 1956);
23. David Rothman, The Discovery of the Asylum: Social Order and Disorder in the New Republic (Boston, 1971);
24. Rowland Berthoff, An Unsettled People: Social Order and Disorder in American History (New York, 1971);
25. Nancy Cott, The Bonds of Womanhood: Woman's Sphere in New England, 1790-1835 (New Haven, 1975);
26. James Brewer Stewart, Holy Warriors: The Abolitionists and American Slavery (New York, 1976);
27. Paul Boyer, Urban Masses and Moral Order in America, 1820-1920 (Cambridge, Mass., 1978);
28. Paul Aaron and David Musto, "Temperance and Prohibition in America: A Historical Overview," in Mark H. Moore and Dean Gernstein (eds.), Alcohol and Public Policy: Beyond the Shadow of Prohibition (Washington, D.C., 1981);
29. Jed Dannenbaum, Drink and Disorder: Temperance Reform in Cincinnati from the Washington Revival to the WCTU (Urbana, 1984);
30. Kathleen Smith Kutolowski, "Freemasonry and Community in the Early Republic: The Case for Antimasonic Anxieties," American Quarterly, XXXIV (1982), 543-561;
31. Charles F. Ferguson, Fifty Million Brothers: A Panorama of American Lodges and Clubs (New York, 1937);
32. Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz, Campus Life: Undergraduate Cultures from the End of the Eighteenth Century to the Present (New York, 1987).
33. Stuart M. Blumin, The Emergence of the Middle Class: Social Experience in the American City, 1760-1900 (Cambridge, 1989), 192.
34. Stuart M. Blumin, See also idem, The Urban Threshold: Growth and Change in a Nineteenth-Century American Community (Chicago, 1976);
35. Ryan, Civic Wars;
36. Timothy L. Smith, Revivalism and Social Reform: American Protestantism on the Eve of the Civil War (Baltimore, 1957);
37. L. L. Doggett, History of the Young Men's Christian Association (New York, 1909);
38. Charles Howard Hopkins, History of the Y.M.C.A. in North America (New York, 1951).
39. Wallace Evan Davies, Patriotism on Parade: The Story of Veterans' and Hereditary Organizations in America, 1783-1900 (Cambridge, Mass., 1955);
40. Rodney G. Minott, Peerless Patriots: Organized Veterans and the Spirit of Americanism (Washington, D.C., 1962);
41. David Bennett, The Party of Fear: From Nativist Movements to the New Right in American History (Chapel Hill, 1988);
42. John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860-1925 (New Brunswick, 1988);
43. Barbara Miller Solomon, Ancestors and Immigrants: A Changing New England Tradition (Cambridge, Mass., 1956);
44. Ferguson, Fifty Million Brothers;
45. John Robson (ed.), Baird's Manual of American College Fraternities (Menasha, Wisc., 1968; 18th ed.);
46. David I. Macleod, Building Character in the American Boy: The Boy Scouts, YMCA, and Their Forerunners, 1870-1920 (Madison, 1983);
47. D. Sven Nordin, Rich Harvest: A History of the Grange, 1867-1900 (Jackson, 1974);
48. Lawrence Goodwyn, Democratic Promise: The Populist Moment in America (New York, 1976);
49. Robert C. McMath, Jr., American Populism: A Social History, 1877-1898 (New York, 1993);
50. Alan Dawley and Paul Faler, "Working-Class Culture and Politics in the Industrial Revolution: Sources of Loyalism and Rebellion," Journal of Social History, IX (1976), 466-480;
51. Stephen Hardy, How Boston Played: Sport, Recreation, and Community, 1865-1915 (Boston, 1982);
52. Melvin Adelman, A Sporting Time: New York City and the Rise of Modern Athletics, 1820-1870 (Urbana, 1986);
53. John S. Gilkeson, Jr., Middle-Class Providence, 1820-1940 (Princeton, 1986);
54. Steven Riess, City Games: The Evolution of American Urban Society and the Rise of Sports (Urbana, 1989);
55. Karen Blair, The Torchbearers: Women and Their Amateur Arts Associations in America, 1890-1930 (Bloomington, 1994);
56. Hopkins, History of the Y.M.C.A.
57. W. S. Harwood, "Secret Societies in America," North American Review, CLXIV (1897), 617,
58. also 620. See also Schlesinger, "Biography";
59. Lynn Dumenil, Freemasonry and American Culture, 1880-1939 (Princeton, 1984);
60. Mary Ann Clawson, Constructing Brotherhood: Class, Gender and Fraternalism (Princeton, 1989);
61. Jeffrey A. Charles, Service Clubs in American Society: Rotary, Kiwanis, and Lions (Urbana, 1993);
62. Clifford Putney, "Service Over Secrecy: How Lodge-Style Fraternalism Yielded Popularity to Men's Service Clubs," Journal of Popular Culture, XXVII (1993), 179-190.
63. Ruth Bordin, Woman and Temperance: The Quest for Power and Liberty, 1875-1900 (Philadelphia, 1981);
64. Aaron and Musto, "Temperance and Prohibition," 146-147;
65. Anne Firor Scott, Natural Allies: Women's Associations in American History (Urbana, 1992);
66. Skocpol, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States (Cambridge, Mass., 1992);
67. Jack S. Blocker, Jr., Retreat from Reform: The Prohibition Movement in the United States, 1890-1913 (Westport, 1976);
68. K. Austin Kerr, Organized for Prohibition: A New History of the Anti-Saloon League (New Haven, 1985);
69. Richard F. Hamm, Shaping the Eighteenth Amendment: Temperance Reform, Legal Culture, and the Polity, 1880-1920 (Chapel Hill, 1995).
70. Kathleen Neils Conzen, "Immigrants, Immigrant Neighborhoods, and Ethnic Identity: Historical Issues," Journal of American History, LXVI (1979), 603-615;
71. James M. Berquist, "German Communities in American Cities: An Interpretation of the Nineteenth Century Experience, "Journal of American Ethnic History, IV (1984), 9-30;
72. Scott, "Most Invisible of All: Black Women's Voluntary Associations," Journal of Southern History, LVI (1990), 3-22;
73. Susan D. Greenbaum, "A Comparison of African American and Euro-American Mutual Aid Societies in 19th Century America," Journal of Ethnic Studies, XIX (1991), 95-119;
74. Samuel L. Baily, "The Adjustment of Italian Immigrants in Buenos Aires and New York, 1870-1914," American Historical Review, LXXXVIII (1983), 281-305;
75. John Bodnar, The Transplanted: A History of Immigrants in Urban America (Bloomington, 1985);
76. Shelly Tenenbaum, "Immigrants and Capital: Jewish Loan Societies in the United States, 1880-1945," American Jewish History, LXXVI (1986), 67-77;
77. Daniel Soyer, Jewish Immigrant Associations and American Identity in New York, 1880-1939 (Cambridge, Mass., 1997).
78. Finke and Stark, Churching of America;
79. E. Brooks Holifield, "Toward a History of American Congregations," in James P. Wind and James W. Lewis (eds.), American Congregations (Chicago, 1994), II;
80. Boylan, Sunday School;
81. Aaron I. Abell, The Urban Impact on American Protestantism, 1865-1900 (Cambridge, Mass., 1943);
82. Jay P. Dolan, The American Catholic Experience: A History from Colonial Times to the Present (Garden City, 1985);
83. Gilkeson, Middle-Class Providence;
84. Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women's Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880-1920 (Cambridge, Mass., 1993);
85. Hopkins, Rise of the Social Gospel in American Protestantism, 1865-1919 (New Haven, 1940);
86. Jenna Weissman Joselit, "The Special Sphere of the Middle-Class American Jewish Woman: The Synagogue Sisterhood, 1890-1940," in Jack Wertheimer (ed.), The American Synagogue: A Sanctuary Transformed (Cambridge, 1987);
87. Diane Winston, "Boozers, Brass Bands, and Hallelujah Lassies: The Salvation Army and Commercial Culture in New York City, 1880-1918," unpub. Ph.D. diss. (Princeton Univ., 1996).
88. This pattern is similar to that recently reported in a wholly independent study by Peter Dobkin Hall (personal communication) about associational life in New Haven, Connecticut, between 1850 and 1950, also based on city-directory listings.
89. The average size of the groups for which membership figures are reported in the city directories is about 200 members; ancillary evidence suggests that this estimate may be biased upward, since smaller groups were less likely to report membership figures. City directories after 1900 include virtually no evidence on membership, so we cannot continue this directory-based analysis of membership into the twentieth century.
90. Louis Wirth, "Urbanism as a Way of Life," American Journal of Sociology, XLIV (1938), 12.
91. See also Robert H. Wiebe, The Search for Order, 1877-1920 (New York, 1967);
92. Thomas Bender, Community and Social Change in America (Baltimore, 1978), 108-110.
93. Hopkins, History of the Y.M.C.A.;
94. Cole, Social Ideas;
95. Clifford S. Griffin, "Religious Benevolence as Social Control, 1815-1860," Mississippi Valley Historical Review, XLIV (1957), 423-444;
96. Joseph Gusfield, Symbolic Crusade: Status, Politics and the American Temperance Movement (Urbana, 1966);
97. Berthoff, Unsettled People;
98. Blocker, Retreat from Reform;
99. Boyer, Urban Masses;
100. Elizabeth Dale Ross, The Kindergarten Crusade: The Establishment of Preschool Education in the United States (Athens, 1976);
101. Paul E. Johnson, A Shopkeeper's Millennium: Society and Revivals in Rochester, New York, 1815-1837 (New York, 1978);
102. Dominick Cavallo, Muscles and Morals: Organized Playgrounds and Urban Reform, 1880-1920 (Philadelphia, 1981);
103. Rivka Shpak Lissak, Pluralism and the Progressives: Hull House and the New Immigrants, 1590-1919 (Chicago, 1989);
104. Hopkins, Rise of the Social Gospel;
105. Abell, Urban Impact;
106. Joseph Timberlake, Prohibition and the Progressive Movement, 1900-1920 (Cambridge, Mass., 1963);
107. Allen F. Davis, Spearheads for Reform: The Social Settlements and the Progressive Movement, 1690-1914 (New York, 1967);
108. Lois W. Banner, "Religious Benevolence as Social Control: A Critique of an Interpretation," Journal of American History, LX (1973), 23-41;
109. Boylan, Sunday School.
110. Berthoff, Unsettled People, 273.
111. See also Hardy, How Boston Played;
112. Dawley and Faler, "Working-Class Culture and Politics"; Randall M. Miller, "Introduction," in idem and Thomas D. Marzik (eds.), Immigrants and Religion in Urban America (Philadelphia, 1977);
113. Timothy L. Smith, "Religion and Ethnicity in America," American Historical Unfair, LXXXIII (1978), 1155-1185;
114. Dolan, American Catholic Experience;
115. Bodnar, Transplanted.
116. Davies, Patriotism on Parade; Solomon, Ancestors and Immigrants;
117. Kenneth Jackson, The Ku Klux Klan in the City, 1915-1930 (New York, 1967);
118. Bennett, Parly of Fear;
119. Higham, Strangers in the Land.
120. Bordin, Woman and Temperance;
121. Paula Baker, "The Domestication of Politics: Women and American Political Society, 1780-1920," American Historical Review, LXXXIX (1984), 620-647;
122. Mark Carnes, Secret Ritual and Manhood in Victorian America (New Haven, 1989);
123. Clawson, Constructing Brotherhood;
124. Skocpol, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers;
125. Charles, Service Clubs;
126. Putney, "Service Over Secrecy";
127. Macleod, Building Character;
128. Riess, City Games;
129. Jodi Vandenberg-Daves, "The Manly Pursuit of a Partnership Between the Sexes: The Debate Over YMCA Programs for Women and Girls, 1914-1933," Journal of American History, LXXVIII (1992), 1324-1346;
130. Winston, "Boozers, Brass Bands, and Hallelujah Lassies";
131. Joselit, "Special Sphere";
132. Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent.
133. Berthoff, Unsettled People, 272, also 274.
134. See also Davies, Patriotism on Parade;
135. Dumenil, Freemasonry;
136. Clawson, Constructing Brotherhood, 146-149;
137. Charles, Service Clubs;
138. Putney, "Service Over Secrecy."
139. Morton Keller, Affairs of State: Public Life in Late Nineteenth Century America (Cambridge, Mass., 1977), 517;
140. Wiebe, Search for Order, 127. Keller also attributes the growth of voluntary associations to "agrarian loneliness," but it is not clear that farmers were growing more isolated in the late nineteenth century than they had been in previous times.
141. In aggregate terms, associational density in the South was greater than that in the Northeast, though less than that in the West and Midwest. Associationalism in the South, however, was heavily concentrated in churches; secular associational density in the South was no greater than in the Northeast.
142. Tocqueville, Democracy in America;
143. Adam Gopnik, "Olmsted's Trip," The New Yorker, 31 March 1997, 96-104.
144. Slow-growing cities in this era were expanding about 1 percent per annum, as compared with roughly 7 percent per annum for fast-growing cities.
145. 2 = .51). Each of the regression coefficients that we discuss below is statistically significant at the .00002 level or better.
146. Because of the skewed distribution of the population size and growth data, we have logged these variables in our equations. This strategy amounts to saying that the difference between 1,000 and 10,000 residents is comparable to the difference between 10,000 and 100,000, rather than to the difference between 100,000 and 109,000.
147. Population change is measured here as the difference between the log of population in the year of the directory and the log of that city's population ten years earlier.
148. Thernstrom, Other Bostonians, 224.
149. See also Knights, Plain People of Boston;
150. Clyde Griffen, "Workers Divided: The Effect of Craft and Ethnic Differences in Poughkeepsie, New York, 1850-1880," in Thernstrom and Richard Sennett (eds.), Nineteenth-Century Cities (New Haven, 1969);
151. Edward Kopf, "Untarnishing the Dream: Mobility, Opportunity, and Order in Modern America," Journal of Social History, XI (1977), 206-227.
152. Putnam, with Roberto Leonardi and Raffaella Y. Nanetti, Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (Princeton, 1993);
153. Sidney Verba, Kay Lehman Schlozman, and Henry E. Brady, Voice and Equality: Civic Voluntarism in American Politics (Cambridge, Mass., 1995).
154. Martin Shefter, "Regional Receptivity to Reform: The Legacy of the Progressive Era," Political Science Quarterly, XCVIII (1983), 459-460.
155. Ryan, Civic Wars, 9.
156. John Kasson, Amusing the Million: Coney Island at the Turn of the Century (New York, 1978);
157. Gunther Barth, City People: The Rise of Modem City Culture in Nineteenth-Century America (New York, 1980);
158. Francis Couvares, "The Triumph of Commerce: Class Culture and Mass Culture in Pittsburgh," in Michael Frisch and Daniel Walkowitz (eds.), Working-Class America: Essays on Labor, Community, and American Society (Urbana, 1983);
159. Riess, City Games;
160. Roy Rosenzweig, Eight Hours for What We Will: Workers and Leisure in an Industrial City, 1870-1920 (Cambridge, 1983);
161. David Nasaw, Going Out: The Rise and Fall of Public Amusements (New York, 1993).
162. Skocpol, "Tocqueville Problem," 470, 471.
163. Baker, "Domestication of Politics";
164. Richard L. McCormick, "Public Life in Industrial America, 1877-1917," in Eric Foner (ed.), The New American History (Philadelphia, 1990);
165. Skocpol, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers;
166. Elisabeth S. Clemens, The People's Lobby: Organizational Innovation and the Rise of Interest Group Politics in the United States, 1890-1925 (Chicago, 1997).