Working Cities:
An Examination of Labor, Class and Fulfillment in Turn of the Century Urban America
Fiction that is contemporary to a given society often provides an effective means of understanding
the nuances and conventions of that period. Thus, work and fulfillment across the classes of early 20th
American Cities can be understood within the framework of three novels: Edith Wharton’s 1920 narrative The
Age of Innocence examining the socially elite class, Upton Sinclair’s 1906 exposé The Jungle, depicting the
laboring class and Frank Norris’s 1899 work of realism, McTeague, highlighting the professional class.
Considering these novels collectively it becomes clear that the professional class, as embodied by the title
character of McTeague, is the only class in the early 20th
from its labor because, while members of the class must work for subsistence, their position as skilled
professionals allows them the autonomy requite to preforming meaningful work. In contrast, members of the
both the laboring and socially elite classes fail to find meaning in their work as those in the laboring class
engage in monotonous, banausic labor from which they can derive little meaning while members of the social
elite class are compelled into certain fields of employment through societal convention and, hence, are
disengaged from their work.
Newland Archer, the protagonist of The Age of Innocence, is an archetypical member of the socially
elite class whose apathetic approach to his employment causes him to trivialize his work and thus derive little
fulfillment from it. Due to his societal position, much of Archer’s future is preordained, from the focus of his
education at Harvard to his employment at a New York City law firm. However, Archer is not only denied by
social convention the opportunity to discover a profession about which he is truly passionate but, because of
his monetary stability, he has no need to engage with his work on the basis of providing sustenance for
himself. Thus, even when arriving hours late to his job, Archer “[perceives] that his doing so made no
difference whatever to anyone, and was filled with sudden exasperation at the elaborate futility of his life…”
(The Age of Innocence, 103).
Archer is a lawyer only in title; in reality he is without any sort of occupational direction
and, hence, lives a life in which he has few sources of true meaning. Archer, free from the concern of
providing himself with means of survival, is economically empowered to pursue humanity’s intrinsic desire to
cultivate sources of passion and fulfillment that allows one to lead a life of passion and meaning. However,
the stifling conformity of the almost tribal-like societal elite of urban America forces him to lead a life that he
recognizes as an abject “futility”. Though Archer has “seen enough of other young men who had dreamed his
dream [of living a fulfilling life]… and who had gradually sunk into the placid and luxurious routine of their
elders,” (103) he is socially restrained from engaging in more meaningful work despite actively recognizing
the utter uselessness of his current employment and, hence, the risk of leading an adult life that is entirely
absent of value. Archer attempts to stymie this progression by seeking alternative sources of gratification,
including reading books, associating with the “bohemian class” of writers and even engaging in a emotional
affair with a quasi-member of the societal elite who rejects the class’s conventions. However, after Archer
passively dissolves the affair so as to conform to the standard life path of a member of his class, his life
slowly crystalizes into the unfilled existence typical of his class. “[Archer] had been, in short, what people
were beginning to call ‘a good citizen’… His days were full, and they were filled decently. He supposed it
was all a man ought to ask.” (286). Thus the tragedy of Archer, and the greater tragedy of his class, is that
though he is in the rare economic position to seek out and engage in meaningful employment, he cannot
transcend the societal barriers that instead define his life. While “the young men [of Archer’s class] were
emancipating themselves from the law and business and taking up all sorts of new things” (285) to engage in
activities about which they are truly passionate, all Archer and the men of his generation can do is sit idly by,
living lives that are “all a man ought to ask”, though silently yearning for more.
In stark contrast to Archer, Jurgis Rudkus, the Lithuanian protagonist of The Jungle, lacks economic
autonomy as a unskilled immigrant and, as such, must accept whatever employment he can secure in
order to sustain himself and his family. While the calamity facing the social elite of urban America is the
inability of individuals to transcend societal convention to seek meaningful employment, the laboring class,
as personified by Jurgis, is unable to capitalize on its collective desire to find fulfilling labor, and hence
achieve the conventional “American Dream”, because of economic restraints. When Jurgis first arrives at the
Stockyards of Chicago, where his societal position has compelled him to find work, he is desperate to attach
a sense of meaning to his employment, despite the insignificance of his unskilled role. Thus, when Jurgis
secures a job at the stockyards, he concludes “all a man could do… was to take a thing like this as he found it,
and do as he was told; to be given a place in it and a share in its activities was a blessing, as one was grateful
for the sunshine and the rain.” (The Jungle, 51).
Jurgis recognizes that meaningful work is intrinsic to basic human fulfillment and thus
likens the “blessing” he sees his employment to fundamental natural sources of happiness. Indeed, Jurgis is so
eager to engage in valuable work, he is overcome with excitement after securing a job despite recognizing,
albeit excitedly, that he is merely “a sharer in all this activity, a cog in this marvelous machine [of the
stockyards].” (41). Jurgis is so optimistic about the stockyards because “he had the feeling that this whole
huge establishment had taken him under its protection, and had become responsible for his welfare” (51). He
derives this sense of security in the stockyards because he believes he has found meaningful employment, and
thus found a source of fulfillment, within its walls. However, because both Jurgis and the rest of Chicago’s
laboring class are economically compelled to work in the Stockyards, the management of the Stockyards has
little incentive to provide the sort of meaningful workplace that Jurgis envisioned alongside his initial feeling
of security. Instead, members of the laboring class preform agonizingly repetitive tasks at a frantic pace,
preventing even those individuals as initially sanguine as Jurgis to find any meaning in their work. Stockyard
laborers must effectively forsake all other sources of fulfillment, whether family, intellectual pursuits or even
rest, to serve their role as a cog. The relationship between the laboring class and their employment is so
imbalanced that every winter “…those whose time was come died off in hordes. All the year round they had
been serving cogs in the great packing machine, and now was the time for renovating it and the replacement
of damaged parts.” (91). However, because of their societal positions, Jurgis and the laboring class must
accept this reality of labor relations or drop out of society all together. Therefore the only way for the laboring
class to engage in meaningful work is to restructure society by eliminating, as Marx and Engels advocated in
their Communist Manifesto “the miserable character of this appropriation [of labor], under which the laborer
lives merely to increase capital, and is allowed to live only in so far as the interest of the ruling class requires
it.” (The Marx-Engels Reader, 485). Thus when Jurgis learns of this alternative class system at end of the
novel he realizes he “was a man whose soul had been murdered, who had ceased to hope and to struggle– who
had made terms with degradation and despair…” (The Jungle, 367). While societal convention forces Archer
into trivial employment, it is economic necessity that compels Jurgis into all-consuming employment.
However, the result of each labor condition is the same as both men introspectively reflect on the
meaninglessness of their respective existences by the end of both novels.
Unlike both Archer and Jurgis, the title character of McTeague is able to engage in meaningful
work as a member of the professional class because his societal position allows him transcend the conformity
that plagues the social elite of the American city while still maintaining the economic autonomy that is
absent among the laboring class. As a dentist serving the working class of San Francisco, McTeague lacks
the monetary advantages that largely facilitate Archer’s apathetic approach to his work. Instead, McTeague
parallels the labor relationship of Jurgis in that he relies on his labor to sustain himself. However, while
Jurgis is placed in a dire economic position as member of the laboring class, and hence is forced to engage in
meaningless industrial labor, McTeague’s standing as a skilled professional allows him significant discretion
in defining his labor conditions. Thus McTeague, and other members of the professional class, engage in
work that strikes a medium between necessary and self-directed labor. Therefore, of the three examined
characters it is only McTeague who is demonstrated to lead a truly fulfilled life. McTeague’s general
satisfaction with his labor defines the rest of his existence, including the Sunday afternoons when he does not
work, which he approaches “as a period of relaxation and enjoyment. He invariably spent them in the same
fashion. These were his only pleasure–to eat, to smoke, to sleep and to play upon his concertina.” (McTeague,
2).
Due to the nature of their employment, neither Archer nor Jurgis would be able to derive this
sort of pleasure from an idle afternoon. Archer’s labor is so trivialized by social convention and lack of
economic incentive that he could never experience McTeague’s intrinsic sense of satisfaction from resting
after meaningful work. Thus, to the social elite “on Sunday evenings…the whole of New York is dying of
inanition,” (The Age of Innocence, 71). In contrast, the brutal nature of Jurgis’ labor leaves him and the rest
of the working class with “only Sundays [for rest], and then they were too tired to walk. They were tied
to the great packing machine, and tied to it for life…” (The Jungle, 124) and hence are similarly unable to
experience McTeague’s sense satisfaction.
However the contrast between the work of McTeague and the work of Archer and Jurgis
stems deeper then the pleasure they experience in their idle hours. For members of the laboring class and the
socially elite class, labor is merely means to greater ends: fulfilling economic necessity and fulfilling societal
convention, respectively. However, because members of the professional class derive such fulfillment from
their labor, their employment serves to define their very identity. Therefore, even when McTeague, who did
not attend a formal dental school, is forced out of his practice due to the phenomena of standardized
qualification among the professional class, he cannot separate current identify from his former position. When
McTeague receives an official decree that he can no longer practice he questions, “Ain’t I a dentist? Ain’t I a
doctor? Look at my sign… Why I’ve been practicing nearly twelve years.” (McTeague, 205). While Jurgis is
able to seamlessly adopt a new position within the Stockyards when he loses his job and Archer attaches so
little meaning his job that he vacations in St. Augustine during the work week without fear of consequence,
McTeague is so deeply connected to his position as a source of identity-defining fulfillment that he cannot
imagine life without it. Accordingly, until an official from City Hall intervenes McTeague continues to
practice, “acting from sheer force of habit; his sluggish, deliberate nature, methodical, obstinate, refusing to
adapt itself to the new conditions” (207). Thus, McTeague slowly decays into the sort of meaningless
existence led by Archer and Jurgis, as his obstinate pursuit of replacing his former source of fulfillment
ultimately renders him a crazed alcoholic. However, it is telling that even as McTeague wanders through the
Nevada desert as a broken man at the end of the novel, he is still evoked as “the dentist”.
While The Age of Innocence, The Jungle and McTeague combine to provide an insightful perspective
into labor and fulfillment across class in the turn of the century America city, they also mark a seminal point
of transition in urban society. As the Gilded Age faded into the new century’s reality, the three principle
classes of urban America began to redefine themselves within the context of an industrialized economy. At
the top of society the social elite slowly transcended the traditional employment that had confined previous
generations to seek more meaningful work in fields such as politics, medicine and philanthropy. The laboring
class similarly began to seek more fulfilling labor by pushing back against the economic constraints that had
forced them into physically and mentally degrading industrial positions. Sustained strikes by the laboring
classes of cities across America provided workers with marked improvement in both wages and laboring
environment, launching some industrial laborers into the middle class by mid century. However, while both
the socially elite and laboring classes began to define a more fulfilling relationship with labor during the early
decades of the twentieth century, many members of the professional class were cast out of their positions of
meaningful skilled labor due to ordinances brought forth by expanded municipal governments standardizing
the practice of these professions. Thus, several decades into the new century the relationship between labor
and fulfillment across the classes of urban America had become inverted to a degree.