Rise and Decline of a Class.

The article discusses white-collar class in the United States after the first World War. The term "white collar" applied to a social class was first noted in print after the First World War. But thing and the attitudes associated with the social phenomenon of the white-collar class or classes, group or groups, is of course much older. The white-collar class is economically giving ground for many reasons, and one is that it is too big. It is a commonplace now that the simple Marxian process that was to produce a conscious proletariat hasn't worked out that way in the advanced industrial countries. It is the clerical, public relations, and selling sections of the employed public that have been growing. Nor is it surprising to learn that the economic spread between white collar and manual worker is narrowing; in some cases and at some times the wage is better than the salary and the white-collar worker has to be satisfied with the diminishing asset of superior social prestige, the prestige of the class in general, the prestige of the kind of job. But as general education spreads the cash and, in the not-very long run, the intangible rewards of the comparative scarcity of "educated" people shrink.