By the middle of the nineteenth century American society was becoming restructured according to the concept of career. A new middle class emerged, and within it professionalism became the highest goal. The creation of the university in America provided the necessary matrix for its development, making possible new attitudes about authority, mobility, merit, and success that have come to characterize modern American society. This study of institutions, and people who created a new professionally conscious society defines the nineteenth century phenomenon so basic to middle class habits of thought and action that a majority of twentieth-century Americans has taken for granted that all intelligent modern persons behave according to it. Chapters of this book include discussions of the advantage of being middle class, the culture of professionalism, character, careers, the old-time college, culture, and the American university. (Author/MSE)