Explicit public-behavior instruction peaked when the early industrial city was most confusing

Evidence

In the United States, at least, a good deal of the public teaching was done by those self-appointed experts on “how to act”: the authors of etiquette books. A casual purview of such books from 1881 to 1962 reveals both a concentration on explicit instructions for public behavior during the period when the early industrial city in the United States was at its most confusing, and a gradually decreasing concern with these matters as the modern city came into its own. — Lyn H. Lofland, World of Strangers_ Order and Action in…, 673

Categorization

• XREF: Directly evidences the cultural-mechanism side of Lofland’s thesis that anonymity required taught codes; pairs with Simmel’s blasé attitude as another learned response to urban novelty.