Industrialization and transformation in Thomas W. Hanchett’s Sorting out the New South City: Race, Class, and Urban Development in Charlotte, 1875-1975 and A Shopkeeper’s Millennium by Paul Johnson Introduction The history of every city is unique though we can easily trace certain patterns in development of settlements through time in different countries. For instance, the cities in the United States of America have similar history in terms of transformation and the role of industrialization in the formation of neighborhoods. Class and race distinctions were obvious before industrialization came to the country whereas their interactions with the new way of life became apparent when the city emerged as a scope of neighborhoods each based on class and racial distinctions. The concepts of transformation and industrialization can be seen in the books Sorting out the New South City: Race, Class, and Urban Development in Charlotte, 1875-1975 (1998) by Thomas W. Hanchett and A Shopkeeper’s Millennium (1978) by Paul Johnson. Space and the City Race and class . Every city has its functions as well as every district of it is inhabited by people that have something in common. Though it is difficult to stay calm while talking about racial discrimination that took place a long before such a concept appeared, racial and class distinctions can be considered one of the primary reasons why neighborhoods were built in this way. As such, Hanchett (1998) labeled the chapters of his book in accordance with the racial belonging of the citizens that inhabited the neighborhoods in Charlotte, North Carolina. As such, the distinction between different races was obvious even in the framework of the old country town where employees were farmers as well as their employers. At the same time, every person knew about those transparent borders that existed between the neighborhoods and chances of living in one of those. Relationships between employees and employers can be considered one of the complicated issues in the world history. The roles may shift, the rights may widen while it is impossible to predict the changes in economical development of the society. As such, people that lived in Rochester, New York and Charlotte, North Carolina could not guess that employees would obtain a kind of freedom with regard to independent living compared to the living on the territory of their employer before industrialization and further changes. As reported by Johnson (1978) about working men that performed different tasks in the farms, “these men moved too fast to be counted” (p. 37). At the same time, “day laborers and journeyman craftsmen made up 71 percent of the adult male work force” (Johnson, 1978, p. 38). In this respect, there were enough men to work though not all of them were representatives of the upper classes. Employment and urban structure . Transformation of so-called country towns was an integral part of the changing circumstances. In other words, the space of the city Charlotte and the one of Rochester was logically divided into the territory of white-collars and blacks, rich people and those who could not afford even commodities. At the same time, the practical framework of such division was obvious as people obtained a chance to live on their o