Commoner

The common people, also known as the common man, commoners, or the masses, are the ordinary people in a community or nation who lack any significant social status, especially those who are members of neither royalty, nobility, the clergy, nor any member of the aristocracy. Whereas historically many civilizations have institutionalized the notion of a common class within society, since the 20th century the term common people has been used in a more general sense to refer to typical members of society in contrast to the highly privileged (in either wealth or influence). In the United States, Andrew Jackson gave hope to the common man by his own example of working his way from being a poor Scots-Irish American to becoming the seventh President of the United States (1829-1837). The administration of Andrew Jackson utilized a system of choosing appointments to federal office which one contemporary congressman labeled the spoils system, thereby enabling previously unmeritorious individuals opportunities to hold office. Additionally, his presidency was marked by the common man’s right of suffrage (which had originally been limited to property-owning or tax-paying white males) as part of his administration’s greater democracy for the common man. Economically, Jackson’s administration fostered trade with Europe, leading to an increase in jobs for the common man in agriculture and industry. 2History In Europe, a distinct concept analogous to common people arose in the Classical civilization of ancient Rome around the 6th century BC, with the social division into patricians (nobles) and plebeians (commoners). The division may have been instituted by Servius Tullius, as an alternative to the previous clan based divisions that had been responsible for internecine conflict. The ancient Greeks generally had no concept of class and their leading social divisions were simply non-Greeks, free-Greeks and slaves. The early organisation of Ancient Athens was something of an exception with certain official roles like archons, magistrates and treasurers being reserved for only the wealthiest citizens – these class-like divisions were weakened by the democratic reforms of Cleisthenes who created new vertical social divisions in contrasting fashion to the horizontal ones thought to have been created by Tulliu