-Caveat Lector-
an excerpt from:
America’s Sixty Families
Ferdinand Lundberg
The Vanguard Press©1937 & 1938
The Citadel Press
New York, NY
578 pages Out-of-print
--[Ea]--
APPENDIX E
Who Controls Industry? With a Note on the Case of Richard Whitney
"I have read Mr. Lundberg's book and the more important criticisms of it, and
I have found nothing in the criticisms which seem to me to discredit his
general conclusions or the character of the evidence he brings forth to
support them. This is the all-important fact to be kept in mind.
"Mr. Lundberg is no inexperienced charlatan. When he was writing on financial
subjects for a conservative paper his reliability was sufficient to make him
acceptable to the most aristocratic journal in this class.
"The procedure of avoiding the major argument by distracting attention to
details is a method so old that even Aristotle found it necessary to expose
it.
"I believe that we may fairly say- that Mr. Lundberg's book is essentially
sound in all important respects."
--DR. HARRY ELMER BARNES Former Professor of History at Smith College, in THE
NEW YORK WORLD-TELEGRAM
In America's 60 Families the author tried to present facts bearing on certain
questions of the utmost importance to all of us. The liberties, the
livelihoods, and the very lives of the American people are dependent on the
answers to such questions as:
Who controls industry?
Who decides on wage policies, which directly or indirectly affect all who
work for a living; -on prices,. which affect us all as consumers; and on
management and dividends, which affect all who own stocks, savings accounts,
or life insurance?
Who controls the press and other creators of public opinion?
Does a small group of people really control these vital activities?
Who are these people?
The book was naturally greeted with diverse receptions. The author has
studied carefully all the reviews he has been able to find, not so much as a
measure of public reaction but more as a means of supplementing and revising
what he wrote. In the case of a book like America's 60 Families the function
of the critic is, or should be, as creative as the function of the author.
The real critic must perform a public service in revealing facts, for or
against the author's thesis, which the author missed, and in correcting any
errors of fact or interpretation.
In the reviews, therefore, the author has sought answers to the questions:
What mistakes were made in the book?
What essential facts are not to be found in the. book?
The public, those who have read America's 60 Families and those who may in
the future read it, is entitled to answers to these questions—to complete
answers. In the months since publication, everybody who is familiar with any
field covered in the book or who has any information relating to any fact in
it, has had an opportunity to perform a public service by revealing new facts
or criticizing any statement made by the author. The following sums up what
has been brought forward by the reviewers.
Because the author had made no attempt to conform to the vested prejudices of
any critical group, it was to be expected that the criticism would range from
the "it's all lies" of the reactionaries, to "it's all old stuff" of the
liberals. It was to be expected that some of the publications referred to in
the book would discreetly refrain from reviewing it at all. It was to be
expected that some would attempt to demolish the entire factual structure of
the volume.
There have been a few critics, in some cases veiled in anonymity, who have
not scrupled to impugn every single fact, set forth in the book. Their
quarrel has not been with the author of America's 60 Families so much as with
contemporary statistics, memoirs, and documents. This type of critic has
built his case by first pointing out a misplaced comma, an error in the
printing of a figure, or a wrong initial. Then, in an attempt to create doubt
about the accuracy of the book as a whole on the basis of the specific minor
blemish cited, these critics have proceeded to bolster their case with fancy
and plain prevarication about alleged additional inaccuracies and blemishes
that do not, indeed, exist at all. In some instances the book has been
misquoted; but with commendable unanimity all such critics have discovered
the same wrong initial.
This supplement will not, however, concern itself with these critics, whom I
have answered at length in their own journals whenever the space to reply has
been made available.* It will confine itself to those critics who offer what
seem to be new facts or challenges to statements in the book; and to those
who attack the author's thesis as unproved, unfounded, or invalid. This discus
sion, therefore, is concerned with those questions raised by the reviewers
which might have been raised in the minds of the unprofessional reader. These
questions all revolve around the reader's question, Is it really true?[* Edito
r and Publisher, January 29 and February 12, 1938; The New York Times, January
19, January 29, and February 12, 1938; and The Annalist, weekly Wall Street
paper. April R. 102R]
One special note has been observed to run through the criticisms of at least
one putative liberal and a score of rock-ribbed conservatives: even though
they regard the book as a valuable collection of detail about contemporary
society, they almost invariably have assailed its principal theme as unsound.
And in doing this, they have not hesitated to misrepresent authorities.
DO STOCKHOLDERS CONTROL INDUSTRY?
The central thesis of America's 60 Families is that our industrial system, as
well as our political and social systems, is controlled by a very small group
of families. Very adequate data are cited to support this contention. Yet
both Mr. Lewis Gannett, daily reviewer of the New York Herald Tribune, and
Mr. Raymond Clapper, Washington commentator of the Scripps-Howard press, saw
fit to dispute this thesis. And both critics cited the work, The Modern
Corporation and Private Property, by Berle and Means, as proof against the
thesis of America's 60 Families. They clearly revealed, however, that they
did not understand Berle-Means.
Mr. Gannett (Herald Tribune, October 30, 1937) said, "The result [of Mr.
Lundberg's work] is impressive in mass, somewhat dubious in detail ... Much
of this is an old story ... I am not sure, however, that his major thesis is
correct; and I am certain that his picture is in many details false." Mr.
Gannett explained further that Berle-Means, in The Modern Corporation and
Private Property, showed that "control of business no longer lies, as in a
more primitive stage of capitalism, with ownership." This is startling if it
is a fact; it is even startling if it is argued seriously in a book. However,
it is not a correct report of the Berle-Means thesis, which Mr. Gannett
without justification wielded against America's 60 Families.
"Mr. Lundberg makes use of the Berle-Means data," added Mr. Gannett, "but
seems not to have digested it. He naively assumes that stockholders control
their stock." But let us see whose intellectual digestion is below par and
who is naive!
Mr. Raymond Clapper (Scripps-Howard newspapers, December 31, 1937) proved
himself an apt pupil of Mr. Gannett. He said Berle-Means show that "ownership
has' largely lost control" of industry, a comfortable thesis as far as the
big proprietors are concerned.
Now, briefly, what is the Berle-Means book about, that it shouId be used to
prove that big proprietors no longer have anything to do with industry? One
way to find out is to read the book, and I suggest that this would be a good
thing for the serious student to do. But for those who may not want to read
it immediately, the thesis is simply that non-ownership management control of
corporations is on the increase, that myriad petty stockholders have nothing
to say any more about running a company.
What Messrs. Gannett and Clapper alike innocently overlook in this tendency
described so fully by Berle-Means is that control of corporations by legal
device, while. excluding small stockholders from a voice in affairs, does not
exclude the big interests. What has happened is this: the big proprietors,
unable to exercise as wide control over as many companies as they would like
by means of simple ownership, have in certain instances abandoned simple
ownership of a corporation as a means of control and have substituted for it
control by legal device. The liquid capital they have by this means been able
to repossess has then been used to obtain an ownership stake in other
additional enterprises. Messrs. Clapper and Gannett are naive enough,
apparently, to believe that those corporations controlled by legal device are
directed by clever but unknown men who have succeeded by some hook or crook
in wresting voting control away from the big stockholders. The fact is,
however, that the managers under the legal device have in virtually all cases
been installed by the big proprietors.
This last is not, to be sure, the thesis of the Berle and Means book, Their
work is concerned chiefly with analyzing legal modes of procedure with
respect to the control of corporations. In no part of the book, however, do
they suggest that a non-ownership management has wrested any corporation away
from the big owners. In nearly every one of the cases they cite concerning
the two hundred largest corporations of the United States, it is big
proprietors, present or former, that are in the saddle.
One can readily ascertain the facts by turning to page 116 of The Modern
Corporation and Private Property. There a tabulation shows that out of 200 of
the largest non-financial corporations of the United States, 21, or 10.5 per
cent, are under management control, and 44, or 22 per cent, are thought to be
under management control. However, the fact that they are under management
control does not mean that the big hereditary proprietor families are
excluded; management control by legal device was installed by just these
proprietors, who now run the companies on the basis of shoestring
investments. Ninety-five companies, or 47.5 per cent of the 200 largest
companies, according to Berle-Means, are controlled through outright
ownership, majority ownership, and minority ownership, while 40 companies, or
20 per cent, are controlled through legal device, joint ownership, or by
uncatalogued special means.
Control of corporations by these means is merely a phase of the development
of finance capital, whose newest methods make it possible for big proprietors
to extend their control over a vast area ridiculously out of proportion to
the amount of money actually owned.
On pages 95 to 116 Berle-Means give in tabular form the names of the
corporations that are under each method of control, so it is possible without
guesswork to ascertain who it is that actually controls the managements which
owe no responsibility to the general run of small stockholders. One company
controlled by legal device, its stock widely held by the public, is the
Alleghany Corporation, top holding company of the Van Sweringen System. For a
number of years, as elicited in 1937 by the Senate Interstate Commerce
Committee, control resided with the Guaranty Trust Company of New York
(Morgan). Another company controlled by legal device and listed by
Berle-Means is the Cities Service Company; the controller of this company is
an individual who was once the majority stockholder, Henry L. Doherty. In
this case, as in the others, one could not truly say control had been
divorced from a big proprietor. In the cases of 21 corporations controlled by
some legal device, the devices invariably lead back to a big quondam or
present potential dominant stockholder.
In the cases Of 21 corporations known to be under management control,
Berle-Means found the following wealthy families the largest stockholders,
and in most cases these families had themselves installed the management
control or were among the directors:
Atchison, Topeka &4 Santa Fe Ry. Mills family
Co. Rockefeller Foundation
Baltimore &4 Ohio Rd. Co. Union Pacific Rd. Co.
Alien Property Custodian
Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul &4 Director General of Railroads
Pac. .4 Rd. Co. Edward S. Harkness
Vanderbilt family
Chicago &4 Northwestern Ry. Co. Union Pacific Co.
Delaware &4 Hudson Co. B. P. Trenkman
Home Insurance Co.
Great Northern Ry. Co. Arthur Curtiss James
George F. Baker, Jr., family
Missouri-Kansas-Texas Rd. Co. Partner, Ladenberg, Thalman &
Co.
Reorganization managers
New York Central Rd. Co. Union Pacific Rd. Co.
Vanderbilt family
Northern Pacific Ry. Co. Arthur Curtiss James
Emma B. Kennedy
Pennsylvania Rd. Co. Penn. Rd. Employees' Provident &
Loan Assn.
William M. Potts
St. Louis-San Francisco Ry. Co. Speyer & Co. account
J. W. Davis & Co. account
Southern Pacific Co. Dodge Family through holding
company
Arthur Curtiss James
Southern Ry. Co. Milbank family
Eli B. Springs
Union Pacific Rd. Co. N. V. M. tot B. van het A. F., of
Amsterdam
Harriman family
.Amer. Tel. &4 Tel. Co. Sun Life Assurance Co.
George F. Baker
Boston Elevated Ry. Co. Curtis &4 Sanger, brokers
R. L. Day & Co.
Consol. Gas Co. of N. Y. Sun Life Assurance Co.
United Corp. (Morgan)
Electric Bond &4 Share Co. Elec. Bd. & Share Sec., Inc.
Employees Stock Purchase Plan
Western Union Tel. Co. Morgan, Turner & Co.
Johnson & Co.
General Electric Co. Elec. Securities Corp., an em-
ployees' invest. company and
subsidiary of General Elec. Co.
(controlled by General Elec.
management)
United States Steel Corp. George F. Baker
Berle and Means explain what they mean by management control. It is control
exercised by officers and directors where there is no single dominating stock
interest or coalition of minority stockholders. Among the corporations listed
by them as under "management control" the following are authoritatively
regarded in Wall Street as actually under the rule of J. P. Morgan and
Company: United States Steel Corporation, General Electric Company, Electric
Bond and Share Company, Consolidated Gas Company (now Consolidated Edison
Company), A. T. & T., and New York Central Railroad.
In short, exclusion of stockholders from control, within the meaning of the
context as revealed by Berle-Means, does not mean that large stockholders,
present or former, are excluded from a decisive voice in the management. It
means only that small stockholders have been denied a say about their
property, but as this is one of the underlying theses of America's 60
Families, neither Messrs. Gannett nor Clapper had any occasion to refer to
the matter as they did.
Having made strange use of the Berle-Means book, Messrs. Gannett and Clapper
proceeded to other criticisms, although Mr. Gannett found some merit in the
book, whereas Mr. Clapper did not.
WHICH FAMILIES?
Mr. Gannett took cognizance of the following "error":
"In his chapter on newspaper control, Mr. Lundberg notes that in Maine one
Guy P. Gannett, whom he describes as 'Insull's journalistic henchman,' owns
newspapers. In New York State Frank E. Gannett, whom Mr. Lundberg described
as Guy's 'cousin,' owns another string. Mr. Lundberg lightly implies an
identity of family interest. By such logic I, who am as close a cousin to
Frank Gannett as is Guy—namely, a fourth cousin' might be 'proved' an Insull
tool, though, as far as I know, since a Massachusetts farmer's sons parted
company some two hundred years ago, the three branches of the Gannett clan
have had no financial contact. The whole picture of interlocking Gannetts is
absurd. Trivial though Mr. Lundberg's mention of them may have been, it led
me inevitably to wonder how many of his other assumptions of family unity may
have been tenuous."
"It would be a better book, and more effective," Mr. Gannett patroningly
concluded, "if Mr. Lundberg had put a tighter checkrein on his guessing
faculty."
Now, let us see who is guessing and what there is to Mr. Gannett's
animadversions about the ubiquitous Gannetts. It is true that Guy P. Gannett
is identified on page 275 of America's 60 Families as a cousin of Frank E.
Gannett; this, however, is a fact, and is mentioned simply to distinguish for
readers two Gannetts with different given names. But there is no implication
of any pecuniary affiliation between the two gentlemen. Indeed, on the same
page one finds it explicitly stated that Guy P. Gannett, representing Insull,
and Frank E. Gannett, representing the International Paper Company, were
journalistic rivals arrayed on opposite sides of the financial fence. There
is in America's 60 Families no "picture of interlocking Gannetts." The
Gannetts are not presented as units in any family entity. There is no "logic"
at work here that would imply that Mr. Lewis Gannett by the same token is an
Insull tool. In short, I am afraid that it is not my non-existent "picture"
of interlocking Gannetts that is "absurd," but that it is Mr. Lewis Gannett's
comments on this point that are absurd.
Mr. Clapper, leaving behind the Berle-Means matter, proceeded further. "You
never have heard, of many of them [the families]," he wrote, "for included
are some decaying families who live abroad mostly and ask only that their
investments return them dividends sufficient to support them in the style to
which they have become accustomed. They don't want to be bothered about
industrial problems. They are busy at Monte Carlo or Palm Beach. Active
management runs the industries and fixes the policies."
Mr. Clapper neglected only to say that this is just what the book states, and
that those who dance and gamble at Monte Carlo and Palm Beach have deputized
active management to underlings.
Mr. Clapper also erred when he said that the book fails to include the
Harrimans, Firestones, Weyerhaeusers, Dollars, Chryslers and Pews. One has
only to refer to page 28 or to the index to see that Mr. Clapper was wrong
again.
Those among the hostile critics who have not questioned the underlying thesis
of the book by misquoting Berle and Means have made use of other devices. One
such critic was that estimable Don Quixote of American liberalism, Oswald
Garrison Villard, writing in The Saturday Review of Literature, which proudly
billed him as "one of the outstanding liberals of the country." It was well
that Mr. Villard was thus explicitly described, for one could not have
deduced it from his critique.
Mr. Villard thought America's 60 Families was a mistake on the whole, even
though he said many of the facts contained in it had first been brought to
light by himself as a journalist. What Mr. Villard most deplored was that the
proprietor families were isolated for study. He did not, like Messrs. Gannett
and Clapper, hold that the big proprietors had been thrown out of their
companies by independent managements, for he knows that this is not true. But
while admitting control by vested interests, Mr. Villard made it clear that
he wanted the matter of control expressed in vague terms.
Instead of having it said that specific persons were in control, he wanted it
said that Big Business, an abstract metaphysical construct against which Mr.
Villard has for years been tilting valiantly, was in control. And if the
abstract category of Big Business is denied him, then, said Mr. Villard, let
us refer to International Bankers, Wall Street, or the Plutocrats-anything
abstract that cannot be seen and dealt with. The author of America's 60
Families respectfully' submits, however, that when people' like Mr. Villard
talk about Big Business they are alluding to nothing more than an allegorical
abstraction. There is nothing in the world like Big Business. One cannot
touch Big Business, see Big Business, hear Big Business, taste Big Business,
or indict Big Business. Nobody ever took a photograph of Big Business or
isolated it under a microscope or in a test tube.
Mr. Villard's love of the term Big Business reminds one very strongly of a
speech last winter by Mr. Thomas W. Lamont, of J. P. Morgan and Company, in
which Mr. Lamont, denying that Wall Streeters had anything to do with the
"recession" of 1937-38, attributed it all to Social and Economic Forces. Some
persons like to talk in similar vein about Historical Forces. In short,
anything to get away from the troublesome Richard Whitneys, Hiders, and Van
Sweringens of this world into the realm of impersonal abstractions.
After having demonstrated that he was consciously or unconsciously as worried
as were Messrs. Clapper and Gannett about the way America's 60 Families traced
power to the specific controllers of society, Mr. Villard, like his two
critical confreres, could not refrain from going off the reservation.
America's 60 Families in its chapter on journalism gives Mr. Villard credit
for having financed The Nation, a liberal weekly. Mr. Villard, however, took
umbrage at the statement that his "income is derived from the remnants of a
nineteenth-century fortune." This was set down as a literal fact explanatory
only of Mr. Villard's ability to finance The Nation. But Mr. Villard said: "I
am sure I do not need to tell the readers of this review what a dreadful
thing a nineteenth-century fortune is and what a blight it casts upon its
possessors." However, no blight with respect to Mr. Villard was suggested in
this connection in America's 60 Families, and one can only feel regretful
that he has without warrant read into the text of the book an evident feeling
of some sort of subconscious and, one may be sure, unjustified guilt.
"There is nothing new in it [America's 60 Families] that I have discovered,"
said Mr. Villard, employing a time-worn journalistic device with which to
affright readers who might be impressed by an Outstanding Liberal. Mr.
Gannett, too, resorted to this ruse. If it is not "new," in the sense that it
is all immediate revelation, the unspoken argument goes, then the book is
obviously not important nor worthy of much attention. Utilizing the same
argument in other contexts, we might also say there is nothing "new" in
Shakespeare, the Bible, The Federalist, or the Constitution., Unfortunately
for' Messrs. Villard and Gannett in this connection, America's 60 Families tur
ned out to be "new" enough to be the occasion of a national political furor.
IS THE BOOK IMPARTIAL?
Mr. Villard, too, expressed himself as disturbed by the lack of "objectivity"
in the book; By objectivity he meant impartiality, I take it, for modern
philosophy and psychology give even "subjectivity" an objective status in the
world. Apparently Mr. Villard is out of touch with developments in the world
of thought -and takes no cognizance of the fact that Dr. John Dewey and other
modern thinkers have exploded "objectivity," in the sense of treating
external matters with aloof impartiality, as just a bogey-word. In the best
modern thought everything that exists is viewed as objective. But a writer
cannot be "objective," i. e., aloofly impartial, in the sense of being able
successfully to divorce himself from and pass disinterested judgment upon his
subject-matter. He is himself involved in the social and historical processes
about which he is writing. On the other hand, pretense to impartial
aloofness, formal objectivity, is nothing but an excessively refined form of
cynicism; for what the sedulously "objective" writer is saying is that all
points of view are equally valid and deserve equally tender consideration. In
this implicit expression, however, he is being far from "objective"; he has
ranged himself on the side of those obscurantists who say one approach is as
good as any other.
The social basis of the cry for "objectivity" in writing about current public
affairs is to be found in the desire of the plutocracy and its savants and
its critics to escape rigorous critical treatment. If one writes of the status
quo and its beneficiaries realistically, calling a thief a thief, one has,
it is said, lost objectivity. This the present writer mildly denies. One is,
in fact, not being objective if one glosses over such unpleasant facts. One
is, in such a case, actually guilty of lack of true objectivity.
In what may have been eagerness to disparage the book in the eyes of
progressives, while sailing under the gay pennant of liberalism, Mr. Villard
overreached himself. He said of the book, "As a guidebook to American folly
and scandal it has a place. How I hope it will not find its way to Hitler and
Mussolini!"
We have here an interesting coincidence. A writer in the organ of his
life-long friend and, Harvard classmate, Mr. Thomas W. Lamont, partner of J.
P. Morgan and Company, is worried lest America's 60 Families encourage Hitler
and Mussolini to assaults upon an inept democracy. Oddly enough, J. P. Morgan
and Company has in the post-war period been the leading spirit in carrying on
American financing for Italy. Mr. Lamont is on visiting terms with Mussolini,
and after seeing him last year returned to America with the news that a
general war in Europe was not likely in the near 'future. Since this
reassuring news, Hitler has-without a "war," to be sure-seized Austria, and
the Spanish civil war has been given increased aid and attention by Hitler
and Mussolini.
Now, a book is what happens to it, what it does. America's 60 Families has
been widely praised by progressives and liberals; Mr. Villard is the only
liberal who has lifted his voice against it. The book has not been applauded
either by the German or the Italian press.
America's 60 Families, far from giving aid or comfort to German or Italian
fascists by its criticism of American democracy as it has been and not as it
can become, is a direct blow at them, for it is a blow against their natural
allies in America—the members of the power-minded upper ruling class that see
everything in terms of their own interests. Every repressive and fascist
trend in the United States can be traced, on the record, in some way, to this
ruling class, which finances the reactionary publications and organizations
devoted to spreading race hatred, anti-labor propaganda, and anti-liberal and
pro-Nazi views. America's 60 Families is, in general, a book that deals with
the American counterparts of those persons that in Europe brought Hitler and
Mussolini into power by the backdoors and back alleys of politics. The book
can do only severe damage to the fascist idea in the United States, for it
impugns with facts the reputed ability of the dominant economic elite to rule
in the interests of all society, either through their present agents or
through future strong-arm agents. The book's criticisms of American
democracy, far from endangering that democracy or suggesting some unpalatable
substitute for it, strengthen it by exposing to public view some of its
weakest points.
Mr. Villard is a libertarian and a humanitarian, but I fear that he was being
less than frank and more than a little investmentminded when he 'pretended to
see America's 60 Families as of potential assistance to Hitler and Mussolini
in breaking down the democratic idea. All the criticisms of the contemporary
ruling class in the book are made, indeed, on the assumption that real
democracy is to be preferred to spurious democracy.
It is interesting to see that Mr. Ralph Thompson, writing in The New York
Times, December 8, 1937, had much in common with the viewpoint of Messrs.
Gannett, Clapper, and Villard. Like Mr. Villard, Mr. Thompson showed an
inadequate conception of objectivity. And like all of these sterling
gentlemen he was at some pains to deny the fundamental thesis of America's 60
Families, viz., that a few persons own and control everything.
WHO OWNS THE NATION'S WEALTH?
But Mr. Thompson attacked this aspect in a somewhat different fashion. He
said the author showed a lack of discrimination. "One has a taste of it right
at the beginning; on the second page of the text there appears the dictum
that 'most' Americans 'own nothing beyond a few sticks of furniture and the
clothes on their backs.* But even as outrageous an exaggeration as this is
simply silly, not vital . . ."
If this is an exaggeration, we must insist that it is vital, for this is the
indispensable corollary to the book's thesis that a few own and control
everything of pecuniary value in the United States. Mr. Thompson
unfortunately must have failed to examine the authorities cited for the
observation he questioned, an observation based upon literal fact. And it is
a fact advanced not by one authority alone, but by a host of authorities. One
of these many authorities is Robert R. Doane, formerly on the staff of the
National Bureau of Economic Research. In his Measurement of American Wealth Mr
. Doane brought out that in reputedly prosperous 1929 about 99 .per cent of
all citizens had gross incomes of $5,000 or less and 83 per cent of all
liquid wealth was possessed by the 1 per cent that received $5,000 or more
annually. Additional authorities to the number of six are cited in America's
60 Families at the foot of page 513 for essentially the same analysis.
Looking at unequal distribution of wealth in another way, the Brookings
Institution in America's Capacity to Consume (1934), found that "Nearly 6
million families, or more than 21 per cent of the total, had incomes less
than $1,000. About 12 million families, or more than 42 per cent, had incomes
less than $1,500. Nearly 20 million families, or 71 per cent, had incomes
less than $2,500. Only a little over 2 million families, or 8 per cent, had
incomes in excess of $5,000. About 600,000 families, or 2-3 per cent, had
incomes in excess of $10,000 the 36,000 families having incomes in excess Of
$75,000 possessed an aggregate income of 9.8 billion dollars. Thus it appears
that 0.1 per cent of the families at the top received practically as much as
42 per cent of the families at the bottom of the scale."
The Federal Trade Commission, in its report "National Wealth and Income"
(1926), estimated that the richest 1 per cent of the population held not less
than 59 per cent of the wealth while the next richest group, comprising about
12 per cent of the population, held not less than 33 per cent of the wealth.
The remaining 87 per cent of the population owned only about 8 per cent of
the wealth.
Late in 1937 the Federal unemployment census showed that from 7.5 to 11
million adults were unemployed. and without means of support. In a population
of approximately 70,000,000 adults this meant that 10 to 15 per cent of the
adult population was completely destitute. A much larger proportion of
children and minors was therefore destitute.
It is hardly necessary to cite additional data, but more is to be found in
abundance, much of it official and final in character. Those who assail this
data are, therefore, only quarreling with the facts.
The only fundamental difference between Mr. Thompson on one hand and Messrs.
Villard, Clapper and Gannett on the other is that the latter deny the bulk of
wealth is owned and controlled by a very few individuals while the former
denies, in the face of the facts, that a vast majority of Americans are
excessively poor. The data Messrs. Clapper and Gannett cite on behalf of
their. notions explode in their faces; neither Mr. Villard nor Mr. Thompson
cites any data at all.
Mr. Thompson could not resist the temptation, like these others, of putting
some additional spice into his critical pudding (although, like Mr. Gannett,
he conceded some superficial value to the book). He began by saying: "It
would be an exaggeration to say that Ferdinand Lundberg . . . is a calm
social thinker and an objective historian. Nevertheless, he has written a
significant book," etc.
How very little this sort of criticism means one can see by substituting a
well known name for the author of America's 60 Families, without doing any
violence to the actual thought in Mr. Thompson's phrase. When we do this we
have the following:
"It would be an exaggeration to say that jean-Jacques Rousseau is a calm
social thinker and an objective historian. Nevertheless, he has written a
significant book entitled The Social Contract and its significance is likely
to increase with the years."
Again one may say this:
"It would be an exaggeration to say that Lord Macaulay is a calm social
thinker and an objective historian. Nevertheless, he has written a
significant book entitled The History of England and its significance is
likely to increase with the years."
The lamentable difficulty with objectivity as defined by Messrs. Thompson and
Villard is that it is found to exist only when the points of view espoused by
critics like Messrs. Thompson and Villard are sustained.
As in the case of the other critics, so in Mr. Thompson's case we find some
nonsense as well as fundamental error, for Mr. Thompson said, "It is possible
to argue that the great concentrations [of wealth], whether those involved
realize it or not, have already been doomed by the trend of American history,
and that they have now entered upon a period of ultimate decline." Mr.
Thompson, of course, is quite correct here. It is possible to argue this, but
only if one is ignorant of or ignores the statistics I have cited.
Finally, bewildering his audience completely by his critical agility, Mr.
Thompson said that although the book had many faults, was replete with hasty
judgments, and gave currency to ridiculous generalizations, it deserved "respe
ctful attention." Why, one may ask? The author, for one, sees no reason why a
book described as Mr. Thompson describes America's 60 Families should be
given any attention at all.
--[cont]--
Aloha, He'Ping,
Om, Shalom, Salaam.
Em Hotep, Peace Be,
Omnia Bona Bonis,
All My Relations.
Adieu, Adios, Aloha.
Amen.
Roads End
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