America's Sixty Families

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America's 60 Families is a 1937 book by Ferdinand Lundberg that looks at leading groups in business and finance from 1896 to 1936. It traces the rise of the biggest industrial trusts from 1900 to 1920 and how their control passed over to finance capital after 1920. It also deals extensively with how these groups influence the Federal government of the United States, press, foundations and education.

Contents

In the first two chapters, Lundberg develops his thesis and names the 60 richest American families, based on the tax reports for the years 1924/25. His thesis is simple: the USA is a dollar democracy, ruled by a modern industrial and financial oligarchy (3). The 60 families intermarry (9-22), and together use certain banks and bank alliances to control a large part of the industrial corporations of the U. S. The five most powerful banks or banking alliances are: the four banks of J. P. Morgan, the National City Bank (NCB), the Rockefeller Chase Manhattan Bank, the Mellon banks in Pittsburgh, and the Warburg and Schiff bank of Kuhn, Loeb & Co. Among the ten most powerful groups are also Lehmann Brothers, Dillon Read & Co., and Goldman, Sachs & Co.. These banks control large parts of U.S. industry through trust organization, through voting shares of the 60 families who deposit their shares and entrust their votes in these banks. The major banks and their agents also control U.S. politicians, especially U. S. presidents. In chapters 3. to 6. Lundberg outlines the presidential Administrations from McKinley to Hoover to show how they are controlled by the leading banking alliances. His method, again, is simple: he looks a the early career of each president, identifying his backers; next he analyzes the nomination process and the donors for the campaign. Next, he studies the composition of the cabinet, and the institutional background of the Secretaries. Finally, he studies the main acts and scandals of each Administration to see who profits from each major presidential decision.

The 1920s administrations signify the triumph of finance capital over the national government. Lundberg shows this also in the impunity of the huge war profit scandals after 1918: overcharging the government for copper, steel, leather, nitrates etc.; non-delivery of air planes, shells. fly-by-night corporations. The scandals even continue after World I: ships, air planes, oil, and stock manipulation (by unloading inflated shares and bonds on the public), which leads to the crisis of 1929.

The remaining chapters show how the 60 families either directly own newspapers or magazines, or, how they control them through advertising, or, in case of the rural and small town press, through the Republican Party. The Rockefellers mainly use advertising (247-51), the Morgan group owns important newspapers in New York, Philadelphia and Boston or handles the independent press through its spokesmen George W. Harvey and Thomas W. Lamont (252-58); the Mellons run the Pittsburgh press and share control with others in News-Week (now Newsweek), Time and Fortune (259-60; the Du Ponts own a number of Delaware papers (260-62) etc. They use their power to suppress news (291-302),to bias news in heir interests by bribing news or feature syndicates (302-08) which becomes especially clear in the Henry Luce magazines Time and Fortune (308-12).

Chapters 9 and 10 outline how the families and their banks use shares in foundations and universities to influence public opinion, when under attack (Rockefellers), to retain power by not relinquishing their voting rights over the donated shares, and to escape taxes (especially inheritance taxes). These three intentions also govern university donations where an additional benefit is to gain influence through trustees over research and the recruitment for their corporations. Among the 20 leading schools, Morgan controls Harvard, Johns Hopkins, and the University of Pennsylvania; Rockefeller controls Yale (together with Morgan trustees), the University of Chicago, and Cornell; NCB controls Columbia and Princeton; the Du Ponts have a strong influence in MIT etc.

After a short revue of the excesses of the 60 families in spending on dinners, yachts, railroads, horses, automobiles, airplanes etc.(408-46), Lundberg comes to an evaluation of the New Deal:

- Franklin D. Roosevelt leads one of the most enlightened governments the U.S. has had in the post-Civil War industrial age, but is far from being revolutionary or radical; the New Deal represents one faction of wealth - the light-goods industrialist - against another faction- the capital goods industrialists, i.e. retail-market manufacturers vs. Wall Street; Roosevelt's career, nomination, campaign finances, and the Acts from 1933 to 1937 substantiate this (447-91). The book quotes from a detailed bibliography and mainly relies on findings of investigative committees in Congress.

References

• Lundberg, Ferdinand. America's 60 Families. New York: Vanguard Press, 1937.

External links

Ferdinand Lundberg