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The Elected and the Anointed: Two American Elites

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Andrew Hacker
Andrew Hacker*
Affiliation:
Cornell University
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Extract

In all advanced societies there is a distinct tendency for political and economic power to be held and exercised by different kinds of individuals. Even in modern totalitarian states it has been possible to observe quite distinguishable groups playing the leading roles in political and economic life. The aptitudes that go to make a successful political leader and those that produce an effective economic manager are analytically separable. And if the men who comprise the political and economic elites in a single society are markedly different in character and social background, then certain tensions are bound to arise in the areas where their power and authority interact. These tensions may develop even if the two sets of people profess to sharing a common ideology and even if they are ostensibly committed to working toward common objectives. For the kinds of men who enter political and economic vocations are prone to view social reality from different vantage points, and consequently they will interpret their shared ideology in the light of different experience. What will follow, then, is a comparative study of two elite groups in contemporary American society. The purpose of this study, quite simply, is to ascertain what the members of these elites have in common and what they do not.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 55 , Issue 3 , September 1961 , pp. 539 - 549
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1961

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References

1 The one hundred corporations were taken from “The Fortune Directory” of the 500 largest industrial corporations; the “Directory” was published in August 1959 and covers the 1958 calendar year. Information on the senators and presidents was secured from 1959 editions of Who's Who in America, Who's Who in Commerce and Industry, and the Congressional Directory. The remainder of the data were obtained by personal letters sent out to the 200 presidents and senators by the students in my undergraduate course in “Political Behavior.” Their hours of toil over their typewriters and their uncomplaining—and unreimbursed—expenditures on postage stamps have my heartfelt appreciation.

2 Burns, James M., Congress on Trial (New York, 1949), pp. 5, 17 Google Scholar. For more systematic analysis of Senatorial backgrounds, see the cumulalative studies of Matthews, Donald R.: “United States Senators and the Class Structure,” Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol. 18 (1954), pp. 5–22 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; The Social Backgrounds of Political Decision-Makers (New York, 1954)Google Scholar; United States Senators and Their World (Chapel Hill, 1960)Google Scholar.

3 Mills, C. Wright, The Power Elite (New York, 1956), p. 279 Google Scholar. There are four full-length studies of business executives: Newcomer, Mabel, The Big Business Executive (New York, 1955)Google Scholar; Warner, W. Lloyd and Abegglen, James C., Big Business Leaders in America (New York, 1955)Google Scholar; Warner, and Abegglen, , Occupational Mobility in American Business and Industry (Minneapolis, 1955)Google Scholar; The Editors of Fortune, The Executive Life (New York, 1956)Google Scholar.

4 Two thoughts occur here: The corporate elite might have displayed a more priviledged background had the heads of large banks, investment houses, and insurance companies been included in the study. Industrial corporations may be less concerned about a man's origins than financial institutions seem to be. At the same time, had the ten (or fifty) men in each company immediately below the president been studied, a greater prep school and Ivy League proportion might have been noted. When the final promotion to the summit is made it may well be that questions of background are given less stress than they are for subordinate executive positions in the company.

5 This classification of religions according to status is employed by Matthews in his The Social Background of Political Decision-Makers, op. cit., p. 26. It was devised by Wesley, and Allinsmith, Beverly, “Religious Affiliation and Politico-Economic Attitude,” Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol. 12 (1948), pp. 377–89Google Scholar. The church memberships of the senators are given in The Congressional Quarterly, 01 8 1961, p. 61 Google Scholar.

6 By “Ivy League” colleges are meant the ten cited in the note accompanying Table III, plus Smith, Vassar, Wellesley, Bryn Mawr, Radcliffe, Barnard, and Mount Holyoke. If a senator or president had sent more than one child to college, and if different children went to different types of institutions, then “Ivy League” was recorded in preference to Non-Ivy, and private colleges were recorded in preference to public institutions.

7 See Sheehan, Robert, “We've Been Transferred,” Fortune, 07, 1957, pp. 116–118, 198–200 Google Scholar.

8 For those who like to keep in touch with the world of affairs, the following intelligence may be of interest: of the 37 corporations with head offices in the New York area, eleven are located around Wall Street, eight are in Rockefeller Center, and seventeen are on the Upper East Side—chiefly Park Avenue. (One is in suburban White Plains.) Tourists to the Soviet Union who wish to set straight the dialecticians of Red Square may point out that “Wall Street” is a thing of the past and “Park Avenue” is the new center of industrial capitalism.

9 Social Register New York 1959 (New York, 1960)Google Scholar. The idea of examining the overlap between “elite” and “upper class” in a metropolitan area comes from Baltzell, E. Digby, Philadelphia Gentlemen (Glencoe, 1958)Google Scholar.

10 The facts of limited tenure of office and corporate bureaucracy raise important questions which can only be broached here. John Kenneth Galbraith, for example, minimizes the role of individual executives: “Organization replaces individual authority; no individual is powerful enough to do much damage. Were it otherwise, the stock market would pay close attention to retirements, deaths, and replacements in the executive ranks of large corporations. In fact, it ignores such details in tacit recognition that the organization is independent of any individual.” The Affluent Society (Boston, 1958), p. 102 Google Scholar.

11 This process is discussed by Hunter, Floyd, Top Leadership U.S.A. (Chapel Hill, 1959)Google Scholar. Even more illuminating is Hobart Rowen's brief discussion of the Business Advisory Council. Harpers, 09 1960, pp. 79–84 Google Scholar. The sixty members of this group, almost all of them corporation leaders, meet periodically for several days to discuss national policies. Despite its recent dissociation from the Department of Commerce the B.A.C. has made clear its intention to continue meeting as a corporate entity. Another gathering point is the National Industrial Conference Board, which assumes importance because the National Association of Manufacturers' membership rolls are dominated by smaller businesses.

12 It might be mentioned as a gratuitous note that this study was largely impelled by two personal experiences of the author. In August of 1959 he was asked to testify before the McClellan Committee on the political activities of corporations. He was unable to persuade the legislators that a national corporation was something more than an expanded version of a locally owned and managed enterprise. “Investigation of Improper Activities in the Labor or Management Field,” 86th Congress, 1st sess., Part 57, pp. 19900–19908. In November of the same year he was asked to speak at a meeting of the National Industrial Conference Board on corporation activities in politics. He was unable to persuade the executives that the Congress was something more than a Washington Branch office which was not up with the times. “Executives Eager to Get in Politics,” New York Herald Tribune, November 25, 1959. But then this may be only a commentary on the persuasive powers of the author.

13 I am grateful to Robert E. Lane for helping me to think through some of the problems raised in this paragraph.

14 The literature exhorting businessmen to get into politics is voluminous. The author has in his files well over one hundred speeches by executives and statements by companies on this subject. A typical call to action is Sheldon's, Horace E. “Businessmen Must Get Into Politics,” Harvard Business Review, Vol. 37 (1959), pp. 37–47 Google Scholar.

15 Very little is known about the political attitudes of executives. For a sampling, see the “Report from 75 Presidents” published by Roper, Elmo and Associates in their The Public Pulse, 09, 1958, pp. 2–3 Google Scholar.

16 See Rogow, Arnold A., The Labor Government and British Industry (Ithaca, 1955)Google Scholar. For a study of the relations between the business community and the nationalized industries in Great Britain, see Jenkins, Clive, Power at the Top (London, 1959)Google Scholar.

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