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American Entrepreneurs and the Horatio Alger Myth

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 May 2010

Bernard Sarachek
Bernard Sarachek
Affiliation:
University of Missouri—Kansas City
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Extract

Since 1925 a number of scholars have conducted studies of the general business elite in America. Their studies have concluded that the American business elite has been predominantly native born, urban, better educated than the general population, and has originated disproportionately from higher economic classes. These conclusions are not surprising. It might have been surprising if the business elite were found to have emerged predominantly from the poor and less educated, and the immigrant, farm or working-class populations. Such origins would infer a rapid displacement of elite members, the possibility of rapid and massive disaggregation of family fortunes, and the loss of family aggrandizement as a motivating consideration in the minds of aspiring businessmen. This, however, was apparently not the case.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 38 , Issue 2 , June 1978 , pp. 439 - 456
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1978

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References

1 Sorokin, Pitirim, “American Millionaires and Multi-Millionaires; A Comparative Study,” journal of Social Forces, 3 (May 1925), 627–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Taussig, F. W., Joslyn, C. S., American Business Leaders (New York, 1932)Google Scholar; Mills, C. Wright, “The American Business Elite: A Collective Portrait,” Journal of Economic History, 5 (Dec. 1945), 20–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Miller, William, “American Historians and the Business Elite,” Journal of Economic History, 9 (Nov. 1949), 184–208CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Miller, William, “Recruitment of the Business Elite,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 64 (May 1950), 242–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Keller, Suzanne, The Social Origins and Career Lines of Three Generations of American Business Leaders (Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1953)Google Scholar; Frances W. Gregory, Irene D. Neu, “The American Industrial Elite in the 1870's,” pp. 193–211, and William Miller, “The Business Elite in Business Bureaucracies,” pp. 286–306, in Miller, William, ed., Men in Business (Cambridge, Mass., 1955)Google Scholar; Adams, Stuart, “Trends in Occupational Origins of Business Leaders,” American Sociological Review, 19 (Oct. 1954), 541–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Warner, W. Lloyd, Abegglen, James C., Occupational Mobility in American Business and Industry (Minneapolis, 1955)Google Scholar; Warner, W. Lloyd, Abegglen, James C., Big Business Leaders in America (New York, 1955)Google Scholar; Newcomer, Mabel, The Big Business Executive (New York, 1955)Google Scholar; Lipset, Seymour Martin, Bendix, Reinhard, Social Mobility in Industrial Society (Berkeley, 1963)Google Scholar.

2 Warner and Abegglen's distinction between “mobile” executives and the “birth elite” is an exception to the tendency to present a single collective portrait of the general business elite. Warner and Abegglen, Business Leaders, especially chs. 4 and 5.

3 Collins, Orvis F., Moore, David G., et al. , The Enterprising Man (East Lansing, 1964)Google Scholar.

4 Cf. Andreano, Ralph, “A Note on the Horatio Alger Legend: Statistical Studies of the Nineteenth Century American Business Elite,” Business Enterprise and Economic Change, Cain, Louis P., Uselding, Paul J., eds. (Kent, 1973), pp. 227–46Google Scholar; Gregory and Neu, “Industrial Elite,” p. 193; Wyllie, Irvin G., The Self-Made Man in America (New Brunswick, 1954)Google Scholar.

5 Space does not permit reproduction of the biographical bibliography here. The author will supply bibliographies upon request and at the cost of office reproduction.

6 Collins, Moore, et al., Enterprising Man, 234; Mills, “Collective Portrait,” pp. 22–28; Miller, “American Historians,” p. 201; Gregory and Neu, “Industrial Elite,” p. 197; Warner and Abegglen, Occupational Mobility, p. 90; Newcomer, Big Business, p. 43; Keller, Social Origins, pp. 40–41.

7 Miller, “Recruitment of the Business Elite,” p. 245; Newcomer, Big Business, p. 48; David C. McClelland, The Achieving Society (New York, 1961), pp. 364–67. See the following three articles in Marshall Sklare, ed., The Jews (Glencoe, 1960): David Goldberg, Harry Sharp, “Occupational Selection Among Detroit Jews,” pp. 119–37; Nathan Glazer, “The American Jew and the Attainment of Middle-Class Rank: Some Trends and Explanations,” pp. 138–46; Fred L. Strodtbeck, “Family Interaction, Values, and Achievement,” pp. 147–65.

8 Father-Dead Entrepreneurs (Birth years are listed after the names)

Ivan Earnest Allen (1877)

Cornelius Aultman (1827)

Thomas Robert Bard (1841)

William Henry Belk (1862)

William Benton (1900)

William E. Boeing (1881)

William Tell Coleman (1824)

Richard Teller Crane (1832)

John Crerar (1827)

Henry Parsons Crowell (1855)

Samuel Cummings (1927)

Glenn Hammond Curtiss (1878)

Thomas James (1775)

Morgan Jones (1839)

Walter Knott (1891)

Frederick Kohnle (1860)

George Washington Littlefield (1842)

Samuel Lord (1802)

John William Mackay (1831)

George Mardikian (1903)

Alexander McDougall (1845)

Hugh Mcllvain (1775)

Thomas Handasyd Perkins (1764)

Anson Greene Phelps (1781)

Allen Pinkerton (1819)

Henry Bradley Plant (1819)

John Deere (1804)

Daniel Drew (1797)

George Eastman (1854)

John Murray Forbes (1813)

John Baptiste Ford (1811)

Robert Fulton (1765)

George Franklin Getty (1855)

Amandeo Peter Giannini (1870)

Adolphus Williamson Green (1843)

Hugh Alexander Hamilton (1890)

James J. Hill (1838)

Hans Jeppesen Isbrandtsen (1891)

George Palmer Putnam (1814)

John Roach (1815)

Samuel Slater (1768)

Albert Goodwill Spalding (1850)

Ellsworth Milton Statler (1863)

A. T. Stewart (1802)

Justus Clayton Strawbridge (1838)

W. Clement Stone (1902)

Israel Thorndike (1755)

Nathan Trotter (1787)

Frederick Weyerhaeuser (1834)

Josiah White (1781)

Halsey William Wilson (1868)

Oliver Fisher Winchester (1810)

9 Father-Separated Entrepreneurs

Simon Cameron (1799)

Hugh Roy Cullen (1881)

Henry P. Davison (1867)

William Crapo Durant (1861)

Carl Graham Fisher (1874)

Robert Gair (1839)

Joyce C. Hall (1891)

Robert Deniston Hume (1845)

James Joseph Ling (1922)

Robert Morris (1735)

John D. Rockefeller (1839)

James Stillman (1850)

Charles Bates Thornton (1913)

10 Father-Inadequate Entrepreneurs

John Emory Andrus (1841)

John Jacob Astor (1763)

Samuel Brannan (1819)

William Anderson Burnette (1887)

Andrew Carnegie (1835)

William Lockhart Clayton (1880)

William Colgate (1783)

Samuel Colt (1814)

Collis Huritihgton (1821)

Samuel Insull (1859)

Tom L. Johnson (1854)

Walter Samuel Johnson (1884)

George Houk Mead (1877)

Jeno F. Paulucci (1918)

George Peabody (1795)

James Cash Penney (1875)

Erastus Corning (1794)

Peter Cooper (1791)

Henry Gassaway Davis (1823)

Granville M. Dodge (1831)

David Eccles (1849)

James Buchanan Eads (1820)

James Fisk, Jr. (1834)

Henry M. Flagler (1830)

John August Roebling (1806)

Richard Warren Sears (1864)

Arthur Edward Stilwell (1859)

Samuel W. Traylor (1869)

Cornelius Vanderbilt (1794)

George Matthew Verity (1865)

John Wanamaker (1838)

Thomas John Watson (1874)

11 Father-Rejecting Entrepreneurs

George William Borg (1887)

John Warne Gates (1885)

Jean Paul Getty (1892)

Stephen Girard (1750)

Jay Gould (1836)

Claibourne Rice Mason (1800)

William Boyce Thompson (1869)

12 Supportive Father

Samuel Leeds Allen (1841)

Philip Danforth Armour (1832)

Edward Goodrich Acheson (1856)

Roger W. Babson (1875)

Michael Late Benedum (1869)

Carl D. Bodine (1881)

Paul J. Bodine (1883)

Milton Bradley (1836)

Joshua Loring Brooks (1868)

Thomas Hamilton Broyhill (1877)

James Edgar Broyhill (1892)

Godfrey Lowell Cabot (1861)

Johnson Newlon Camden (1828)

Asa Griggs Candler (1851)

Roy Diekman Chapin (1880)

Walter P. Chrysler (1875)

Jay Cooke (1821).

Jacob Dolson Cox (1852)

William H. Danforth (1871)

Walter S. Dickey (1860)

Herbert Henry Dow (1866)

James Buchanan Duke (1856)

Eleuthere Irenee du Pont (1771)

Marriner Stoddard Eccles (1890)

John F. Ernsthausen (1888)

Cyrus Field (1819)

Harvey S. Firestone (1868)

Charles R. Flint (1850)

Edward Gideon Melroe (1892)

David Halliday Moffat (1839)

John Pierpont Morgan (1837)

Charles Steward Mott (1874)

Ralph Mueller (1877)

Orvis Marcus Nelson (1907)

Ransom Eli Olds (1864)

William Francis O'Neil (1885)

George Mortimer Pullman (1831)

David Edward Ross (1871)

Joseph Benjamin Saunders, Jr. (1901)

Edward Ford (1843)

Henry Ford (1863)

Alfred C. Fuller (1885)

Eugene Duncan Funk, Sr. (1867)

Alfred C. Gilbert (1884)

Armand Hammer (1898)

James Harper (1795)

Hayward Augustus Harvey (1824)

Fritz August Heinze (1868)

Ernest Henderson (1897)

Conrad Hilton (1887)

William Henry Hoover (1849)

Johns Hopkins (1795)

Howard Hughes (1906)

Henry Edwards Huntington (1850)

George Francis Johnson (1857)

J. Logan Jones (1859)

Jesse Holman Jones (1874)

Kirk Kerkorian (1917)

Edward Lamb (1903)

Edward Hudson Lane (1891)

Edward Drummond Libbey (1854)

James Lick (1796)

Charles Addison Ludey (1874)

Cyrus Hall McCormick (1809)

Ernest Whitworth Marland (1874)

Fred Louis Maytag (1857)

Andrew W. Mellon (1855)

Josiah Ellis Saunders (1889)

Igor Ivan Sikorsky (1889)

Leland Stanford (1824)

Edbridge Amos Stuart (1856)

Charlemagne Tower (1809)

Juan Terry Trippe (1899)

William Volker (1859)

George Westinghouse (1846)

Orville Wright (1871)

Wilbur Wright (1867)

13 Special Cases

Thomas Alva Edison (1847)

Ray Hugh Garvey (1893)

Will Keith Kellogg (1860)

Robert Gilmore LeTourneau (1888)

Winfield Scott Stratton (1848)

Paul Starrett (1866)

14 Entrepreneurs experiencing the death or separation of a father may experience at least two relationships with their fathers. Fifteen entrepreneurs were under five years of age when their fathers died. Thirteen “Father-Dead” and “Father-Separated” entrepreneurs experienced father-son relationships described with such lack of detail that they must be disregarded. Fathers absent due to death or separation are frequently described in less biographic detail than other fathers. Empoying less stringent standards of judgment than used in the rest of this paper, it appears that 21 of the remaining group of “Father-Dead” and “Father-Separated” entrepreneurs experienced inadequate fathers. These include W. Benton, S. Cameron, W. T. Coleman, D. Drew, W. C. Durant, C. G. Fisher, J. M. Forbes, R. Gair, G. F. Getty, J. C. Hall, R. Hume, F. Kohnle, J. J. Ling, A. McDougall, T. H. Perkins, A. G. Phelps, G. P. Putnam, J. Roach, J. D. Rockefeller, E. M. Statler and J. White. Two entrepreneurs, R. Morris and C. B. Thornton, experienced rejection from their fathers. The remaining 14 entrepreneurs appear to have experienced supportive fathers. These include T. R. Bard, W. E. Boeing, R. T. Crane, H. P. Crowell, S. Cummings, G. Eastman, A. P. Giannini, G. W. Littlefield, G. Mardikian, H. B. Plant, A. G. Spalding, J. Stillman, N. Trotter and F. Weyerhaeuser.

15 Gregory and Neu, “Industrial Elite,” p. 202.

16 Reinhard Bendix, Frank W. Howton, “Social Mobility and the American Business Elite,” in Lipset and Bendix, Social Mobility, p. 122.

17 Mills, “Collective Portrait,” p. 30; Miller, “American Historians,” p. 206; Newcomer, Big Business, pp. 61–64; Lipset and Bendix, Social Mobility, pp. 122–23.

18 Miller, “American Historians,” p. 206, and Newcomer, Big Business, p. 63, respectively.

19 For example, J. B. Duke returned with his father to their farm following the Civil War to resume life at a subsistence level. For our purposes, this was not considered as a condition of poverty since it was similar to the condition of other southern farmers of that period and locale.

20 Miller, “American Historians,” p. 206; Gregory and Neu, “Industrial Elite,” p. 203.

21 Newcomer, Big Business, p. 88.

22 Warner and Abegglen, Occupational Mobility, p. 272.

23 Op. cit., ch. 4; Warner and Abegglen, Business Leaders p. 79; Collins, Moore, et. al., Enterprising Man, pp. 109–24.