¹ One reason for this may be that the traditional framework and the traditional assumptions of American history writing preclude serious questions about personal aspirations and the patterns of ascent. This framework is the “presidential synthesis,” and one of the key assumptions is equality of opportunity. On this theme see Cochran, Thomas C., “The ‘Presidential Synthesis’ in American History,” American Historical Review, LIII (1948), 748–59. See alsoCrossRefGoogle ScholarStephenson, N. W., “Roosevelt and the Stratification of Society,” Scripps College Papers, No. 3 (1930), esp. pp. 71–72Google Scholar.

² The role of such social factors and of others to be considered here, such as education, nationality, and faith, in the selection of men even for training for high executive posts in modern corporations is brilliantly set forth by the former president of the New Jersey Bell Telephone Company, Barnard, Chester I., in his book, The Functions of the Executive (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1938). See alsoGoogle Scholar“The Thirty Thousand Managers,” Fortune, 02 1940Google Scholar.

³ Sociologists (and a few others in special fields) were the first to adapt to the analysis of elite recruitment in social terms quantitative methods evolved by statisticians and used initially in elite studies by eugenists. For the early literature, see Cattell, J. McKeen, American Men of Science (2d ed.; New York: The Science Press, 1910), p. 537Google Scholar.

⁴ The first was published in 1940 by Edwards Brothers Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan; the second in 1947 by Hafner Publishing Co., New YorkGoogle Scholar.

⁵ The problem of defining “entrepreneurial” functions in modern business and of locating the actual “enterpreneurs” in modern corporate bureaucracies has been occupying economists and business historians for some years. Probably the best book on the subject, one rich in bibliography, is Gordon's, Robert A.Business Leadership in the Large Corporation (Washington: The Brookings Institution, 1945)Google Scholar. Also suggestive are the papers read at the 1946 meeting of the Economic History Association and collected in THE TASKS OF ECONOMIC HISTORY (Supplemental Issue of THE JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC HISTORY), Vol. VI (1946), and the papers and discussion at the 1948 meeting of the American Economic Association, published in theGoogle ScholarAmerican Economic Review (1949), XXXIX, 322–55Google Scholar.

⁶ For a provocative explanation of why Redlich himself has not synthesized his findings, see his preface to The Molding of American Banking.

⁷ These are the major statistical studies. A few others discuss certain limited groups of business leaders or only one or two factors in the lives of national samples of the business elite. Of the first, one of the best, on New England railroad men in the later nineteenth century, is in Kirkland, Edward C., Men, Cities and Transportation: A Study in New England History 1820–1900 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1948), II, 452–79Google Scholar. Two examples of the second type are Shannon, J. R. and Shaw, Maxine, “Education of Business and Professional Leaders,” American Sociological Review, V (1940), 381–83;CrossRefGoogle ScholarNearing, Scott, “The Younger Generation of American Genius,” Scientific Monthly, II (1916), 48–61Google Scholar. There are useful tables in Sorokin, Pitirim, Social Mobility (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1927)Google Scholar. A few tables appear in such inspirational books as Forbes, B. C., Men Who Are Making America (New York: B. C. Forbes Publishing Co., 1917), andCrossRefGoogle ScholarForbes, B. C., ed., America's Fifty Foremost Business Leaders (New York: B. C. Forbes & Sons Publishing Co., 1948)Google Scholar. Popular but informative is “The Thirty Thousand Managers,” Fortune, 02 1940Google Scholar. Not designed as a study of business leaders but actually concerned with them in a social capacity is Beck, Hubert P., Men Who Control Our Universities (New York: King's Crown Press, 1947)Google Scholar. An interesting study of English business leaders is Haxey, Simon, England's Money Lords, Tory MJ. (New York: Harrison-Hilton Books, 1939)Google Scholar. Useful statistical studies of leaders in other fields include Ewing, Cortcz A. M., The Judges of the Supreme Court 1789–1937 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1938)Google Scholar; Herring, E. Pendleton, Federal Commissioners: a Study of Their Careers and Qualifications (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1936)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Haynes, George H., The Senate of the United States, Its History and Practice (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1938)Google Scholar; Mills, C. Wright, The New Men of Power: America's Labor Leaders (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1948); andGoogle ScholarClarke, Edwin L., American Men of Letters: Their Nature and Nurture (New York: Columbia University Press, 1916)Google Scholar.

⁸ The Journal of Social Forces, III (1915), 627–40Google Scholar.

⁹ THE TASKS OF ECONOMIC HISTORY (Supplemental Issue of THE JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC HISTORY), VI (1946), 28–49Google Scholar.

¹⁰ THE TASKS OF ECONOMIC HISTORY (Supplemental Issue of THE JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC HISTORY), V (1945), 20–44Google Scholar.

¹¹ New York: The Macmillan Co., 1932.

¹² In extenuation it should be said that Destler's list makes his study more interesting than it would have bee n had he taken seriously the instructions to participants in the “program on entrepreneurial leadership” for which he wrote his paper. In a note (p. 29) he says: “In a circular memorandum sent in advance…to the contributors to the program…the suggestion was made that each select the ‘typical entrepreneur’ of his epoch and then analyze his career in reference to his personal life…” No suggestion appears to have been made as to how such a “typical entrepreneur” could be selected without first making a study such as the one Destler made. He continues: “A cursory examination of the personalities and careers of the so-called ‘robber barons’ revealed that there was no one figure who might be regarded as typical of the group. Instead of the study of an individual career, therefore, an analysis of a relatively large group of ‘robber barons’ seemed called for if significant results were to be attained.”

¹³ Mills was aware of this but concluded that the DAB nevertheless “forms a convenient point of departure for an over-all view of the social characteristics of eminent American businessmen” (p. 20). On this no one yet really can gainsay him; by using the DAB he naturally lost a number of the topmost business leaders, but any more objectively composed list would also have lost some. In my list, for example (see pp. 191–96), neither John D. Archbold nor Thomas F. Ryan appears; to have stretched a point to include them would have meant to distort the objective criteria by which the others were named or to alter those criteria in such ways that others would have fallen out. Not until a good deal more is known about the whole universe of American business leaders (for which a dictionary of such leaders would be an excellent starting point) or about commensurable parts of that universe can anyone say with precision how good or how bad the DAB is as a source of a representative sample of the business elite; and not until we can make samples that we have confidence in—as market researchers have confidence in national samples based on national censuses—will we be able easily and scientifically to extend and deepen our knowledge of that universe.

¹⁴ The Journal of Political Economy, XLII (1934), 404–6Google Scholar.

¹⁵ Taussig and Joslyn used mail questionnaires to get information from about 7,000 businessmen, selected in a thoroughly objective fashion from Poor's 1928 national Register of Directors, on the following points: age, age on first entering business, most important position now held, age on assuming this position, size of company, occupation of father and grandfather, education, assistance from relatives and friends. Mills used the DAB for both his names and his information and sought the following data for 1,464 business leaders born between 1570 and 1879: date of birth, region of birth and of “success” (objectively defined by him), social class of family, education, father's occupation, political activity.

¹⁶ , Destler, “Entrepreneurial Leadership,” THE TASKS OF ECONOMIC HISTORY (Supplemental Issue of THE JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC HISTORY), VI, (1946), 28Google Scholar.

¹⁷ See Moody, John, The Truth About the Trusts (New York: Moody Publishing Co., 1904), PP. 453–76Google Scholar.

¹⁸ For a study of business bureaucrats it seemed reasonable to select the leaders from among those who held the topmost positions in the largest business companies. This was done without regard to the problem of getting biographical information on the men who happened to hold these positions. As it turned out, most of the information sought (approximately thirty questions to be answered for each of these men were put on a schedule, the answers then being coded and punched on Hollerith cards) could be obtained for all but a few of these men. Only a part of this information is analyzed in this essay; I hope in later studies to present more of it.

To describe in detail the sources used for information would use up far too much of the space available here. Besides obvious sources such as individual biographies (of which only eighteen of these business leaders have been subjects), the DAB (which has essays on only fifty-six of these men), the National Cyclopedia of American Biography ( a much more useful source than the DAB and often more accurate), and other encyclopedias, state and local histories, and diverse Who's Who's, I consulted magazine articles, newspaper files, folders of clippings in morgues of newspapers and magazines, and carried on an extensive correspondence with business companies, historical societies, and relatives of men discussed here.

¹⁹ Of the seventy-four nonfinancial corporations represented by the men studied here, fifty-eight (under original or other names) are among Berle and Means' two hundred. Forty-five are among the two hundred (as of 1937) listed in Monograph 29, “The Distribution of Ownership in the 200 Largest Nonfinancial Corporations,” of the TNEC Investigation of Concentration of Economic Power (Government Printing Office, 1940). See pp. 346–47Google Scholar.

²⁰ Those in the first three fields were taken from Part VI of Moody's The Truth About the Trusts, published in 1904Google Scholar. Financial companies arc not listed in Moody's book, hence they were taken from Moody's Manual, 1903. The leading investment-banking houses were named not on the basis of size but largely on that of testimony before the Pujo Committee, of which the following is a pertinent example: Louis Untcrmeyer questioning George F. Baker: “Will you be good enough to name a single transaction in the last 10 years of over $10,000,000 in amount which had been financed without the participation of Messrs. Morgan & Co., or the City Bank, or Kuhn, Loeb & Co., or Speyer & Co., or Lee, Higginson & Co., or Kidder, Peabody & Co., of Boston, and the First National Bank and the Illinois Trust and Savings Bank, of Chicago?” Mr. Baker could not name one. See United States Congress, Committee on Banking and Currency, Money Trust Investigation (Government Printing Office, 1913), II, 1540. Men from all the banks named here are included in this study; those italicized are the five investment banking houses from which nine partners were selected.

²¹ Among the leading studies in this field are those already cited, by Gordon, Barnard, and Berle and Means.

²² I plan in another place to discuss in detail the selection of the 188 political leaders for this study. It is sufficient to state here that this number includes all the presidents, vice-presidents, cabinet members, and United States Supreme Court judges in the decade 1901–1910, these being 44 men plus 67 United States senators and 77 representatives. Twenty-three of the senators and 31 of the representatives held all the chairmanships in the 57th through the 61st Congresses of “major” committees in their respective houses, the list of committees being adapted from that in Haynes, George H., The Senate of the United States, II, 1059Google Scholar, and that in Alexander, DeAlva Sunwood, History and Procedure of the House of Representatives (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co. 1916) pp. 399–410Google Scholar. The remaining 44 senators and 46 representatives held all the chairmanships of certain other committees designated “minor” but sometimes of major importance in channeling legislation. Of the total of 144 senators and representatives, only 14 were not members of some “major” committee.

²³ The only exception is Bruce H. Ismay, an Englishman, who was president of the International Mercantile Marine Company beginning in 1904 and who served in this capacity abroad.

²⁴ This information is based on listings for 85 men in the Directory of Directors, City of New York, 1909–1910; for 58 men, iGoogle Scholar n similar directories issued during the decade 1901–1910; for 31 men, on other sources. Two thousand seven hundred and twenty directorships is a conservative figure; were the maximum number ever held by each of these men available, the total would be appreciably higher.

²⁵ p. 129.

²⁶ II, 172–73.

²⁷ II, 134.

²⁸ Growth of the American People, p. 129.

²⁹ P. 168.

³⁰ Rise of American Civilization, II, 173.

³¹ “The Thirty Thousand Managers,” Fortune, 02 1940, p. 61Google Scholar.

³² In fairness to the Beards it should be pointed out that they were aware of changes in the recruitment of business leaders by the turn of the century. They write: “By the end of the century the government of American railways and staple industries, with exceptions of course, had been lost by the men who had grown up in the roundhouses and the mills through all the technical processes. On the whole, the high command in the empire of business was now in the hands of great banking corporations, and captains of industry were as a rule no longer evolved by natural selection; they were chosen by the dominant bankers who served as financial guardians.” —Rise of American Civilization, II, 196–97Google Scholar. Two things must be said about this statement. (1) After making it, the Beards say nothing more about the leaders selected under the new conditions; they name no men and make no comparisons with the older group discussed earlier in such detail. (2) Much more important, they fail to focus upon the lasting change that took place in the period of which they write. They say the new men no longer were selected from the plants. But whence, then, did they come? The Beards do not even raise this question. They do not, in fact, even establish that the older business leaders did rise from long years in “the roundhouses and the mills,” and indeed it is more likely that, except for some in railroads, the older leaders started their own enterprises at early ages and rose with not in those enterprises. But whatever may be said of the older men, the majority of the new business leaders, along with hundreds of thousands of others who never rose out of the “ruck,” did spend many years in the plant, or, in more instances, in the offices of their industries—for the problems of administration had already become complex enough to take an entire career to master. Bankers and other directors at the turn of the century did place “outsiders” at the head of the companies they financed—after all, many of these were newly organized or reorganized companies into which the introduction of outsiders early in their history probably was necessary and expedient. No one, to my knowledge, has studied the business backgrounds of these outsiders. I suggest that they were frequently experienced in the industries if not the companies into which they were placed. But the lasting change was not the importation of outsiders by the bankers; it was the tendency to select top bureaucrats from the hierarchy below. And the question of lasting social import is not whom did the bankers select from the outside but whom did the top bureaucrats select from the whole eager army of aspirants within the hierarchies to develop for, and finally install at, the top? Virtually all the candidates have been, in recent decades, so to speak, in business, often in the business. What then were the factors that differentiated the more from the less successful? If this was not the key question earlier in our history when business bureaucracies, in the main, were nonexistent, since the turn of the century it has been a question the answer to which has been of increasing social moment—a question, nevertheless, that most historians have not yet asked.

³³ Rise of American Civilization, II, 181. The adjective “Barnumesque”is Allan Nevins'; see his Rockefeller, John D., the Heroic Age of American Enterprise (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1940), I, 15–16Google Scholar. See also I, 39–40, for Nevins' discussion of the role of the business background in Rockefeller's life. See, too, Rockefeller, John D., Random Reminiscences of Men and Events (New York: Doubleday, Page & Co., 1909) p. 33Google Scholar.

³⁴ Parkes, Henry B., Recent America (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Co., 1945), p. 55Google Scholar. Heinze's father was a German immigrant.

³⁵ Carnegie, Andrew, The Empire of Business (New York: Doubleday, Page & Co., 1902), pp. 107–11Google Scholar.

³⁶ The last quotation in this paragraph is from Ida Tarbell, M., The Life of Elbert H. Gary (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1925), p. £20Google Scholar. The other quotations are from the DAB.

³⁷ The average age of the 190 business leaders in 1905 was 54 years; of the political leaders, 57 years.

³⁸ In his study of 1,464 businessmen born between 1570 and 1879, Mills found that 18.6 per cent had been foreign-born. He divided his men, by birth dates, into seven generations starting in the following years (in parentheses after each date is the proportion of foreign-born businessmen in the generation starting at that date): 1570 (78.4%), 1700 (28.3%) 1730 (28.1%), 1760 (22.3%), 1790 (10.2%), 1820 (17.5%), 1850 (10.9%). Thus, in each of these generations, except that born between 1790 and 1819, there was a greater percentage of foreign-born businessmen than in Mills' last generation, which is nearest to the period of the present study and in the group used in this study. (, Mills, “The American Business Elite,” The Tasks Of Economic History (Supplemental Issue of THE JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC HISTORY), V, (1945), 22)Google Scholar.

³⁹ Defining “colonial”families as those settled in America before 1776.

⁴⁰ Forbes, , Men Who Are Making America p. 232Google Scholar.

⁴¹ Henry Lee Higginson, senior partner in Lee, Higginson & Co. early in this century, once said: “If there were just one thing I could tell the boys of this country it would be to tell them to be expert in whatever they set out to do. This country sorely needs experts. There is a scarcity of experts and a great opportunity for the boy who wants to be of the greatest service.”—Quoted from Eliot, Samuel A., Biographical History of Massachusetts (Boston: Massachusetts Biography Society, 1911–1918)Google Scholar, Vol. IX (no pagination). Since Higginson spoke, this scarcity of experts in some lines has been so fully overcome that big corporations sometimes seem to be choked by them. The early business bureaucrats studied here, however, as a rule had no formal business or professional training. Those who went to college found few courses in business subjects when they were in attendance. About 9 per cent of the whole group attended secretarial, bookkeeping, or technical schools; 10 per cent had formal engineering training; 16 per cent had legal educations. Sixty-five per cent had no formal vocational, business, or professional education.

⁴² Based on 180 business leaders about whom all three kinds of data are known.

⁴³ An estimate based on data about the presidents and partners studied here showing elapsed working time indicates that 61 per cent of the middle- and lower-class, noncollege, early starters (before 19 years of age) spent more than thirty years at work before acquiring the position that made them eligible for this study while 66 per cent of the upper-class, college, late starters (19 years of age or older) spent less than thirty years.