Tuesday, December 28, 2010

America's 60 Families (1937)

Skylaire Alfvegren
Thursday, December 16, 2010

Dynasties listed below were included in America's 60 Families, Ferdinand Lundberg's 1937 expose on the super-rich. Lundberg used tax records to uncover the often impenetrable financial and political machinations of the 60 Families, effectively publishing a directory of names and occupations of family scions as well as estimates of their fortunes.

"The United States is owned and dominated today by a hierarchy of its sixty richest families, buttressed by no more than ninety families of lesser wealth... These families are the living center of the modern industrial oligarchy which dominates the United States, functioning discreetly under a de jure democratic form of government behind which a de facto government, absolutist and plutocratic in its lineaments, has gradually taken form since the Civil War. This de facto government is actually the government of the United States -- informal, invisible, shadowy. It is the government of money in a dollar democracy."

Families are listed in ranked order (according to 1924 tax records) with their primary sources of wealth.

1 Rockefeller Family Standard Oil

2 Morgan Family J. P. Morgan & Co.

3 Ford Family Ford Motors

4 Harkness Family Standard Oil

5 Mellon Family Aluminum Company

6 Vanderbilt Family NY Central R&R

7 Whitney Family Standard Oil

8 Standard Oil Families Standard Oil

9 Du Pont Family DuPont

10 McCormick Family International Harvester, Chicago Times

11 Baker Family First National Bank

12 Fisher Family General Motors

13 Guggenheim Family American Smelting & Refining Co.

14 Field Family Marshall Field's

15 Curtis-Boks Family Curtis Publishing Co.

16 Duke Family American Tobacco Company

17 Berwind Family Berwind-White Coal Co.

18 Lehman Family Lehman Brothers

19 Widener Family American Tobacco Company, public utilities

20 Reynolds Family R. J. Reynolds

21 Astor Family Real estate

22 Winthrop Family Miscellaneous

23 Stillman Family Citibank

24 Timken Family Timken

25 Pitcairn Family Pittsburgh Plate Glass Co. (now PPG Industries)

26 Warburg Family Kuhn, Loeb & Co.

27 Metcalf Family Rhode Island textile mills

28 Clark Family Singer Sewing Machine Co.

29 Phipps Family Carnegie Steel

30 Kahn Family Kuhn, Loeb & Co.

31 Green Family Stocks and real estate

32 Patterson Family Chicago Tribune

33 Taft Family Real estate

34 Deering Family International Harvester

35 De Forest Family Corporate law practice

36 Gould Family Railroads

37 Hills Family Railroads

38 Drexel Family J. P. Morgan & Co.

39 Ryan Family Stock market

40 Foster Family Auto parts

41 Johnson Family Victor Phonograph

42 James Family Copper and railroads

43 Nash Family Automobiles

44 Schiff Family Kuhn, Loeb & Co.

45 Patten Family Wheat market

46 Hayden Family Stock market

47 Weber Family Allied Chemical & Dye Corp.

48 Blumenthal Family Lazard

49 Mills Family Mining

50 Friedsam Family Merchandising

51 McLean Family Mining

52 Higgins Family New York real estate

53 Cochran Family Textiles

54 Kirkwood Family

55 Tyson Family

56 Huntington Family Railroads

57 Storrow Family Lee Higginson & Co.

58 Rosenwald Family Sears Roebuck

59 Baruch Family Stock market

60 Kresge Family Merchandising

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