America's 60 Families is a book by American journalist Ferdinand Lundberg published in 1937 by Vanguard Press. It is an argumentative analysis of wealth and class in the United States, and how they are leveraged for purposes of political and economic power, specifically by what the author contends is a "plutocratic circle" composed of a tightly interlinked group of 60 families.
The controversial study has met with mixed reactions since its publication. Though praised by some contemporary and modern reviewers, and once cited in a speech by Harold L. Ickes, it has also been criticized by others and was the subject of a 1938 libel suit by DuPont over factual inaccuracies contained in the text. In 1968 Lundberg published The Rich and the Super-Rich, described by some sources as a sequel to America's 60 Families.
Background
Ferdinand Lundberg was an iconoclastic journalist and writer who spent his career pillorying the American upper class over what he charged was its grip on the United States' economy. According to Lundberg, he quit his job as a reporter at the New York Herald Tribune to pen his first book, Imperial Hearst: A Social Biography, which was published in 1936. An unflattering look at the life and business of the publishing tycoon William Randolph Hearst, it ascribed to Hearst what The New York Times would later describe as "fascist political ambitions ... abetted by an unholy alliance of big bankers". The book, whose foreword by Charles A. Beard said that Hearst would face "oblivion in death", caused an immediate stir and was described by Foreign Affairs as "an annihilating study of the newspaper magnate" worthy of "wide attention".
America's 60 Families was Lundberg's second book. Published in 1937 by Vanguard Press, it joined several previous works by American authors and commentators which purportedly identified a cartel of families or individuals that controlled most of the wealth in the United States, part of what has been described as "a generational moral reaction against the perceived depredations of the monied class".
In the book's foreword, Lundberg mentions two of those commentators, journalist Gustavus Myers and diplomat James W. Gerard. Similar publications during this time also included Matthew Josephson's The Robber Barons: The Great American Capitalists, 1861-1901 (1934), Anna Rochester's Rulers of America (1936), Frederick Lewis Allen's The Lords of Creation (1936), and Horace Coon's Money to Burn: Great American Foundations and Their Money (1938).
Content
Overview
In America's 60 Families Lundberg analyzes 1924 income tax payments to estimate levels of consolidated familial wealth and to map networks of capital interconnectedness in the United States. Using his findings, Lundberg asserts that a small group of 60 interlinked American families control the mainstream media, the United States economy, and have unchecked influence over American political institutions. He goes on to claim this nucleus of 60 families is supported by a larger group of 90 families of secondary prestige. According to Lundberg, this situation is unique to the United States as the plutocracies of Europe had largely disintegrated due to World War I:
According to Lundberg, the 60 families slowly wrested control of the state during the 19th century and, beginning with the presidency of Grover Cleveland, essentially held total control over national institutions. He contends that U.S. entry into World War I was brought about through pressures applied on the government by J.P. Morgan and John Francis Dodge, and that America's leading universities are at the behest of the 60 families due to influence applied through the endowment system. Lundberg also criticizes the New Deal, saying that it represents "one faction of wealth – the light goods industrialists – pitted in bitter political struggle against another faction – the capital-goods industrialists" and that it only appears to be a popular program to benefit the working class due to Franklin Roosevelt's insistence of such.
The 60 Families
The "60 families" named by Lundberg included the Rockefeller, Morgan, Ford, Vanderbilt, Mellon, Guggenheim, Whitney, Du Pont, and Astor families, among others, though Lundberg also noted that many wealthy Americans had not placed on his list because their wealth was in the form of individual fortunes and not familial or dynastic assets. Examples of this latter group included Harvey Firestone, Frederick H. Prince, and Samuel Zemurray. "Whether their fortunes will eventually be placed on a permanent family basis," Lundberg wrote, "is not yet known".