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Fourteen

   FINPOLITAN FRONTIERS

   As the management of properties is considered by apologists to represent in itself a great social contribution (which may in some muted degree indeed be so), in this chapter there will be passingly considered this aspect--even though the management of personal holdings can hardly be considered a clearcut public contribution. At best it would be an ambiguous one. Just because a man runs his plantation well provides no ground in itself for immoderate public rejoicing (as public relations men insist), however much we may admire his adroitness and democratic bearing.

   As to corporations, most of the big ones are run well. They are models of self-centered efficiency and rational planning. In some cases they are managed by dominant owners, in others by well-paid hired managers acting for dominant owners. But while laudable efficiency and rational planning--in their own self-oriented interests--mark the large corporations, the dominant public ideology sponsored by the leaders of these very corporations is that there should be no public planning. Planning is a wicked word when engaged in by government, for it allegedly leads to "statism," by definition a bad thing. But corporate planning for maximum profits is virtuous. The consequence is that only corporate policy is rational, in the interests of the corporation, and helter-skelter public policy is helpless to defend itself against the corporations. Such being the case it can only be incidentally that the well-managed corporation is publicly supportive; often it is discovered as overtly anti-social. Merely managing a corporation well, then, does not represent a social contribution. Such action may represent carefully contrived piracy. We can, therefore, forget about corporate management as ipso facto a social contribution even though it may be in some instances.

   The Rockefeller empire of contrapuntal profit and nonprofit enterprises is here taken, purely for illustrative purposes, as the central and conventionally most creditable of such ostensible contributions, with allusion later to lesser similar finpolitan complexes. Currently this empire is an international network of industrial, financial, cultural and political activities that for variety, quantity and quality put everything of a similar kind in the shade. The present third generation of ruling Rockefellers--five sons and a daughter of John D., Jr., without considering the independent branch of the founder's brother, William-has at its fingertips what is the quintessence of many great fiefdoms, worthy to be included in a modern Arabian Nights tale. All of it is bone and muscle, none either of fat or meagerness. It is not only quantitatively but qualitatively rich, like a Christmas fruit-nut-brandy cake.

   The reigning Rockefeller brothers are John D. III (b. 1906), Nelson Aldrich (b. 1908), Laurance S. (b. 1910), Winthrop (b. 1912) and David (b. 1915). They have a sister, Mrs. Abby Mauzé, who figures in the giltedged sextette, according to reports by family friends, pretty much as a silent partner. All appear to be of good intelligence, not the least of their assets, although actually the intelligence at their disposal--the pooled family intelligence deriving from long experience with a mercurial world plus that of their large professional advisory and research staffs--greatly exceeds their personal intelligence, Like the ruler of a great state they have far more relevant information at their ready disposition than they carry with them in their own heads. As far as the contemporary world is concerned, they are thoroughly informed. They can, in fact, out-think most contemporaries.

   The fourth, and even fifth, generation is being readied in the wings. At this writing there are twenty-three living members of the fourth generation. John D. III has one son and three daughters, Nelson four living sons and two daughters, Laurance one son and three daughters, Winthrop one son, David two sons and four daughters and Abby two children. Some of these offspring are now married and themselves have children of the fifth Rockefeller generation, members of an established world dynasty.

   The self-image of the Rockefellers is quite different from that which a detached observer might arrive at, although it is a conception that many people now share through the power of public relations. "The boys' father," says Joe Alex Morris, "had been brought up with the feeling, which his mother emphasized, that the family's money belonged to God and that he was to be merely a steward. He impressed something of this idea on his sons. . . ." ¹ They are, then, stewards of wealth. In this case the laudably humble role carries with it vast emoluments, privileges, immunities and intangible advantages and disadvantages.

   Discussing foreign trade after World War II, Nelson remarked: 'In the last century capital went where it could make the greatest profit. In this century, it must go where it can render the greatest service." ² Noble words. . . .

   Again, speaking of the financing of various enterprises in Latin America, Nelson said: "We're really setting up pilot plants. Our way of life is confronted with a lot of big problems that have to be solved. We hope that our pilot plant operations will demonstrate some of the things that American enterprise can do to help solve these problems that are vital to our everyday life and to our position in world affairs. Because we've got to master such problems if our system is going to survive." ³ Survival of "our system," then, is a matter of concern.

   The Rockefellers, then, look upon themselves as stewards rendering service and helping solve big world problems in harmony with "our system." They are, in fact, problem solvers, within limits imposed by mass irrationality.

   "Any real clues as to the wealth of the brothers," says Fortune, "have been vigilantly guarded since their birth. None of the terms of the trusts established for them by their father has ever been revealed, and even the names of the trustees are known only to the family and a few key advisers. The great concentration of the brothers' wealth is in oil companies like Jersey Standard, Creole, and Socony-Vacuum, but the precise amount is still their secret since the holdings are not big enough for mandatory disclosure to the SEC." ⁴ Glimpses of some of the trust funds, however, were obtained from TNEC records as cited in Chapter Four. As the SEC does not require the reporting of stockholdings of less than 10 per cent in a company unless held by an officer, the six Rockefellers, none of whom is a Standard Oil officer or director, could (but certainly do not) own up to nearly 60 per cent of the stock of each of the many Standard Oil companies without the fact appearing on the public record.

   "Though these circumstances make appraisal inordinately difficult, appraisal is essential to an understanding of the material source of the brothers' power--their wealth," Fortune continued. "Their personal fortunes are estimated at upwards of $100 million each [as of pre-boom 1955 and prior to their father's death--F.L.]; the money is mostly tied up in trust funds, yielding them individual incomes of probably $5 million a year before taxes, but leaving control to trustees. Roughly $7 million is given away each year to standard charities, or in gifts such as Laurance's recent offer of one-half the island of St. John for a national park in the Virgin Islands. Apart from the, trusts, they have an asset of roughly $150 million in Rockefeller Center [an understatement, clearly, for the Empire State Building alone recently sold for $100 million--F. L.]; some $15 million is put out as U.S. venture capital; $12 million has gone into Latin-American enterprises such as dairies, supermarkets, fisheries, hog farms. At a minimum, then, the brothers are probably worth over $500 million. Even in 1955 dollars, this does not compare too badly with the 1913 fortune of $900 million-considering that the holdings of their father, their sister, and other Rockefeller kin are not included in the $500 million, considering all that has been given away, and finally, considering taxes." ⁵

   Since the death of John D. Rockefeller, Jr., in 1960, the center of financial gravity has moved, manifestly, to the brothers. And inheritance taxes have not whittled down the original Standard Oil fortune by much because the original John D. transferred most of it to his son (and daughters) by gift, himself dying comparatively stripped of wealth, and the son in turn transferred at least half of it by bits and pieces to his children, thus incurring only gift taxes. As some was transferred in the 1930's at depression prices, some no doubt nontaxable at birth, possibly by the grandfather as well as the father, the gift taxes on highly elastic, dynamic properties were minimal. Morris says. "With the third generation, the family's accumulated wealth is being dissipated on a great descending curve by taxes, philanthropies and division among the heirs. . . ." ⁶

   Now, whatever else one may say, one cannot rightly say the Rockefeller fortune is in any way being dissipated; it is, apart from that portion undeniably dedicated to public purposes, only being subdivided as to direct beneficiaries but held together in concentrated form in properties. One can dismiss the so-called tax bite out of hand. Owing to its trustification the fortune left in private bands is intact, and a potent influence.

   Precisely how much has been paid in inheritance taxes, even while many publicists erroneously assert that taxes are breaking down big estates, can easily be shown. John D. Rockefeller's estate after death in 1937 totaled $26,410,837, of which $16,630,000 was paid in federal and state taxes. ⁷ His son's estate totaled approximately $150 million, of which half went to the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and half to his wife. The first half was nontaxable as a philanthropic contribution and the second half was nontaxable under the marital deduction of the tax law, a spouse receiving tax free under 1947 law half of any estate above the basic deduction of $60,000. ⁸ There was some small real and personal property in the estate of the junior Rockefeller, and any of it that was not given to institutions would be subject to a minor tax, tax experts pointed out.

   We see, then, that the Rockefeller fortune, estimated at $900 million in 1913, has to this date not paid much more than $16,630,000 in inheritance taxes.

   Leaving it at this would be misleading because the 1913 dollar has depreciated by approximately 70 per cent to the Johnson dollar of August, 1966. In terms of the value of current dollars, as measured by the Bureau of Labor Statistics indexes of the cost of living, Rockefeller's fortune as of 1913 was worth approximately $3 billion, exclusive of what he had put into foundations before 1913. A man today would need to make $100 per week to equal in purchasing power $30 per week in 1913, when, moreover, he was not subject to a federal tax bite. Put another way, what cost 30 cents on the average in 1913 now costs $1, taxes sometimes added.

   The brothers' investments, apart from trust funds of which the capital is distributable only to their grandchildren (an example of serial entailment if the grandchildren replace the trusts with new trusts according to standard estate doctrine) are held through Rockefeller Brothers, Inc. There was also established by them in 1940 the Rockefeller Brothers Fund to finance nonprofit or philanthropic properties. ⁹

   None of the brothers is actively associated with the management of any of the Standard Oil companies, although most, like their father, held minor jobs with some of them upon emerging from college and some have for a time been directors. All are directors of Rockefeller Brothers, Inc., formed in 1946, and Rockefeller Center, Inc., and trustees of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. David, for a short time secretary to Mayor Fiorello La Guardia of New York, is now chairman of the ultra-powerful Chase Manhattan Bank, one of the "Big Three" largest commercial banks in the world. His cousin James S. Rockefeller, of the William Rockefeller branch of the family, is chairman of the First National City Bank of New York, another of the "Big Three."

   John D. III is chairman of the Rockefeller Foundation and the General Education Board as well as of the Lincoln Center of Performing Arts. Laurance is chairman of Rockefeller Brothers, Inc., and Rockefeller Center, Inc., and styles himself a "venture capitalist." Nelson was chairman of Rockefeller Center before becoming governor of New York in 1958. Winthrop heads his own Winrock Enterprises in Arkansas and participates in the fraternal enterprises; he was elected Republican governor of Arkansas in 1966.

   A division of labor has been worked out by the quintet. John D. III is generally in charge of nonprofit or philanthropic enterprises, David of banking and finance, Laurance of new investments, Nelson (and, lately, Winthrop) of direct political participation (all are indirectly in politics through financial participation in the Republican Party) and Winthrop to some extent in his own orbit although he is a participant in all the fraternal enterprises and his brothers may, too, he participants in some of his ventures.

   Winthrop, for special reasons associated with his development in the family constellation and his childhood relations to his older brothers appears to be the more independent of family patterns, at least in shading. Although each brother is sharply individualized, which a psychologist would expect in view of their order in the family, Winthrop appears to be the most noticeably different, more ambient. Both intra-family and later experience, including severe combat experience in World War II during which he rose from enlisted private to lieutenant colonel and won the Purple Heart and Bronze Star with oak leaf cluster, no doubt set him somewhat apart. Although all the brothers except Nelson served in the armed forces, Winthrop's experience was sufficiently unique, following and presaging a persistent pattern, so that among the Rockefellers he is a bit of an odd-man out. As such, he provokes a more spontaneous kind of publicity. Actually, all the Rockefellers are far more individualistic than even some close admirers credit them with being. On policies, their intimates report, they often differ and argue strongly back and forth at quarterly meetings. How differences are settled, by majority vote or otherwise, is not indicated. Which one, if any, is dominant in the group is as much a mystery as in the Russian Politburo.

   It would require a rather long catalogue to detail all the projects, profit and nonprofit, with which they are associated. Morris lists thirty-six boards and committees of which John D. III was a member over a period of eighteen years and suggests that one multiply the list by five to ascertain how many such formal connections the brothers have, excluding their club memberships. Some of these are permanent connections, some temporary. The Rockefellers, because of past unpleasant experience with deputies (as in the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company strike of 1913), always involve themselves with all projects with which they are financially associated; and the mere business of attending rounds of meetings occupies much of their time and energy. They are working diplomats, or finpols, who aim to eliminate unfavorable public repercussions to the often commendable application of great power.

   Their major enterprises are as follows:

   Trust funds, at least seventy-five, managed by family nominees, invested in corporations, mainly in Standard Oil companies. Precisely what is in the trust funds, precisely how many there are or what they are worth in the aggregate is not publicly known. As trust funds are usually managed, there is shifting of holdings, perhaps only in the way of selling out at higher prices and buying back at lower. Whether there has been such shifting of Rockefeller holdings is not known. If the trustees were omniscient and in every market phase sold out at top prices and repossessed at market lows, never making an error, the funds would today be worth far more than anyone believes them to be. As nobody can pick market highs and lows with perfect prescience, theoretically maximum results can never be attained. What seems more certain is that the relative value of the Rockefeller trusts has at least been preserved with respect to the performance of the economy. Whether they have outperformed the economy is not known, but it is a lively possibility considering the politically coddled oil industry.

   A question of interest to a wide public is how the brothers stand with respect to control of the Standard Oil companies. The image projected by writers in the confidence of the family is that they are passive income-receivers, rentiers. Up to a point they may indeed be. But at any moment the massed family holdings can be mobilized into active dominance and control. This was shown cleanly in 1929 when a wayward chairman of the Standard Oil Company of Indiana, in which the Rockefellers were not active, took it into his head to seize control. The chairman was very popular with small stockholders, who had enjoyed unexpected extra dividends and the like. After rivalrous appeals to stockholders for proxies, at a special meeting the chairman was overwhelmingly voted out by the massed proxies of the Rockefeller family, philanthropic funds, family trust funds and nonfamily investment and trust funds. For investment managers throughout the world, after studying the issues, had decided to side with John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Mainly the small, purely dividend-oriented stockholders sided with the chairman. The Rockefellers held proxies for about 65 per cent of the stock when all the chips were down. A new management was installed. What was exemplified here was corporate power.

   As there is a good deal of learned nonsense in circulation about who controls the corporations--nonsense placed into circulation by professors intent upon making a complex mountain out of a simple molehill--this is as good a place as any to dismiss the question. This nonsense was originally set in motion by Berle and Means in The Modern Corporation and Private Property (1932) and has since been embroidered upon by James Burnham in The Managerial Revolution, and others. Even such hard-bitten observers as the neo-Marxists Baran and Sweezy have to some extent been brought into the camp of those who believe corporations are dominated by managers, not by stockholders. ¹⁰

   When all the chips are down, which is not always the case, the stockholders, particularly the big stockholders or trustees managing, big stockholdings, exercise broad control by determining the composition of the management. Basically, the stock controls. There are situations, however, where the generalized-ownership kind of influence Baran-Sweezy talk about comes into play.

   Even with respect to small stockholders the formal power of the management is in any test restricted. Lindahl and Carter, in The Dartmouth Study, repeatedly point out, correctly, that the small stockholders have much legal power they do not use with respect to company policy. ¹¹ Small stockholders are usually interested only in dividends, and as long as these keep flowing they are inert. But in many cases of record a single small stockholder has, by invoking the assistance of the courts, completely thwarted an established management, even a stockholding management. There is a great deal of law on the books on the side of the smallest stockholder. Most small stockholders feel they cannot take the time, trouble and expense to invoke this law; if they don't like the way the company is run they usually simply sell out, depressing the value of the stock to the chagrin of managers. They have an effect indirectly.

   The big nonmanagerial stockholders hold the whip hand. So I believe it to be the case of the Rockefellers with respect to the Standard Oil empire, in which they are silent partners. If any issue arises with respect to which control needs to be asserted, they will unhesitatingly once again, as in the case of the Indiana company, assert that control. This fact--or assumption--is unquestionably part of the thinking of every high Standard Oil official in the world.

   Even though we don't know precisely the amount of stock the Rockefellers own in the Standard Oil companies, it is known what stock is owned by the Rockefeller Foundation, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund et al. This stock, too, has voting power, and the trustees include the Rockefellers. The voting power of these foundation stocks combines with the precisely undetermined stake of the family members to give a large, perhaps unexercised voice, in the determination of the company management. No company management is going to ride roughshod over or even politely ignore the interests merely of the foundation stock, formally a public possession. And so it is in other cases.

   As I indicated, it is not known precisely what the participation of the Rockefellers is in the Standard Oil companies. When the master New Jersey company was ordered dissolved in 1911 it was separated into thirty-eight independent companies, and the stocks of thirty-three underlying subsidiaries as well as those of the parent companies were distributed pro rata to stockholders. The parent company then had outstanding 983,383 shares, of which John D. Rockefeller I owned 244,500 or almost 25 per cent, giving him working control. If this distribution had been maintained through the constituent companies the family would, clearly, now hold about 25 per cent evenly throughout the empire.

   There is ample reason to believe, however, that this even ownership has not been maintained. First, the stocks in some companies appear to have been sold out, with more emphasis placed on other companies. Again, there has been distribution of assets on the philanthropic circuit, although where such distribution has been retained as principal the control power of the stock has remained in being, an important point.

   During his later lifetime it was often reported that John D. Rockefeller, Jr., owned 10 per cent of the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey, an enormous holding in itself in the largest industrial company in the world in point of assets; but this percentage, as it was often assumed, did not necessarily exhaust the family participation in the company.

   While soon after dissolution the Rockefeller share of the constituents of the New Jersey company was valued in the market at around $900 million, subsequent price movements showed that this was a gross undervaluation. For in the market the stocks, and this prior to the automobile age, were steeply marked up in price. It took the dissolution of the trust to reveal to investors something of what this company was worth. It was the greatest profit-generating mechanism the world has ever to this day seen. It made General Motors even as of today look small because it included with the New Jersey company, which alone tops General Motors in assets in the industrial field, the present-day Indiana, California, Mobil, Marathon and many other big companies.

   What happened to this 25 per cent Standard Oil interest is that it was subdivided among family members and family foundations for the most part. Taxes, either inheritance or gift, have had little impact, and as to income taxes far from all income of the companies has been paid out. It has been retained and reinvested.

   So much for the trust funds, corporate control and the Rockefeller position in Standard Oil companies.

   Rockefeller Brothers, Inc., is the brothers' joint private investment company, into which they apparently put some of their income from Standard Oil sources, thus diversifying in an uncertain world. Its holdings are not reported. This enterprise, with Laurance as chairman, appears to concentrate in the area of modern advanced technology. Laurance himself, for his personal account, has invested in technologically advanced growth-type companies; and writers such as Morris leave it ambiguous whether some of his investments at different times also included his brothers. Sometimes he clearly acts for the brothers together, sometimes apparently alone.

   In the first five years of its life the brothers put less than $4 million into ventures of Rockefeller Brothers, Inc., Morris reports, whereas their total investments of venture capital in that period came to $15 million. ¹² The proclaimed intent of Rockefeller Brothers, Inc., is "to achieve social and economic progress as well as a fair profit on investment." ¹³ How much it is now worth does not appear on the record.

   Laurance, the gadgeteer of the family, with ace flyer Eddy Rickenbacker in 1938 bought into North American Aviation, which was converted into Eastern Air Lines, a profitable venture. He then went into nonscoring Platt le Page, pioneer in building helicopters, and finally put in with the then limping J. S. McDonnell Aircraft Corporation, in which the brothers collectively after the war held 20 per cent of the stock on an original investment of $400,000 apart from any share Laurance antecedently held, put by Morris at an original modest $10,000. This company produced the advanced Phantom and Banshee jet fighters, which are thought to have enabled the United States to command the air in Korea in 1950-52 and which are still used in improved models. It is more recently deep in space-age technology. ¹⁴ But the Rockefellers, through their oil interests, were already an integral part of the front line of national offense-defense.

   Other investments of the brothers were in Marquardt Aircraft Company of Los Angeles, manufacturer of ram-jet and pulse-jet engines and electronic air-navigation and control devices; the Laboratory for Electronics, Inc., of Boston, makers of cyclotron equipment, radar components, electric flight control and guidance systems; Airborne Instruments Laboratory, radar and electronic devices and target indicators; the Aircraft Radio Corporation, radar and other electronic instruments; Horizons, Inc., engineering development and research and (Laurance alone) $1 million as of 1952 in the Glenn L. Martin aircraft enterprise. ¹⁵

   Laurance, too, held an interest in Reaction Motors (21 per cent), Marquardt Aircraft (20 per cent), Wallace Aviation (27 per cent), Flight Refueling (30 per cent), Piasecki Helicopter (17 per cent), Airborne Instruments (24 per cent), Aircraft Radio (24 per cent), New York Airways (3 per cent), Horizons (5 per cent), and Nuclear Development Associates (17 per cent). ¹⁶

   Four out of five of these ventures, said Fortune, were successful. ¹⁷

   While the Rockefeller brothers clearly have decided to put a good part of their personal investments into the field of advanced technology, which may seem to them the wave of the investment future, some clue to their broader investment approach may be discerned in the portfolio of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.

   At the end of 1964 we find there $20,689,425 by market value of government and corporate bonds, $21,882,161 of corporate notes, $1,801,589 of preferred stocks and $161,608,512 of common stocks with a book or acquisition value of $88,157,570. The entire Fund was valued at $205,981,687.

   Although the portfolio embraced a wide section of the investment spectrum, like any balanced investment fund, distinctive Rockefeller properties among the holdings were as follows:

                                   Shares     Book Value     Market Value
Standard Oil Co. (New Jersey)      684,220   $30,422,352     $61,665,328
Standard Oil Co. of California     244,333    10,388,607      17,927,934
Socony Mobil Oil Co                199,900     8,482,656      18,340,825
Marathon Oil Co.,
   a Standard Oil unit              31,200     1,074,958       1,996,800
Chase Manhattan Bank               167,168     6,949,897      12,203,264

   All these stocks, naturally, represent corporate voting power which, in conjunction with other family holdings, represent still greater voting power. Additional smaller holdings were in Alcoa, AT&T, Armour, Bethlehem Steel, Chrysler, Du Pont, Eastman Kodak, Ford Motor, General Electric, General Motors, Great A&P, IBM, International Nickel, International Paper, National Cash Register, Polaroid, Sears, Roebuck, Texaco, etc. As indicated by this Fund, then, the Rockefellers: are diversified by investment throughout the American corporate structure.

   Their private holdings presumably follow the same general line of distribution, although there may be differences of emphasis in different funds.

   More recently at least, Laurance has had a large position in the Itek Corporation, formed in 1960 to concern itself with mechanical, electrical and electronic equipment and to develop optics with relation to photography and photocopying.

   Some of these personal investments have been closed out. Where there has been a profit, the close-out required a capital gains tax of 25 per cent. These capital gains ventures of the Rockefellers are, in my opinion, on the basis of the theory of giving tax leniency to actual new ventures, fully justified and differ from capital gains leniency accorded buyers and sellers of stock and real estate in the open market, where there is not the shadow of any social contribution. Whether the brothers operate cyclically in the stock market, as their grandfather did over a broad spectrum, is not known, although the family Stock Exchange seat is still held.

   The brothers, Morris reports, are "keenly interested" in making money but not by any means for the sake of mere possession or accumulation, only of "proving their ability." ¹⁸ To them, he says, money is a mere tool with which to build. They don't like to talk about money, which by reason of constant allusion in their presence must surely be boring, but will redirect pecuniary conversations to value. Unlike lesser mortals they are in a position where they can do this on the basis of authentic impulse. Their biggest problem about money is no doubt that they have had dumped in their laps so much of what most other people desire.

   The Rockefeller Brothers Fund is a foundation enterprise run by the brothers and the largest in a flotilla of others including the General Education Board, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial and the like. Out of the General Education Board were financed the University of Chicago and many other educational enterprises in whole or in part, including many southern Negro colleges. The Rockefeller Foundation has been more broadly engaged in financing medical, scientific, cultural and other enterprises in vast profusion, a work the Rockefeller Brothers Fund is continuing.

   There is, quite evidently, a counterpoint going far back into the history of John D. I between profit-making enterprises, originally subject to much public and judicial disapproval, and nonprofit-making enterprises that have earned wide public approval. Anyone who does not like the way Rockefeller conducted his business affairs is, upon inquiring into his nonprofit or philanthropic enterprises, brought up short. Here the signals become crossed, as in the case of Pavlov's experiments with dogs. Original feelings of pain or disapproval are now followed by feelings of pleasure and approval. Then, as one sits back to enjoy the pleasure, one suddenly again feels a stab of pain. Observers are confused, perhaps like the Pavlovian dogs brought to a state of nervous breakdown or apathy.

   There is room a-plenty here for feelings of ambivalence. Are the Rockefellers trying to improve the world? Or are they merely automatically milking it?

   These questions, which reflect the Rockefellers as controversial figures, require some sort of answer. There are many persons who would blandly and patronizingly dismiss such thoughts as the product of a presumptuous writer's overheated imagination. If there were nothing to the negative side then, one should ask, why did Winthrop, who never hurt a fly, when he went to work in the Texas oil fields in 1933 find it necessary to have bodyguards and, when he returned in 1936, to get a permit to carry a gun for protection against "fanatics"? ¹⁹

   The contrapuntal Rockefeller style of operation is shown by the more recent enterprise of the brothers in the international field, especially in Latin America and the Middle East but also, of all places, in Russia. Two organizations, Morris reports, were established by them as an "experiment in international cooperation." One was the International Basic Economy Corporation (IBEC), originally started with $2 million in 1947 and soon capitalized at $10,824,000, "intended to help raise the standard of living in the localities involved--chiefly Latin America--and to return a profit, if possible, to the investors." ²⁰

   Paralleling IBEC there was formed the American International Association for Economic and Social Development (AIA), with Nelson president of both at the inception. Because IBEC would be operating its profit enterprises in poor if not primitive areas, AIA would engage in providing health, education, research and credit facilities. AIA was nonprofit, Operations were begun in Brazil and Venezuela and later extended to other areas.

   AIA put up Rockefeller funds but, following a settled Rockefeller policy, it involved others as well--at first various Venezuelan oil companies and the Corn Products Refining Company and later Pfizer Corporation do Brasil; Anderson, Clayton, Ltda; The Sulphur Institute; The Ford Foundation; and Price Waterhouse and Company. Then it called upon local governments to put up matching funds.

   Since Morris reported on these enterprises they have grown, particularly in the profit area. IBEC as of 1965 had 9 plants in the United States and 135 stores in Latin America and 108 wholly or partially owned subsidiaries in various parts of the world. It had 297 common and 32 preferred stockholders and 10,090 employees. Its business included housing, retailing, credit and many other endeavors. Total assets at the end of 1965 were $142,227,662 and total sales $191,711,425. Profits for 1965 were $2,723,007. The president was R. S. Aldrich and one of the vice presidents was Rodman C. Rockefeller, Nelson's son. ²¹ This has manifestly become a big operation.

   AIA in 1961 had total assets of $752,585, received gifts of $908,207 for the year and expended $937,444. ²²

   Early in 1967 it was announced (New York Times, January 16, 1967; 1:6-7) that IBEC was entering Russia and the Iron Curtain countries in a multi-billion-dollar operation. Joining 50-50 with Tower International, Inc., of the Cleveland Cyrus Eaton interests, it was announced that the joint enterprise would begin or complete already launched large hotels in Budapest, Belgrade, Warsaw, Prague, Sofia and Bucharest in a Rockefeller-Eaton version of an Iron Curtain Hilton chain. Also to be built were rubber plants in Russia costing considerably more than $200 million, a $50-million aluminum plant in Yugoslavia and a glass plant in Rumania. Highly profitable arrangements were announced to have been made in return for American financing and construction knowhow and can-do; materials, labor and sites would be supplied by the. Communist governments.

   The entire deal was looked upon by the principals as the beginning of a highly useful "dialogue" between the capitalist West and the communist East, a really constructive thrust that can bring salvation to the ordinary run of mortals and, naturally, plenty of dollars to the promoters. Considering the stature of all the participants it was hard to see how the whole enterprise could fail to be a huge success.

   These two ventures in the private development (exploitation?) of undeveloped world regions show the general emphasis. The tax-free AIA clears the way; IBEC earns the profits. The profits of IBEC more than nourish AIA. All spells "development," international fraternization.

   Almost from the very beginning the Rockefellers have followed a policy, wherever they could, of requiring that others be brought in with matching funds. In this way they have succeeded in involving a broader section of the community of wealth in any particular nonprofit enterprise.

   Thus, when John D. Rockefeller put up the money to get the University of Chicago started, Marshall Field I, the department-store tycoon, was prevailed upon to provide the land, and many rich Chicagoans--Armours, Swifts, Fields and others--have from time to time contributed funds to the university. In this way the Rockefellers have been, to a large extent, bellwethers or pilots in the field of philanthropolity.

   Before World War I, after Andrew Carnegie financed Abraham Flexner in a study of the medical schools that led to profound valuable reforms and the elimination of a large number of shabby diploma mills, it was decided to give the University of Rochester a medical school. Flexner approached George Eastman, the Rochester camera magnate, and explained that the cost would be $10 million. Eastman offered to put up $2.5 million, which Flexner found inadequate. Eastman then sent word that he would put up $3.5 million, to which Flexner is said to have replied: "That would make it a Rockefeller school, not yours. It must be yours." Over this Eastman brooded for a few weeks and then called in Flexner, shaking his finger and shouting: "I'll put up five million--then I don't want ever to see your face again!" ²³

   In this and many other instances the way was by no means smooth in cooperative money-raising. Nevertheless, this pattern of the Rockefellers, originally devised by Rockefeller's close adviser, Frederick T. Gates, head of the American Baptist Education Society, has been rather faithfully adhered to throughout. They try to put up no more than half the funds for any project.

   How Rockefeller became acquainted with Gates, why he decided to make him his philanthropolic adviser, is a revealing story. Gates, a clergyman stationed in Minneapolis, was called upon by George A. Pillsbury, the flour king, to help draw up his will, by which he intended to leave several hundred thousand dollars to a Baptist school. Pillsbury decided to give immediately only $50,000 and leave them to raise a like amount, thus insuring their close supervision of the money. Then he would leave an amount in his will. Gates succeeded in raising $60,000 additional for the Pillsbury Academy and was thereupon made head of the Baptist Education Society, which had a plan for establishing a big university in Chicago or New York. In this guise he approached Rockefeller, a Baptist official, who invited him to pass a weekend with him, during which Gates did little talking.

   The oil man became interested in him [says Morris] especially when he learned that Gates was acquainted with the Merritt family in Minneapolis which owned the vast Mesabi Range iron ore deposits. John D. knew that if he could buy Mesabi Range and develop it under the techniques he had developed in the oil business he could become the master of American steel and iron. Furthermore, the Merritts needed money.

   Not long afterward Gates was instrumental in getting a large loan for the Merritts, who pledged the key railroad into the iron field as security. It was Rockefeller money, although the Merritts didn't know it, and in time John D. had the railroad, and forced the Merritt family to sell out to him at his own price. The steel men immediately took alarm when they saw the Mesabi Range fall into Rockefeller hands, but John D. apparently did not want a knockdown fight and he later leased the deposit to Carnegie for fifty years. ²⁴

   This was back in the late 1880's and early 1890's. The way Rockefeller scooped up Gates and the ultra-juicy Mesabi Range and started planning for the University of Chicago well illustrates the Rockefeller and the higher finpolitan style. This style is multifaceted.

   The essence of a finpolitan project is that it be multifaceted, that it have aspects of profound profitability interlaced with do-gooding, philanthropy and favorable publicity. It must seem constructive, statesmanlike. The philanthropic thrust qualifies and protects the profit-making thrust. For this reason, almost any Rockefeller or emulatory higher finpolitan endeavor is very much like a rich four-decker sandwich: One layer is Big Business, the next layer is obviously vaguely philanthropic or cultural-scientific, the third layer represents favorable notoriety stemming both from profitability and from philanthropy and the fourth layer and the first three layers in combination represent cultural, social, political and economic power. It all adds up to power.

   In the case of the Rockefellers as of others of the wealthy, there are plenty of persons ready to dispute such suggestions. Thus, Professor Nevins, writing of the elder Rockefeller, says: "Unlike James B. Duke, he never for a moment mingled private commercial interests with philanthropic acts." ²⁵ 1 have no interest whatever in asserting that Rockefeller did or did not mingle commercial and philanthropic acts; what is at stake is simple intellectual clarity with respect to facts. On the basis of abundant evidence that Nevins himself is obliged to scan, Rockefeller did mingle profit and nonprofit activities; it would have been difficult if not impossible to avoid doing so.

   The chief instrumentality of this mingling was Gates himself.

   As Gates has written, owing to public reports coming out about his great wealth, Rockefeller at the time began to be "hounded almost like a wild animal" by people soliciting funds for plausible and implausible causes. Many simply wanted personal handouts. ²⁶ From this pressure he wanted to escape, and Gates, now in Rockefeller's employ, was the man to whom solicitors were sent for screening.

   "It has been customary to treat Gates as a minister who developed an interest in education and philanthropy," says Nevins. "Actually, Gates was essentially a businessman with a talent for large affairs, a keen interest in the power of money, and a passion for seeing it expended with the greatest possible efficiency. He was, in short, a man after Rockefeller's own heart . . . he was also shrewd, alert, aggressive, and capable of driving hard bargains. The time was not far distant when this former minister, coming to New York, would teach Wall Street itself some lessons." ²⁷

   Subsequently Nevins notes, "The man whom Rockefeller thus selected as his principal aide in philanthropy was as remarkable as any of his partners in business. In sheer ability he matched Flagler, Rogers, and perhaps even Archbold . . . he possessed an unusual combination of gifts: insight, genuine imagination, analytical power, and vision, backed by unquenchable energy, courage, and an evangelistic fervor. . . . He was often impulsive and sometimes inconsistent. . . . At bottom, as we have said, he was a businessman rather than a minister or social worker, and he soon gained a reputation for cautious, adroit, and hard-headed conduct in business affairs." ²⁸

   Gates, like many an underling, was as flinty as his master. At the time of the strike at the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company in 1913 (twenty-seven dead and two mines set on fire by desperate workers), Gates stood firmly against the strikers as Rockefeller, Jr., relented. Both had been directors of the company of which John D. Rockefeller was II a major stockholder" (Fosdick); and L. M. Bowers, the chairman, was the uncle of Gates.

   Characterizing the strikers as "desperate and lawless," waging "organized and deliberate war on society," Gates said, "The officers of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company are standing between the country and chaos, anarchy, proscription and confiscation, and in so doing are worthy of the support of every man who loves his country." ²⁹ Actually, the strikers had been maddened with ill treatment. According to John T. Flynn, a biographer who presents a less genteel Rockefeller than Nevins, "When Henry C. Frick shocked the country by shooting down ruthlessly the striking iron workers at Homestead, John D. Rockefeller wrote him a letter approving his course and expressing sympathy." ³⁰ Gates and the elder Rockefeller saw pretty much eye to eye.

   So talented did Rockefeller quickly find Gates that "Inevitably, Gates was soon looking after Rockefeller's investments as well as his philanthropies." ³¹

   Although the Standard Oil Trust absorbed all of Rockefeller's time and energy, he had nevertheless already made extensive diversified investments--in mines, steel mills, paper mills, a nail factory, railroads, lumbering, smelting properties and the like. ³² On some of these he had been stuck, through bad advice; others were not being operated properly. Gates was sent on tours of the country to look into the properties underlying the entire investment portfolio. He reported back to Rockefeller on what he found, not always favorably. Then he was given carte blanche to reorganize, revise and to bring order out of chaos.

   Gates stepped into a dual role as the first director of the Rockefeller philanthropic activities and as investment manager, and he was equally good in both roles. ³³

   Beyond this the clergyman-humanitarian became a rabid and successful Wall Street speculator for his own account and an officer of various Rockefeller companies, notably the head of the Lake Superior Iron Ore Company. "Nothing could be stranger than the spectacle of this impecunious Baptist preacher setting out to raise funds for a religious college and winding up in a few years as the president of an iron mine and ore railroad company worth twenty millions, and finally the almoner of America's greatest multimillionaire, with the power of the purse over these vast treasures." ³⁴

   For his role in negotiating the sale of Rockefeller ore properties to the embryo United States Steel Corporation, Gates resolutely demanded and received a commission from Rockefeller. ³⁵ Gates had some idea of his worth in cash value.

   Such being the case, the meaning of a statement is baffling when it indicates that Rockefeller never mingled philanthropy and business. There was such mingling in still further degree when he established endowments with Standard Oil stock, all of which carried company voting power.

   What became the "Rockefeller style," then, was apparently not something reasoned out in advance. Gates and Rockefeller played everything "by ear," and the style slowly evolved. But from the moment Gates joined Rockefeller formally in 1891, both the philanthropies and the satellite investments were carefully thought about and supervised by Gates while Rockefeller tuned Standard Oil up to concert pitch. In the course of time the contrapuntal role of Gates took Standard Oil into its sweep and is well exemplified today in IBEC, AIA and other new Rockefeller enterprises.

   Just as the brothers have evolved a division of labor among types of activities so, too, have they evidently (perhaps unconsciously) divided the world into spheres of individual influence. Latin America, where Nelson has a Venezuelan ranch, appears to be his particular domain; his son, thus, is a high official of IBEC. The Orient is the particular domain of John D. III. All .areas are under the supervision of David as the head of a bank with more than 200 world branches. Laurance seems pointed toward Africa. 'Only Europe does not yet seem spoken for.

   The chief chairmanships and directorships show the special orientations of interest.

   John D. 111, chairman of the Rockefeller Foundation, the General Education Board, the national council of the United Negro College Fund, was also as of 1966 a trustee of Princeton University, Harvard-Yenching Institute and chairman of Products of Asia, Inc., Products of India, Inc., and president of the Japan Society, Inc., and the Asia Society, Inc. He was a lieutenant commander in the United States Naval Reserve during World War 11, special assistant to the under secretary of the Navy late in 1945, and

   was a consultant of the Dulles Mission to Japan on the peace settlement in 1951 and a U.S. delegate to the Japanese peace treaty conference in San Francisco in 1951. He holds the following decorations: Order of Auspicious Star of China (Kuomintang), Order of the British Empire, Grand Cordon of the Order of the Sacred Treasure of Japan, Grand Cordon of the Star of Ethiopia, Most Exalted Order of the White Elephant of Thailand and Commander of the Ordre des Millions d'Elephants et du Parasol Blanc of Laos.

   Now, whatever else this worthy man is, taking into consideration many other directorships, trusteeships and chairmanships, he is more than an ordinary citizen with one vote at the polls. He is, also, manifestly more than a wealthy man. He is a finpol, intermeshing between governments, industries and cultural institutions.

   "Because of their many friendships with missionaries, the Rockefellers had [as early as 1914] taken a keen interest in China," says Nevins. ³⁶ There were others who churlishly believed the keen interest of the pecuniary wizard of Standard Oil related more to the fact that China was a huge market outlet for kerosene, of which Standard was then almost the sole supplier.

   The Rockefellers were, at any rate, keenly interested in China, as they are now, without missionaries, interested in all of the Orient from Japan to India, where Standard Oil at least incidentally has large interests, and the General Education Board put up money to establish the China Medical Board and to build Peking Union Medical College. Up to 1952, Nevins says, the Foundation had put some $45 million into westernizing Chinese medicine, science and education. More recently, as the Communists took over China, the Rockefellers shifted Asiatic emphasis to Japan, India and other areas.

   Nelson Rockefeller, three-time governor of New York, premier state of the Union, was president of Rockefeller Center from 1938 to 1945 and chairman from 1945 to 1953 and 1956 to 1958; Federal Coordinator of International American Affairs, 1940-44; Assistant Secretary of State, 1944-45; chairman of the International Development Advisory Board (Point Four), 1950-51; Special Assistant to the President of the United States, 1954-55; Under-Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW), 1953-54 and has at various times (when not helping run the government) been or remains director or trustee of various foundations, museums and organizations. A Phi Beta Kappan, he holds the Order of Merit of Chile, the National Order of the Southern Cross of Brazil and the Order of the Aztec Eagle of Mexico. Here, again, is no common person, no ordinary wealthy man, no run-of-the-mill politician. This is a finpol, a very wealthy man with an interlacing of high governmental and cultural points d'appui.

   David Rockefeller, chairman of The Chase Manhattan Bank, worked his way quickly up through various jobs in the bank and is also chairman of The Chase International Investment Corporation, chairman of Morningside Heights, Inc., a big housing development, and a director of B. F. Goodrich Company, Rockefeller Brothers, Inc., and the vast Equitable Life Assurance Society. He was an army captain in World War II, is a director and trustee of various Rockefeller foundations and museums, and is an overseer of Harvard University, of which he is an alumnus. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. He also holds the French Legion of Honor and the Legion of Merit. In 1940 he published Unused Resources and Economic Waste. Here again is a high personage, far from an ordinary citizen.

   Laurance Rockefeller is a similar type of Higher Organization Man. He is chairman of Rockefeller Brothers, Inc., Caneel Bay Plantation, Inc., Rockefeller Center, Inc., and director of Filatures et Tissages Africains (Africa and the Caribbean are apparently his particular domains), Cape of Good Hope Corporation, Dorado Beach Hotel Corporation, president and trustee of Rockefeller Brothers Fund and trustee of the Conservation Foundation, chairman of the New York State Council of Parks, member of the corporation of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a trustee of the YWCA, director of the American Committee of International Wildlife Protection, director of Resources of the Future, director of the American Planning and Civic Association and of the Hudson River Conservation Society, commissioner and vice president of the Palisades Interstate Park Commission, trustee and president of Jackson Hole Preserve, Inc., trustee of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, chairman of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, trustee and vice president of Sealantic Fund, trustee and president of the American Conservation Association, trustee and vice president of the New York Zoological Society and director, trustee or officer of various other bodies. He is a Commandeur de L'Ordre Royal du Lion, Belgium, recipient of the Conservation Service award of the U.S. Department of Agriculture and of its Special Conservation award and a holder of the Horace Marder Albright Scenic Preservation medal. A lieutenant commander during World War II, he is a member of the Naval Air Reserve.

   Winthrop trails somewhat in this august procession but is coming abreast fast via politics. Governor of Arkansas, he is also chairman of IBEC Housing Corporation and Winrock Enterprises, Inc., conducting vast agricultural and cattle-raising enterprises in Arkansas; a director of the Union National Bank of Little Rock, Rockefeller Brothers, Inc., and Rockefeller Center, Inc.; a trustee of Industrial Relations Counsellors; chairman of the board of Colonial Williamsburg, Inc., and Williamsburg Restoration, Inc.; chairman of the Arkansas Industrial Development Commission; trustee of the National Urban League, Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the National Fund for Medical Education. Since 1953 he has resided in Arkansas.

   Among them all they cover a great deal of ground. As anyone can see, they are community-minded, but on an international scale that gives this term a new dimension. The world is their plantation.

   Total outlays for philanthropic or nonprofit enterprises by the founder of Standard Oil are put by Raymond B. Fosdick at $446,719,371.22 capital sum and income therefrom of $850 million--in all well over a billion dollars. ³⁷ Most of the income was expended in the form of grants, except in the case of Rockefeller Institute.

   The capital sums were allocated as follows:

Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, 1902
   (now Rockefeller University)                       $ 60,673,409.45
General Education Board, 1902                          129,209,167.10
The Rockefeller Foundation, 1913                       182,851,480.90
Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial, 1918-28             73,985,313.77

                             Total                    $446,719,371.22

   In recent years the capital funds of the General Education Board have been drawn down steeply for grants in the neglected field of education and the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial was merged in 1928 with the Foundation. Funds for the University of Chicago came largely through the General Education Board. Coming up in place of the General Education Board has been the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.

   Up to 1950 external grants by income and principal were as follows: ³⁸

Rockefeller Foundation
   From income                   $325,754,751.35
   From principal                $125,773,613.93

   Total                         $451,528,365.28

General Education Board
   From income                   $132,339,912.86
   From principal                $164,427,148.34

   Total                         $296,767,061.20

Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial
   From income                   $ 27,839,809.74
   From principal                $ 27,500,000.00

   Total                         $ 55,339,809.74

International Education Board
   From income                    $ 6,495,807.82
   From principal                $ 11,837,482.00

   Total                         $ 18,333,289.82

   Grand Total                   $821,968,526.04*
     *Here should be added $60,673,409.45 for Rockefeller University.

   The International Education Board was established by John D. Rockefeller, Jr., in 1923 but, in a very real sense, all the Rockefeller moneys are derived from the founder because nobody in the family since him has been a fortune-builder or even a conspicuous moneymaker. The grandsons have enterprises under way that appear likely to become highly profitable but not on any scale, as far as appears to date, resembling the original Standard Oil, the real honey-pie.

   What remained of these funds at the end of 1950 was as follows:

Rockefeller Foundation                  $158,103,332.13 39
General Education Board                 $ 24,624,493.01 40
Rockefeller Brothers Fund (as of 1955)  $ 59,663,273.62 41

   Total                                $242,391,098.76

   Of the moneys in the Rockefeller Brothers Fund the late John D. Rockefeller, Jr., contributed $58 million in 1951 and bequeathed to it half of his estate. Reflecting part of this bequest in the amount of $65 million, at the end of 1960 the Fund showed total assets of $116,173,369. ⁴² Appreciation since then, as already shown, has been great.

   Since 1950, of course, these funds have been generating more income, most of which has been allocated in the form of grants.

   It is clear, then, that a truly stupendous sum was directed from the fortune of a single individual into various medical, educational, scientific and general cultural projects, both in the United States and abroad. As most of these moneys consisted of dollars of much greater purchasing power than the present dollar, it is evident that in dollars of current value the disbursements were of far greater weight.

   That all this was part of a far-reaching plan is denied by spokesmen for the family such as Professor Nevins and Raymond B. Fosdick. To the charge of critics that the benefactions were established as "a shield against public censure," or, as some charged, "conscience money," Fosdick, following Nevins, points out that Rockefeller in his 'teens, as a pious Baptist, was already giving to the church as much as 6 per cent of his earnings. He kept a meticulous record down through the years of all such gifts, which amounted to more than $1,000 annually by 1865 and to nearly $6,000 by 1869--goodly sums in those days. He gave $558.42 in a lump to Denison University, for example, in the late 1860's. ⁴³

   Rockefeller, in other words, gave money all along, even as he saved and acquired it, and, as it appears in the Fosdick-Nevins accounts, merely stepped up the rate when he became very wealthy. Yet, that there was more to it than a mere continuation of charitable giving, is shown when these writers quote Gates.

   Mr. Rockefeller, a prudent man, apparently showed some doubt at first about proposals of large-scale largesse, if such it was. Says Fosdick:

   "Mr. Gates, who could never be anything but candid and forthright, used to thunder at the elder Rockefeller, 'Your fortune is rolling up, rolling up like an avalanche! You must keep up with it! You must distribute it faster than it grows! If you do not, it will crush you and your children and your children's children.'" ⁴⁴ These remarks are taken from Gates's autobiography and one wonders, if Rockefeller was such a freehanded routine giver, why Gates had to "thunder" at him to drive home the message.

   What Rockefeller really thought even Gates, who described him as "a very reserved man" who revealed "little or nothing of his own innermost thoughts," did not profess to know. ⁴⁵ He may have had no thoughts to keep in reserve--a plain man.

   To me it seems a disservice to the Machiavelli of Standard Oil, whom even an apologist like Nevins shows continually embroiled with business and political opponents one after the other down through the years, to attempt to domesticate him in terms of churchly estimates of genteel benevolence. As the history of Standard Oil by any author, pro or con, clearly shows, Rockefeller was of a deeply conspiratorial, scheming nature, always planning years ahead with a clarity of vision that went far beyond anything any of his associates had to offer. It seems to me far more in keeping with what we know of the man's character, as revealed by his business career, that he embarked on his large-scale philanthropies with at least some self-serving personal ends in view.

   Until Gates took over, Rockefeller had been giving money away more or less helter-skelter, mainly to Baptist missionary societies. One gets the impression that some of this giving was merely to get rid of importunate suppliants, who, as Gates said, "beset" him. ⁴⁶ When Gates joined Rockefeller, he very gradually converted the magnate to the idea of "scientific giving." ⁴⁷ This "scientific giving" slowly took the form of the great foundations.

   Rockefeller very early saw that he was getting some mileage from his Baptist patronage. As early as 1889 when a small Baptist publication criticized the Standard Oil Company, all of whose leading figures were Baptists, the company was stoutly defended by the Examiner, official organ of the Baptist Church. ⁴⁸ Had Rockefeller and his Standard Oil colleagues all been Jews or Catholics one trembles to imagine what the anti-Rockefeller movement would have been like! It could not have escaped Rockefeller's notice that whenever his money had been bestowed he had staunch friends.

   His gradual conversion by Gates, it seems to me, shows Rockefeller in a better light in terms of intelligent motivation than many of his apologists indicate. These latter show him only as a compulsive, mechanical giver from the very beginning. Actually, he was a thoroughly responsible man within the light of his own interests and his understanding of them. As the center of raging and constantly intensifying public controversy, which made him in his time "the most hated man in the world," Rockefeller might well have suspected that he was leaving a bitter inheritance to his children and grandchildren. Again, the torrent of public criticism against him, in part at least calumny, could not help but have some effect upon his wife and children however much be discounted it personally as attributable to envy. He prized his son especially, as many remarks showed, and was always deeply pained at any criticism of him. When both father and son were being publicly criticized he said: "They have no right to attack Mr. John. All my life I have been the object of assault. But they have no ground for striking at him!" ⁴⁹ Possibly Mr. Rockefeller now saw some valid ground for attacks on himself.

   His family was, indeed, Rockefeller's Achilles Heel and it is not at all difficult to see that he wanted to make a better public impression than the one currently dominant for the family's sake if not his own. Rockefeller, therefore, as I see him, put his mind coldly to the problem and saw that what Gates and others recommended might at least divide the forces against him, perhaps turn the tide. His first tentative ventures in large-scale philanthropy suggested that this view was valid. Rockefeller did not plunge into philanthropy. He was never a plunger, always made his moves in business, politics and philanthropy gradually and after careful thought.

   That his large-scale entry into public philanthropy was very gradual and, after being undertaken, was spread out over a long period of time is shown by Nevins, who lists his donations for every year beginning with $2.77 for 1855. Rockefeller kept a record of his donations, which prior to 1880, says Nevins, was incomplete. But in no year through 1877 was as much as $10,000 recorded as donations and not until 1884 was more than $100,000 donated. In 1887 the figure jumped to $284,116.52 and in 1890 to $303,542.78.

   Up to the time when Gates joined him in 1891 his gifts had mainly been to the Baptists. In the 1890's his donations exceeded $1 million each in only five years. In 1892 his Ohio trust was dissolved by court order. Even though he had been comparatively generous, all this up to 1900 was no more than chicken feed; the flood from the secret recesses of Standard Oil was still to come. In 1900 he put up more than $2 million and again in 1901. But in 1902, when the General Education Board and Rockefeller Institute were launched, he contributed $5,407,856.78. Falling somewhat short of this amount for the next two years, in 1905, when public outcry against him was stupendous, he put up $13,602,820.78. Although he was never to miss a year until death in these benefactions, the really big years were as follows:

     1907       $ 39,170,480.52
     1909         71,453,231.15
     1913         45,499,367.63
     1914         67,627,095.87
     1917         15,770,624.48
     1919        138,624,574.61
     1920         31,780,348.24
     1928         19,964,455.38

   Not only did such munificence top anything else of record (and until Rockefeller and Carnegie came along, public donations were meager indeed) but the Rockefeller benefactions went nearly wholly into projects of, invariably high quality. To fault Rockefeller on the quality of his projects, one must fault the highly rated University of Chicago, Rockefeller University, the work of the Foundation in combating hookworm, yellow fever, malaria, typhus, influenza, tuberculosis, rabies, yaws, schistosomiasis and various other diseases, and the worldwide contributions to medical education, the financing of projects in experimental biology and other natural sciences, international relations and scores of other fields.

   That kudos accrued to Rockefeller, particularly from the press and executive types in charge of projects in education, science and medicine, in place of the earlier brickbats, is not to be denied; but the seeking of praise for meritorious performance, if such was the case, is not in itself a fault. That Rockefeller preferred praise to adverse criticism is evident from the fact that Standard Oil early busily engaged itself in buying and surreptitiously financing newspapers. ⁵⁰ The influencing of public opinion in his favor was a problem that Rockefeller long wrestled with before he found the right combination.

   Prior to 1913 at least, the problem of taxes could not have influenced Rockefeller in his philanthropies because business and wealth were subject then only to piddling local taxes. Nor can it be held that the creation of the Rockefeller Foundation was a direct reflex to the advent of federal taxes in 1913 because the Foundation had long been planned, at least since 1905. The community of Big Business, it is true, was opposed to the new

   taxes and Rockefeller's chief attorney, Joseph H. Choate, had been the lawyer who in 1893 convinced the Supreme Court that income taxes were unconstitutional; it was therefore necessary to amend the Constitution to enact income taxes. However, even though the advent of federal taxes did not influence the idea of the Foundation, it was gradually noticed by others that there were distinct tax advantages in making philanthropic allocations. This fact is now part of standard tax doctrine, set down in many tax treatises. Gifts to philanthropic funds pay no taxes, the income on such funds pay no taxes, and there is no inheritance tax on such funds. Furthermore, stocks placed in such endowments carry corporate voting power--a nice point. It should be recalled here that it is power really, rather than money or property, that we are concerned with.

   Considerations such as these may not have occurred to Rockefeller during tax agitation prior to 1913 but it is hard to see that they could have escaped the notice of his lawyers. At any rate, the size of his philanthropic allocations increased markedly beginning with the new tax laws. Whatever he did not allot to philanthropy was now going to incur income and estate taxes; and such taxes, he must have foreseen, would tend to increase rather than diminish.

   As to the relation of taxes to philanthropolic capers the Wall Street Journal of August 2, 1967, points out that philanthropies would be sharply reduced if compensating tax reductions were reduced or repealed-an assertion made on the basis of a study by the Brookings Institution in collaboration with T. Willard Hunter, executive vice president of the Independent Colleges of Southern California. In this study there were interviewed 30 of 47 living philanthropists who in 1965 made 69 capital gifts of $1 million or more each for an aggregate of more than $93 million. The donors reported that $40 million, or 43 per cent of all, would not have been given if there was no tax reduction allowed; they also reported that had deductions been limited to the original cost of securities rather than to an inflated price, as has been proposed, the donations or allocations would have been reduced by 46 per cent. The donors themselves rated tax savings as fifth on a list of twelve considerations controlling philanthropolic maneuvers.

   Actually, it can be shown that in many cases a donor can obtain for himself more indirect in-pocket income by being a generous philanthropist than by holding tightly to direct investments. Among many possible illustrations are the cases of big chemical proprietors who have donated entire schools and laboratories of chemistry to big universities, at huge but tax-deductible costs. What the chemical proprietors have now derived from the schools in the way of new discoveries and trained research chemists has given them a constant return of many hundred per cent on the original "donation."

   Peer-group esteem is gained on the finpolic circuit by such contributions that strengthen the entire finpol network. Rockefeller, finpolically speaking, was a very good neighbor, of vast benefit to all finpols.

   On the basis of his own experience with legislators at the state and national level Rockefeller could not have felt reassured about what they might do with his money. He no doubt felt that he could make a more constructive disposition of it than they. With this view, if it was his, I concur. Even today one can have no rational confidence in the allocation of funds by any Congress the American people in their present low state of cultural development are likely to elect.

   There were, at any rate, many advantages, perhaps foreseen and unforeseen, in the course he gradually adopted, not the least of which was wider public acceptance for himself and his family (for which he seems to me to deserve great credit), particularly at the hands of the educated and the middle classes., The high quality of most of the Rockefeller projects particularly commended the man, and still commends him, to the cultivated, and lends strong color to the view of him as a Robin Hood who took, not from the rich for the poor but from grasping business rivals, politicians and an oafish squandering public and, now under severe public criticism, turned a substantial and possibly major portion of the loot over to institutions closely identified with high civilization--a triumph of the sardonic over the indignantly sentimental, a twisting of the knife in the philistines.

   Rockefeller, thus, is a paradox. The biggest, most assiduous, most successful, sufficiently unscrupulous and most condemned acquisitor converted himself into the most munificent high-level giver. Rockefeller, late in life and possibly suiting the word to his Lord Bountiful actions, himself enunciated the elvish principle that "A man should make all he can and give all he can." ⁵¹ If this was intended to mean (and it does not necessarily) that a man should try to make a great deal of money and give nearly all of it away, the program seems absurd to the point of the comical.

   Although this chapter may appear, thus far, to be about the Rockefellers, it really is not. As I remarked at the beginning, the highly civilized Rockefellers: are featured here, perhaps sacrilegiously, purely for illustrative purposes. For what has become the "Rockefeller style" is in essence the finpolitan style, which copies the Rockefeller style in a general way. Many others do or pretend to do about as the Rockefellers do, perhaps not with as much earnest conviction.

   "If the rich are capitalism's aristocracy," as William Manchester observes, "the Rockefellers: are its royalty." ⁵² One is constrained to agree. They not only show the way in finpolitania; they invented it and appear to be deeply convinced of the constructiveness of their role, not an unusual human trait.

   Various aspects of the life of the wealthy have been depicted by assorted writers. Perhaps the most popular, representing the role most of the hoi polloi see for themselves as rich people, has been the wealthy as irresponsible playboys, spendthrifts and more or less graceful idlers. This view is well conveyed in the writings of Cleveland Amory and others of the same genre. The next most compelling aspect has been the wealthy as ruthless grabbers, as shown by Gustavus Myers and Matthew Josephson. Some attempt, of less wide interest but in my view more significant, has been made to show the wealthy as contemporary social power wielders, as I and C. Wright Mills have done. On the American scene Thorstein Veblen first delved in depth into the role of the wealthy as socially irresponsible power wielders and exorbitant consumers. Individual critical biographies, as by Harvey O'Connor and John T. Flynn, have touched on all these aspects.

   But the modes of being of the more mature among the established wealthy have by no means been fully explored. These modes turn out to be distant emulations, not always convincing, of the Rockefeller style. Although academic sociologists anxiously inquire into the most minute, interstitial phases of contemporary society, it is instructive to notice that there is no systematic sociology of the wealthy. The academicians seem to sense through built-in radar that this is taboo terrain and allow unanointed non-award-winning journalists, publicists, free-lancers and miscellaneous literate and offbeat ideologists to dominate the field which, it is true, promises little in the way of academic promotion. A notable exception among the certified sociologists is the suave E. Digby Baltzell, author of The Philadelphia Gentlemen and The Protestant Establishment: Aristocracy and Caste in America, the latter a penetrating study.

   "The real truth is that very few of the social scientists look very deeply into the subject [of fortunes] for fear of being thought politically radical," says Professor Floyd Hunter in The Big Rich and the Little Rich (Doubleday & Co., N.Y., 1965, pp. 173-74). "There has been so much moralizing about the division of power and wealth in world society that an earnest consideration of what actually takes place in modem American economic affairs, politically, is left largely to sterile theoretical conjecture. There is no serious empirical study of socio-economic logistics of the distribution of wealth. There is no forthright, open discussion of what the phenomena of personal wealth really does for the community--or doesn't do."

   It could be shown, indeed, that there is room for at least 200 interesting books, as yet unwritten, in the field of the large American wealth-holders. As it is, the subject is largely taboo, in accord with imposed canons of respectability. Who would be so foolish or reckless as to court the stigma of disrepute by inquiring into the doings of the wealthy?

   As C. Wright Mills discovered, not much material has been systematically gathered on this general subject of the sociology of wealth and one must, perforce, dig into whatever random outcroppings: are left available; data are systematically hidden. Nor do there appear to be contemporary Boswells like the late Clarence W. Barron of the Wall Street Journal to make mordant secret notes on the inner doings of the contemporary tycoons. Perhaps some enterprise like that is going forward; if so, it has not yet come to light.

   Although contemporary wealth is associated with the term "capitalism," in the finpolitan model capitalism becomes something more like super-capitalism. The term "monopoly capitalism" is in any event self-contradictory because capitalism does not allow of monopoly; it is competitive and its companies can fail. The super-capitalist companies, potential claimants to public subsidies, are permanently beyond failure, occupants of a politically protected haven. In search of a better term under the tyranny of old meanings, it would perhaps be better to speak of financial syndicalism, for the big finpolitan groups are in fact syndicates of concentrated yet widely deployed private holders with governments at their beck and call.

   And as to concentration of holdings, we have yet apparently seen nothing like the destiny toward which the world is heading. In Multinational Corporate Planning, edited by George A. Steiner and Warren M. Cannon (Macmillan, N.Y., 1966), it is pointed out that the big corporations are now multinational. "In the light of present trends and future prospects," say these percipient writers, "it does not seem at all impossible that in the next twenty years, six or seven hundred large multinational companies will be doing most of the world's business. This will indeed be pan-imperialist super-concentration.

   The finpolitan corporation, or cluster of corporations, is a multinational corporation. Multinationality is a hallmark of finpolity.

   Rockefeller set at least two of the three major widely copied styles of operation for the American wealthy, and the finpolitan style just outlined is the one that is currently dominant, with variations.

   The first Rockefeller exercise in style setting was the use of the trust as an instrument of corporate integration and monopolization. In 1872 when the Standard Oil Company of Ohio, the original company, secretly provided funds to acquire companies in other states, it placed the acquired stocks in the custody of one of its directors as a trustee. (Under law as it then stood it was illegal for any company to own other companies in another state.) But Rockefeller, like other rising tycoons, was not deterred by a detail like legality. Furthermore, the law on trusts at the time was suitably vague. By 1879 the system was devised of having three officials of Standard of Ohio act as trustees of the acquired stock. They were not, the company contended, legally trustees for Standard of Ohio but, if for anybody, for the thirty-seven underlying stockholders of Standard of Ohio. These stockholders could roundly deny, as they did even on the witness stand, that Standard of Ohio owned these companies. It was all these acquired companies, scattered in many states, that secretly composed what came to be called the Standard Oil Trust. As far as the public knew, these companies were all competitors of Standard.

   As word seeped into business and legal circles about this handy new arrangement, which long preceded the New Jersey holding-company law of 1889, other industries organized into trusts until there were soon a Sugar Trust, Whiskey Trust, Tobacco Trust, Rubber Trust, Shoe Trust, Butcher Trust, Furniture Trust, Coal Trust, Cotton-Seed Trust, Gunpowder Trust and many others. These were all actually secret cartels to regulate the market and hold up prices in the interests of the owners. Standard Oil was the first of the giant trusts.

   How readily the unpublicized device could be used to baffle people is shown by an affidavit filed by Rockefeller in a Cleveland law suit in 1880, that read: "It is not true . . . that the Standard Oil Company, directly or indirectly, through its officers and agents owns or controls the works of. . . ." Here followed the names in a long list of companies, the stock of which was secretly held by trustees employed by the Standard Oil Company of Ohio. ⁵³

   "Legally, this statement might be defended," says Nevins, a vacuous remark because legally any action whatever is entitled to a defense. "The three trustees held ownership and Rockefeller could say they acted not for the Standard but its stockholders. Actually, to call the statement disingenuous would be putting the matter mildly; it was equivocation. Such evasive tarradiddles were then too common in American business." ⁵⁴

   What is pointedly false about this assertion is that the "trustees held ownership." Trustees are not owners but agents. While it may be said that they were agents for the Standard stockholders, a closely knit group, they were in fact agents and employees of Standard of Ohio, whose stockholders held an interest in the acquisitions in proportion to their share of ownership of Standard of Ohio. Rockefeller's affidavit was perjury and a fraud on the court. ⁵⁵

   At the time, Rockefeller owned 8,984 out of 35,000 outstanding shares of Standard Oil, Henry M. Flagler 3,000, Stephen V. Harkness 2,925, Charles Pratt 2,700, Oliver H. Payne 2,637, J. A. Bostwick 1,872, William Rockefeller 1,600, J. J. Vandergrift 500, John D. Archbold 350, J. N. Camden 200, C. M. Pratt 200 and Ambrose McGregor 118. The Cleveland group, comprising Rockefeller's Baptist cronies, held 19,146 shares, a majority. ⁵⁶

   Each of the key Standard Oil units was duly found to be a law violator. First the Standard Oil Company of Ohio was held by the Supreme Court of Ohio in 1892 to be in violation of the law in its trust arrangement, was forbidden to continue it and ordered to pay the costs of the litigation. The assets were thereupon by an exchange of stock acquired by the Standard Oil Company (New Jersey), operating under the wide-open New Jersey holding company act of 1889, and to the Standard Oil Company of New York; these had approximately the same directors. Finally, in 1911, the U.S. Supreme Court found that the New Jersey company violated the Sherman Act and, tapping it lightly on the wrist, ordered it dissolved into its constituent corporate parts and the stock of each company distributed pro rata to each of its stockholders. Instead of owning one-quarter of one central company Rockefeller now owned one-quarter each of nearly two score companies!

   Standard Oil in the foregoing was clearly guilty of noncapitalist behavior as, indeed, many of the fortune-builders have been. Critics of capitalism commonly lump together the behavior of strictly performing capitalists with that of operators outside the rules, thus making capitalism take the blame for much that is outside capitalism. This is not to say that capitalism, for its austerely stylized procedure, may not be the legitimate object of distasteful criticism; but capitalism surely should not be blamed for noncapitalist behavior. If a man robs a bank and is not caught, thus coming into the possession of a large sum of money, he has not according to the dicta of any school of economics acquired his money in a capitalist way.

   Capitalism is an economist's ideal abstraction, concerned with aggregate results and average procedures. Many of the big fortunes, however, were built precisely because they departed in important respects from average procedures, precisely because their builders were anything but capitalists. Within capitalism, under the rules, one can lose; the fortune-builders never had any intention of submitting to disadvantageous rules that might land them in the bankruptcy courts. They had lawyers and legislators to assist them in avoiding the rough while benefiting from the smooth.

   One learns little about the capitalism of the economists by studying the history of the big fortunes. John D. Rockefeller indeed became a capitalist, but not by practicing capitalism--at least not exclusively. Those who lost out to him, however, were often garden-variety capitalists.

   A style Rockefeller neither set nor practiced, which was copied from an English innovator, was that of issuing "watered" stock in mushrooming corporate combinations. J. P. Morgan, William Rockefeller and almost the whole of the upper financial community went in for this exhilarating practice, through which patriotic investors were mulcted of billions and promoters either sold out or retained full control at no cost. This was not capitalism either. The Rockefeller companies were always closely held until the dissolution order of 1911, and Rockefeller never gypped fellow investors, In his acquisition of companies Rockefeller always tried to induce the sellers to take Standard Oil stock rather than cash, which most of them cannily refused to do and thus unwittingly threw away the chance of becoming incalculably wealthy. Sore losers, many of these later joined the accusing chorus against him.

   But the successful style of how the well-tempered super-millionaire and his family should conduct themselves was definitely evolved by the hardpressed Rockefeller and Gates. This style required the creation of foundation philanthropies and the involvement of members of the family in publicly approved cultural, scientific and socially supportive projects. Although widely imitated, as were the Rockefeller trust and the English wateredstock ideas, it is a style subject to great variations.

   The foundation idea, as we have already seen, has come to be a widely utilized scheme of tax evasion while maintaining tax-exempt corporate control.

   The idea that capitalism is to blame for everything irrational, and that failure to face up to basic problems derives only from pro-capitalist bias, comes largely from socialists, who, in their super-heated zeal, present a vastly overdrawn indictment of capitalism. Even if we agree that capitalism--particularly unregulated, automatic capitalism of the classic variety that allows no modifications in terms of human needs--is subject to rejection, it is not true that all social problems stem from the economic system. But according to many socialist (particularly Marxist) critiques, capitalism is to blame for all that is detestable or frightening about the contemporary world.

   Actually no system, including socialism, will automatically produce good results. The contradictory is an unexamined notion that stems through the Physiocrats of the eighteenth century from the idea of a mechanical physical universe as given in Newtonian physics. Nature is automatic; whatever is automatic is natural; whatever is natural is good (itself a questionable notion). Therefore, a good economic system will be an automatic one, operating according to natural laws. Any viable socio-economic system whatever, as a matter of historical fact, needs constant modification from day to day at many points. Such being the case, any system is humanly troublesome, requiring constant revision and tinkering. Every system is bound to be far from perfect.

   Without defending capitalism either in automatic or rationally modified form, one must nevertheless notice that capitalism contains within its theory no propositions directly or by implication stating support for racism, prostitution, ill treatment of criminal offenders, overpopulation, neglect of the mentally retarded, support of crime and the like. To this the socialist will reply: But capitalism, seeking only maximum profits, fosters callousness by seeing salvation only in profits; and, by directly and indirectly pressuring people through its profit-making machinery, induces much social havocalcoholism, emotional disturbance, delinquency and the like. Only infidelity between the sexes appears to have been left out of the indictment, although Marx included even this. ⁵⁷

   Yet this long list of ills for which capitalism is blamed existed long before capitalism was ever heard of, although the ills were not as finely limned as now by modern statistical methods. The persistence of unsolved problems is cited gleefully by socialists; but the solutions of many problems, as of food supply, are not cited on the credit side for capitalism. I don't myself believe that capitalism is responsible for the improvement in food supply or the conquest of disease; credit here should properly go to modern scientific technology. But neither should capitalism be unwarrantably blamed for the persistence of old problems.

   Where the blame mainly lies for failure to apply rational procedures to the solution of a legion of problems is shown, in fact, valuably and dazzlingly, by the reluctance of intelligent capitalist foundations to step into any except conventionally approved areas, even though retired foundation officials cite the need for intrusion into many neglected fields. It would not, with respect to most of the problems lying about, hurt capitalism as such to see these problems solved; indeed, capitalism might be benefited by having much sand removed from the social gears.

   That the public itself offered no encouragement in basic problem-solving is shown primarily in the fact that ameliorative measures, with respect to many problems, were never adopted by Congress. Stone-faced, unsympathetic Demos barred the gate there.

   The foundations, it is clear, must consider not only capitalism but the behavior of a certainly hostile public. This public opposes almost anything civilized.

   Capitalism, although it thrust itself up into the world, did not create that world or its ideas. It modified that world; in some instances for good, in others for ill. The worst count against capitalists (not capitalism) is that in their insatiable drive for raw materials and markets they have fostered some of the most destructive wars and revolutions in history and seem likely to foster more. Here, as I see it, is a heavy count in an indictment, hardly requiring the critic to bring in topics like prostitution to bolster his case. ⁵⁸ Beyond this capitalists. simply neglect social problems, often in deference to public opinion.

   But the very fact that capitalists (and socialists) are able to enlist a large populace on their side in a warmaking capacity, merely by waving the flag, shows there is more to it all than capitalism or socialism. There is, in fact, an irrational populace, ready to be mobilized for destruction by any bugleblowing fuehrer. It is this irrational populace, as I see it, that impedes capitalists themselves, gives them pause, in advancing to the solution of many basic problems (leaving to one side the thorny question of war).

   The situation would be more readily understandable at a glance if the population were attired, in harmony with its basic emotional and intellectual organization, in suitable symbolic garb. Then more than 50 per cent of the people, perhaps up to 75 per cent, would be still dressed today in animal skins and sandals and would wear their hair long and unkempt. Businessmen and their assistants would be dressed, as now, in standard sack business suits. Professionals--lawyers, physicians, educators and savants--would be dressed, medieval-style, in long black robes; each might wear a distinctive hat. Many clerics, as suitable to shamans, would be outfitted in feathers, bones and bangles. Perhaps many people, politicians especially, would be garbed eclectically--part skins, part business suit, perhaps adorned with a feather or bone here and there. Some, representing a hard core, would no doubt be dressed in no more than loin cloths. Most of this populace would carry spears.

   Generally, however, the majority of this symbolically garbed populace would be dressed in skins and sandals. These are the ones most responsive to religious and political dervishes--among the religious mercurially responsive to the hard-nosed Catholic hierarchy, Billy Graham and lesser Protestant luminaries and among the politicals to the likes of George Wallace, Lester Maddox, Theodore Bilbo, Strom Thurmond, Everett Dirksen and Huey Long (to say nothing of good old Lyndon B. Johnson and Barry Goldwater).

   Here in skins, for all to see, would be the crowd that responds joyfully to all calls of a holy war against whatever is rational. Here is the crowd that not only well-tempered capitalists fear. This is the presumably democratic mass, toward whom philosophic democrats look with increasing dubiety for salvation. The doctrine of democracy no doubt made sense as a political device when it was a question of appealing against the despotic authority of unprogressive kings. Unfortunately, once the kings were overthrown, many self-hypnotized democrats began to take their doctrine about the essential right-mindedness of the populace seriously. Teach the people to read and write, they said, and they will automatically--that word again--turn to the best in literature and culture and soon lift themselves into the radiance of full humanity, with malice toward none.

   This did not happen, as any demographic survey will show; most of these elements refuse to be budged from their irrational ruts, long hallowed by medicine men. It would require hundreds of thousands of psychiatrists and assistants to reorient them.

   Karl Marx was a little more precise than the democrats when he found an unheeding constituency for socialist revolution in the working class, specifically factory workers. These persons, brought together under harsh conditions from field and farm, Marx saw as the battering ram of glorious socialist revolution, overthrowing the overreaching, exploiting capitalists. Yet the workers in no capitalist society behaved according to this vision, any more than people in general responded to the democratic vision. The most militant workers, indeed, banded themselves together in over-reaching trade unions, separating themselves from the bulk of workers. Neo-Marxists such as Baran-Sweezy now admit they cannot get revolutionary assistance from the production workers, who are rapidly being reduced in number by automation. Even if they were not being so reduced, however, they would on the basis of past performance show no support for socialism. In no instance has any considerable segment of the working class of any capitalist country supported socialist aspirations. There is little idealism on the working-class level.

   The metaphorically skin-clad majority has no more than a confused conception of either democracy or socialism and has no interest in applying itself to get an improved conception. Prayer, imprecation and incantation remain its chief short-cut instrumentalities for dealing with reality.

   It is here that opportunity beckons to the dervishes, religious and political. It is here that they find they are in business, in a position to mediate, at a price, between mass irrationality, which has its own claims, and rationality.

   Capitalism in rising to the economic surface came into a world of many surviving historical currents. Focusing our attention on Europe, it will be noticed that most of the population was literally skin-clad and wholly illiterate as the Christian church thrust itself up in the fifth century, A.D., from the ruins of classic civilization in the Mediterranean. Whatever of civilization came into northern Europe came via the Church. Yet the feudal system, associated in time with the Church, was not born of the Church. It was simply a local secular system of boss and followers that came into being, first in Italy, with the decay of Roman imperial institutions. Feudalism, as the dominant economic-political system, is uncritically held in retrospect responsible for whatever one cares to focus attention on in this period, just as capitalism is held responsible by socialists for whatever happens today.

   In the course of time the rise of cities and inter-regional trade gave birth to a growing merchant class, embryonic capitalists or bourgeoisie (city dwellers). These people differed from churchmen, lords and village vassals; they were businessmen and businesswomen. With the slow accumulation of wealth, this merchant class increasingly held the whip hand, and it finally asserted it most strongly in the successful French Revolution.

   But although economic institutions were now increasingly looked upon as capitalistic rather than feudal, wages being paid for labor rather than service and protection, all the old cultural ways persisted and still flourish.

   Marx, in The Communist Manifesto, recognized the capitalists as a new class, superior historically and functionally to peasants, vassals, lords, clergy and the like, but doomed to fall before the holy onslaught of the factory proletariat. Marx, obviously, wishfully accelerated the pace of history, and wrongly anticipated a turn that never took place. Marx's lumpish proletariat, actually, was heading nowhere beyond right where it stood. As matters now appear, it is heading toward liquidation, first split, then part pushed lower into a dismal subproletariat via automation and part pushed upward into the lower middle classes or beyond, perhaps into middle-classness. What made the capitalists superior to predecessors, although not wholly acceptable to Marx, was their greater rationality. But, as Marx saw it (correctly I believe), it was a rationality largely misplaced, wholly in the narrow service of self, to the dangerous neglect of society as a whole. Only the proletariat, oppressed under wage slavery, could in the Marxian view feel the necessity for equitable social arrangements all around. Such arrangements, as Marx thought (perhaps rightly), could be supplied only by socialism. The proletariat has obviously failed Marx and his followers just as the masses have failed the democrats. They represent lost hopes.

   As any casual glance around the United States will show, the country is full of mentalities more appropriate to the old Teutonic forests, the Roman arenas and the medieval countryside than to a society of capitalist institutions. One can discard socialism completely. For verification of this view one hardly needs stray as far away as Nashoba County, Mississippi; Selma, Alabama; Cicero, Illinois; or even Bronx County, New York. One need only read speeches in The Congressional Record, where the free-ranging infantile Freudian id reveals itself in full baroque regalia.

   Any hut, any palace, the Kremlin itself is open to the finpolitans, who range the world in breadth and depth. These cannot, manifestly, be ordinary people. They put grand dukes comparatively into the shade.

   "What we really have," said one of the Rockefellers to Morris, "is our name. That is our big asset. It opens doors and, as our money is dispersed, it is of far greater value than anything else as long as it remains a good name. Seeing that it does must be our first consideration. There is an old saying: 'Shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves in three generations.' Well, we have to avoid a third-generation anticlimax. We have to put our time and our money to work building something new." ⁵⁹

   Aptly put. The Rockefellers, as any intelligent person might have suspected, do not feel they have been called upon to preside over the dissolution of the world's largest fortune. They are, like all the finpols, at work preserving and building something new. They have long-term projects. They intend to stay even as their public relations men, imaginatively anticipating socialist intentions, suggest they are disappearing.

   As Laurance put it on another occasion, they are concerned "to see to it that the well doesn't run dry." Two of the fourth generation who have been earmarked to occupy themselves for this reason with family business affairs are Nelson's son, Rodman, and David Rockefeller, Jr. ⁶⁰ "There are so many Rockefeller organizations extant that it is hard for outsiders to keep them straight." ⁶¹

   That their multi-faceted position is at times as confusing to them as it may be to outsiders is shown when Morris says elsewhere that "The Rockefellers always have their guard up against anyone who suggests that their name and wealth give them some special privilege." ⁶² Here, on different pages, one can have it either way: Their name alone has great weight in the world (page 36), their name confers upon them no special privilege (page 28). What is the case is that in ordinary behavior they are like anyone else, "democratic," standing in a long line to get a wedding license, eating in a college cafeteria to save pocket money or living as a common laborer in the oilfields on the first job. But when large objectives loom, the name alone opens difficult doors. ⁶³ They appear to be Cinderellas, of lowly station one minute, up in the clouds the next.

   The name, however sinister it may sound to leftists, is a primary asset of all the finpols --Du Ponts, Mellons, Fords, Pews, Hartfords, Rosenwalds et al.

   Just what the cash value of the name is in each case would be difficult to determine with any preciseness. What, one may ask, would it be worth to a syndicate if converted into the designation of The Rockefeller National Bank and Trust Company, the Rockefeller Insurance Company or Rockefeller Enterprises, Inc.? Merely for the use of the name in some such enterprise the promoters would unquestionably be willing to assign a sizeable block of stock, the exact dimensions subject to negotiation. With the understanding that the Rockefellers would be associated with the management, bringing into the background their vast connections and holdings, the block of stock would be considerable apart from any contribution of capital by the Rockefellers. They need put up no money at all.

   Beyond this, the name is of shadowy intangible value in a project-oriented world.

   As to opening doors, indeed, the Rockefeller name is magic. (The names of all the American big-wealthy open doors all over the world.) Whenever the Rockefellers--or any of the other higher finpols --travel abroad, they are instantly enmeshed in the nets of upper-level governmental protocol. As key figures in American society, they instantly galvanize governmental attention.

   Thus, says Kahn in the New Yorker, when David Rockefeller at forty-eight contemplated taking a trip to Russia, he paused to reflect; for he "had heard hints that if he should get to the USSR he would probably be invited to confer with Premier Khrushchev, and there was no telling how explosively the Communist leader might react to a confrontation, on his home ground, with a notorious international banker." ⁶⁴

   Rockefeller decided to go, and in Leningrad "was told Khrushchev would like to see him the following afternoon at the Kremlin, in Moscow." There he went with his daughter Neva and for two and a half hours participated in what he later described as "the most intensive conversation I've ever had with anyone." ⁶⁵ What the upshot of it all was has not been indicated, but within two years the United States had widened its trade relations with the Soviet bloc. Was there any connection?

   As Kahn pointed out in the New Yorker, the Rockefellers cannot traipse into any country anywhere without ascertaining the political climate in advance. At the wrong time their appearance could cause riots. Thus in Ghana, to which the Rockefeller Brothers Fund had contributed a million-dollar program of developing small local industries, in 1963 they came under heavy ungrateful attack by the Ghanaian Times which said truculently: "Whilst the Governor of New York concentrates on changing the political climate in Washington to open up the trade in nuclear arms, the president of Chase Manhattan is mostly concerned with commodities like copper and bananas." The paper went on to charge that David was engaged in blocking the Organization of American States and the Alliance for Progress, trying to overthrow (apparently without success) the governments of Bolivia and Peru, providing Portugal and the Union of South Africa with arms, dominating the U.S. Congress with stooges and a kept press, and using the Central Intelligence Agency and the State Department as tools to supervise and protect his bank's ramified foreign investments. ⁶⁶

   While all this sounded a bit far-fetched to the conventionally skeptical, the reserved Christian Science Monitor had earlier described Rockefeller as "a businessman who is listened to all over the world." ⁶⁷ Apparently they were at least aware of this fact in Ghana.

   As Kahn went on to point out, David Rockefeller travels a good deal all over the world, inspecting properties, meeting with the highest government officials--left, right or centrist.

   In return, at home, David frequently entertains, in the city and at Pocantico Hills, potentates who visit the United States.

   "David's always got an Emperor or Shah or some other damn person over here, and is always giving them lunches," grumbled the doughty Sidney J. Weinberg of Goldman, Sachs and Company. "If I went to all the lunches he gives for people like that, I'd never get any work done." ⁶⁸

   Not only is he engaged in an interminable running series of conferences with the highest foreign movers and shakers at home and abroad but his schedule takes in without any party discrimination the highest American officials. All of this going and coming, hosting and guesting, may indeed be conducive to a more smoothly running world (and this one devoutly hopes) but it is not a line of activity familiar to ordinary mortals. This, in point of fact, is the way it is on the finpol circuit. This is beyond mere Big Business. This is Super-Business, where the line of demarcation between inner government and upper business is so blurred as to be indistinguishable. It isn't deals but concessions, protectorates and spheres of influence that are negotiated here.

   Training for such a high-level life in the case of the Rockefellers began early. Whereas the aim of the routinely upcoming wealthy was merely to get into The Social Register or to marry impecunious nobility, the Rockefellers were early pointed toward much higher game: close-harmony association with the power-elite leadership of nations. Declassé nobility, whatever aura it carried from the past, never interested any of the Rockefellers; they always went directly for the man who was in charge now. He, they seemed to know through some sort of osmosis, was the fellow to know and understand, whatever his forebears or background. They aren't discriminatory; they would just as soon negotiate with an emperor as with an ex-peasant.

   Thus Nelson, just out of college and just married, went on a trip around the world with his bride. He carried letters of introduction to "high officials and distinguished persons," and in India had interviews with the Viceroy, later Lord Halifax, and Mahatma Gandhi. ⁶⁹ These were, to say the least, rather exalted companions for a collegian. But this was no ordinary collegian. It was a future high U.S. finpol.

   With the possible exception of Winthrop, all the Rockefellers when they go abroad are knee-deep during their entire visit in power-wielders, power-elitists and their mentors, majordomos and public relations men. The same is true of other finpols, and of their representatives, the upper managers of the big corporations and banks. In the Orient John D. III is kow-towed to from teahouse to pagoda and palace.

   This hobnobbing with the international bigwigs contrasts rather pointedly with Nelson's political campaigning at home, during which thousands of TV viewers have seen sweaty admirers pounding his back at Coney Island and other plebeian haunts and shouting, "Good old Rocky." There is apparently a difference of opinion between foreign leaders (including Khrushchev and the Emperor of Japan) and the American public about the precise status of the Rockefellers. Can it be that the foreign political sharks, as they muster out the palace guard and diplomats to greet them, are mistaken? My own view of them accords more with that of the foreigners. The finpols are ultra-bigwigs, super-megaton bigshots, Brobdingnagian commissars of affairs. In relation to them the average one-vote citizen is a muted cipher, a noisless nullity, an impalpable phantom, a shadow in a vacuum, a subpeasant.

   Whereas at home the contact of these worthies with the pubpols is somewhat veiled, out of consideration for the illusions of the American booboisie, abroad the contact is more open. But for every contact with the power-brokers abroad there plainly are ten to a hundred with the domestic variety, all readily accessible by telephone. The finpols along with the pubpols, rising men of wealth, churchpols, corp-pols and top corporation lawyers, lawpols) are collectively engaged in running the world politico-economic system according to their own peculiar lights. Out of these ranks are drawn most appointed high government officials when such officials are not drawn from the ranks of electorally defeated pubpols.

   Public policy is determined by this echelon in the sense that a given stated policy is either implemented or ignored. If it is ignored, like Prohibition, it is dead. Thus, in the 1950's anti-Communism was the policy publicly supported as a means of promoting a lucrative military-industrial complex, and many rank-and-file citizens gleefully joined in verbally strafing Communism and hunting out real and supposed Communists and deviant ideologists. In the 1960's, despite the escalation of the Vietnam war by President Johnson, anti-Communism was allowed to wane, as a diplomatic rapprochement gradually took place with the Soviet Union and trade relations were broadened with the Soviet bloc. The Vietnam war was waged not against Communism but against an amorphous "aggression." True, many stalwarts tried to pump life back into the anti-Communist crusade of the 1950's but they were more and more ignored by the upper financial-political echelons. These did not repudiate their former anti-Communist position, which might once again be useful; they simply abandoned it and chatted at length with Mr. Gromyko, possibly discussing The Chinese Menace. Soon, no doubt, it will be unpatriotic to eat chop suey and egg foo yung as it became unpatriotic to eat knockwurst, sauerkraut and hamburger (liberty steak) in 1917-18. And so it goes in a fabulous democracy.

   So extensive are the affairs of the finpols that all the members of each finpolitan financial syndicate (finsyn?) require large personal staffs embracing far more than body servants. In the case of the exemplary Rockefellers, for example, "In addition to a special staff that each Rockefeller has to handle his personal affairs, the Rockefellers in mass have a general staff to handle their communal business. There are more than three hundred employees in this establishment, which includes a legal department, an investment department, a philanthropic department, a brigade of accountants, and a family archivist." ⁷⁰ Many of these are people of arcane knowledge in near and remote fields, including a specialist on theological education in underdeveloped regions.

   It is the general style of this finpolitan world that newcomers to big wealth will in time, whatever their current reservations, come to embrace through their children and grandchildren. Although the more recent Texas oil millionaires do not belong to this world, they are already getting ready for it as shown by their sprouting foundations. Once one has made the money, as old judge Mellon recognized, it is necessary to hold on to it. And the finpolitan style is a way of becoming a permanent fixture, of weaving oneself into the warp and woof of the status quo. The finpolitans, it is evident, are far less concerned with today than with tomorrow.

   What any sociology of the finpolitan world would be devoted to, it seems to me, would be the outlining of point by point comparisons between the Rockefeller style and that of their contemporaries. There would be shown wherein the established big-rich copy the Rockefeller style and wherein they deviate from it. Variations of emphasis take place throughout. But, despite variations, basic similarities are visible, notably the presence of investments in huge slabs.

   In one matter all the finpolitan groups resemble each other: None behaves as though it believed it had been called upon to preside over the dissolution of the family dukedom. All, like the man who came to dinner, act thoroughly at home and as though they intend to stay, even as mass-media propaganda trumpets that the great fortunes are being dissipated. Rather than being dissipated, they appear to be more permanently and acceptably entrenched from day to day. It is only a popular fantasy that the big fortunes are disappearing; but, perhaps like a bad dream, they disappear only in order to appear again.