-Caveat Lector-
an excerpt from:
The Higher Circles
G. William Domhoff©1970
Vintage Books Edition(1971)
orginally Random House(1970)
LCCN 79-102332
367pps—out-of-print
-----
--Before undertaking this exercise, it may be asked why I find it necessary
to do so. The answer is that critics of the thesis that the upper class is a
governing class or ruling class say that cohesion, consciousness, and
conspiracy must be demonstrated within the group said to be the ruling class.
It must be shown, according to this argument, that the members of the
so-called ruling class are aware of each other and their common interests.
Furthermore, if it is not shown that they meet (perhaps secretly) to
designate leaders and plan strategies, then they are merely individuals
participating as any other individuals in political activities. Members of
the upper class are not, coherent force unless they are united by the three
"C's"—cohesion, consciousness, and conspiracy. --
Om
K
-----
CHAPTER FOUR
Cohesion and Consciousness: Is There an American Upper Class?
Can we really speak of an American upper class? Or is the idea of an
interacting and intermarrying upper crust the figment of a few imaginations?
The purpose of this essay will be to present evidence affirming the existence
of the upper class as a psychosocial reality. Such an undertaking is
necessary because there are many who do not believe that something so vulgar
as social classes exists in the United States of America. Indeed, this is the
official view of many big businessmen and their publicists. They would have
us believe we are all one big happy family with similar interests. However, I
suspect they know quite otherwise, especially from the now available
correspondence of their fathers and grandfathers, which shows their concerns
about combating class consciousness and ideologies that supposedly promote
class consciousness. I also believe they know better because of such dramatic
confessions as this one by Mrs. Marietta Peabody Tree, a member of the upper
class if there ever was one:
. . . Mrs. Tree recalls that the "first and only" time her grandmother ever
slapped her was when, as a young girl, Marietta referred to an acquaintance
as "very middle class." After the slap came these stern, grandmotherly words:
"there are no classes in America—upper, lower, or middle. You are never to
use that term again."[1]
Closely related to the assertion of classlessness is the idea that this
classlessness is in good part due to rapid social Mobility. According to this
view, our big rich were mostly farm boys and poor immigrants who "Horatio
Algered" their way to the top, with no time to become part of or conscious of
class.
Now, it is not my concern in this essay to trace the ways in which members
and publicists of the upper class assiduously supported these closely related
beliefs of One Big Happy Family and Horatio Alger. Nor will I attempt to
judge how important their efforts have been in contributing to the weak class
identifications in the American populace and the general acceptance of the
Horatio Alger myth. Instead, I am concerned with what scholarship has to tell
us about the truth or falsity of these conceptions. As will be seen, scholars
do not share the publicists' theories. On the other hand, scholars have not
given enough attention to the fraction of a percent making up the upper
class, which places important limitations on their generalizations.
To take the claim of Horatio Alger first, the work of historian William
Miller and his associates in the Research Center for Entrepreneurial History
at Harvard has shown that important business leaders and corporation lawyers
from the 1870's on have been native-born Anglo Saxons of "high-status"
Protestant religions (Episcopal, Presbyterian, and Congregationalist) who
were the well-educated sons of native-born businessmen and professionals. For
example, in the study of 179 major businessmen at the turn of the century,
fully half were from the upper class, only 5% came from the lower class.[2]
The few cases of rags to riches which were trumpeted by publicists and
uncritically accepted by some historians of an earlier generation were the
rare exceptions rather than the rule. Miller's systematic data are rather
embarrassing to the historical works he holds up to them. As to other work on
the origins of big businessmen, it is summarized by Morroe Berger when he
concludes that "there has been some movement from the bottom to the lower
limits of the top, but very little to the upper limits of the top."[3] Thus,
only one thing more needs to be asked about the slow ascendancy of a few
individuals into the upper class of big businessmen and their descendants.
Does this gradual infusion change the class? From all indications, the answer
is no. The climbers seem eager to assimilate the values and styles of the
class to which they aspire. This does not deny that there are changes within
the upper class over a period of generations, but it does deny that upward
mobility is one of the key factors in creating them. In short, social
mobility is not central to the study of the American upper class of the
twentieth century. For students of the upper class, the findings on the small
amount of movement into the upper class are interesting because they provide
a basis for re-evaluating the efforts of the upper-class publicists and
upper-class historians. They also cast doubt on the value of the claim that
rapid social mobility has inhibited the development of class consciousness or
cohesion in the highest stratum of American society.
Scholars also have done away with the classless society myth, but they have
done so in a sophisticated way more relevant to other levels of society than
the one of interest here. That is, they have decided that social "class" is
not quite the right term to describe our hierarchical social structure. True,
there are the highers and the lowers, and most people know about where they
stand even if they don't understand the whole picture. However, there are no
obvious or rigid boundaries, titles, or modes of dress that mark this
continuum into classes. One level shades into the next in its social
interactions and style of life. I do not want to quarrel with this overall
conception of the American social structure except at its highest level. I
hope to show that it is based upon studies of every level of society but the
highest and that this level has in fact all the attributes which have
traditionally marked off a group as a social class. In other words, the
social structure is made up of strata that shade off one into the other until
we arrive at the highest level, where the continuum hardens into a social
class with more or less definite boundaries and class consciousness.
One of the best summary essays describing the view on social class
which I have attributed to most American social scientists is by social
psychologist Roger Brown. Entitled "Stratification," it provides an excellent
starting point for this inquiry. Brown distills from previous writings three
points which must be established to demonstrate the existence of a social
class: patterns of in-group interactions to the general exclusion of
out-group interactions; differences in style of life from other groups; and
stratum consciousness, an awareness of oneself as a member of a specific
social group.[4] After presenting these criteria, Brown summarizes a great
deal of empirical research on social classes in America and then concludes
that they do not exist, that what we have are status groups along a social
hierarchy. However, his discussion is not relevant to the upper class.
Indeed, it cites none of the references I will use in contradicting it for
that level of society. Particularly conspicuous by its absence is the work of
E. Digby Baltzell, which presents most of the points I will make using
different empirical material.[5]
Before undertaking this exercise, it may be asked why I find it necessary to
do so. The answer is that critics of the thesis that the upper class is a
governing class or ruling class say that cohesion, consciousness, and
conspiracy must be demonstrated within the group said to be the ruling class.
It must be shown, according to this argument, that the members of the
so-called ruling class are aware of each other and their common interests.
Furthermore, if it is not shown that they meet (perhaps secretly) to
designate leaders and plan strategies, then they are merely individuals
participating as any other individuals in political activities. Members of
the upper class are not, coherent force unless they are united by the three
"C's"—cohesion, consciousness, and conspiracy.
The means by which various leadership groups within the upper class involve
themselves as cohesive forces within the political process will be made clear
in subsequent essays. The importance of consensus rather than conspiracy as
the third of the "three C's" also will become apparent. For now, I want to
concentrate on cohesion and consciousness to provide a context for assessing
the involvement of members of the upper class in government and politics.
Cohesion will be deduced from patterns of interaction and a unique life style.
IN-GROUP INTERACTION
Roger Brown sets out our task for us in the following words:
The reality of class in a community will be undeniable in the following
circumstances: 1) the population is conscious of classes, agreed on the
number of classes, and on the mem-bership of them; 2) Styles of life are
strikingly uniform within a stratum and there are clear contrasts between
strata; 3) interaction is sharply patterned by stratum; 4) the boundaries
suggested by the three kinds of data are coincident.[6]
Brown starts with class consciousness, but I prefer to build up to that
problem by first considering in-group interaction and differential life
styles, for they are the basis for whatever class consciousness might be
found to exist.
The Evidence of Intermarriage
Intermarriages are one of the key evidences of in-group interaction, and
there is certainly a great deal of it within the American upper class.
Indeed, a marriage outside the group is often the occasion for much tongue
clucking or newspaper gossip. Intermarriage within the upper class defies
simple description. It does not go too far to say that everyone is related to
everyone else, and sometimes many times over. However, there is one general
exception to this: Sons and daughters of the upper class can bring home a
bright and well-polished youth of the upper-middle class whom they came to
know because this arriviste was attending a school such as Vassar, Harvard,
Smith, or Yale. Then too, it should not be forgotten that the beauties and
charms of a small handful of models, actresses, and stewardesses often give
them considerable social mobility. Brown may want to make something out of
this small amount of boundary-crossing at Harvard and in the discotheque, but
it does have the happy consequence of infusing more brains and beauty into
the privileged class.
How do we know about this great amount of intermarriage? Through the reading
of books about society, and through the study of family histories,
biographies, and autobiographies. Let me cite just a few of the examples and
authorities, leaving the quantification of this complex kinship system to an
anthropologist and his computer:
1. First Families in Boston have tended toward marrying each other in a
way that would do justice to the planned marriages of European royalty.[7]
2. Nathaniel Burt, an expert on the Philadelphia branch of the upper
class, says there is nobody in the web of that city's financial and
professional old-family elite who is not related.[8]
3. As members of the American aristocracy, over the years [the Bayards]
have linked fortunes through marriage with the Washingtons of Virginia; the
Carrolls, Howards, and Wirts of Maryland; the Bassetts and duPonts of
Delaware; the Kembles, Kirkpatricks, Stevenses, and Stocktons of New Jersey;
the Stuyvesants, DeLanceys, Jays, Livingstons, Pintards, and Schuylers of New
York; the Bowdoins and Winthrops of Massachusetts.[9]
4. So intimately related by travel and actual multiple family connection
was San Francisco with two of the watering places, Santa Barbara and
Honolulu, that society news from those two bivouacs appeared regularly, from
1920 on, in more than one San Francisco newspaper in columns flanking
Peninsula and East Bay Society News.[10]
5. "Through marriage, the Auchinclosses are now kin, in addition to
Rockefellers, Sloans, Winthrops, Jenningses, Saltonstalls, and Smedbergs, to
such other redoubtable families as the Frelinghuysens, the Van Rensselaers,
the Cuttings, the Reids, the duPonts, the Grosvenors, the Truslows, the
Tiffanys, the Bundys, the Adamses, the Ingrahams, the Burdens, the
Vanderbilts, and, of course, the Kennedys."[11]
Histories of, among others, the Rockefellers, Roosevelts, duPonts, Morgans,
Astors, Vanderbilts, and Kennedys point in the same direction. In each case
one can find a few people who went outside the class for a marriage partner,
but the overall picture is one of marriage to other wealthy people of the
upper class.
The Evidence of Schools
We have studied the publications of expensive private schools. Attendance
patterns at these schools suggest that rich children from all over the
country interact at this handful of exclusive institutions. For example,
Hotchkiss graduates are listed in the Social Register for the following
cities: New York, 552; Chicago, 125; Philadelphia, ninety-four; Cleveland,
sixty-four; Pittsburgh, sixty-four; Boston, fifty-nine; San Francisco, forty;
Washington, thirty-five; and St. Louis, thirty-four. St. Marks, which is
twenty-three miles from Boston, had 214 boarding students and twenty-six day
students in 1967. In addition to sixty-nine students from Massachusetts,
forty-four from New York, twenty-two from New Jersey, and fourteen from
Pennsylvania, there were eighteen from the Midwest, eighteen from the South,
and fifteen from the Far West. Foxcroft, a school for girls, had students
from twenty-nine states in 1967, while Eaglebrook, a school in Massachusetts
for younger boys, had forty-seven from New York, twenty-two from Connecticut,
thirteen from Pennsylvania, seven from Illinois, six from Florida, and three
from California. Chatham Hall, a girls' school in Virginia, had sixteen
students from New York, sixteen from Ohio, fifteen from Connecticut, and
eight from Texas, in addition to seventy-three from the South. The picture
would not be different if we looked at exclusive girls' colleges and junior
colleges, for a few girls from each of the private schools are found in each
of the classes at these schools.
The Evidence of Clubs
Upper-class clubs have nationwide memberships. This is particularly true of
such strategically located clubs as the Links, Brook, and Century in New
York, and the Bohemian and Pacific Union in San Francisco, but it is true to
a certain extent for other clubs as well. As of 1953, for example, the Boston
Club in New Orleans had thirty-one non-resident members from Texas,
twenty-two from New York, ten from Washington, D. C., and six each from
Chicago and San Francisco, in addition to the dozens of non-resident members
from Mississippi and the rest of Louisiana.
A very interesting club meets once a year on the 3,700-acre Abercrombie
Ranch in Santa Barbara, California. The Ranchero Visitadores "are a group Of
500 wealthy businessmen, industrialists, and ranchers who get together once a
year for a week of horseback riding, partying, games, relaxation—and just
plain fun."[12] The article goes on to note that they come from all over the
country, and that they bring their own equipment and "fine horses" with them.
There are many such nationwide clubs. For example, the finely bred and highly
trained dogs of rich men and women from all over the country are the basis
for get-togethers by the National Retriever Field Trial Club. At the 1963
national championship stake one could mingle with upper-class people from all
over the country, including the president of Olin Industries of St. Louis and
the wife of a San Francisco shipping magnate.
The Evidence of Summer Resorts
The work of Cleveland Amory and E. Digby Baltzell suggests that summer
residences in exclusive resort areas are good evidence for the cohesiveness
of the national upper class. We attempted to systematize the anecdotal hints
of Amory and to extend the systematic study of Philadelphia by Baltzell.[13]
This was done by geographically classifying the summer residences of every
person who takes the trouble to list in the Summer Social Register, which is
a compendium of summer addresses for the thirteen city editions. It does not
include the summer residences of a great many listees, but it is indicative
of where vacations are spent by the upper class. This study shows that the
summer homes of the rich who live in the eastern half of the United States
are on islands and secluded coastlines. In Maine, for example, there are
Social Register listees in many of the little towns along the coast. The
greatest concentration, however, is on two tiny islands, Mt. Desert and
Vinalhaven. The several towns on Mt. Desert, such as Northeast Harbor, Seal
Harbor, and Southwest Harbor, are the summer addresses of Social Register
listees from the following cities: Philadelphia, ninetytwo; New York, eighty;
Boston, forty; Washington, twelve; Chicago and Baltimore, seven;
Cincinnati-Dayton, six; and St. Louis, five. North Haven, on Vinalhaven
Island, is another prominent Maine address, with forty-two from Boston,
twenty from New York, eight from Philadelphia, and three from St. Louis.
Further down the Atlantic Coast, two islands off the Massachusetts cape are
popular summer respites. The first is Nantucket, which has seventy-one
families from New York, thirty from Philadelphia, twenty-six from Boston,
fifteen from Washington, eight each from Baltimore and Cincinnati-Dayton,
four each from Buffalo and Pittsburgh, and three from San Francisco. The
second is the betterknown Martha's Vineyard, particularly at Edgartown, where
121 New Yorkers, twenty-five Bostonians, ten Philadelphians, eight
Washingtonians, and seven each from Chicago, Cincinnati-Dayton, and
Pittsburgh make their summer home. The Osterville-Hyannisport area on the
cape itself is also popular. Pittsburgh's Social Register provides the
largest contingent with thirty-three families, but these families are joined
by twenty-three from Boston, twelve from New York, nine from Philadelphia,
eight from Washington, four from Chicago, and three each from Buffalo and St.
Louis.
Little Rhode Island turns out to be a summer haven for the well-to-do listed
in the Social Register. One favorite spot is Jamestown, which is on Conanicut
Island in the Narragansett Bay. There are twenty-eight families from
Philadelphia, six each from Boston and Washington, three from Buffalo, and
two each from New York and St. Louis. The Watch Hill area, on the
southern-most coast of Rhode Island, can boast of thirty families from New
York, eleven from Philadelphia, six each from Pittsburgh and
CincinnatiDayton, five from Washington, four from Boston, and three from St.
Louis.
Watch Hill is only a short yacht ride from Fisher's Island, which is
offically part of the state of New York. It is a longstanding retreat for the
wealthy. Most of the residents seem to be New Yorkers, with seventy-seven
families from that city, but there are also nine Philadelphians and one or
two families from Boston, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Baltimore, Buffalo, and St.
Louis. Below Fisher's Island, on an island that is the eastern-most tip of
Long Island, the cities of Southampton, Bridgehampton, and East Hampton
provide summer homes for 353 New Yorkers, ten Philadelphians, seven
Washingtonians, and seven from the CincinnatiDayton area. There are several
other minor gathering places in the East, but none are of the significance of
the nine detailed in the preceding paragraphs. One more that might be
mentioned is the isolated coastal town of Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, which has
nineteen St. Louis families in addition to eleven from Washington, nine from
Baltimore, and six from Philadelphia.
As seen, there are Midwesterners in most of these East-ern retreats.
However, many Social Register listees from Chicago (17) and Cincinnati-Dayton
(12) are also partial to a covey of small towns on the Northern Michigan
coast that borders on Lake Michigan. From Kavalees work we know they are
joined there by several well-to-do families from Detroit.[14] Three
Philadelphians and two Clevelanders also go to this area. In general, very
few Clevelanders list themselves as being part of the summer resort circuit.
They tend to stay in the gently rolling and wooded hills east of their home
city. Social Register families from Buffalo have their own area across the
lake in Ridgeway, Ontario, but some of them join a handful of Social
Register listees from
ten other cities in journeying to small towns in northern Ontario. Except for
one or two families at Edgartown, Nantucket, Long Island, and Watch Hill,
very few San
Franciscans are found in any of the resorts mentioned. They summer on Lake
Tahoe on the California-Nevada border, on the Monterey Peninsula below San
Francisco,
and in little towns north of the city.
Members of the upper class spend their summers in a great many other places,
including Europe, but the general point has been made. There are a handful of
summer resort areas, on islands and secluded coastlines, which provide
evidence for in-group interactions among families froth every Social Register
city except Cleveland and San Francisco. The next step would be "field
studies" of these areas to determine how many wealthy families are in
attendance from cities without Social Registers. Paul Sweezy made this
suggestion many years ago to those who question the existence of an upper
class, but no one has taken him up on it.[15]
The Evidence of Winter Resorts
During the winter two areas in the United States are the principal meccas for
members of the upper class from all over the United States. The first is Palm
Beach-Hobe Sound in Florida, the second is Palm Springs in southern
California. Observers stationed in these two places alone might be able to
convince skeptics of an interacting national upper class. Indeed, the
membership lists of the Everglades in Palm Beach and the Thunderbird in Palm
Springs might save them the trouble of being there physically, but such
membership lists are not easy to come by.[16], In any event, both of these
areas have been treated anecdotally by Stephen Birmingham in The Right
People.[17] Among the examples he uses to show the rich visitors to Palm
Springs are corporate leaders Paul Hoffman, Benjamin Fairless, Conrad Hilton,
Leonard Firestone, William Ford, and J. J. McCloy.[18] As for Palm Beach,
society from the eastern half of the United States has been joined there by
"invasions from Middle Western cities, and from the oil lands of Oklahoma and
Texas."[19]
Palm Springs and Palm Beach, of course, do not exhaust the winter spas.
Members of the upper class from all over the country can be found on
"Millionaires' Row" in Naples, Florida. Others settle down among their
counterparts in Fort Lauderdale, or in the "other Miami"—Coral Gableswherein
live "the best of Miami's year-round Society, whose lives are led with quiet
elegance, whose 'sons go North to New England prep schools, whose daughters
come out at the Debutante Ball at the Surf Club, and who speak with the
'social voice . . .[20]
The Evidence of Acquaintance Patterns
In the 1950's sociologist Floyd Hunter sent questionnaires to and interviewed
one hundred men from all over the country who had the reputation of being top
leaders. Among the questions he asked them was how well they knew the other
men on his list. Whether they are top leaders or not, these men did know each
other.[21] Since we have found that many of Hunter's top leaders are members
of the upper class by our criteria, he has provided evidence for nationwide
in-group interactions among rich men of considerable prominence in the
business world.
We decided to attempt a variation of Hunter's "acquaintance" study by sending
questionnaires to prominent social families in San Francisco, Los Angeles,
and Beverly Hills. With the help of informants, Tony Mohr selected
twenty-five of the most prominent Christian families and twenty-five of the
most prominent Jewish families in San Francisco. (The reason for separating
Christian and Jewish families was that the study was concerned with
anti-Semitism within the upper class as well as inter-city acquaintance
patterns, but that aspect will not be pursued here.) All of the Christian
families were listed in the Social Register, as were seven of the Jewish
families. Also working with informants, David Guggenhime, in a parallel
study, selected twenty wealthy families who were quite active in civic
affairs in Beverly Hills. Sixteen of the families were—Jewish. Guggenhime
also selected twenty prominent Los Angeles Christian families. He did not
have the help of informants for this city, but all those selected were in
both the Los Angeles Blue Book and the California Club. Most of the names are
quite well known, but several not known to us were selected on the basis of
their several upper-class credentials in addition to being listed in the Blue
Book and belonging to the California Club. In short, there is every reason to
believe that our four groups are part of any elite social circle that exists
in their respective cities.
The ninety names so selected were later arranged alphabetically on a
questionnaire that was sent to each person on the list. It was introduced by
a letter asking cooperation in a study of how well various prominent families
in California know each other. Respondents were asked to indicate beside each
name their degree of acquaintance with the family by writing "1" (know well);
"2" (know casually); "3" (know by reputation only); "4" (do not know). We did
not try to control whether one or both members of the family answered the
questionnaire, assuming that any differences in husband and wife acquaintance
patterns were too minor to make any restrictions on answering that might
reduce the number of questionnaires returned.
The subjects were very cooperative. Seventy-six percent of the San Francisco
Christians returned the questionnaire. The figures were 88% for San Francisco
Jewish families, 70% for Los Angeles Christian families, and 75% for Beverly
Hills civic families. The results can be expressed in what I call an
"acquaintance percent." That is, the number of families scored "1" or "2" are
divided by the number of families rated. For example, if twenty San Francisco
Christian families rated twenty Los Angeles Christian families, there would
be 400 ratings; 400 is then divided into the number of "1" and "2" ratings.
The decision to use both "1's" and "2's" is based upon the assumption. that
it is enough for these people to know each other casually to be considered
part of the same social class.
As to our findings, it can first of all be said that our informants were
correct that the prominent families within San Francisco and Beverly Hills
respectively are well acquainted with each other. The acquaintance percent
for San Francisco Christians was ninety-one, for San Francisco Jewish
families, ninety-seven, and for Beverly Hills civic leaders, seventy-eight.
The acquaintance percent for the Los Angeles group was sixty-four, which
suggests that California Club members are well known to each other.
Of greater interest were the acquaintance percents between local elites.
First, there is a considerable degree of acquaintance between the prominent
Christian and Jewish families of San Francisco in spite of the exclusion of
most wealthy Jewish people from the Social Register and all Jewish people
from the Pacific Union and Bohemian Clubs. The acquaintance percent between
the two groups was fifty-nine according to twenty-two Jewish respondents who
rated the twenty-five Christians, sixty-five according to the nineteen
Christian respondents who rated the twenty-five Jewish families. The
similarity of the acquaintance percents as judged from different sides of the
fence reinforces the credibility of both of them.
There is a modest amount of acquaintance between the Los Angeles Christians
and the San Francisco Christians. The acquaintance percent is thirty-one
according to nineteen San Francisco raters, twenty-seven according to
fourteen Los Angeles respondents. Again, the similarity of the two
percentages ]ends to the credibility of both of them. On the other hand, the
Jewish families of San Francisco and the Christian families of Los Angeles
are less well known to each other. According to the twenty-one Jewish
families who rated twenty Los Angeles Christians, the acquaintance percent
was only seven, while the fourteen Angelenos who rated twenty-five San
Francisco Jewish families thought the percentage of acquaintance somewhat
higher at fourteen.
Our Beverly Hills sample is not part of the national upper class. The Beverly
Hills group is known to neither the Los Angeles nor the San Francisco groups,
and its members do not claim to know members of the Los Angeles and San
Francisco groups except by reputation. The acquaintance percents in question
are fifteen, eight, seven, three, two, and one. As further evidence for this
negative finding, we found there is very little overlap of the clubs and
schools of the Beverly Hills group with those assumed to be institutions of
the upper class. If there is a branch of the national upper class in Beverly
Hills, it is not known to the Beverly Hills insider who served as our
informant.
Summary on In-Group Interaction
The picture that emerges for me from these various types of evidence for
in-group interaction within the upper class is one of overlapping social
cliques that have a considerable amount of intermarriage and social
interaction among them. It is quite clear that everyone does not know
everyone else, but it is also highly probable that everyone has friends and
relatives who interact in one way or another with one or more persons in
other cliques. The person thus has entree into the highest social circles all
over the country. For some it is the Junior League that fills this function.
For others it is graduation from Groton or membership in the Piedmont Driving
Club. Or perhaps a brother rides to the hounds in Virginia and summers in
Watch Hill, or a fellow member of Hasty Pudding at Harvard is in the Woodhill
Country Club in Minneapolis. If all else fails, there is even the letter of
introduction. Lucy Sprague Mitchell, raised in the Chicago branch of the
upper class, had friends in Los Angeles where she went to Marlborough School,
in Boston where she attended Radcliffe, and in San Francisco-Berkeley where
she was the first dean of women at the University of California, but she knew
very few people in New York. When she got ready to go to New York, however,
she had "a suitcaseful of letters of introduction ranging from Anne Morgan to
Lillian Wald." They came from a friend she had met in Boston.[22]
And then there are the more subtle bases of cohesion, such as the feeling of
belonging and the comfortableness of being among one's own kind. This brings
us to a conisideration of the rather unique style of life that is typical of
members of the American upper class.
DIFFERENCES IN LIFE STYLE
Brown believes that life style differences in America "arborealize into the
flimsiest trivia."[23] However, he mentions none of the following points that
distinguish members of the upper class-from birth to death-from the rest of
the population. If the perception of differences leads to cohesion and
consciousness, the pattern of activities and experiences unique to the upper
class are evidence for its reality.[24]
Early Years
Upper-class babies are seldom born in the general hospital, but the first
distinctive difference I want to stress is the presence of nurses,
governesses, or maids in the houses in which the babies are raised. This
rather unusual situation is followed by special pre-schools and a private day
school. Indeed, many members of the upper class have never been in a public
school in their lives, which distinguishes them from a considerable
percentage of the population. Special dancing classes, riding lessons, and
tutoring in a foreign language are some of the other unusual experiences that
may be part of the early years for upper-class children.
Adolescence
Adolescents of the upper class continue their private schooling, often at
boarding schools far from home. Summers are spent at exclusive summer camps,
at the family summer home, and in traveling. One of the unique experiences of
late adolescence is the round of debutante parties that occur in June, early
September, and the Christmas holidays. Many of the affairs are fairly routine
parties costing only a few thousand dollars, but every once in a while
someone celebrates the occasion in a way not likely to be emulated by
middle-class pretenders. A recent example would be the party held on a
chartered Braniff jetliner as it flew from Dallas to New Orleans; the proud
father is part of a syndicate that owns one-third of the land area in that
Louisiana city.[25]
Adulthood
Maturity finds members of the upper class in such prestigious occupations as
businessman, financier, and lawyer, occupations which suggest the common
interest of ownership and management of business enterprises. Others function
as museum directors, architects, art collectors and physicians, which are
among the most prestigious pursuits on the occupational ladder. The lady of
the house is in the Junior League or is a volunteer for any one of a number
of agencies and charities. The daily routine of both men and women is
supplemented by directorships, trusteeships, and association memberships.
Upper-class families live in town houses or large apartments in an exclusive
area of the city, or in an exclusive suburb. Chances are they will have a
second home-perhaps a farm or ranch, more likely a summer home. While the
city home is usually quite plush, the reverse snobbery of casual tastefulness
is well understood. The most conspicuous consumption—often conspicuous only
to those who can recognize quality-is more and more reserved for the interior
of the home. Expensive art may be part of the decor.
The upper-class man is a member of one or more maleonly clubs in the city.
There may or may not be a parallel club for women, but it is likely that
there is a country club for the family. Club memberships outside one's home
city are not unusual.
The leisure activities of the upper class also show distinctiveness. Charity
balls and jet setting may be part of the nighttime activities. Weekends may
be spent on a boat, or chasing foxes at one of the ninety-some hunt clubs
across the country. The breeding and raising of horses is another activity
that has an upper-class bias. So does the showing of dogs and the training of
dogs for bird retrieving. Many of these people annually spend more money on
their animals than most people earn in a year.
Status After Death
Finally, after all this, there is death, but it is not the great leveler it
is claimed to be when it comes to differences in life style. For example, a
study of post-war Philadelphia showed that its Social Register listees had
distinctive funeral and burial customs.[26] First, they were much more likely
to practice cremation. Second, they had a shorter elapsed time between death
and burial than any other group. They showed the greatest control of emotion,
and they were more likely to restrict viewing of the body. Most interesting,
they also have their own burial grounds, which are usually simple and uniform
churchyard cemeteries.
According to Cleveland Amory, Proper Bostonians also seem to have a concern
with status after death:
Great attention is also paid to the final resting place of the deceased. In
Boston's early days Old Granary, across from the ancient Park Street Church,
was a sort of Proper Bos-tonian Westminster Abbey.... In more recent times
Forest Hills and Mount Auburn . have risen to positions of high favor.[27]
And some families, such as the duPonts, have private burial grounds, which
truly completes the circuit from private school through exclusive club and
exclusive neighborhood.
There are many other things that could be shown to be rather unique about the
life style of the upper class, but I believe the general point has been made.
Members of the upper class not only have more, they have different. And it
would be amazing, defying laws of discrimination and perception, if some of
these differences did not register somewhere, consciously or unconsciously,
in the psyches of most members of the upper class. As political scientist
Gabriel Almond noted many years ago, "The elaborate private life of the
plutocracy serves in considerable measure to separate them out in their own
consciousness as a superior, more refined element."[28] It is now time to
confront the problem of class consciousness directly.
CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS
American social scientists, who put a great deal of emphasis on class
consciousness in determining the existence of social classes, have done a
number of studies which show that there is not much of it in the United
States. I think the emphasis on such an ephemeral thing as consciousness is
mistaken in an age of behaviorism and psychoanalysis; people's behavior—e.g.,
interaction patterns and life styles—and their implicit, unverbalized
conceptions are much more important than their ability to verbalize about
their class positions in a brief interview with a polltaker. Then too:
"Economic position" and the control over the life chances of others are
matters of social fact, which are relatively independent of subjective
recognition. They can and frequently do exist outside popular awareness;
sometimes, they exist though they are denied explicitly.[29]
Nonetheless, the problem of class consciousness can be met on its own
terms. As Seymour Lipset and Reinhold Bendix point out, not not even Marx
expected, the lower levels of society to develop class consciousness except
under, certain unusual conditions. However, Marx did claim there was class
consicousness in the upper stratum, and that is precisly where it can be
demonstrated.[30] Starting once again with Brown, he asks that the population
be conscious of classes, agreed on the number of classes, and agreed on the
membership of them.[31] However, to expect everyone in the population to
understand the entire class structure, as Brown does, is clearly too
demanding. No one carries around a complete conception of his own social
stratum let alone the entire social structure. Indeed, social scientists who
have studied the problem often have a better overview of a social class than
any of their informants. C. Wright Mills once noted that he had never studied
a group which had "an adequate view of its own social position."[32] For my
purposes, then, it would be necessary to show only that the population is
conscious of the upper class and its membership. Such consciousness is
suggested by the fact that 82 % of respondents place big businessmen in the
upper class, that 67% of respondents reply that wealth and income are the key
factors in being a member of the upper class (those who say they are upper
class play those factors down), and that only 3% of those who call themselves
middle class and .2% of those who call themselves working class consider big
businessmen to be part of their class.[33] In short, people have a pretty
good idea of the upper class.
However, what non upper-class people think is not the real issue. The
question is the class awareness of members of the upper social class. Are
they class conscious? Unfortunately, the major work on class consciousness is
of little use on this question, for it included few if any persons from the
top .5% of the social hierarchy.[34] Any arguments on the matter therefore
have had to rely on the testimony of an insider-expert such as Baltzell, the
novels of a perceptive observer such as J. P. Marquand, and remarks about the
"mobility" and "peasants" that used to slip from cultured tongues. Then too,
every once in a while an upper-class writer will drop a remark that implies
class consciousness. For example, Lewis Lapham (Social Register, New York)
noted in the Saturday Evening Post that "the old rich recognize one another
by small and elusive signals: a tone of voice, a name in common, a summer
once at Fisher's Island, the recollection of a bunker below the 13th green at
a course in Southampton."[35] Stephen Birmingham, a graduate of Hotchkiss,
devotes a whole chapter to "How Shall We Tell the Children."[36] The concern
with ancestry, family emblems, and club memberships also implies class
consciousness, but it does not carry us much beyond arguments based on life
style and anecdotal testimony.
The Testimony of Psychoanalysts
I thought I had the perfect coup, the ace of them all on class consciousness
in the upper class, when I wrote to the men I hoped would know its members
best, the psycho-analysts. A questionnaire was sent to one-third of the 912
Freudian analysts and all of the seventy Jungian analysts. Unfortunately,
very few psychoanalysts replied, and only thirty-six of the sixty-nine who
did felt they could speak on this subject. The low rate of return may reflect
the fact that few analysts see upper-class patients. The typical
psycho-analytic patient is a professional man making $10-15,000 per year.
Only 22% have incomes over $20,000; 40% are Jewish; occupationally, 18 % are
psychiatrists or psychiatric residents, 17 % academic professionals, I I %
students, and 10% social workers and psychiatric nurses.[37] It also may
reflect hesitancy due to the criticism psychiatrists and psychoanalysts
received for their part in a sensationalist story on Barry Goldwater's sanity
that appeared several years ago.[38] At any rate, thirty-six psychoanalysts
were willing to comment on the class consciousness of patients who listed in
the Social Register or graduated from such schools as Groton and St. Paul's.
Fifteen of the thirty-six circled the highest option, 90-95%, in answer to a
question asking what percent of their upper-class patients "could be
described as class conscious in terms of being aware of themselves as members
of a social group distinct from others." Another twelve believed that 70-80%
of such patients were class conscious. One said 60% were, three said 40-50%,
and two said 25%. Only three took the lowest choice, 5-10%. In short, most of
the psychoanalysts who have seen such patients believe that most of them are
class conscious.
There is some speculation that women of the upper class are more class
conscious than the men. However, most of the psychoanalysts saw no
difference. Those who did were evenly divided as to whether men or women were
more class conscious. The analysts also were asked what they thought created
any class consciousness that they discerned. The most frequent answer was the
family, with schools running a distant second. Several of the psychoanalysts
were kind enough to send further comments on the psychology of their
upper-class patients. These comments suggest that in-depth discussions with
psychoanalysts could be very useful.[39] For now, it is enough to say that
the testimony of several psychoanalysts hopefully in a position to know
sup.ports the observations of insiders and novelists.
The Testimony of an "Informant"
Perhaps the most interesting result of the questionnaire to psychoanalysts
was that it brought me into correspondence with a person who is both a
psychologist and a member of the upper class. This person, whose credentials
are impeccable and go back several generations, gave me detailed comments on
class consciousness as well as differences in life style. Basing comments on
the observation of "Xn" fellow members of the upper class, this observer
believes that 95% of them are class conscious. There is agreement with the
psychoanalysts in seeing neither men nor women as more class conscious, and
in believing that class considerations are important for both men and women
when it comes to a marriage partner. The family is given great importance in
inculcating the feelings that are part of this class consciousness. This
participant also testifies to the ability of upper-class people to recognize
one another, which implies some sort of awareness:
UC individuals certainly do recognize one another, by many variations of "the
old school tie"; accent; understatement in dress and behavior frequently;
common assumptions and values; maintenance of standards of behavior; and by a
characteristic sense of "noblesse oblige" which is really a sine qua non ...
Nationwide contacts are documented in passing:
One of the ways that UC members know people all over the country is by
keeping up with those they knew at schools and colleges typically attended by
their number. And of course, when they move around, their friends write and
alert friends in the new locality, who show hospitality, and tend to
incorporate them into the local UC.
The letters of this correspondent also make it clear that the subjective
sense of "upper classness" does not correlate perfectly with our
institutional indicators, at least in this person's mind. Looking at it from
the perspective of a family that has been in the upper class for several
generations, this participant-observer sees many very wealthy private school
graduates and club members as upper-middle class. Right or wrong, the
comments of this sophisticated informant are very interesting. They raise
questions that should be broached with other members of the upper class. If
cooperation could be obtained, in-depth interviews and free association
sessions might go beyond questionnaires and polls in determining the
consciousness of the American upper class.[40]
SUMMARY
I think the evidence I have presented on in-group interactions and life,
style demonstrates the cohesiveness that makes the American upper elms a
sociological reality. As my psychologist-informant assured me in the
unexpected letter offering an insider's lifetime of observations: "[Members
of the upper class] are not a figment of the imagination, nor a machination
of the unconscious, and need to be defined and evaluated if the record is to
be complete." Unfortunately, I am not able to put a quantitative stamp on the
degree of cohesiveness that characterizes the upper class. Nor am I able to
compare it quantitatively with the cohesiveness of other social layers in
America or with upper classes in other countries. It would take very subtle
and expensive studies to make such comparisons, probably involving extensive
interviewing and field observation. However, I believe it can be argued that
the upper-elms' *wore cohesive than any other level of the American social
hierarchy. Its smaller size, greater wealth, different sources of income
(stocks and bonds), different schooling, different leisure activities, and
different occupations, not to mention its complicated web of intermarriages,
are among the evidences for this statement.
I also think there is ample evidence for asserting that an upper class exists
in American consciousness. We know they exist, even if society page readers
are the only Americans who know of very many examples by name. And they know
they are members of a privileged social class. They also know they have a
good thing going, which no doubt sets certain limitations on the activities
and verbalizations of most of them; surely we do not need a smug
multi-millionaire like William F. Buckley, Jr., to remind us of that
truism.[41] Psychoanalyst Theodore Reik once told his great mentor, Sigmund
Freud, that the psychoanalytic method reminded him of the detective work of
Sherlock Holmes. Freud said no, it was more like the work of, a certain art
historian Giovanni Morelli, who had developed a method of identifying
paintings by studying their unimportant and irrelevant aspects. Instead of
studying the choice of subjects or the use of colors, this astute art
detective turned to minor details such as fingernails and ear lobes in order
to determine whether or not the painting was by a given person. The details
of an eyelid, like a slip of the tongue, give the whole game away. In this
spirit, I offer in conclusion the following irrelevancies to support the case
for the existence of a national upper class that is cohesive and conscious:
1, The ninety bands of Meyer Davis and the twenty-five bands of Lester Lanin
play at society parties and debutante balls all over the country.[42]
2. "The same style of decoration can be found in the homes of socialites all
over the country. And the reason again is that a handful of decorators gets
all the society trade. Most of these designers, as they like to be called,
live in New York, but wealthy clients do not hesitate to fly an approved
decorator to Houston, Cleveland or Los Angeles.[43]
3. The maid's night out is Thursday throughout the United States from
Portland, Oregon to Norwich, Connecticut.
pps. 71-99
--[notes]--
1. Stephen Birmingham, The Right People (Boston: Little, Brown and Co.,
1968), P. 340.
2. William Miller, "American Historians and the Business Elite" (Journal of
Economic History, November, 1949), P. 206.
3. Morroe Berger, "The Business Elite: Then and Now" (Commentary, October,
1956), P. 370.
4. Roger Brown, Social Psychology (New York: The Free Press, 1965), PP. 102,
114.
5. E. Digby Baltzell, Philadelphia Gentlemen: The Making of a National Upper
Class (Glencoe, Illinois: The Free Press, 1958).
6. Brown, op. cit., p. 114.
7. Cleveland Amory, The Proper Bostonians (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co.,
1947), P. 20.
8. Nathaniel Burt, The Perennial Philadelphians (Boston: Little, Brown & Co.,
1963), P. 43.
9. Stephen Hess, America's Political Dynasties (New York: Doubleday & Co.,
1966), p. 297.
10. Julia Cooley Altrocchi, The Spectacular San Franciscans (New York: E. P.
Dutton & Co., 1949), P. 319.
11. Birmingham, op. cit., P. 327.
12. Jack Lind, "The Good Life in Santa Barbara" (Mainliner, November, 1967),
n.p.
13. Cleveland Amory, The Last Resorts (New York: Harper & Row, 1952);
Baltzell, OP. cit., pp. 220-2.
14. Lucy Kavaler, The Private World of High Society (New York: David McKay
Co., 1960), P. 37.
15. Paul Sweezy, The Present As History (New York: Monthly Review Press,
1953), P. 130.
16. The phrase "but such membership lists are not easy to come by" is
obviously added with the hope that mavericks and youthful rebels will send me
every membership list they can obtain on any upper-class organization.
Perhaps the most valuable prize would be the membership list for the Junior
League.
17. Birmingham, op. cit., chapters 18 and 19.
18. Ibid., Pp. 295, 303.
19. Ibid., P. 284.
20. Ibid., p. 293.
21. Floyd Hunter, Top Leadership, USA (Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 1959), PP. 167-72.
22. Lucy Sprague Mitchell, Two Lives (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1953), P.
207.
23. Brown, op. cit., p. 132.
24. Unless otherwise specified, the following account is based upon Baltzell,
op. cit., and Kavaler, op. cit. Many of these points were made in more detail
for the feminine half of the upper class in the second essay.
25. "Debs Put Party on' Jet" (San Francisco Chronicle, December 18, 1965), p.
2. "Hostesses wearing the Emilio Pucci-designed ensemble served a nonstandard
menu that ranged from mumms cordon rouge, brut vintage, cruse 1. Emilion, to
empandana, rumaki, roast heart of tenderloin, broiled lobster and Italian rum
cake."
26. William M. Kephart, "Status After Death" (American Sociological Review,
October, 1950).
27. Amory, op. Cit., P. 257.
28. Gabriel Almond, "Plutocracy and Politics in New York City" (Unpublished
Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago, 1941), p. 108.
29. Seymour M. Lipset and Reinhold Bendix, "Social Status and Social
Structure: A Re-examination of Data and Interpretations: 11" (British Journal
of Sociology, October, 195 1 ), P. 249.
30.lbid p, 241n. "Marx never suggested that any but the members of the
dominant controlling class would by themselves develop a consistent,
class-conscious ideology. it is significant to note that most of American
sociological research on class, as well as the reports of perceptive
journalists, tend to confirm this hypothesis."
31. Brown, op. cit., p. 114.
32. C. Wright Mills, "Comment on Criticism," in C. Wright Mills and the Power
Elite, G. William Domhoff and Hoyt B. Ballard, eds. (Boston: Beacon Press,
1968), p. 230.
33. Brown, op. cit., p. 130; Richard Centers, The Psychology of Social
Classes (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1949), pp. 80-3, 94-5.
34. Centers, op. cit., PP. 48-9.
35. Lewis H. Lapman, "Old Money, New Money" (Saturday Evening Post, December
30, 1967), P. 22.
36. Birmingham, op. cit., Chapter 3.
37. "Who's In Analysis?" (Trans-Action, November, 1968), P. 7.
38. Ralph Ginzburg, "Goldwater: The Man and the Menace"; Warren Boroson,
"What Psychiatrists Say About Goldwater" (Fact, September/ October, 1964).
39. Herbert E. Krugman, "The Role of Hostility in the Appeal of Communism in
the United States" (Psychiatry, August, 1953) demonstrates the usefulness of
careful interviews with psychoanalysts.
40. Herbert Hendlin, Willard Gaylin, and Arthur Carr, Psychoanalysis and
Social Research: The Psychoanalytic Study of the Non-Patient (Garden City:
Doubleday & Co., 1965), introduction and pp. 103ff, demonstrates the
possibilities of this approach.
41. William F. Buckley, Jr., "God Bless the Rich" (Saturday Evening Post,
December 30, 1967), P. 4.
42. Personal communications from Meyer Davis Productions and Lester Lanin
Orchestras. Ile number of "bands" the two organizations maintain is lower
during certain times of the year.
43. Kavaler, op. Cit., pp. 26-7.
-----
Aloha, He'Ping,
Om, Shalom, Salaam.
Em Hotep, Peace Be,
Omnia Bona Bonis,
All My Relations.
Adieu, Adios, Aloha.
Amen.
Roads End
Kris
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