He is, in fact, far more autonomous and far-ranging than any Soviet industrial commissar, who is always under the tight leash of the
Communist
Party.
Lundberg - The-Rich-and-the-Super-Rich-by-Ferdinand-Lundberg
owns 58 per cent
Dutch government owns 51 per cent
Directors own about 13 per cent
Storer Broadcasting owns 87 per cent
77 per cent of stock held in trust for
Hughes Tool Co. , owned by Howard
Allan P. Kirby controls; he owns 4. 5
cent directly and controls 15 per cent
through Alleghany Corp.
81 per cent owned by New York Central
Canadian Pacific owns 56 per cent
Directors own/control 12 per cent
16 per cent closely held
Isbrandtsen Co. owns 26. 3 per cent
Directors own 15 per cent; another 50
cent closely held by Lykes family
Directors own 60 per cent
Directors interested in 34 per cent
About 35 per cent of stock closely
About 20 per cent of stock closely
G. and C. L. Whitehead own 47. 2 per
Galen J. Roush family owns about 52
Directors control about 53 per cent
Directors own about 47 per cent
November 5, 1965
United Kingdom government owns about
10. 8 per cent
65 per cent owned by Gulf Oil (Mellon)
Creole Petroleum
(New
Hess Oil & Chemical
66
Imperial Oil
Kerr-McGee
per
Murphy Oil
Pacific Petroleums
Richfield Oil
per
now
Shell Oil
Dutch/Shell
Signal Oil & Gas
Class B
Superior Oil
Coastal States Gas Producing
Texas Gas Transmission
95. 4 per cent owned by Standard Oil
Jersey) (Rockefeller)
Leon and Moses Hess interests control
per cent
70. 2 per cent owned by Standard Oil
(New Jersey) (Rockefeller)
McGee interests control more than 11
cent of stock
Management controls 56 per cent
Phillips Petroleum (Du Pont presence)
owns 45 per cent
Sinclair and Cities Service did own 61
cent (Atlantic Refining [Rockefeller]
owns)
69. 4 per cent owned by Royal
Group
Officer-directors own majority of
voting common
More than 50 per cent owned by Keck
Family
Directors own about 19 per cent
Hillman family owns 11 per cent common
Transcontinental Gas Pipe Line Stone and Webster, Inc. , owns 11 per
cent
Ayrshire Collieries
per
Consolidation Coal
of
Eastern Gas & Fuel Associates
Peabody Coal
stock
Pittston
com-
common; directors 2. 6 per cent
B. F. Goodrich and associates own 43
cent common
M. A. Hanna controls with 15 per cent
common stock; dominant Mellon presence
26 per cent closely held
Directors own 16. 3 per cent of voting
Directors control about 11 per cent
mon; Pitcairn family presence
United Electric Coal
Diamond Alkali
Mel-
per
International Salt
cent
Koppers long
Minerals & Chemicals Philipp
Minnesota Mining & Mfg.
National Starch & Chemical
Occidental Petroleum
Olin Mathieson Chemical
cent
Pittsburgh Coke and Chemical
cent
Reichhold Chemicals
common
Remington Arms
cent
Rohm & Haas
(mainly
Stauffer Chemical
directors
Sun Chemical
20
U. S. Borax & Chemical
Wallace & Tiernan
fami-
Witco Chemical
American Hospital Supply
Baxter Laboratories
General Dynamics owns 53 per cent
November 12, 1965
Directors own 6. 2 per cent common;
lon National Bank as fiduciary 12. 7
cent
The Fuller family holds about 10 per
Directors control 10 per cent, but
time Mellon interest
50 per cent stock closely held
Directors own 19 per cent
Mr. and Mrs. F. K. Greenwall own more
than 20 per cent
Directors, including Armand Hammer and
Frederic Gimbel, own 14 per cent
Olin family and directors own 15 per
Directors own or control about 57 per
H. H. Reichhold owns 14 per cent of
E. I. du Pont de Nemours owns 60 per
common, 99. 6 per cent preferred
70 per cent of stock closely held
by Rohm and Haas families)
16 per cent of stock controlled by
N. E. Alexander, president, owns about
per cent common
73 per cent owned by Borax, Ltd.
Wallace, Tiernan and Strasenburgh
lies own 54. 5 per cent
Directors control 56 per cent
Directors own 13. 6 per cent
Management controls 25 per cent common
Carter-Wallace
Johnson & Johnson
family
Kendall
Eli Lilly
associ-
voting non-
McKesson & Robbins
Mead Johnson
stock
Miles Laboratories
cent
Plough, Inc.
Rexall Drug
W. H. Borer
G. D. Searle
Smith, Kline & French
Laboratories
Syntex Corp.
20
Upjohn
Warner-Lambert Pharmaceutical
Anheuser-Busch
24
Drewrys cent
Falstaff Brewing
Pabst Brewing
Joseph Schlitz Brewing
Brown Shoe
CPT Development Corp. , controlled by
Hoyt family, owns 51. 9 per cent
42. 4 per cent controlled by Johnson
Directors own 20 per cent common
Lilly Endowment, Lilly family and
ates own 100 per cent of Class A
stock; only 25 per cent of Class B
voting stock publicly held
Foremost Dairies owns 25 per cent
Directors bold 49. 6 per cent of voting
Management controls about 12. 4 per
of outstanding stock
A. Plough, president, owns 13 per cent
Directors own 12. 3 per cent
Borer family owns 36 per cent
Searle family controls 46 per cent
Directors control 32 per cent
Allen & Co. , investment bankers, own
per cent; directors about 7 per cent
Upjohn family owns 47 per cent
Directors own 12. 2 per cent common
Busch family and directors own about
per cent
Directors interested in about 10. 1 per
Directors control about 13. 3 per cent
"Management stockholdings are under-
stood to be large"
Owned 93 per cent by Uihlein family
Directors control about 8. 5 per cent
Edison Bros. Stores
Genesco
Green Shoe
per
International Shoe
U. S. Shoe
Wolverine Shoe and Tanning
Duke Power
Endowment
Edison family owns 15 per cent
Officers and directors own 21 per cent
Common
Officers and families own about 26. 5
Cent
Directors own 9. 5 per cent
Directors own about 15 per cent
Krause family controls 45 per cent
November 19, 1965
Duke, Doris Duke Trust and Duke
control 73 per cent common stock
(Note: In most of the electric power and light companies directors
usually
own 1 per cent or less of the stock and the large stockholders in
recent
years do not trade; the large holdings, therefore, are not
reflected in
recent SEC reports but must be sought in the original SEC
prospectuses. )
American Cement
stock
(Philip) Carey Mfg.
per
Congoleum-Nairn
Corning Glass Works
Crane
De Soto Chemical
Kaiser Cement & Gypsum
Kaiser Industries
common
Marquette Cement
Masonite
National Homes
cent
Owens-Corning
Corning
cent
November 26, 1965
Directors own about 25 per cent of
Directors and families own about 10
cent
Power Corporation owns 26. 3 per cent;
directors 7. 5 per cent
Houghton family owns 33 per cent
Directors own 18 per cent
Sears, Roebuck owns 52 per cent common
Kaiser family and directors own 24 per
cent common
Kaiser family owns about 50 per cent
Directors own 18. 7 per cent common
Directors own 14. 5 per cent
Officers and directors own 32. 7 per
Owens-Illinois Glass (Levis) and
Glass (Houghton) each own 31. 1 per
Common
Pittsburgh Plate Glass
Screw and Bolt
Wallace-Murray
by
Walworth
Welbilt
common
Hudson Pulp and Paper
controls
Riegel Paper
American Distilling
James B. Beam Distilling
Brown-Forman Distillers
Class
Distillers
per
Heublein
addi-
National Distillers
Publicker Industries
Schenley Industries
cent
Admiral
Amp per
Avnet
Bunker-Ramo
Bundy
Pitcairn family owns 30 per cent stock
through The Pitcairn Co.
Directors control 26. 4 per cent
About one-third of common and two
thirds of convertible preferred owned
Charles H. Dyson and F. H. Kissner
General Waterworks owns 49. 9 per cent
Hirsch interests own 70 per cent
Abraham Mazer Family Fund, Inc. ,
60. 25 per cent common with management
interests
Directors control about 10 per cent
Directors own about 20 per cent
Directors control about 55 per cent
Directors own about 25 per cent of
A, 20 per cent Class B
Bronfman family holds more than 38. 8
Cent
Directors own 16 per cent of stock;
tional 25 per cent held in trust for
insiders and families
12 per cent common owned by Panhandle
Eastern Pipe Line
S. S. Neuman owns 25 per cent common,
controls additional 30 per cent
Directors and associates own 30 per
common
December 3, 1965
Siragusa family owns about 40 per cent
Directors own or represent about 33
Cent
Avnet family owns 25. 8 per cent
Martin Marietta owns about 62 per cent
Officers and directors own 35 per cent
Collins Radio
Consolidated Electronics
in-
Industries
CTS
Emerson Electric
Emerson Radio
Fairchild Camera
cent
Cornell-Dubilier Electric
Elec-
Pioneer Electric
Foxboro
General Instrument
General Precision Equipment
Hoffman Electronics
Indiana General
International Resistance
Magnavox
cent
Maytag
McGraw-Edison
cent
Motorola
other
Robertshaw Controls
Reynolds
Ronson cent
Sangamo Electric
per
Schick Electric
cent
Collins family owns 24. 4 per cent
U. S. Philips Trust owns directly and
directly about 33 per cent common
Directors own about 43 per cent
Directors own 8 per cent
Directors own more than 33 per cent
S. M. Fairchild of IBM owns 20 per
98 per cent owned by Federal Pacific
Tric
100 per cent owned by Federal Pacific
Electric
About 49 per cent is closely held
Directors own about 20 per cent
Directors own about 10 per cent
H. Leslie Hoffman and his family own
about 22 per cent
Directors control about 7. 9 per cent
Directors control about 10 per cent
Officers and directors own about 9 per
Directors own about 15 per cent
Officers and directors own 9. 4 per
Galvin family controls 24 per cent;
insiders own additional 12 per cent
Reynolds Metals, largely owned by
family, owns 30 per cent
Directors control more than 15 per
Bunn and Lamphier families control 25
Cent
Eversharp and Technicolor own 25 per
Schlumberger
per
Sunbeam
Tung-Sol Electric
cent
Varian Associates
per
Whirlpool
7. 5
Schlumberger family controls about 50
Cent
Directors own about 13 per cent
Directors own or control about 22 per
of common
Directors and officers own about 17
cent of stock
RCA owns . 5 per cent; Sears, Roebuck
per cent; directors 6 per cent
Directors own 7 per cent
Zenith Radio
Carolina Telephone & Telegraph Bell System owns about 18 per cent
Comsat
carriers;
New England Telephone
Pacific Telephone
Southern New England
Telephone
Central Telephone
Addressograph-Multigraph
stock
American Photocopy
Control Data
Cyclops
Detroit Steel
Eastern Stainless Steel
cent
Firth Sterling
Harsco stock
Interlake Steel
Kaiser Steel
family,
50 per cent owned by the common
balance by general stockholders
AT&T owns about 69 per cent
AT&T owns about 90 per cent
AT&T owns 18. 4 per cent
Western Power and Gas owns 57 per cent
Common
Directors own about 15 per cent of
Rautbord family owns about 27 per cent
Directors own about 6 per cent
December 10, 1965
Directors own about 6 per cent
Directors control 13. 7 per cent
Officers and directors own about 8 per
Directors own 11. 7 per cent common
Directors have about 10 per cent of
Pickands Mather & Co. own 9. 2 per cent
common; directors 3. 4 per cent
Kaiser Industries, owned by Kaiser
Lukens Steel
National Steel
Phoenix Steel
Pittsburgh Steel
common
U. S. Pipe & Foundry
Freeport
Wheeling Steel
cent;
Woodward Iron
percent;
American Metal Climax
Dodge
owns 79 per cent
Huston family owns 38 per cent
M. A. Hanna Co. owns 22 per cent, in-
siders 3. 5 per cent
Insiders own about 25 per cent common
Directors control about 21 per cent
Directors own about 2 per cent,
Sulphur 5. 7 per cent
Hunt Foods & Industries own 11. 1 per
cent; Cleveland Cliffs Iron 4. 8 per
directors 1 per cent
Woodward family holds about 15. 4
directors about 8 per cent common
Selection Trust owns 12. 2 per cent com
mon; directors 4. 2 per cent; Phelps
4 per cent
American Zinc, Lead & Smelting Consolidated Goldfields of South
Africa
Bunker Hill
Campbell Red Lake
Cleveland-Cliffs Iron
Detroit
Consolidated Mining
Copper Range
Great Northern Iron
Harvey Aluminum
Hudson Bay Mining
Inspiration Consol. Copper
Kaiser Aluminum
common
owns 61 per cent
Hecla Mining owns 9. 75 per cent common
Dome Mines, Ltd. , owns 57 per cent
Directors own about 5 per cent;
Steel 22 per cent
Canadian Pacific owns 51. 5 per cent
American Metal Climax owns 17. 5 per
cent; Blacton & Co. 12. 5 per cent
In trust for lifetime of 18 persons
Harvey family owns all Class B stock
Anglo-American Corporation owns 18 per
cent common
Anaconda Co. owns about 28 per cent of
Stock
Kaiser interests own 45. 2 per cent
Magma Copper
common
McIntyre-Porcupine Mines
Newmont Mining
common
Reynolds Metals
United Nuclear
Chemical
Vanadium
Calumet & Hecla
common
Continental Copper
Fansteel Metallurgical
General Cable
Howmet
com-
International Silver
Revere Copper & Brass
American Chain & Cable
Baker Oil Tools
common
Clark Equipment
per
Continental Motors
Foster Wheeler
Gardner-Denver
Halliburton Co
Ingersoll-Rand
Leesona
Link-Belt
Newmont Mining owns 80. 6 per cent
Shares closely held
Directors own more than 15 per cent
Directors, mainly members of Reynolds
family, control about 19 per cent
Olin Mathieson and Malinckrodt
Works own nearly 30 per cent
Directors control about 11 per cent
Directors control about 9 per cent
Directors Control 7 per cent common
Directors control 9 per cent of stock
American Smelting owns 36 per cent
Pechiney (France) owns 49 per cent
mon; directors control 8 per cent
Directors control 9 per cent common
American Smelting owns 34 per cent of
stock
December 17, 1965
W. T. Morris Foundation owns 17. 8 per
cent of stock; directors 3. 1 per cent
Directors hold about 16 per cent
Directors and families own about 12
cent of stock
Ryan Aeronautical owns about 47 per
Cent
Directors own 5. 7 per cent; Financial
General Corp. owns 13. 5 per cent
Directors represent 7. 1 per cent
Directors own about 8 per cent
Directors own 6 per cent common
Directors own about 17 per cent
Directors own about 6 per cent
McNeil
Mesta Machine
Outboard Marine
Rockwell Manufacturing
Symington Wayne
Textron
S. S. White
Brown & Sharpe Manufacturing
Carborundum
own
Cincinnati Milling Machine
cent
Giddings & Lewis
of
Kearney & Trecker
Norton
UTD of
Dr. Pepper
Royal Crown Cola
and
General Baking
common
United Biscuit
Ward Foods
stock
John Morrell
Campbell Soup
64. 3
Directors own 11 per cent
Directors own about 6 per cent common
Ralph S. Evinrude owns/controls 14 per
cent of stock
Rockwell family controls 19 per cent
Directors own 10 per cent
Directors own 6. 5 per cent common
Directors own about 6 per cent common
Henry B. Sharpe, president, and family
own 34 per cent of stock
Mellon family and related interests
about 21 per cent common
Directors and families own 21. 7 per
Common
Directors and families own 21 per cent
stock; Motch & Merryweather Machinery
10 per cent
Trecker family owns about 50 per cent
Officers and directors own 11 per cent
Common
Directors interested in 25. 3 per cent
Stock
Directors hold about 11 per cent
Directors hold 14. 6 per cent; Pickett
Hatcher Educational Fund 2. 9 per cent
Goldfield Corp. owns 51 per cent
Directors own 18 per cent of stock
Directors interested in 32 per cent of
Directors hold 18 per cent
Dorrance estate owns in trust about
per cent
Chock Full O'Nuts
con-
Consolidated Foods
Gerber Products
30
H. J. Heinz
cent
Hershey Chocolate
Hunt Foods & Industries
common
Libby, McNeill & Libby
common
A. E. Staley
Stokely-Van Camp
directors own
William Wrigley, Jr.
control
Eversharp
stock
Max Factor
Helene Curtis Industries
Revlon and
Pet Milk
Anderson, Clayton
Kellogg per
Pillsbury
stock
Bulova Watch
Hewlett-Packard
William Black, chairman and founder,
trols about 15 per cent common
Nathan Cummings owns 9. 4 per cent of
stock; Union Sugar 8. 2 per cent
Gerber family and directors own about
per cent common
Heinz family owns more than 37 per
Common
Milton Hershey School owns 66 per cent
of stock
Directors own about 7. 9 per cent
Foreign interests own 40 per cent
Staley family owns 60 per cent common
A. J. Stokely, president, and
or control 31 per cent common
Wrigley interests and directors
about 35 per cent common
Directors own about 15 per cent of
Directors own 99. 9 per cent common and
33. 5 per cent Class A shares
Directors own 53 per cent of stock
Directors own 99. 9 per cent Class B
11 per cent common
Leading stockholders own about 65 per
cent common
Directors control 48 per cent of stock
W. K. Kellogg Foundation controls 51
cent common
Directors control about 6 per cent of
Directors control 19 per cent
Directors own about 70 per cent
Polaroid
Tektronix
Alleghany
holdings
Pacific
General American Investors
Directors control about 25 per cent
Directors and officers own 57 per cent
Allan P. Kirby owns about 40 per cent
common in this company with big
in New York Central RR, Missouri
RR, Transamerica and Investors Diversi
fied Services
Directors own about 11 per cent common
Investors Diversified Services Alleghany owns 43 per cent voting
stock
The burden of proof has clearly been shifted in this chapter to those who contend that stock ownership and corporate control are widely dispersed among many small stockholders. All available evidence, direct and statistical, stands as an insurmountable barrier against the contention.
Any low percentages of participation in the foregoing list should not be taken as implying that they exhaust the concentrated interest. All they indicate is that this is the concentrated interest as shown under the rules of the SEC. In every single case, even where only a 5 per cent interest is shown, deeper inquiry would show, almost invariably, that far fewer than 1 per cent of stockholders owned the bulk of the stock or enough to give working control.
Even Fortune, after many years of surrender to the Berle-Means fantasy that ownership is divorced from control in most of the big companies, has now (June 15, 1967 ) come over to recognizing that the big owners have more than a little to say. What Berle-Means did. initiating the fantasy, was to confuse control with operating direction. Company managers, whether themselves owners or nonowners, are always in charge of operations, by tacit or explicit leave of the big owners. The issue of control is seldom raised. But when it is, as most recently with a big company in the case of the New York Central Railroad, the nonowning management walks the plank. In this case the big owners turned out to be the Young-Kirby-Murchison group.
"After more than two generations during which ownership has been increasingly divorced from control," says Fortune rather misleadingly, "it is assumed that all large U. S. corporations are owned by everybody and nobody, and are run and ruled by bland organization men. The individual entrepreneur or family that holds onto the controlling interest and actively manages the affairs of a big company is regarded as a rare exception, as something of an anachronism. But a close look at the 500 largest industrial corporations does not substantiate such sweeping generalizations.
"In approximately 150 companies on the current Fortune 500 list, controlling ownership rests in the hands of an individual or of the members of a single family. Significantly, these owners are not just the remnants of the nineteenth-century dynasties that once ruled American business. Many of them are relatively fresh faces. In any event, the evidence that 30 per cent of the 500 largest industrials are clearly controlled by identifiable individuals, or by family groups, is something to ponder. It suggests that the demise of the traditional American proprietor has been slightly exaggerated and that the much-advertised triumph of the organization is far from total. "
While it is true that the big owners are not "just" remnants, they nevertheless, among other things, are indeed remnants. And while true that many are "relatively fresh faces," nearly all show strong ancestral resemblances or bear established ancestral names already mentioned many times in this book. They are heirs.
Fortune's list of 150 concerned only an individual owner or a single family that holds the controlling interest and is active in the management. In the case of the 350 other largest industrials, which were not touched upon, control also rested with a small number of owners (as distinct from nonowning managers and many small stockholders): either multi-family ownership groups consisting of as many as five to seven families or individual members of a functionally related financial group. In no case, except when a company is under court-sanctioned trustees, can it be shown that ownership is divorced from control, although in many cases it is divorced from active management.
While taking cognizance of the Fortune article, and largely endorsing it as far as it goes, I, for my part, learned nothing from it that I have not known for thirty years. Its significance was not that it told something new but that it represented some open backtracking from the Berle-Means contention that ownership has been, or is being, divorced from company control and that full control rather than delegated management is being exercised by professionally trained nonowning managements.
What is most interesting--to me, at any rate--is why steps are now being taken to abandon, at least partly, the Berle-Means fantasy, which has been widely disseminated and has many quite distinguished followers. There was nothing inherently marvelous about the theory; what led to its being given wide currency was that it served to gull an always gullible public with the idea that property was losing its power and that something akin to socialism (but better) was evolving before our eyes. The United States was going to retain private property but at the same time it was going to have collective nonprofit-oriented, professional management in the corporations; if the owners, particularly the big owners, did not like this they would be powerless. As far as that went, big ownership itself was going out of existence.
In brief, this was a useful myth in manipulating restive public sentiment, particularly in the Depression and spectacular World War II. The idea that big stockholders were either impotent or vanishing was widely relished.
As I surmise, the myth is being abandoned precisely because of this depiction of the stockholders, particularly the big ones, as impotent. As a psychiatrist might say, the stockholders are shown in the Berle-Means script as castrates, displaced by bright young men tip from Swampwater College with nothing but technique to offer: know- how and can-do. Objectively serviceable though the myth has been for the big proprietors, it has been subjectively and personally humiliating. Instead of being seen by his wife, children and friends as an authentic bigwig, the boss (which he is), the top owner-manager has had himself publicly presented as something of a corporate tabby cat. As the Fortune sample list of 150 shows, he is anything but this.
He is, in fact, far more autonomous and far-ranging than any Soviet industrial commissar, who is always under the tight leash of the Communist Party. The commissar accepts policy; the big owners make or shape policy. They are not the puppets of nonowning corporate managers.
What must have happened in a general way, it seems to me, is that somebody grumbled about this constant depiction of stockholders as the pawns of puissant corporate officials who came from nowhere, and the grumbling was finally beard by the big ears up at Fortune. And now we see the beginning of the dismantling of what had become a sturdy myth, although quite a few academicians are still bemused by it and see something akin to socialism (only better) developing by gradual administrative fiat
promulgated by expert nonowning managers to whom profits are secondary, public welfare primary.
Seven
THE AMERICAN PLANTATION: A PROFILE
It has been abundantly shown that the members of a small coterie, comparable in relative size to the owning class of the Banana Republics and other unbenign polities, own and control all important economic enterprises in the United States. And now that we have a latter-day insight into the ownership and control of the individual parts, it remains to be shown into what whole these parts fit.
The thesis of this chapter is that the economic system as a whole is principally owned, and mainly though not wholly controlled but certainly decisively influenced, by or on behalf of hardly many more than 500,000 biological individuals (as distinguished from fictitious persons such as corporations). In turn, the political system is very concentratedly influenced. The instrument of this highly personal influence-control is the large corporation, an Archimedean lever. Ownership in some degree may be claimed by perhaps 10 per cent of the population, most of it in tiny bits, but outside this slice it is largely confined to chattels. Few Americans own more productive property, directly or indirectly, than do benighted Russians, Chinese or Latin American descamisados. This fact is no doubt difficult for those conditioned by domestic mass-media propaganda to accept; yet intractable fact it unquestionably is.
Firms in Operation
The number of American firms in operation as of 1963, the most recent date for which the information is available, was 4,797,000, an increase of 22,000 over 1962. 1 This figure did not include agricultural enterprises or firms of professionals such as physicians and lawyers. Nearly half, or 2,032,000 firms, were in retail trade, most of them small local retail stores, often in hock to local banks.
Sole proprietorships at the end of 1961 totaled 9,242,000 and partnerships 939,000. 2
Gross national product, or the totality of goods and services transferred to consumers by all agencies, public and private, amounted to $554. 9 billion in 1962. 3 It approximated $600 billion in 1965 and may have exceeded $700 billion before this book is published. The national rate of economic growth rose to 5. 5 per cent in 1965.
Sales of the 500 largest industrial corporations amounted to $229. 08 billion in 1962, or nearly 42 per cent of gross national product. About 65 per cent of these sales, or $149. 4 billion, were made by the 100 largest industrial corporations, $36. 2 billion by the next 100, $20. 5 billion by the third 100 and $13. 2 by the fourth 100. 4
The Treasury Department for tax purposes has a category of "active corporations," numbering 1,190,286 in 1961. This category with sweeping catholicity includes
corporations in finance, insurance, real estate, services, nonallocable businesses and agriculture, forestry and fisheries. Excluding all such and retaining only the mining, construction, manufacturing, transportation, communication, electric, gas and wholesale as well as retail trade industries in order to obtain a category comparable with that of the big industrial enterprises we have been considering, we have 675,074 active industrial enterprises. 5
The total assets of all these 675,074 active industrial and trading enterprises were $561. 778 billion in 1961 6 compared with total assets in the same year of $186. 769 billion for the 500 largest industrial companies, $125. 734 billion for the 100 largest. 7 In 1962 the assets of the 500 had risen by more than $10 billion. More than 30 per cent of the industrial assets of the country, then, was confined to 500 of the largest companies.
Actually, in 1961 companies with assets of $50 million and more among all active corporations, industrial and nonindustrial, well above the range of "small business," held the bulk of assets and most of the net income.
The number of such companies was 2,632 or . 2 per cent out of the 1,190,286. The $50-million-asset-plus companies held $812. 396 billion out of total corporate assets of $1,289. 516 billion, or nearly 65 per cent. Their net income was $30,027 billion out of $45,894 billion, or 66 per cent of all corporate net income.
Confining ourselves once again to active industrial and trading companies, we find that 1,073 constituting the $50-million-plus class had assets of $346. 922 billion out of total industrial and trading assets of $561. 778 billion. , or more than 60 per cent, and net income of $24. 151 billion or 70 per cent, out of total net income of 35. 916 billion. 8 Again, one central corporation often owns many other large ones. The big corporations are not always detached entities.
Summarizing, 2,632 active corporations or slightly more than . 2 per cent of all active corporations (almost always dominantly owned and controlled by less than . 1 per cent of their stockholders) held nearly 65 per cent of all corporate assets for 1961 and got 66 per cent of net corporate income. These 2,632 corporations were those with individual assets of $50 million or more. In the industrial-trading category alone less than . 2 per cent ( 1,073 out of 684,075) of corporations, with assets of $50 million or more, held more than 60 per cent of assets and derived 70 per cent of net income.
The vast number of enterprises below the $50-million asset class (and almost 60 per cent of them had assets of less than $100,000) perform only a shrinking marginal amount of the business of the country. We can therefore with the utmost caution say that most of the productive activity of the United States is in the hands of a tiny number of very large corporations largely owned and completely dominated by a small coterie, almost a junta.
This fact is shown, too, in the figure of $302. 536 billion for total sales of the 1,073 largest industrial and trading corporations for 1961, which was nearly 60 per cent of gross national product. 9
What have been cited are official government figures and as such may be suspect to some persons who profess deep distrust of all government activity. Let us, then, turn to strictly business sources.
"The 7,126 U. S. companies with more than 100 or more employees (2. 5% of the nation's 286,817 manufacturing corporations) account for 90% of total manufacturing assets and 83% of sales," says a widely circulated business directory in referring to 1961. 10 "The nation's top 13 employers, firms with 100,000 or more workers, have assets of $37. 9 billion (15. 3% of total U. S. manufacturing assets) and sales of $47. 1 billion (13. 6% of total sales). "
No matter which source one turns to, the same prospect unfolds: intense concentration. Slightly more than 7,000 managements, often interlocked, account for 83 per cent of all sales!
Whoever owns and /or controls the large corporations, then, obviously owns and/or controls the lion's share of the productive system, We have already shown how untenable is the idea that such ownership is widely diffused among millions of small shareholders. The small shareholder in the United States stands in the same relative position to the large shareholder as the rank-and-file Communist in Russia stands to the party leadership. Useful, he nevertheless need not be seriously consulted. He carries no more weight than the rank-and-file employee. Corporatively speaking, he is a nonentity, an unperson.
The Cannibalistic Merger Movement>
The smaller enterprises, moreover, are being steadily squeezed out of business or
absorbed by the giants, most of which became giants by the cannibalistic process.
There have been three periods in this century marked by waves of American mergers-- 1900-10, the 1920's and the years since World War II. From 1920 through 1929 there were 6,818 mergers; from 1930 through 1939 there were 2,264; from 1940 through 1949 there were 2,411; from 1950 through 1959 there were 4,089; and from 1960 through 1963 there were 1,978. In most cases larger companies absorbed smaller ones; in some cases many small companies were suddenly combined into large ones. 11
The word "merger" in actual practice almost invariably indicates that large companies are involved; it is rare for really small enterprises to figure in mergers. Thus in the decade 1951-61, of 3,736 mergers involving the 500 largest industrial and 50 largest merchandising firms--almost all the mergers there were--the largest 100 industrial companies absorbed 884 firms, the next largest 100 absorbed 1,059, the third largest 100 took in 577, the fourth largest 100 absorbed 453 and the fifth largest 100 absorbed 431 firms. Among the merchandising companies the largest 50 took in 332 other companies. 12
In the years 1948-60, 33. 4 per cent of assets acquired by merger went to companies with assets of $50 million or more and 34. 3 per cent of acquired assets went to companies with assets of $10-$50 million. Assets acquired by companies with less than $1 million of assets amounted to only 1. 6 per cent. The same trend continued into the 1960's up through 1962, the latest date available. 13 Since then, the merger movement has taken a new spurt.
The small enterprise, at least rhetorically beloved by many small-town congressmen, has also been steadily driven out of business by failure, a traditional hazard of genuine businessmen as distinct from corporate manipulators. In the period 1921 through 1935 there was a yearly average of more than 20,000 failures (excluding railroad bankruptcy proceedings), with aggregate liabilities averaging more than $500 million and average individual liabilities between $21,000 and $27,000. From 1936 through 1940 the yearly average was 12,064 and in the 1940's it was a little more than 5,000. But in the 1950's the figure started burgeoning again, from 8,058 in 1951 to 14,053 by 1959. In the 1960's it is exceeding 15,000 annually.
Most of these failures are of very small firms. Only in 1961 did aggregate annual liabilities cross $1 billion, where it remained thereafter through 1963, our latest date. In no year has the average individual liability exceeded $100,000. 14
The figures tell little of blasted hopes in the uneven race toward business success.
It is almost a cardinal rule that only small businesses go out of existence through bankruptcy. The word is encountered only academically on the higher corporate circuit.
One of the effects of the propaganda about business success (propaganda based on a meager number of instances) is to encourage each year thousands of illusion-ridden citizens to jump into the business whirlpool. Unskilled in logical analysis, they optimistically accept the lopsided findings of Time, Fortune and the Wall Street Journal as representative fact. All they accomplish in most cases, sooner or later, is to enrich with their small bankrolls the coffers of suppliers of business equipment, which is later knocked down to the highest bidder at bankruptcy auction sales. There is a thriving business in the United States dealing, year in and year out, with bankruptcy itself.
By every known sign, entering into business for oneself in the United States is now, and always has been, a highly risky affair. Many are called; few are chosen. And most who remain in business do so on the thinnest of survival margins, constantly financed by short-term bank loans, the constant prey to recessions, regional strikes or even vagaries of the weather. A simple run of unseasonable weather regularly drives out of business hordes of hopeful operators of small resorts, hotels, stores and service enterprises. Many are hopelessly in debt. But in addition to misfortunes of local circumstance there stand in the background the asset-heavy large enterprises, which survive all vicissitudes, like granite cliffs against the sea. Not many German enterprises survived the military disasters that engulfed the Reich this century; but the Krupp family's steel enterprises, for one, did survive and, indeed, are flourishing now as never before. Krupp in Germany could no more be vanquished by overwhelming national calamity than could Du Pont in the United States. What would survive any event, perhaps even atomic warfare, would be titles, patents, formulas, certain key personnel and organization charts. One would, as the saying goes, have to get the country "moving" again. And who can do this better than Krupps, Du Ponts, Rockefellers, Fords, Pews, Gettys, Rosenwalds and their kind? For, among other things, they have gathered unto themselves administration of the technical "know-how. " This is what they have, over and beyond money: general far-ranging administrative authority.
Business versus the Corporation
As applied to the larger enterprises the term "business" has become a euphemism, no longer expressing the intended content of the word. The man who owns and operates a small independent shoe store is a businessman. So, it is implied, are Henry Ford II, J. Paul Getty, Crawford H. Greenewalt and Roger Blough. Yet these latter basically have no more in common with the small tradesman, either in outlook or mode of operation, than has a juke-box entrepreneur with a musician.
Among the defining characteristics of any business enterprise is that it can fail, can go out of business through bankruptcy. It is risky, in short. But the major corporations can no more fail than can the public treasury. Their risks are all marginal. Their massed financial reserves and other assets are absolute guarantees against total risk and failure. Beyond this, they are so thoroughly woven into the very warp and woof of society that they are the peculiar anxious and constant concern of sovereign power itself.
This last has been shown in this century in particular in the case of railroads, many of which through gross financial mismanagement--"milking"--have gone through bankruptcy proceedings in which unpreferred creditors were squeezed out with heavy losses. But reorganization proceedings under the supervision of the federal courts have restored them to formal financial health, often under the same management, bankers and holders of senior obligations. For the railroads serve a vital function in modern society.
The large industrial corporations have never yet had to be individually bailed out of financial difficulties by the government, for they have not experienced overwhelming
individual financial difficulties. Their financial position has been made too secure by monopolistic and semi-monopolistic practices, at times formally adjudicated illegal.
What kind of business is it, then, that is impervious to failure, one of the most basic possible experiences of business in history? If it is indeed a business, then it is something distinctly new in business history.
Close students of corporations feel driven to employ various devices to differentiate the big corporation from the ordinary corporation, which may indeed fail. There was first widely used the rather imprecise term Big Business. But, as we have noticed, the big corporation is different from the smaller corporation in crucial ways other than mere size. It is not only big but it cannot fail, cannot (as the saying goes) go out of business. Some specialists then introduced the term super-corporation, 15 which is better, as it indicates at least some sort of superiority or supremacy. But what is the superiority? The fact of being failureproof? Size?
The big corporation, as a matter of fact, is not a business enterprise at all, at least not in the sense that business enterprise has been understood through history and as it is commonly understood even today. The linguistic habits of people have simply not kept abreast of institutional change.
The big corporation, it is true, does business, engages in trade. But so do the government trading enterprises established by Soviet Russia, which seek profits but which are nevertheless not thought of as businesses or business enterprises. By definitional ukase they are excluded from the business category.
A writer on economic affairs, reflecting on AT&T, shows awareness of the inapplicability of the term "business" to the functioning of the large companies when he says: "AT&T today is less a company than a quasi-political state. " 16
But not only is AT&T a quasi-political state; many other large corporations are in the same category and, indeed, like AT&T have foreign governments among their large stock-holders. The stock is held as a national treasury asset. But it is not the participation of governments as investors that makes these entities quasi-political states; they are that even without any government stockholding. They are, too, more than an integral part of the economy. They are an integral part of the functioning political system, their acts and plans focusing the attention of legislators and political administrators, just as the acts of legislators and political administrators are of paramount concern to them. Their interests and those of government officials at many points overlap and interlock.
The big stockholders and managers of these quasi-political states, again, are stockholders and managers in some sense different from people ordinarily so recognized. They not only have more power than the common run of stockholders and managers but they must continually pass judgment and act on a wider spectrum of eventualities, a spectrum as wide indeed as that of any top government leader. What the president of the United States is thinking about is, more often than not, precisely what the big corporate people are thinking about, often in the same terms: war or peace, balance of international payments, treaties, unemployment and wages, gross national product, interest rates, consumer finance, national debt, taxes, etc. , etc.
Because referring to these men as corporate leaders or big stockholders or magnates is imprecise, and confusing as well to many (for what, really, is a big stockholder, a man owning a million shares worth $1 each or a million shares worth $500 each? ), I have coined a new term for them. They are, according to this term, finpols-- financial politicians. Their political mentalities and acts are shaped by their propertied and institutional positions.
Although not recognized by the general public as politicians, whom cartoonists still regressively depict as men in broad-brimmed black hats wearing string ties and black frock coats, much of the daily activity of the biggest property holders--the finpols-- is identical with the work of government leaders. They are, first, diplomats--so much so that they can be quickly shuttled into the highest formal diplomatic posts. They are, too, manipulators of public sentiment through advertising, public relations subordinates and corporately controlled mass media in general. They make or cause to be made speeches on fundamental public questions, seeking to persuade. They select subordinates, conduct negotiations with governments, hire and fire high-level corporate personnel, manipulate political parties and, above all, make decisions of national and international import. Most crucially, they have, like the very top governmental leaders, vast financial resources at their fingertips, resources for which they are far less strictly accountable than most government leaders working within constitutional frameworks. They can, and at times do, buy legislators and judges. Most--repeat: most--legislators are on their payrolls.
As far as that goes, many of them or their aids can and do without so much as shifting gears go right into top government posts, where they feel perfectly at home. When Robert McNamara went from the presidency of the Ford Motor Company to become secretary of defense, he simply stepped from one to another large organization. The horizon of Nelson A. Rockefeller hardly broadened when he stepped into the governorship of New York. Even though he had not previously been in any very high administrative post, the transition from the universal concerns of the Rockefeller family to those of New York State was hardly a move into a wider domain.
These quasi-political states or super-enterprises, then, are a reality. The men with the biggest stakes in them and at their helms are little different from government leaders in function, outlook or means at their disposal. To most cases they far overshadow the domains of all except the highest political leaders. Revenues for AT&T in 1964 exceeded revenues of the thirty smallest American states, nearly equaled the three richest. No governor of any American state presides over an enterprise nearly so vast, complicated or minutely far-reaching. No senator has in his jurisdiction any comparable domain. As Desmond Smith points out, the net income of AT&T's Bell Systern, after taxes, is approximately equal to the national income of Sweden. Bring a few of the other large companies into a cluster and one sees how many other long-established nations they together exceed. France becomes a minor operation, comparatively. The big corporations account for most of the American gross national product itself, and most of the national income as well. One can almost justifiably say: They are the United States. Take them out of the picture and what would be left?
AT&T is certainly a gigantic affair, an octopus or super-octopus if you will. But it has many near counterparts at home and abroad: General Motors, Standard Oil (New Jersey), Ford Motor, U. S. Steel, Socony Mobil Oil, Du Pont, Bank of America, Chase Manhattan Bank, First National City Bank, Manufacturers Hanover Bank, the big life insurance companies (Metropolitan, Prudential, Equitable, New York and John Hancock), Sears, Roebuck, Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea, Royal Dutch Shell, Unilever and still others.
Dutch government owns 51 per cent
Directors own about 13 per cent
Storer Broadcasting owns 87 per cent
77 per cent of stock held in trust for
Hughes Tool Co. , owned by Howard
Allan P. Kirby controls; he owns 4. 5
cent directly and controls 15 per cent
through Alleghany Corp.
81 per cent owned by New York Central
Canadian Pacific owns 56 per cent
Directors own/control 12 per cent
16 per cent closely held
Isbrandtsen Co. owns 26. 3 per cent
Directors own 15 per cent; another 50
cent closely held by Lykes family
Directors own 60 per cent
Directors interested in 34 per cent
About 35 per cent of stock closely
About 20 per cent of stock closely
G. and C. L. Whitehead own 47. 2 per
Galen J. Roush family owns about 52
Directors control about 53 per cent
Directors own about 47 per cent
November 5, 1965
United Kingdom government owns about
10. 8 per cent
65 per cent owned by Gulf Oil (Mellon)
Creole Petroleum
(New
Hess Oil & Chemical
66
Imperial Oil
Kerr-McGee
per
Murphy Oil
Pacific Petroleums
Richfield Oil
per
now
Shell Oil
Dutch/Shell
Signal Oil & Gas
Class B
Superior Oil
Coastal States Gas Producing
Texas Gas Transmission
95. 4 per cent owned by Standard Oil
Jersey) (Rockefeller)
Leon and Moses Hess interests control
per cent
70. 2 per cent owned by Standard Oil
(New Jersey) (Rockefeller)
McGee interests control more than 11
cent of stock
Management controls 56 per cent
Phillips Petroleum (Du Pont presence)
owns 45 per cent
Sinclair and Cities Service did own 61
cent (Atlantic Refining [Rockefeller]
owns)
69. 4 per cent owned by Royal
Group
Officer-directors own majority of
voting common
More than 50 per cent owned by Keck
Family
Directors own about 19 per cent
Hillman family owns 11 per cent common
Transcontinental Gas Pipe Line Stone and Webster, Inc. , owns 11 per
cent
Ayrshire Collieries
per
Consolidation Coal
of
Eastern Gas & Fuel Associates
Peabody Coal
stock
Pittston
com-
common; directors 2. 6 per cent
B. F. Goodrich and associates own 43
cent common
M. A. Hanna controls with 15 per cent
common stock; dominant Mellon presence
26 per cent closely held
Directors own 16. 3 per cent of voting
Directors control about 11 per cent
mon; Pitcairn family presence
United Electric Coal
Diamond Alkali
Mel-
per
International Salt
cent
Koppers long
Minerals & Chemicals Philipp
Minnesota Mining & Mfg.
National Starch & Chemical
Occidental Petroleum
Olin Mathieson Chemical
cent
Pittsburgh Coke and Chemical
cent
Reichhold Chemicals
common
Remington Arms
cent
Rohm & Haas
(mainly
Stauffer Chemical
directors
Sun Chemical
20
U. S. Borax & Chemical
Wallace & Tiernan
fami-
Witco Chemical
American Hospital Supply
Baxter Laboratories
General Dynamics owns 53 per cent
November 12, 1965
Directors own 6. 2 per cent common;
lon National Bank as fiduciary 12. 7
cent
The Fuller family holds about 10 per
Directors control 10 per cent, but
time Mellon interest
50 per cent stock closely held
Directors own 19 per cent
Mr. and Mrs. F. K. Greenwall own more
than 20 per cent
Directors, including Armand Hammer and
Frederic Gimbel, own 14 per cent
Olin family and directors own 15 per
Directors own or control about 57 per
H. H. Reichhold owns 14 per cent of
E. I. du Pont de Nemours owns 60 per
common, 99. 6 per cent preferred
70 per cent of stock closely held
by Rohm and Haas families)
16 per cent of stock controlled by
N. E. Alexander, president, owns about
per cent common
73 per cent owned by Borax, Ltd.
Wallace, Tiernan and Strasenburgh
lies own 54. 5 per cent
Directors control 56 per cent
Directors own 13. 6 per cent
Management controls 25 per cent common
Carter-Wallace
Johnson & Johnson
family
Kendall
Eli Lilly
associ-
voting non-
McKesson & Robbins
Mead Johnson
stock
Miles Laboratories
cent
Plough, Inc.
Rexall Drug
W. H. Borer
G. D. Searle
Smith, Kline & French
Laboratories
Syntex Corp.
20
Upjohn
Warner-Lambert Pharmaceutical
Anheuser-Busch
24
Drewrys cent
Falstaff Brewing
Pabst Brewing
Joseph Schlitz Brewing
Brown Shoe
CPT Development Corp. , controlled by
Hoyt family, owns 51. 9 per cent
42. 4 per cent controlled by Johnson
Directors own 20 per cent common
Lilly Endowment, Lilly family and
ates own 100 per cent of Class A
stock; only 25 per cent of Class B
voting stock publicly held
Foremost Dairies owns 25 per cent
Directors bold 49. 6 per cent of voting
Management controls about 12. 4 per
of outstanding stock
A. Plough, president, owns 13 per cent
Directors own 12. 3 per cent
Borer family owns 36 per cent
Searle family controls 46 per cent
Directors control 32 per cent
Allen & Co. , investment bankers, own
per cent; directors about 7 per cent
Upjohn family owns 47 per cent
Directors own 12. 2 per cent common
Busch family and directors own about
per cent
Directors interested in about 10. 1 per
Directors control about 13. 3 per cent
"Management stockholdings are under-
stood to be large"
Owned 93 per cent by Uihlein family
Directors control about 8. 5 per cent
Edison Bros. Stores
Genesco
Green Shoe
per
International Shoe
U. S. Shoe
Wolverine Shoe and Tanning
Duke Power
Endowment
Edison family owns 15 per cent
Officers and directors own 21 per cent
Common
Officers and families own about 26. 5
Cent
Directors own 9. 5 per cent
Directors own about 15 per cent
Krause family controls 45 per cent
November 19, 1965
Duke, Doris Duke Trust and Duke
control 73 per cent common stock
(Note: In most of the electric power and light companies directors
usually
own 1 per cent or less of the stock and the large stockholders in
recent
years do not trade; the large holdings, therefore, are not
reflected in
recent SEC reports but must be sought in the original SEC
prospectuses. )
American Cement
stock
(Philip) Carey Mfg.
per
Congoleum-Nairn
Corning Glass Works
Crane
De Soto Chemical
Kaiser Cement & Gypsum
Kaiser Industries
common
Marquette Cement
Masonite
National Homes
cent
Owens-Corning
Corning
cent
November 26, 1965
Directors own about 25 per cent of
Directors and families own about 10
cent
Power Corporation owns 26. 3 per cent;
directors 7. 5 per cent
Houghton family owns 33 per cent
Directors own 18 per cent
Sears, Roebuck owns 52 per cent common
Kaiser family and directors own 24 per
cent common
Kaiser family owns about 50 per cent
Directors own 18. 7 per cent common
Directors own 14. 5 per cent
Officers and directors own 32. 7 per
Owens-Illinois Glass (Levis) and
Glass (Houghton) each own 31. 1 per
Common
Pittsburgh Plate Glass
Screw and Bolt
Wallace-Murray
by
Walworth
Welbilt
common
Hudson Pulp and Paper
controls
Riegel Paper
American Distilling
James B. Beam Distilling
Brown-Forman Distillers
Class
Distillers
per
Heublein
addi-
National Distillers
Publicker Industries
Schenley Industries
cent
Admiral
Amp per
Avnet
Bunker-Ramo
Bundy
Pitcairn family owns 30 per cent stock
through The Pitcairn Co.
Directors control 26. 4 per cent
About one-third of common and two
thirds of convertible preferred owned
Charles H. Dyson and F. H. Kissner
General Waterworks owns 49. 9 per cent
Hirsch interests own 70 per cent
Abraham Mazer Family Fund, Inc. ,
60. 25 per cent common with management
interests
Directors control about 10 per cent
Directors own about 20 per cent
Directors control about 55 per cent
Directors own about 25 per cent of
A, 20 per cent Class B
Bronfman family holds more than 38. 8
Cent
Directors own 16 per cent of stock;
tional 25 per cent held in trust for
insiders and families
12 per cent common owned by Panhandle
Eastern Pipe Line
S. S. Neuman owns 25 per cent common,
controls additional 30 per cent
Directors and associates own 30 per
common
December 3, 1965
Siragusa family owns about 40 per cent
Directors own or represent about 33
Cent
Avnet family owns 25. 8 per cent
Martin Marietta owns about 62 per cent
Officers and directors own 35 per cent
Collins Radio
Consolidated Electronics
in-
Industries
CTS
Emerson Electric
Emerson Radio
Fairchild Camera
cent
Cornell-Dubilier Electric
Elec-
Pioneer Electric
Foxboro
General Instrument
General Precision Equipment
Hoffman Electronics
Indiana General
International Resistance
Magnavox
cent
Maytag
McGraw-Edison
cent
Motorola
other
Robertshaw Controls
Reynolds
Ronson cent
Sangamo Electric
per
Schick Electric
cent
Collins family owns 24. 4 per cent
U. S. Philips Trust owns directly and
directly about 33 per cent common
Directors own about 43 per cent
Directors own 8 per cent
Directors own more than 33 per cent
S. M. Fairchild of IBM owns 20 per
98 per cent owned by Federal Pacific
Tric
100 per cent owned by Federal Pacific
Electric
About 49 per cent is closely held
Directors own about 20 per cent
Directors own about 10 per cent
H. Leslie Hoffman and his family own
about 22 per cent
Directors control about 7. 9 per cent
Directors control about 10 per cent
Officers and directors own about 9 per
Directors own about 15 per cent
Officers and directors own 9. 4 per
Galvin family controls 24 per cent;
insiders own additional 12 per cent
Reynolds Metals, largely owned by
family, owns 30 per cent
Directors control more than 15 per
Bunn and Lamphier families control 25
Cent
Eversharp and Technicolor own 25 per
Schlumberger
per
Sunbeam
Tung-Sol Electric
cent
Varian Associates
per
Whirlpool
7. 5
Schlumberger family controls about 50
Cent
Directors own about 13 per cent
Directors own or control about 22 per
of common
Directors and officers own about 17
cent of stock
RCA owns . 5 per cent; Sears, Roebuck
per cent; directors 6 per cent
Directors own 7 per cent
Zenith Radio
Carolina Telephone & Telegraph Bell System owns about 18 per cent
Comsat
carriers;
New England Telephone
Pacific Telephone
Southern New England
Telephone
Central Telephone
Addressograph-Multigraph
stock
American Photocopy
Control Data
Cyclops
Detroit Steel
Eastern Stainless Steel
cent
Firth Sterling
Harsco stock
Interlake Steel
Kaiser Steel
family,
50 per cent owned by the common
balance by general stockholders
AT&T owns about 69 per cent
AT&T owns about 90 per cent
AT&T owns 18. 4 per cent
Western Power and Gas owns 57 per cent
Common
Directors own about 15 per cent of
Rautbord family owns about 27 per cent
Directors own about 6 per cent
December 10, 1965
Directors own about 6 per cent
Directors control 13. 7 per cent
Officers and directors own about 8 per
Directors own 11. 7 per cent common
Directors have about 10 per cent of
Pickands Mather & Co. own 9. 2 per cent
common; directors 3. 4 per cent
Kaiser Industries, owned by Kaiser
Lukens Steel
National Steel
Phoenix Steel
Pittsburgh Steel
common
U. S. Pipe & Foundry
Freeport
Wheeling Steel
cent;
Woodward Iron
percent;
American Metal Climax
Dodge
owns 79 per cent
Huston family owns 38 per cent
M. A. Hanna Co. owns 22 per cent, in-
siders 3. 5 per cent
Insiders own about 25 per cent common
Directors control about 21 per cent
Directors own about 2 per cent,
Sulphur 5. 7 per cent
Hunt Foods & Industries own 11. 1 per
cent; Cleveland Cliffs Iron 4. 8 per
directors 1 per cent
Woodward family holds about 15. 4
directors about 8 per cent common
Selection Trust owns 12. 2 per cent com
mon; directors 4. 2 per cent; Phelps
4 per cent
American Zinc, Lead & Smelting Consolidated Goldfields of South
Africa
Bunker Hill
Campbell Red Lake
Cleveland-Cliffs Iron
Detroit
Consolidated Mining
Copper Range
Great Northern Iron
Harvey Aluminum
Hudson Bay Mining
Inspiration Consol. Copper
Kaiser Aluminum
common
owns 61 per cent
Hecla Mining owns 9. 75 per cent common
Dome Mines, Ltd. , owns 57 per cent
Directors own about 5 per cent;
Steel 22 per cent
Canadian Pacific owns 51. 5 per cent
American Metal Climax owns 17. 5 per
cent; Blacton & Co. 12. 5 per cent
In trust for lifetime of 18 persons
Harvey family owns all Class B stock
Anglo-American Corporation owns 18 per
cent common
Anaconda Co. owns about 28 per cent of
Stock
Kaiser interests own 45. 2 per cent
Magma Copper
common
McIntyre-Porcupine Mines
Newmont Mining
common
Reynolds Metals
United Nuclear
Chemical
Vanadium
Calumet & Hecla
common
Continental Copper
Fansteel Metallurgical
General Cable
Howmet
com-
International Silver
Revere Copper & Brass
American Chain & Cable
Baker Oil Tools
common
Clark Equipment
per
Continental Motors
Foster Wheeler
Gardner-Denver
Halliburton Co
Ingersoll-Rand
Leesona
Link-Belt
Newmont Mining owns 80. 6 per cent
Shares closely held
Directors own more than 15 per cent
Directors, mainly members of Reynolds
family, control about 19 per cent
Olin Mathieson and Malinckrodt
Works own nearly 30 per cent
Directors control about 11 per cent
Directors control about 9 per cent
Directors Control 7 per cent common
Directors control 9 per cent of stock
American Smelting owns 36 per cent
Pechiney (France) owns 49 per cent
mon; directors control 8 per cent
Directors control 9 per cent common
American Smelting owns 34 per cent of
stock
December 17, 1965
W. T. Morris Foundation owns 17. 8 per
cent of stock; directors 3. 1 per cent
Directors hold about 16 per cent
Directors and families own about 12
cent of stock
Ryan Aeronautical owns about 47 per
Cent
Directors own 5. 7 per cent; Financial
General Corp. owns 13. 5 per cent
Directors represent 7. 1 per cent
Directors own about 8 per cent
Directors own 6 per cent common
Directors own about 17 per cent
Directors own about 6 per cent
McNeil
Mesta Machine
Outboard Marine
Rockwell Manufacturing
Symington Wayne
Textron
S. S. White
Brown & Sharpe Manufacturing
Carborundum
own
Cincinnati Milling Machine
cent
Giddings & Lewis
of
Kearney & Trecker
Norton
UTD of
Dr. Pepper
Royal Crown Cola
and
General Baking
common
United Biscuit
Ward Foods
stock
John Morrell
Campbell Soup
64. 3
Directors own 11 per cent
Directors own about 6 per cent common
Ralph S. Evinrude owns/controls 14 per
cent of stock
Rockwell family controls 19 per cent
Directors own 10 per cent
Directors own 6. 5 per cent common
Directors own about 6 per cent common
Henry B. Sharpe, president, and family
own 34 per cent of stock
Mellon family and related interests
about 21 per cent common
Directors and families own 21. 7 per
Common
Directors and families own 21 per cent
stock; Motch & Merryweather Machinery
10 per cent
Trecker family owns about 50 per cent
Officers and directors own 11 per cent
Common
Directors interested in 25. 3 per cent
Stock
Directors hold about 11 per cent
Directors hold 14. 6 per cent; Pickett
Hatcher Educational Fund 2. 9 per cent
Goldfield Corp. owns 51 per cent
Directors own 18 per cent of stock
Directors interested in 32 per cent of
Directors hold 18 per cent
Dorrance estate owns in trust about
per cent
Chock Full O'Nuts
con-
Consolidated Foods
Gerber Products
30
H. J. Heinz
cent
Hershey Chocolate
Hunt Foods & Industries
common
Libby, McNeill & Libby
common
A. E. Staley
Stokely-Van Camp
directors own
William Wrigley, Jr.
control
Eversharp
stock
Max Factor
Helene Curtis Industries
Revlon and
Pet Milk
Anderson, Clayton
Kellogg per
Pillsbury
stock
Bulova Watch
Hewlett-Packard
William Black, chairman and founder,
trols about 15 per cent common
Nathan Cummings owns 9. 4 per cent of
stock; Union Sugar 8. 2 per cent
Gerber family and directors own about
per cent common
Heinz family owns more than 37 per
Common
Milton Hershey School owns 66 per cent
of stock
Directors own about 7. 9 per cent
Foreign interests own 40 per cent
Staley family owns 60 per cent common
A. J. Stokely, president, and
or control 31 per cent common
Wrigley interests and directors
about 35 per cent common
Directors own about 15 per cent of
Directors own 99. 9 per cent common and
33. 5 per cent Class A shares
Directors own 53 per cent of stock
Directors own 99. 9 per cent Class B
11 per cent common
Leading stockholders own about 65 per
cent common
Directors control 48 per cent of stock
W. K. Kellogg Foundation controls 51
cent common
Directors control about 6 per cent of
Directors control 19 per cent
Directors own about 70 per cent
Polaroid
Tektronix
Alleghany
holdings
Pacific
General American Investors
Directors control about 25 per cent
Directors and officers own 57 per cent
Allan P. Kirby owns about 40 per cent
common in this company with big
in New York Central RR, Missouri
RR, Transamerica and Investors Diversi
fied Services
Directors own about 11 per cent common
Investors Diversified Services Alleghany owns 43 per cent voting
stock
The burden of proof has clearly been shifted in this chapter to those who contend that stock ownership and corporate control are widely dispersed among many small stockholders. All available evidence, direct and statistical, stands as an insurmountable barrier against the contention.
Any low percentages of participation in the foregoing list should not be taken as implying that they exhaust the concentrated interest. All they indicate is that this is the concentrated interest as shown under the rules of the SEC. In every single case, even where only a 5 per cent interest is shown, deeper inquiry would show, almost invariably, that far fewer than 1 per cent of stockholders owned the bulk of the stock or enough to give working control.
Even Fortune, after many years of surrender to the Berle-Means fantasy that ownership is divorced from control in most of the big companies, has now (June 15, 1967 ) come over to recognizing that the big owners have more than a little to say. What Berle-Means did. initiating the fantasy, was to confuse control with operating direction. Company managers, whether themselves owners or nonowners, are always in charge of operations, by tacit or explicit leave of the big owners. The issue of control is seldom raised. But when it is, as most recently with a big company in the case of the New York Central Railroad, the nonowning management walks the plank. In this case the big owners turned out to be the Young-Kirby-Murchison group.
"After more than two generations during which ownership has been increasingly divorced from control," says Fortune rather misleadingly, "it is assumed that all large U. S. corporations are owned by everybody and nobody, and are run and ruled by bland organization men. The individual entrepreneur or family that holds onto the controlling interest and actively manages the affairs of a big company is regarded as a rare exception, as something of an anachronism. But a close look at the 500 largest industrial corporations does not substantiate such sweeping generalizations.
"In approximately 150 companies on the current Fortune 500 list, controlling ownership rests in the hands of an individual or of the members of a single family. Significantly, these owners are not just the remnants of the nineteenth-century dynasties that once ruled American business. Many of them are relatively fresh faces. In any event, the evidence that 30 per cent of the 500 largest industrials are clearly controlled by identifiable individuals, or by family groups, is something to ponder. It suggests that the demise of the traditional American proprietor has been slightly exaggerated and that the much-advertised triumph of the organization is far from total. "
While it is true that the big owners are not "just" remnants, they nevertheless, among other things, are indeed remnants. And while true that many are "relatively fresh faces," nearly all show strong ancestral resemblances or bear established ancestral names already mentioned many times in this book. They are heirs.
Fortune's list of 150 concerned only an individual owner or a single family that holds the controlling interest and is active in the management. In the case of the 350 other largest industrials, which were not touched upon, control also rested with a small number of owners (as distinct from nonowning managers and many small stockholders): either multi-family ownership groups consisting of as many as five to seven families or individual members of a functionally related financial group. In no case, except when a company is under court-sanctioned trustees, can it be shown that ownership is divorced from control, although in many cases it is divorced from active management.
While taking cognizance of the Fortune article, and largely endorsing it as far as it goes, I, for my part, learned nothing from it that I have not known for thirty years. Its significance was not that it told something new but that it represented some open backtracking from the Berle-Means contention that ownership has been, or is being, divorced from company control and that full control rather than delegated management is being exercised by professionally trained nonowning managements.
What is most interesting--to me, at any rate--is why steps are now being taken to abandon, at least partly, the Berle-Means fantasy, which has been widely disseminated and has many quite distinguished followers. There was nothing inherently marvelous about the theory; what led to its being given wide currency was that it served to gull an always gullible public with the idea that property was losing its power and that something akin to socialism (but better) was evolving before our eyes. The United States was going to retain private property but at the same time it was going to have collective nonprofit-oriented, professional management in the corporations; if the owners, particularly the big owners, did not like this they would be powerless. As far as that went, big ownership itself was going out of existence.
In brief, this was a useful myth in manipulating restive public sentiment, particularly in the Depression and spectacular World War II. The idea that big stockholders were either impotent or vanishing was widely relished.
As I surmise, the myth is being abandoned precisely because of this depiction of the stockholders, particularly the big ones, as impotent. As a psychiatrist might say, the stockholders are shown in the Berle-Means script as castrates, displaced by bright young men tip from Swampwater College with nothing but technique to offer: know- how and can-do. Objectively serviceable though the myth has been for the big proprietors, it has been subjectively and personally humiliating. Instead of being seen by his wife, children and friends as an authentic bigwig, the boss (which he is), the top owner-manager has had himself publicly presented as something of a corporate tabby cat. As the Fortune sample list of 150 shows, he is anything but this.
He is, in fact, far more autonomous and far-ranging than any Soviet industrial commissar, who is always under the tight leash of the Communist Party. The commissar accepts policy; the big owners make or shape policy. They are not the puppets of nonowning corporate managers.
What must have happened in a general way, it seems to me, is that somebody grumbled about this constant depiction of stockholders as the pawns of puissant corporate officials who came from nowhere, and the grumbling was finally beard by the big ears up at Fortune. And now we see the beginning of the dismantling of what had become a sturdy myth, although quite a few academicians are still bemused by it and see something akin to socialism (only better) developing by gradual administrative fiat
promulgated by expert nonowning managers to whom profits are secondary, public welfare primary.
Seven
THE AMERICAN PLANTATION: A PROFILE
It has been abundantly shown that the members of a small coterie, comparable in relative size to the owning class of the Banana Republics and other unbenign polities, own and control all important economic enterprises in the United States. And now that we have a latter-day insight into the ownership and control of the individual parts, it remains to be shown into what whole these parts fit.
The thesis of this chapter is that the economic system as a whole is principally owned, and mainly though not wholly controlled but certainly decisively influenced, by or on behalf of hardly many more than 500,000 biological individuals (as distinguished from fictitious persons such as corporations). In turn, the political system is very concentratedly influenced. The instrument of this highly personal influence-control is the large corporation, an Archimedean lever. Ownership in some degree may be claimed by perhaps 10 per cent of the population, most of it in tiny bits, but outside this slice it is largely confined to chattels. Few Americans own more productive property, directly or indirectly, than do benighted Russians, Chinese or Latin American descamisados. This fact is no doubt difficult for those conditioned by domestic mass-media propaganda to accept; yet intractable fact it unquestionably is.
Firms in Operation
The number of American firms in operation as of 1963, the most recent date for which the information is available, was 4,797,000, an increase of 22,000 over 1962. 1 This figure did not include agricultural enterprises or firms of professionals such as physicians and lawyers. Nearly half, or 2,032,000 firms, were in retail trade, most of them small local retail stores, often in hock to local banks.
Sole proprietorships at the end of 1961 totaled 9,242,000 and partnerships 939,000. 2
Gross national product, or the totality of goods and services transferred to consumers by all agencies, public and private, amounted to $554. 9 billion in 1962. 3 It approximated $600 billion in 1965 and may have exceeded $700 billion before this book is published. The national rate of economic growth rose to 5. 5 per cent in 1965.
Sales of the 500 largest industrial corporations amounted to $229. 08 billion in 1962, or nearly 42 per cent of gross national product. About 65 per cent of these sales, or $149. 4 billion, were made by the 100 largest industrial corporations, $36. 2 billion by the next 100, $20. 5 billion by the third 100 and $13. 2 by the fourth 100. 4
The Treasury Department for tax purposes has a category of "active corporations," numbering 1,190,286 in 1961. This category with sweeping catholicity includes
corporations in finance, insurance, real estate, services, nonallocable businesses and agriculture, forestry and fisheries. Excluding all such and retaining only the mining, construction, manufacturing, transportation, communication, electric, gas and wholesale as well as retail trade industries in order to obtain a category comparable with that of the big industrial enterprises we have been considering, we have 675,074 active industrial enterprises. 5
The total assets of all these 675,074 active industrial and trading enterprises were $561. 778 billion in 1961 6 compared with total assets in the same year of $186. 769 billion for the 500 largest industrial companies, $125. 734 billion for the 100 largest. 7 In 1962 the assets of the 500 had risen by more than $10 billion. More than 30 per cent of the industrial assets of the country, then, was confined to 500 of the largest companies.
Actually, in 1961 companies with assets of $50 million and more among all active corporations, industrial and nonindustrial, well above the range of "small business," held the bulk of assets and most of the net income.
The number of such companies was 2,632 or . 2 per cent out of the 1,190,286. The $50-million-asset-plus companies held $812. 396 billion out of total corporate assets of $1,289. 516 billion, or nearly 65 per cent. Their net income was $30,027 billion out of $45,894 billion, or 66 per cent of all corporate net income.
Confining ourselves once again to active industrial and trading companies, we find that 1,073 constituting the $50-million-plus class had assets of $346. 922 billion out of total industrial and trading assets of $561. 778 billion. , or more than 60 per cent, and net income of $24. 151 billion or 70 per cent, out of total net income of 35. 916 billion. 8 Again, one central corporation often owns many other large ones. The big corporations are not always detached entities.
Summarizing, 2,632 active corporations or slightly more than . 2 per cent of all active corporations (almost always dominantly owned and controlled by less than . 1 per cent of their stockholders) held nearly 65 per cent of all corporate assets for 1961 and got 66 per cent of net corporate income. These 2,632 corporations were those with individual assets of $50 million or more. In the industrial-trading category alone less than . 2 per cent ( 1,073 out of 684,075) of corporations, with assets of $50 million or more, held more than 60 per cent of assets and derived 70 per cent of net income.
The vast number of enterprises below the $50-million asset class (and almost 60 per cent of them had assets of less than $100,000) perform only a shrinking marginal amount of the business of the country. We can therefore with the utmost caution say that most of the productive activity of the United States is in the hands of a tiny number of very large corporations largely owned and completely dominated by a small coterie, almost a junta.
This fact is shown, too, in the figure of $302. 536 billion for total sales of the 1,073 largest industrial and trading corporations for 1961, which was nearly 60 per cent of gross national product. 9
What have been cited are official government figures and as such may be suspect to some persons who profess deep distrust of all government activity. Let us, then, turn to strictly business sources.
"The 7,126 U. S. companies with more than 100 or more employees (2. 5% of the nation's 286,817 manufacturing corporations) account for 90% of total manufacturing assets and 83% of sales," says a widely circulated business directory in referring to 1961. 10 "The nation's top 13 employers, firms with 100,000 or more workers, have assets of $37. 9 billion (15. 3% of total U. S. manufacturing assets) and sales of $47. 1 billion (13. 6% of total sales). "
No matter which source one turns to, the same prospect unfolds: intense concentration. Slightly more than 7,000 managements, often interlocked, account for 83 per cent of all sales!
Whoever owns and /or controls the large corporations, then, obviously owns and/or controls the lion's share of the productive system, We have already shown how untenable is the idea that such ownership is widely diffused among millions of small shareholders. The small shareholder in the United States stands in the same relative position to the large shareholder as the rank-and-file Communist in Russia stands to the party leadership. Useful, he nevertheless need not be seriously consulted. He carries no more weight than the rank-and-file employee. Corporatively speaking, he is a nonentity, an unperson.
The Cannibalistic Merger Movement>
The smaller enterprises, moreover, are being steadily squeezed out of business or
absorbed by the giants, most of which became giants by the cannibalistic process.
There have been three periods in this century marked by waves of American mergers-- 1900-10, the 1920's and the years since World War II. From 1920 through 1929 there were 6,818 mergers; from 1930 through 1939 there were 2,264; from 1940 through 1949 there were 2,411; from 1950 through 1959 there were 4,089; and from 1960 through 1963 there were 1,978. In most cases larger companies absorbed smaller ones; in some cases many small companies were suddenly combined into large ones. 11
The word "merger" in actual practice almost invariably indicates that large companies are involved; it is rare for really small enterprises to figure in mergers. Thus in the decade 1951-61, of 3,736 mergers involving the 500 largest industrial and 50 largest merchandising firms--almost all the mergers there were--the largest 100 industrial companies absorbed 884 firms, the next largest 100 absorbed 1,059, the third largest 100 took in 577, the fourth largest 100 absorbed 453 and the fifth largest 100 absorbed 431 firms. Among the merchandising companies the largest 50 took in 332 other companies. 12
In the years 1948-60, 33. 4 per cent of assets acquired by merger went to companies with assets of $50 million or more and 34. 3 per cent of acquired assets went to companies with assets of $10-$50 million. Assets acquired by companies with less than $1 million of assets amounted to only 1. 6 per cent. The same trend continued into the 1960's up through 1962, the latest date available. 13 Since then, the merger movement has taken a new spurt.
The small enterprise, at least rhetorically beloved by many small-town congressmen, has also been steadily driven out of business by failure, a traditional hazard of genuine businessmen as distinct from corporate manipulators. In the period 1921 through 1935 there was a yearly average of more than 20,000 failures (excluding railroad bankruptcy proceedings), with aggregate liabilities averaging more than $500 million and average individual liabilities between $21,000 and $27,000. From 1936 through 1940 the yearly average was 12,064 and in the 1940's it was a little more than 5,000. But in the 1950's the figure started burgeoning again, from 8,058 in 1951 to 14,053 by 1959. In the 1960's it is exceeding 15,000 annually.
Most of these failures are of very small firms. Only in 1961 did aggregate annual liabilities cross $1 billion, where it remained thereafter through 1963, our latest date. In no year has the average individual liability exceeded $100,000. 14
The figures tell little of blasted hopes in the uneven race toward business success.
It is almost a cardinal rule that only small businesses go out of existence through bankruptcy. The word is encountered only academically on the higher corporate circuit.
One of the effects of the propaganda about business success (propaganda based on a meager number of instances) is to encourage each year thousands of illusion-ridden citizens to jump into the business whirlpool. Unskilled in logical analysis, they optimistically accept the lopsided findings of Time, Fortune and the Wall Street Journal as representative fact. All they accomplish in most cases, sooner or later, is to enrich with their small bankrolls the coffers of suppliers of business equipment, which is later knocked down to the highest bidder at bankruptcy auction sales. There is a thriving business in the United States dealing, year in and year out, with bankruptcy itself.
By every known sign, entering into business for oneself in the United States is now, and always has been, a highly risky affair. Many are called; few are chosen. And most who remain in business do so on the thinnest of survival margins, constantly financed by short-term bank loans, the constant prey to recessions, regional strikes or even vagaries of the weather. A simple run of unseasonable weather regularly drives out of business hordes of hopeful operators of small resorts, hotels, stores and service enterprises. Many are hopelessly in debt. But in addition to misfortunes of local circumstance there stand in the background the asset-heavy large enterprises, which survive all vicissitudes, like granite cliffs against the sea. Not many German enterprises survived the military disasters that engulfed the Reich this century; but the Krupp family's steel enterprises, for one, did survive and, indeed, are flourishing now as never before. Krupp in Germany could no more be vanquished by overwhelming national calamity than could Du Pont in the United States. What would survive any event, perhaps even atomic warfare, would be titles, patents, formulas, certain key personnel and organization charts. One would, as the saying goes, have to get the country "moving" again. And who can do this better than Krupps, Du Ponts, Rockefellers, Fords, Pews, Gettys, Rosenwalds and their kind? For, among other things, they have gathered unto themselves administration of the technical "know-how. " This is what they have, over and beyond money: general far-ranging administrative authority.
Business versus the Corporation
As applied to the larger enterprises the term "business" has become a euphemism, no longer expressing the intended content of the word. The man who owns and operates a small independent shoe store is a businessman. So, it is implied, are Henry Ford II, J. Paul Getty, Crawford H. Greenewalt and Roger Blough. Yet these latter basically have no more in common with the small tradesman, either in outlook or mode of operation, than has a juke-box entrepreneur with a musician.
Among the defining characteristics of any business enterprise is that it can fail, can go out of business through bankruptcy. It is risky, in short. But the major corporations can no more fail than can the public treasury. Their risks are all marginal. Their massed financial reserves and other assets are absolute guarantees against total risk and failure. Beyond this, they are so thoroughly woven into the very warp and woof of society that they are the peculiar anxious and constant concern of sovereign power itself.
This last has been shown in this century in particular in the case of railroads, many of which through gross financial mismanagement--"milking"--have gone through bankruptcy proceedings in which unpreferred creditors were squeezed out with heavy losses. But reorganization proceedings under the supervision of the federal courts have restored them to formal financial health, often under the same management, bankers and holders of senior obligations. For the railroads serve a vital function in modern society.
The large industrial corporations have never yet had to be individually bailed out of financial difficulties by the government, for they have not experienced overwhelming
individual financial difficulties. Their financial position has been made too secure by monopolistic and semi-monopolistic practices, at times formally adjudicated illegal.
What kind of business is it, then, that is impervious to failure, one of the most basic possible experiences of business in history? If it is indeed a business, then it is something distinctly new in business history.
Close students of corporations feel driven to employ various devices to differentiate the big corporation from the ordinary corporation, which may indeed fail. There was first widely used the rather imprecise term Big Business. But, as we have noticed, the big corporation is different from the smaller corporation in crucial ways other than mere size. It is not only big but it cannot fail, cannot (as the saying goes) go out of business. Some specialists then introduced the term super-corporation, 15 which is better, as it indicates at least some sort of superiority or supremacy. But what is the superiority? The fact of being failureproof? Size?
The big corporation, as a matter of fact, is not a business enterprise at all, at least not in the sense that business enterprise has been understood through history and as it is commonly understood even today. The linguistic habits of people have simply not kept abreast of institutional change.
The big corporation, it is true, does business, engages in trade. But so do the government trading enterprises established by Soviet Russia, which seek profits but which are nevertheless not thought of as businesses or business enterprises. By definitional ukase they are excluded from the business category.
A writer on economic affairs, reflecting on AT&T, shows awareness of the inapplicability of the term "business" to the functioning of the large companies when he says: "AT&T today is less a company than a quasi-political state. " 16
But not only is AT&T a quasi-political state; many other large corporations are in the same category and, indeed, like AT&T have foreign governments among their large stock-holders. The stock is held as a national treasury asset. But it is not the participation of governments as investors that makes these entities quasi-political states; they are that even without any government stockholding. They are, too, more than an integral part of the economy. They are an integral part of the functioning political system, their acts and plans focusing the attention of legislators and political administrators, just as the acts of legislators and political administrators are of paramount concern to them. Their interests and those of government officials at many points overlap and interlock.
The big stockholders and managers of these quasi-political states, again, are stockholders and managers in some sense different from people ordinarily so recognized. They not only have more power than the common run of stockholders and managers but they must continually pass judgment and act on a wider spectrum of eventualities, a spectrum as wide indeed as that of any top government leader. What the president of the United States is thinking about is, more often than not, precisely what the big corporate people are thinking about, often in the same terms: war or peace, balance of international payments, treaties, unemployment and wages, gross national product, interest rates, consumer finance, national debt, taxes, etc. , etc.
Because referring to these men as corporate leaders or big stockholders or magnates is imprecise, and confusing as well to many (for what, really, is a big stockholder, a man owning a million shares worth $1 each or a million shares worth $500 each? ), I have coined a new term for them. They are, according to this term, finpols-- financial politicians. Their political mentalities and acts are shaped by their propertied and institutional positions.
Although not recognized by the general public as politicians, whom cartoonists still regressively depict as men in broad-brimmed black hats wearing string ties and black frock coats, much of the daily activity of the biggest property holders--the finpols-- is identical with the work of government leaders. They are, first, diplomats--so much so that they can be quickly shuttled into the highest formal diplomatic posts. They are, too, manipulators of public sentiment through advertising, public relations subordinates and corporately controlled mass media in general. They make or cause to be made speeches on fundamental public questions, seeking to persuade. They select subordinates, conduct negotiations with governments, hire and fire high-level corporate personnel, manipulate political parties and, above all, make decisions of national and international import. Most crucially, they have, like the very top governmental leaders, vast financial resources at their fingertips, resources for which they are far less strictly accountable than most government leaders working within constitutional frameworks. They can, and at times do, buy legislators and judges. Most--repeat: most--legislators are on their payrolls.
As far as that goes, many of them or their aids can and do without so much as shifting gears go right into top government posts, where they feel perfectly at home. When Robert McNamara went from the presidency of the Ford Motor Company to become secretary of defense, he simply stepped from one to another large organization. The horizon of Nelson A. Rockefeller hardly broadened when he stepped into the governorship of New York. Even though he had not previously been in any very high administrative post, the transition from the universal concerns of the Rockefeller family to those of New York State was hardly a move into a wider domain.
These quasi-political states or super-enterprises, then, are a reality. The men with the biggest stakes in them and at their helms are little different from government leaders in function, outlook or means at their disposal. To most cases they far overshadow the domains of all except the highest political leaders. Revenues for AT&T in 1964 exceeded revenues of the thirty smallest American states, nearly equaled the three richest. No governor of any American state presides over an enterprise nearly so vast, complicated or minutely far-reaching. No senator has in his jurisdiction any comparable domain. As Desmond Smith points out, the net income of AT&T's Bell Systern, after taxes, is approximately equal to the national income of Sweden. Bring a few of the other large companies into a cluster and one sees how many other long-established nations they together exceed. France becomes a minor operation, comparatively. The big corporations account for most of the American gross national product itself, and most of the national income as well. One can almost justifiably say: They are the United States. Take them out of the picture and what would be left?
AT&T is certainly a gigantic affair, an octopus or super-octopus if you will. But it has many near counterparts at home and abroad: General Motors, Standard Oil (New Jersey), Ford Motor, U. S. Steel, Socony Mobil Oil, Du Pont, Bank of America, Chase Manhattan Bank, First National City Bank, Manufacturers Hanover Bank, the big life insurance companies (Metropolitan, Prudential, Equitable, New York and John Hancock), Sears, Roebuck, Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea, Royal Dutch Shell, Unilever and still others.
