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Clifton Hood: Counting Who Counts: Method and Findings of a Statistical Clifton Hood: Counting Who Counts: Method and Findings of a Statistical Analysis of Economic Elites in the New York Region, 1947 Schriftenreihe Bulletin of the German Historical Institute Washington, D.C., Band 55 (Fall 2014) Herausgegeben vom Deutschen Historischen Institut Washington, D.C. Copyright Das Digitalisat wird Ihnen von perspectivia.net, der Online-Publikationsplattform der Max Weber Stiftung – Deutsche Geisteswissenschaftliche Institute im Ausland, zur Verfügung gestellt. Bitte beachten Sie, dass das Digitalisat urheberrechtlich geschützt ist. Erlaubt ist aber das Lesen, das Ausdrucken des Textes, das Herunterladen, das Speichern der Daten auf einem eigenen Datenträger soweit die vorgenannten Handlungen ausschließlich zu privaten und nicht-kommerziellen Zwecken erfolgen. Eine darüber hinausgehende unerlaubte Verwendung, Reproduktion oder Weitergabe einzelner Inhalte oder Bilder können sowohl zivil- als auch strafrechtlich verfolgt werden. Features Forum GHI Research Conference Reports GHI News COUNTING WHO COUNTS: METHOD AND FINDINGS OF A STATISTICAL ANALYSIS OF ECONOMIC ELITES IN THE NEW YORK REGION, 1947 Clifton Hood HOBART AND WILLIAM SMITH COLLEGES For over a decade I have been researching and writing a cultural his- tory of New York City’s upper class from the 1750s to the present. The book takes an essay-like approach, exploring a series of related topics and ideas analytically rather than providing encyclopedic coverage or a narrative storyline. Its method is to investigate particular decades as slices or layers of the overall history of New York City. Seven de- cades are scrutinized: the 1750s/1760s, the 1780s/1790s, the 1820s, the 1860s, the 1890s, the 1940s, and the 1970s. These seven decades were selected to receive in-depth examination because important changes in the urban political economy happened then that in various ways challenged the upper class. In responding to these challenges, upper-class individuals made choices that reveal their priorities and that reset their compass directions. I begin with the 1750s/1760s because that is when New York City fi rst became internationally important, as a British military headquarters dur- ing the Seven Years’ War. Four other periods (the 1780s/1790s, the 1860s, and the 1940s) also coincided with wars (the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and World War II, respectively) that transformed political and economic aff airs and altered how elites organized their lives. The Gilded Age was at its height during the 1890s. Two other decades (the 1820s and the 1970s) marked fundamental shift s in the urban economic base that had far-reaching eff ects on the upper class, with the 1820s representing the beginning of the city’s takeoff as a national metropolis aft er the construction of the Erie Canal and the 1970s encompassing New York City’s near-bankruptcy during the fi scal crisis along with its transition to a fi nance- and service- centered economy. My basic conclusion is that upper-class New Yorkers tried hard to create a separate and exclusive world for themselves, but they kept being assailed by the forces of economic growth and democracy. Their pursuit of privilege is what makes them diff erent, but they were never able to completely control their environments in economically dynamic New York City. An initial colonial upper class that modeled HOOD | COUNTING WHO COUNTS 57 itself on European norms ran headlong into American capitalism and democracy by the 1790s and then spent the next two centuries trying to fi gure out how to deal with that whipsaw. In the process the elite became more complex and more plastic, while at the same time working feverishly to preserve its exclusivity, especially from the middle class that began to gain in numbers and prestige from the time it formed in the mid-nineteenth century. The tension between urban economic dynamism and democratic culture, on the one hand, and the enticements of exclusivity and superiority, on the other, is 1 I use two main categories of my focal point. high status populations: “upper class” and “economic elites.” The upper class is de- If high-status populations were convinced of anything, it was of fi ned as a group of individu- their own importance. Fortunately for me, they fi lled libraries and als who are tied together by family, friendship, and busi- archives with an abundance of materials documenting themselves — ness bonds, are self-conscious genealogies that are best described as creative; detailed household in their possession of goods deemed to be prestigious, records; diaries, manuscripts, and letters; memoirs and books; the and lead a distinctive way of fi les of their churches, militia companies, private schools, and other life. Economic elites com- prise people who make key institutions, and more. Along the way, however, I realized that I economic decisions, those needed a better empirical knowledge of the people who constituted who provide support for the 1 decision-makers, and those New York’s economic elites. Although I use quantitative evidence who serve as their retainers. throughout the book, much of it comes from the records of institutions Although the binary schema applied here derives from the like private men’s clubs and elite militias and involves the piecing theoretical work of sociologist together of networks. I decided that I required something less impres- E. Digby Baltzell, it modifi es his typology in two respects. sionistic than my qualitative evidence and more comprehensive and First, economic elites are not viewed as atomized individu- systematic than the rest of my quantitative evidence — a census, in als. Like the upper class, eco- eff ect. That need was especially acute for my chapter on the 1940s. nomic elites could establish communities and had their own values, practices, and as- The main reason for this felt need involves what I will call “the pirations. Second, economic problem of the Gilded Age.” The preponderance of scholarship on elites and the upper class in- teracted in a variety of ways: the American (and New York City) upper class concentrates on sometimes they overlapped, the so-called Gilded Age of the late nineteenth century. Think of cooperated, and shared, while at other times they separated the work of Sven Beckert, Thomas Kessner, Eric Homberger, and and clashed. Both modifi ca- David C. Hammack, not to mention the many biographies that tions take into consideration the intricacies of relationships have been written about robber barons like John D. Rockefeller, among the high status New Andrew Carnegie, and J.P. Morgan.2 And of course there’s Susie Pak’s Yorkers. Digby Baltzell, Philadelphia Gentlemen: The Making of a National Upper 2 Sven Beckert, The Monied (New York, 2004); Eric John D. Rockefeller, Sr. Class (1958; New Brunswick, Metropolis: New York City Homberger, Mrs. Astor’s (New York, 1998): N.J., 1992), 6–8; E. Digby and the Consolidation of New York: Money and David Nasaw, Andrew Baltzell, The Protestant Estab- the American Bourgeoisie, Social Power in a Gilded Age Carnegie (New York, lishment: Aristocracy and Caste 1850-1896 (New York, (New Haven, Conn., 2004); 2006); David Cannadine, in America (New York, 1964), 2001); Thomas Kessner, David C. Hammack, Power Mellon: An American vii–xv; E. Digby Baltzell, Puritan Capital City: New York and Society: Greater New Life (New York, 2006); Boston and Quaker Philadelphia City and the Men Behind York at the Turn of the Cen- Jean Strouse, Morgan: (1979; New Brunswick, N.J., America’s Rise to Economic tury (New York, 1987); Ron American Financier 1996), 19–30. Dominance, 1860-1900 Chernow, Titan: The Life of (New York, 1999). 58 BULLETIN OF THE GHI | 55 | FALL 2014 Features Forum GHI Research Conference Reports GHI News new and methodologically innovative Gentlemen Bankers.3 Historians are drawn to the Gilded Age because that is when the upper class was at the summit of its wealth and power and was unequivocal about fl exing its muscle, with some of its members even conceiving of themselves as a European-style aristocracy. Most of these individual works are of high quality, but the problem with the myopic concentration of this overall body of scholarship on a single era is that it misses the historical profession’s reason for being, the study of change over time. The late nineteenth century was indeed signifi cant. Yet a tight shot of the Gilded Age leaves out critically important events and issues that happened in other times. That creates a fundamental problem for an analysis of the twentieth- century elites. If you want to widen the angle of the camera lens to look at other time periods, how can you avoid being so infl uenced by 3 Susie J. Pak, Gentlemen Bankers: The World of what happened and what has been written about the Gilded Age that J. P. Morgan (Cambridge, you can see later periods clearly and fi gure out what was happening Mass., 2013). then? Things get even more complicated when one factors in the 4 Winfi eld Scott Downs, ed., economic dynamism of twentieth-century metropolitan New York Who’s Who in New York (City and State), 1947, and the sheer size of its high status population. 11th ed. (New York, 1947). Information from this study Hence my desire to create a statistical study of elites for my chapter will be cited as Henry House Elites Project, or on the 1940s. I elected to use a publication entitled Who’s Who in New HHEP. I supplemented York (City and State). Published in thirteen volumes between 1904 Who’s Who in New York (City and State) with infor- and 1960, Who’s Who in New York contains biographical profi les of mation from The National leading New Yorkers. As sociologists, historians, and other scholars Cyclopædia of American Biography, 63 vols. (New well know, such profi les have a wealth of information that can pro- York, 1892–1984) and vide the basis for a detailed and comprehensive statistical portrait of Who’s Who in America, 1948–1949 (Chicago, 4 social groups.
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