Foundations of the American Century

by Inderjeet Parmar

  JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER JR. (1874–1960)

  It was John D. Rockefeller Jr., however, who was mainly responsible for running the family’s philanthropic enterprises. He lived and worked in his father’s shadow, sharing many of the same attitudes and ideals. Junior’s life was driven by a desire to detach in the public mind the Rockefeller name from social irresponsibility and privilege and adorn it with responsibility and service; hence his employment of Ivy Lee as a permanent senior adviser after the Colorado dispute.52 Yet he was also committed to big business and to leaving behind as large a fortune to his children as he had received from Senior.53

  Privately tutored until the age of ten, Junior attended successively the New York School of Languages, the Cutler, and then the Browning private schools. He graduated from Brown University in 189754 and joined his father’s financial staff under the tutelage of the Reverend Frederick T. Gates, who also drove and managed Senior’s numerous philanthropic projects.55 Much later, Junior made a number of appointments to assist his philanthropic and other enterprises that, in effect, replicated the modern corporate committee system with which Senior had run the tightly networked Standard Oil. The influence of Gates was supplemented by Junior’s appointment of a number of “informal” associates, including Raymond Fosdick and Beardsley Ruml, men who were progressive modernizers, builders of organizations, networks, and a new “administrative state.”56 Junior weaved Rockefeller interests into the very institutional fabric of American life.57 He had a view of global affairs and alignments that derived from the work with which Fosdick and Gates had acquainted him, which was being done by the elitist and internationalist Institute of Pacific Relations (IPR), the Foreign Policy Association (FPA), and the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), among other leading organizations that had resulted directly from the Great War.58 Swimming with the tide of modernization, Junior put Rockefeller money behind programs of centralization, scientific management, and “the internationalization of American influence and power.”59 His work with the Protestant churches, missions, and charitable trusts, as with his philanthropy, was of a piece. And it continued to be funded by Junior’s stock holdings of Standard Oil and by the profits from his forays into banking and finance, through the acquisition of Chase Manhattan Bank (1930) and the Equitable Trust Company (1911).60 Junior ended up building a network of philanthropies and other emblematically American entities that are every bit as impressive as the Standard Oil monopoly. Yet, at heart, there was never any contradiction for him in “giving” while pursuing greater wealth; indeed, giving was seen a way of “taking” more power or, at least, exercising greater influence over the great social and other movements—combination, concentration, centralization, and internationalization—that he believed would dominate the future.

  ANDREW CARNEGIE (1835–1919)

  Andrew Carnegie was born in Dunfermline, Scotland, to a caring family. He never knew grinding poverty firsthand and never empathized with those who did. According to Wall, Carnegie’s references to the nobility of poverty in his Gospel of Wealth betrayed his inability ever really to appreciate others’ experiences: his life of care and protection had made him largely egocentric, unusually so.61 Educated at local schools, Carnegie was a voracious reader. Both parents were lapsed Calvinists, his father a supporter of Chartism—a radical reformist organization that campaigned for democracy in nineteenth-century Britain. Ironically, it was at the very moment that the Chartists seemed to be raising the temperature of protest that the family emigrated to the United States. For Andrew, who also was “educated” in the political democratic demands of Chartism, the United States was just about the world’s best system, and he wanted to utilize to the full the opportunities open to him. Like John D. Rockefeller Sr., Carnegie became the supporter of his family at a young age, as his weaver father, William, rued the industrial revolution that rendered his handloom obsolete. There was little inkling in those days that Andrew Carnegie was destined to be one of the pioneers and powerhouses of the American industrial revolution.

  Starting as a telegraph messenger at the Pittsburgh branch of the Ohio Telegraph Company in 1851, Carnegie’s hard-working nature and eye for opportunities saw him promoted to superintendent. He began making money through investing in stocks and shares. Progressing into the railroad industry, Carnegie served in the Civil War as superintendent of military railways and telegraphs. His biggest windfall came with earnings of $1 million on a $40,000 investment in 1864, which Carnegie used astutely to move into the iron and steel industry, given the lucrative government contracts available for railroads, bridges, and armaments to defeat the Confederate armies.

  Like Rockefeller, Carnegie was an organizational innovator: he vertically integrated steel production with its raw materials’ supply chain, bought up rival corporations, and built the biggest steel company in the world. When he sold out to J. P. Morgan in 1901, Carnegie received $480 million.62 The sale led to the emergence of the United States Steel Corporation, the world’s first billion-dollar company.63 Upon retirement, Carnegie vowed to “give away” the bulk of his money before his death.

  The Rockefellers and Carnegie modernized charitable giving into “scientific” philanthropy. The foundations they established were in the proper sense investments and investors—in ideas, scholarship, and research institutions. Just as they revolutionized American industrial organization and reaped the dividends, so they transmogrified “giving,” hoping to reap dividends in the form of social peace and stability, particular forms of progress, ideological legitimation for the American system, and ameliorative reform—making America modern through the rule of expertise to cohere the elite, build a stronger federal executive, and “manage” the masses.

  HENRY FORD (1863–1947)

  The Ford Foundation, in its “modern” form, on the other hand, was only the indirect work of the man who gave it its name, Henry Ford. Although funded by an endowment of over $2.3 billion in 1936—a sum that dwarfed the Carnegie and Rockefeller philanthropies—from Ford Motor Company profits and shares, the foundation is not a direct extension of the Ford family. While Andrew Carnegie and the Rockefellers conceptualized and built their foundations, the Ford Foundation’s mission resulted from an “expert” commission headed by Rowan Gaither, a Los Angeles attorney, in 1950. While Henry and Edsel (Henry’s only son) were original founders, the foundation as a major institution developed under the relatively hands-off Henry Ford II, the grandson. To some extent, therefore, the Ford Foundation suggests more than Carnegie and Rockefeller a “separation” of ownership and control emblematic of the modern corporation. That the Ford Foundation has operated since 1950 very much on the lines of the other major philanthropies indicates that though its early history may differ, its strategic mission, its operating style, and its goals differed very little. It is of a piece with the-then Big 2.64

  Despite the humane character of Ford’s own general reputation, especially the five-dollar-a-day wage in 1914 and his admiration of honest hard work, he was implacably opposed to organized labor. The Ford Service Department (FSD) intimidated workers attracted by unions, as well as using “bribery, liquor, and easy women” to deal with anyone threatening Ford interests. Headed by Harry Bennett, an ex-boxer, FSD was thoroughly involved with the criminal gangs of the Detroit underworld and in political corruption. During the 1930s, Bennett unleashed “terror” against union organizers and sympathizers, employing thugs, spies, and agents provocateurs.65

  Rugged individualism, unsurprisingly, was Ford’s underlying value: if you don’t like something, change it or change yourself. He loathed charity as degrading and as a drug that fostered perpetual dependency and did not address the root causes of problems such as poverty.66 The answer to poverty was not charity but industrial growth, development, and service to society. Philanthropy—particularly of the wrong sort—was wasteful and unproductive: Ford argued that “no matter how noble its motive, [philanthropy] does not make for self-reliance.” However, it is possible to develop philan
thropy that is more acceptable if it “spends its time and money in helping the world to do more for itself.”67 Yet Ford’s views were not dissimilar to those of Carnegie and Rockefeller; many of Ford’s innovations were underpinned by specific kinds of middle-class family values, even when their principal motivations were increased efficiency and profitability.68 The Ford sociology department’s aim was to uplift workers’ culture to conform to Ford’s standards: clean, male-dominated nuclear families, English speaking and fully Americanized.69

  The latter point is quite basic to understanding the principal characteristic of the “founding fathers”: they were “systems engineers” adept at diagnosing the problems of organization so as better to achieve their industrial objectives. More than this, they were able to implement their diagnoses with spectacular success and apply them to entirely new fields of organization—through their philanthropy to American society and to other parts of the world itself. Indeed, if they helped produce the American system, they saw in the world a need for global-systemic elements within which the American system itself would flourish. They were not alone in such thinking: the philosophy of Taylorism, or scientific management, had by the turn of the century come to predominate in the United States.70 The activities of philanthropy will be examined later in this study; for now, it is to the leadership of the Big 3 that attention must be paid.

  THE ROCKEFELLER FOUNDATION AND THE AMERICAN ELITE, 1930–1951

  Social background influences behavior.71 What people do and what and how they think about their society and the world is heavily influenced by their place and time of birth, “historical generation,” social class, schooling, race, gender and ethnicity, religion, and their degree of assimilation in American society. The social composition of a group creates a particular subculture and mindset that affects not just decision making on grants and programs but also on the kinds of people, values, and ideas that are considered “acceptable.” The backgrounds and networks of the leaders of the Big 3, therefore, are explored in the sections below, beginning with the Rockefeller Foundation.

  A survey was conducted of Rockefeller Foundation trustees for three sample years—1930, 1945, and 1951, a pivotal period of U.S. foreign policy transformation. Data were collected from Who’s Who and Who Was Who on background factors on twenty-nine trustees, including region and decade of birth, university education, profession, corporate directorships, service in government, connections with other elite political-intellectual organizations, and membership in elite clubs.

  Several of the trustees were major figures in the world of business, the press, or government service. John D. Rockefeller Jr. was trustee from 1913 to 1940. Junior’s father-in-law, Winthrop W. Aldrich, served as trustee from 1935 to 1951, alongside his leading role at the Rockefeller bank, Chase National. The publisher of the New York Times, Arthur Hays Sulzberger, served from 1939 to 1957, while John Foster Dulles was trustee from 1935 until 1952, when President Eisenhower appointed him to serve his administration as secretary of state, a post he held from 1953–1960.

  The majority (fifteen) were East Coast born—particularly New York and Pennsylvania—while the rest were reasonably evenly distributed across the rest of the country: two in the southeast and southwest and two abroad. All of the trustees, bar one, were born after the Civil War and before 1900, indicating a shared generational experience in those decades of “psychic crisis” mentioned earlier. The period also featured, of course, an evangelical awakening and the Darwinian revolution in science, effects that may already be clearly visible in the character of American philanthropy.

  Educationally, the Rockefeller trustees exhibited powerful elitist characteristics, with nineteen having attended Ivy League (fourteen at Harvard and Princeton) and other elite universities (five), including Chicago and Johns Hopkins.

  The foundations’ trustees were dominated by the legal and educational professions, with ten lawyers from major “blue-blood” New York firms such as Sullivan and Cromwell (where Dulles was partner) and Davis, Polk, Wardwell, Gardner, and Reed (where John W. Davis was senior partner). The presidents of Yale University (James R. Angell), Princeton (Harold W. Dodds), Chicago (Max Mason), and the University of California–Los Angeles (Robert G. Sproul) were trustees during the 1930–1951 period. In addition to Aldrich and Rockefeller Jr., there were several major figures from the world of business and finance, for example Chester I. Barnard, the president of the Bell Telephone Company; Lewis W. Douglas, the president of the Mutual Life Insurance Company; and Owen D. Young, of General Electric.

  Corporate directorships among the trustees—excluding John D. Rockefeller Jr.—totaled thirty-four; just fourteen trustees accounted for that number. Some of the most important corporations were “represented” by trustees, including General Electric, AT&T, Westinghouse, and Equitable Life Insurance.

  Government service was another key factor that many trustees had in common. Several had served as U.S. ambassadors, for example, including Winthrop Aldrich, John W. Davis, and Lewis Douglas (all of whom served as ambassadors to Britain). John Foster Dulles served under Eisenhower; he was also distinguished by having an uncle (Robert Lansing) and grandfather (John W. Foster) who had served as secretary of state, and his brother Allen Welsh was CIA director in the 1950s. Additionally, of course, Dulles served numerous U.S. presidents from the Great War onward, bringing an important perspective to the Rockefeller board of trustees.

  Most trustees (eighteen) of the Rockefeller Foundation served numerous other Rockefeller philanthropies—such as the General Education Board and the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research. Four trustees were also on the boards of several Carnegie philanthropies, including the Carnegie Corporation and CEIP. In addition, several were more broadly connected with other philanthropies, including Karl T. Compton, who was a trustee of five other foundations, including the Ford Foundation. There were numerous links with organizations that regularly received large grants from the Rockefeller Foundation, including the Council on Foreign Relations (nine trustees), the Institute of Pacific Relations (two), and the Brookings Institution (two).

  Finally, twenty-five trustees accounted for over one hundred elite club memberships, including New York City’s Century (eighteen), Harvard (five), and Metropolitan (four), and four trustee members at the Cosmos Club in Washington, D.C. John W. Davies was the most clubbable, with nine memberships.72 In 1940, the Century Club was a hotbed of prowar organizers mainly drawn from the leading members of the Council on Foreign Relations.73

  THE CEIP AND THE AMERICAN ELITE, 1939–1945

  The original leadership of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace was drawn from a narrow East Coast elite, with twenty-seven of its twenty-eight trustees having been born before the Civil War.74 According to its third president, Alger Hiss, the endowment had changed little fundamentally almost forty years later, when he took office. The CEIP’s trustees were “interlocked,” he claimed, with the charitable bodies, the New York public library, the Metropolitan Museum, the Metropolitan Opera, and the Rockefeller Foundation. It was through such interlocking that the attitudes of a small section of the United States predominated culturally and otherwise.75

  A detailed survey of the trustees of the CEIP for the years 1939 to 1945 (inclusive) provides an indication of its elite socioeconomic and other characteristics, such as corporate directorships, educational background, region of residence and birth, membership in other foreign policy organizations, elite clubs, and political and religious affiliations. On average, the CEIP trustees numbered twenty-eight for each year between 1939 and 1945, although the sample studied totals thirty-five owing to turnover. At least some information of the kind sought was available for thirty-three of the thirty-five men in the sample, from sources such as Who Was Who and Shoup and Minter’s study of the Council on Foreign Relations.76

  Of the twenty-seven trustees upon whom generational and regional information was available, seven had been born during the 1860s, ten in the 1870s, and nine in t
he 1880s. Only one had been born during the 1890s. The age group of the trustees was therefore between fifty to seventy, whose formative years were those of post–Civil War America, the rise of U.S. national and global corporations, U.S. imperialism, and progressivism. The CEIP’s President Butler was the most senior in age, having been born in 1862.

  The majority of the trustees had been born outside the eastern seaboard (which accounted for twelve trustees). The East Coast, however, provided the largest single group (by birth) compared with the other regions (Midwest, seven; West, three; South, four; born abroad, three). By residence, however, most trustees were located on the East Coast: sixteen compared with six from the Midwest and three from each of the West and South. This still left twelve trustees in the regions outside the East Coast, a much larger representation than Robert Divine suggests in his general comments on the CEIP.77 Given the CEIP’s focus on public opinion, it was essential that the organization had representation across America.

  Data for schooling is sparse, with information on only seven trustees, one of whom (Harper Sibley, the agribusinessman) had listed the elite school, Groton, founded by the puritanical Endicott Peabody, who aimed to recreate the English public school on American soil.78 The university data are more complete, however, and pride of place goes to the Ivy League universities. Fifty universities and colleges were listed by the trustees (many attended more than one). Twenty-one of the fifty university registrations were with Ivy League institutions, with Columbia (seven) and Harvard (six) the most popular. Other elite colleges accounted for a further eighteen registrations, including the University of Chicago, MIT, the University of California, and Georgetown. In addition, ten registrations were for foreign, mostly European, universities.