GOVERNMENT: Thirteen Families

In 1937 a lumbering, leftish ex-newspaperman named Ferdinand Lundberg decided to give form to his favorite gripe: big, fat capitalists and their de facto control of our de jure Government. Under his microscope went 60 of the fattest with their families, their incomes, their politics, their philanthropies. He wrote an erudite bombshell of questionable accuracy titled America’s 60 Families, watched his subjects squirm while Secretary Ickes and then Assistant Attorney General Jackson quoted it with gusto. Within less than a year the families were sprawled under more powerful microscopes as the Temporary National Economic Committee made a study of corporate practices and controls.

Last week the Securities and Exchange Commission published its report to null a 121-page study of “The Distribution of Ownership in the 200 Largest Non-Financial* Corporations.” Based on 1937 figures, it whittled the Lundberg roster to 13 families, was considerably less personal than his census of Du Pont bathrooms, considerably more dogged in tracking down actual shareholdings (Lundberg had estimated fortunes by 1924 tax returns). It found:

» Of an estimated 8,500,000 U. S. stockholders, less than 75,000 (.06% of the population) own fully one-half of all corporate stock held by individuals. The majority of the voting power in the average large corporation is in the hands of not much over 1% of the shareholders. But some of the biggest and best-known corporations are exceptions (i.e., widely held, without visible centralized control): A. T. & T., Anaconda, Bethlehem Steel, Eastman Kodak, General Electric, Goodyear, R. C. A., U. S. Steel, Pennsylvania Railroad, etc.

» More than 80% of individual stockholders had a dividend income of less than $500, probably received not much over 10% of the total dividend income of individuals.

» Foreigners owned 3 to 4% of the total stock outstanding in all domestic corporations. Of the 200 corporations surveyed, 17 paid over 10% of their dividends to persons living outside the U. S. Examples: Shell Union Oil, 80%; Singer Manufacturing, 18.8%; Anaconda Copper, 17.5%; Western Union, 17.1%.

» The 13 most potent family groups’ holdings were worth $2,700,000,000, comprised over 8% of the stock of the 200 corporations: Fords, $624,975,000; Du Fonts, $573,690,000; Rockefellers, $396,583,000; Mellons, $390,943,000; McCormicks (International Harvester), $111,102,000; Hartfords (A. & P.), $105,702,000; Harknesses (Standard Oil), $104,891,000; Dukes (tobacco, power), $89,459,000; Pews (Sun Oil), $75,628,000; Pitcairns (Pittsburgh Plate Glass), $65,576,000; Clarks (Singer), $57,215,000; Reynolds (tobacco), $54,766,000; Kresses (S. H. Kress), $50,044,000.

» Three groups—Du Fonts, Mellons, Rockefellers—have shareholdings valued at nearly $1,400,000,000, control, directly or indirectly, 15 of the 200 corporations.

Fortnight before the official release, when details of the report leaked out, New York’s Communist Daily Worker scooped its rivals, printed a front-page cartoon and editorial headed “Three Families Drive America to War.” Promptly Michigan’s Representative Roy Orchard Woodruff (Republican) lashed out in Congress at “this sort of propaganda played up at a time like this for purposes of political demagoguery.” To Representative Woodruff SECommissioner Sumner Pike, retired oilman and onetime vice president of Wall Street’s Case. Pomeroy & Co., explained: “In some way unknown to the commission, a copy of the report or the summary was obtained by a newspaper correspondent. . . . When the report had reached its final stages it was supervised by me. As I am a Republican, that ought to set at rest any notion that it was designed as an aid to the Democratic campaign.”

*Excluded: banks, trust companies, insurance companies, investment houses.