Copyright 1937

[stillcool]

this is the intro for a chapter in the book "America's 60 Families" by Ferdinand Lundberg.

VI INTRIGUE AND SCANDAL
Need for ruling class to resort to methods illegal and extralegal to retain power in a democratic political context. The war profits conspiracies. Guggenheim-agent Bernard M. Baruch held personally to blame for most wartime irregularities. The grave charges of the Graham Committee and the proofs. Airplane scandals. Hughes recommends courtmartial for Edward A. Deeds, of the National City Bank. Newton D. Baker quashes recommendation. Aviation industry today dominated by men who took huge government war subsidies and failed to deliver planes. Nitrate program found unnecessary. Du Pont Old Hickory plant also unnecessary. Du Ponts charged with defrauding government on war contracts. Charges secretly squashed. Corporations involved in scandalous failure to deliver huge quantities of ammunition and ordinance, for which payment had been made. Rockefellers implicated in fly-by-night profiteering companies. Attorney-General Harry M. Daugherty acts as 'fixer' for wealthy Republicans and others under accusation. Daugherty quashes all war-profiteering cases and engages in miscellaneous deviltry. Fraud under Alien Property Custodian. The American Metal Company Case. The Teapot Dome Scandal and the Rockefeller participation. Nearly everyone on Wall Street involved. The Shipping Board Scandals. Government subsidy of Dollar shipping interests. The gigantic airline grab, recalling Standard Oil grabs of nineteenth century. Hoover's Postmaster General Walter Brown used by Mellon-Vanderbilt-Morgan companies to seize all airways. Airmail contents withheld by Hoover Administration to ruin independents. Airmail contracts canceled by Franklin D. Roosevelt as fraudulent and collusively obtained. The Hoover-Morgan airplane conspiracy disclosed. Speculative boom fueled by richest families and their Wall Street agents. How the boom was secretly launched under political auspices in 1923. J.P. Morgan and Company and Benjamin Strong. The rape of the Federal Reserve System. The richest families direct the speculative boom from their banks. Directors of big banks members of richest families. Fortunes behind boom all rooted in nineteenth century. Antisocial role of the National City Bank in stock pools, in foreign securities deals. Destructive role of Chase National Bank in stock market, in Cuba, in Fox Film Corporation. J.P.Morgan and Company and the Guaranty Trust Company inflate the Van Sweringen bubble. Political and financial figures get share of Allegheny Corporation, Standard and Brands,Inc. and United Corporation stock gifts. The Morgan 'slush list'. Ivan Kreuger and Samuel Insull, agents of the rich families who failed to make good. Some agents who made good. Financial juggling of David Milton, Rockefeller son-in-law. Various miscellaneous swindles in astronomic sums. Recent history of the Van Sweringen pyramid.

...the more things change...

[Junkdrawer]

1. Things do change...The super-wealthy have MUCH better PR agents...

today.

Did you know that John D. Rockefeller invented modern Public Relations?

[stillcool]

2. No I didn't...for some reason...

the Rockefellers have failed to garner my attention, maybe because their influence is so blatant. The Harrimans and the du Ponts are my faves of late.

[Junkdrawer]

3. For Xmas, my wife bought me a copy of "Dupont, Behind the Nylon Curtain"...

..And, if I ever get a chance, I'll read it...

So many books, so little time...

[LiberalFighter]

4. Do they have better PR agents or just better tools to use?

[stillcool]

6. this from Ferdinand Lundberg's book...

The Rich and the Super-rich...copyright 1968

"Super-wealth simply consists of a very large generic fortune that may or may not be split into several parts. It has other characteristics: First, it generally controls and revolves aroung one or more important banks. It absolutely controls or has a controlling ownership stake in from one to three or more of the largest industrial corporations. It has established and controls through the family one to three or four or more super-foundations designed to achieve a variety of stated worthy purposes as well as confer vast industrial control through stock ownership and extend patronage-influence over wide areas. It has established or principally supports one or several major universities or leading polytechnic institutes. It is a constant heavy political contributor, invariably to the Republican Party, the political projection of super-wealth. It has extremely heavy property holdings abroad so that national, foreign and military policy is of particular interest to it. And it has vast indirect popular cultural influence because of the huge amount of advertising its corporations place in the mass media.
-Critics mistakenly blame a shadowy entity called "Madison Avenue" for the culturally stultifying quality as well as intrusiveness of most advertising. But here it should be noticed that Madison Avenue can produce only what is approved by its clients, the big corporations. If these latter ordered Elizabethan verse, Greek drama and great pictorial art, Madison Avenue would supply them with alacrity.
-Beyond this, the dependence upon corporate advertising of the mass media-newspapers, magazines, radio and television-makes them editorially subservient, without in any way being prompted, to points of view known or thought to be favored by the big property owners. Sometimes, of course, as the record abundantly shows, they have been prompted and even coerced to alter attitudes. But the willing subservience shows itself most generally, apart from specific acts of omission or commission, in an easy blandness on the part of the mass media toward serious social problems. These are all treated, when treated at all, as part of a diverting kaleidoscopic spectacle, the modern Roman circus of tele-communication. As Professor J. Kenneth Galbraith aptly remarked, in the United States it is a case of the bland leading the bland. No doubt it would be bad for trade if there was serious stress on the problematic side of affairs. It would disturb "confidence".

[Jcrowley]

5. Edward Bernays

The Father of Spin: Edward L. Bernays & The Birth of PR
by Larry Tye

book review by John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton

Today, few people outside the public relations profession recognize the name of Edward L. Bernays. As the year 2000 approaches, however, his name deserves to figure on historians' lists of the most influential figures of the 20th century.

It is impossible to fundamentally grasp the social, political, economic and cultural developments of the past 100 years without some understanding of Bernays and his professional heirs in the public relations industry. PR is a 20th century phenomenon, and Bernays--widely eulogized as the "father of public relations" at the time of his death in 1995--played a major role in defining the industry's philosophy and methods.

Eddie Bernays himself desperately craved fame and a place in history. During his lifetime he worked and schemed to be remembered as the founder of his profession and sometimes drew ridicule from his industry colleagues for his incessant self-promotions. These schemes notwithstanding, Bernays richly deserves the title that Boston Globe reporter Larry Tye has given him in his engagingly written new book, The Father of Spin.

In keeping with his obsessive desire for recognition, Bernays was the author of a massive memoir, titled Biography of an Idea, and he fretted about who would author his biography. He would probably be happy with Tye's book, the first written since his passing.

The Father of Spin is a bit too fawning and uncritical of Bernays and his profession. We recommend it, however, for its new insights into Bernays, many of which are based on a first-time-ever examination of the 80 boxes of papers and documents that Bernays left to the Library of Congress. The portrait that emerges is of a brilliant, contradictory man.

http://www.prwatch.org/prwissues/1999Q2/bernays.html

[Junkdrawer]

7. Ivy Ledbetter Lee

Ivy Ledbetter Lee (July 16, 1877 – November 9, 1934) is considered by some to be the founder of modern public relations, although the title could also be held by Edward Bernays.

...

Many historians credit Lee with being the originator of modern crisis communications. His principal competitor in the new public relations industry was Edward Bernays.

In 1914 he was to enter public relations on a much larger scale when he was retained by John D. Rockefeller Jr (Junior) to represent his family and Standard Oil, ("to burnish the family image"), after the coal mining rebellion in Colorado known as the "Ludlow Massacre". From then on he faithfully served the Rockefellers and their corporate interests, including a strong involvement in Rockefeller Center -he was in fact the first to suggest to Junior (against his reservations) that he give to the complex his family name - even after he moved on to set up his own consulting firm.

...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivy_Lee