America's 60 Families Quotes

“All these wasteful expenditures of the rich, only a few of which have been briefly enumerated, are extenuated by hired apologists on the ground that they give many people work in the luxury trades, in domestic service, in the garages, stables, and gardens, and on board the yachts.
It is not realized, it seems, that if the money wasted by the rich in personal indulgence were taken in taxes and put into the building of needed hospitals, schools, playgrounds, clinics, low-rent apartment buildings, farm homes, sanatoria, rest homes, and recreation clubs for the mass of Americans, the persons now given employment by the wealthy would obtain work of a more constructive character in these other fields.”
― Ferdinand Lundberg, America's 60 Families

“It is true that Harvard and Yale, as well as other upper-class institutions, offer free tuition, some cash scholarships, and nominal paid employment to the highest-ranking graduates of accredited secondary schools, without regard for the social class origins of these students.

One can, it is true, meet a coal miner's or a farmer's son at Harvard, although it is a rare experience.

The task of Yale and Harvard, however, is to mold these bright youngsters into unconscious servitors of the ruling class—as lawyers, as corporate scientists, as civil servants, as brokers, bankers, and clergymen. The enforced "democratic" mingling effected by the new house plans assures this result more positively now than ever, for in the past, many students were made to feel like pariahs by their exclusion from the quasi-aristocratic clubs.”
― Ferdinand Lundberg, America's 60 Families

“Newspapers as a whole are hostile to organized labor, and the public is therefore suspicious of organized labor whenever it moves to implement its rights. Whether the hostility be open or covert, it is nevertheless a notorious fact that all the effective efforts of labor to better its precarious economic position are misrepresented by the newspapers.”
― Ferdinand Lundberg, America's 60 Families

“JOURNALISM, which shapes, modifies, or subtly suggests public attitudes and states of mind, morbidly attracts the owners of the great fortunes, for whose protection against popular disapproval and action there must be a constantly running defense, direct or implied, specific or general.

The protective maneuvers often take the form, in this plutocratic press, of eloquent editorial assaults upon popular yearnings and ideas.

The journalism of the United States, from top to bottom, is the personal affair bought and paid for by the wealthy families. There is little in American journalism today, good or bad, which does not emanate from the family dynasties.

The press lords of America are actually to be found among the multimillionaire families.”
― Ferdinand Lundberg, America's 60 Families

“The war, in brief, provided an unparalleled opportunity for the richest families to grab, at the expense of the public; and, without exception, they made the most of this opportunity. Some of the families took profits in the stock market, and hence did not figure directly in the industrial looting. Up to September 1, 1919, the War Department spent $18,501,117,999, and, judging by the Graham Committee's findings, at least one-third of this was dissipated in channels that had no relation to a successful prosecution of the war.”
― Ferdinand Lundberg, America's 60 Families

“However one approaches the problem of income distribution, one is confronted with substantially the same conclusion: fewer than twenty per cent of the people possess nearly everything while eighty per cent own practically nothing except chattels. Wealth itself has become monopolized.”
― Ferdinand Lundberg, America's 60 Families

“Persons of limited means who scrimp to save from fifty to seventy-five per cent of income are properly termed misers, and are regarded with pitying scorn; but the rich of today enjoy the doubly paradoxical distinction of being spendthrifts, misers, and philanthropists simultaneously.”
― Ferdinand Lundberg, America's 60 Families