Rags to Riches Revisited: The Effect of City Size and Related Factors on the Recruitment of Business Leaders

Abstract

THE question of control of the nation's industrial system has troubled social scientists for several decades. While well-publicized debates continue about who controls the present economic structure, a quieter, yet fundamentally important, controversy has occurred about which groups held power in the early years of industrialization. Two broad theories have developed about the late-nineteenth century. On one side are those who argue that a new, radically different social and economic group moved into control with the onset of industrialism. On the other side are those who posit that the industrializing process remained under the control of the same groups that had dominated the economy and society of the preindustrial era. Of those who have argued for the emergence of a new elite under industrialization, the most popular has been Matthew Josephson.' He viewed the new industrialists as men from lower social origins, who, by ability, chance, and hard work, had dramatically risen to the top of the economic pyramid. They, therefore, represented a profound social transformation in the control of the American economy, creating, in effect, a new "power elite." These ideas have been further systematized by Herbert G. Gutman. He has portrayed the industrialists of the late-nineteenth century essentially as "new men," alien beings from outside the local status structures.2 Gutman's conclusion is based on two important social facts concerning the