ABSTRACT
The American business elite has been studied repeatedly during the past twenty years, especially with reference to its social composition. This chapter presents data from a complementary study based upon 1,097 biographies, most of them from the National Cyclopedia of American Biography (NCAB). Studies of the American business elite have been undertaken primarily to test the hypothesis that the American social structure has become more rigid in the course of its history. The chapter summarizes the findings concerning the parental background of prominent businessmen at several different periods in American history. The most notable discrepancy in the trends that characterize the changing social derivation of the American business elite is apparent in the period before 1800. The paradox is that this bureaucratization of economic enterprise also serves in some measure to facilitate the upward social mobility of the individual and thus to reinforce the social base of American ideological equalitarianism.
