ABSTRACT
The aristocratic and amateur traditions in England survived the agricultural, urban, commercial, industrial, and political revolutions which ushered in the modern world for a variety of reasons. Along with toughened character, the code of good sportsmanship stressed the amateur values of the all-rounder, and winning as less important than playing hard and fairly. The New England boarding schools, modeled on the British public school traditions, played an important role in forming a national upper class in America. The American upper-class kinship system has always included both celebrity socialites like Caroline Astor and aristocratic socialites such as Nancy Astor, the first woman to sit in the British Parliament, or the two Roosevelt presidents. Endicott Peabody and his good friend and kinsman-through-marriage, Theodore Roosevelt, did more to advance the in America than any other two men in the first half of the twentieth century.
