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PEOPLE WHO MADE A FORTUNE

The American men of wealth exist today as they did a quarter or half a century ago. The old multimillionaire families who made their fortune at the dawn of monopoly capitalism have been preserved in the main and many of them have greatly increased both their wealth and their influence.

It is no easy task to detect a millionaire and ascertain his wealth. It is even more difficult to determine the exact number of people who could be put in the category of ‘top-wealth holders‘ in America. The American magazine ‘Fortune’ conducted such an investigation. The magazine did not resort to statistical calculations and based its estimates on a poll of income tax experts and the millionaires themselves, on materials of government archives and information about the wealth of millionaires which appear in the press from time to time. According to various estimates, to which ‘Fortune' refers, the number of persons owning more than $50,000,000 ranged from 150 to 500. Studying for several months the biggest fortunes, the magazine succeeded in definitely establishing the names of I55 persons who owned capital of that size. The magazine remarked that most likely there is another 100. ‘Fortune' thus estimated that there were approximately 250 persons, each owning more than $50,000,000.

Among these people there are so called ‘Old Fortunes’ whose owners are famous and known all over the world — the Rockefellers and the Fords.

At the beginning of the 20th century, John D. Rockefeller, Sr. himself calculated his fortune with precision up to one cent and set it at $815,600,000. In I968, ‘Fortune’ estimated the total of the capital belonging to the six Rockefeller brothers and one sister at from $1,200 million to $1,800 million.

In the mid-l920s the Fords’ fortune was estimated at $660 million and consisted almost exclusively of the personal capital of Henry Ford invested in the Ford Motor Company. Nowadays the personal fortune of the Fords can be estimated at $1,200 - 1,500 million.