THE FORDS LEAD

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 4, Issue 148, 29 August 1941, Page 8

THE FORDS LEAD

RICHEST MILLIONAIRES

U.S. COMMISSION'S FINDINGS

A commission in America lias' investigated to what extent its richest citizens have holdings as families in the great businesses which have long been so prominent a feature of that country. In America, a millionaire is the owner of capital worth a million dollars, and there is a large number of them. The Revenue Department issues an annual list of the number whose yearly income exceeds a million dollars, and it is interesting to find how the number varies with international prosperity. There were, for example, 513 in the boom year of 1929, but only 20 in the disastrous year 1932. Since then the number has once again risen, reaching 61 in 1936. The commission which reported last autumn specified seven families with stock valued at more than a hundred million dollars. The first was the Ford group (described as the best example of control by one family), the Ford Motor Company having about 625 million dollars' worth of its capital invested in Henry Ford, his son, and his daughter-in-law. The du Pont family, comes second with nearly 574 million dollars to their credit in rubber companies. The Rockefeller holdings in oil companies (396,500,000 dollars), afo third, with the Mellons very close behind in oil and aluminium. The McCormicks, of International Har-i tester fame, are fifth with 112 millions, followed by the Harlfords and the Harknesses (HarkneSs of the Pilgrim Trust). With the prospect of another boom owing to the war, the American Government is beginning to wonder whether so much wealth in so few hands is to her national advantage. At any rate, she taxes these incomes even in peacetime at over 75 per cent.