America's Dirty Little Secret

 “Social class is America's dirty little secret.”

 --Donald G. Ellis, Crafting Society: Ethnicity, Class, and Communication Theory (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1999), p. iii.

In the Introduction to Donald Ellis’ book, Crafting Society, he states that

“…social structure is made of networks of contacts and the communication that takes place within these networks. What people talk about and how they talk to each other determines their relationships, and these relationships make up the various social stratifications of society.” (Ellis, Crafting Society, p. xii)   

Ellis’ thesis becomes a mere beginning point—a stepping stone—for our investigation into the history of one particular network whose hub can be traced to America’s early Puritans in Connecticut.

Contacts and communication are the keys to the network.  Unfortunately, much of the communication is not only private, but buried behind a shield of secret oaths that protect the network from prying eyes. Therefore, to study such a network we must look, not only to written discourse in the form of letters and other papers of communication. We must discover the secret communication by linking the contacts between the members of the network, exploring those contacts within society pages of the news—weddings, obituaries—where family ties are announced and boasted of.

Ellis’ analysis helps us to delineate the social infrastructure of America’s ruling class—an elite network bred within a limited number of stratified families with an equally limited view of life. The foundation was laid very early in American history, and the edifice has been built within that limited framework ever since.  Such a precise architecture is no mere coincidence, but a designed plan whose purpose coincides with similar networks established in distant lands. But that is another story.

This book/website aspires to uncover the infrastructure hiding behind America’s façade of democracy. Many of the facts set forth herein have been gleaned from society pages and obituaries, pieced together over several generations, which reveal the families which piece the framework together to form the “contacts” of which Ellis spoke. 

The reader must be made aware of one proviso, however: It is not possible for anyone to prove that “communication” exists, when such words are never spoken in public nor written down. That is the underlying reason behind the policy of secret fraternities like Skull and Bones at Yale which forbade public discussion of its practices. The same philosophy has surrounded Masonic-inspired groups for centuries. When coupled with the principles of “scientific” education engineered in America by anti-Socratic reasoning—“educators” such as John Dewey and Daniel Coit Gilman—the secrecy principle rescues its adherents from the fear of “being caught.” If they leave no evidence of their methods of operation, then their schemes can never be proven; accusers can be ridiculed as “conspiracy theorists.”

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Our intent is not to judge but merely to present the framework. It is for you, the reader, to read between the lines—the planks in the infrastructure. The design and the finished portrait of America’s dirty secret of social class can only be viewed through personal insight, experience and intestinal intuition—all of which are inadmissible in a court of law, courts of equity (based on reason and justice) having long since been superseded by scientific principles. Therefore,  conclusions will remain unstated, left only to reasonable minds.

Linda Minor

September 2006