“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
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.
“…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
