158. Fountains Of Business Wealth: The Underground History of American Education by John Taylor Gatto from archive.org

Fountains Of Business Wealth 

The new American establishment of the twentieth century was organized around the 
fountains of wealth international corporate business provides. By 1900 huge businesses 
had begun already to dominate American schooling, and the metropolitan clubs where 
business was transacted lay at the core of upper-class authority in every major city in the 
nation. The men's club emerged as the principal agency where business agreements were 
struck and, indirectly, where school policy was forged. 

In 1959, Fortune magazine shocked a portion of our still innocent nation by announcing 
where national policy and important deals really were made in New York City. If the 
matter was relatively minor, the venue would be the Metropolitan, the Union League, or 
the University; if it were a middling matter it would be determined at the Knickerbocker 
or the Racquet; and if it required the utmost attention of powerful men, Brook or Links. 
Nothing happened in boardrooms or executive suites where it could be overheard by 
outlanders. Each city had this private ground where aristocracy met quietly out of the 
reach of prying eyes or unwelcome attendants. In San Francisco, the Pacific Union; in 
Washington, Cosmos or the Chevy Chase Club; the Sommerset in Boston; Duquesne in 
Pittsburgh; the Philadelphia Club in Philadelphia; the Chicago Club in Chicago. Once 
hands were shaken in these places, the process of public debate and certification was 
choreographed elsewhere for public and press. Government business came to be done this 
way, too. 

The entire web of affiliations among insiders in business, government, and the nonprofit 
sector operates through interpersonal and institutional ties which interconnect at the 
highest levels of finance, politics, commerce, school affairs, social work, the arts, and the 
media. Continuing conflicts of value within the leadership community give an appearance 
of adversarial proceedings, but each passing decade brings more and more harmony to 
the unseen community which plans the fate of schools and work. 

The General Education Board And Friends