The Da Vinci Code - AMAZON NOIR

1 The Da Vinci CodeBy: Dan brown ISBN: 0767905342 See detail of this book on served by AMAZON NOIR ( )project by:PAOLO CIRIO LUDOVICO 1 CONTENTS Preface to the Paperback Edition vii Introduction xi PART I THEGREAT WAVES OF AMERICAN WEALTH ONE The Eighteenth and NineteenthCenturies: From Privateersmen to Robber Barons TWO Serious Money: TheThree Twentieth-Century Wealth Explosions THREE MillennialPlutographics: American Fortunes 3 47 and Misfortunes at the Turn of theCentury zo ART II THE ORIGINS, EVOLUTIONS, AND ENGINES OF WEALTH:Government, Global Leadership, and Technology FOUR The World Is OurOyster: The Transformation of Leading World Economic Powers 171 FIVEF riends in High Places: Government, Political Influence, and Wealth 201six Technology and the Uncertain Foundations of Anglo-American Wealth249 0 ix Page 2 Page 3 CHAPTER ONE THE EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES: FROM PRIVATEERSMENTO ROBBER BARONS The people who own the country ought to govern it.

2 JohnJay, first chief justice of the United States, 1787 Many of our rich menhave not been content with equal protection and equal benefits , buthave besought us to make them richer by act of Congress. -AndrewJackson, veto of Second Bank charter extension, 1832 Corruptiondominates the ballot-box, the Legislatures, the Congress and toucheseven the ermine of the bench. The fruits of the toil of millions areboldly stolen to build up colossal fortunes for a few, unprecedented inthe history of mankind; and the possessors of these, in turn, despisethe Republic and endanger liberty.

3 -National platform of the PopulistParty, 1892 he debate over the compatibility of wealth and democracy isas old as the republic. From the start, concern that the egalitarian-seeming United States of the late eighteenth and early nineteenthcenturies might develop wealth concentrations to match Europe's was aworry for many but also the guarded hope of an important few. AlexanderHamilton, who favored both a financial class and an aristocracy , wouldhave cherished the possibility of such an elite. John Adams, who thoughtaristocracies inevitable, would not have been surprised.

4 ThomasJefferson brooded that such a danger could flow all too easily fromurban growth, finance, and commerce. Richard Price, the British reformerfriendly to the American Revolution, warned the new nation againstforeign banks and finance; and Alexis de Tocqueville, in 1837, hedgedhis praise for democracy in America with concern that the new industrialelite, "one of the harshest that ever existed," would bring about the"permanent inequality of conditions and aristocracy." 0 Page 4 ALTH AND DEMOCRACY By the beginning of the twenty-first century, whenthe first clocks along the international date line struck midnight, theUnited States had met, at least broadly, the hopes of Hamilton and thefears of Jefferson and de Tocqueville.

5 The transformation was hardlylinear, given the interruptions of the populist and progressive eras andthe New Deal. By 2000, however, the United States was not only theworld's wealthiest nation and leading economic power, but also theWestern industrial nation with the greatest percentage of the world'srich and the greatest gap between rich and poor. To make thistransformation from agrarian republic to financial aristocracy fullycome alive-to fill in its enormous achievement, recurrent corruption,amazing technological innovation, and political pretense- the bestcourse is to begin in the Massachusetts seaports of Adams and JohnHancock, the Virginia plantations of Jefferson and George Washington,and the Manhattan financial district of Hamilton, takingnineteenth-century turnpikes and canals to the railroads, stockexchanges, Civil War battlefields.

6 And William Jennings Bryan's angryfarm belt and moving on to Hollywood, the World War 11 defenseindustries, and Silicon Valley, and always keeping an eye on twoprincipal centers of influence , Washington and Wall Street. By the endof the period covered by this first chapter, from the 1770s to 1900,wealth had enjoyed a glorious century and a quarter. The largest fortunein the United States had grown from an ambiguous $1 million to somewherein the $300 to $400 million range. Democracy, in her allegorical garb,was by then wandering around Washington more than a little woebegone,muttering about "the shame of the Senate," watching a Supreme Courtunabashedly hold for railroads in fifteen of sixteen cases, condemningNew York City tenements that matched the worst of East End London, andglooming about the lost world of Jefferson, Jackson, and Lincoln.

7 Theunusual political freedom in the , to be sure, was part of what madewealth more openly controversial than it was in Europe. Suspicion ofaristocracy, officialdom, and inherited riches was a legacy of theRevolution. Like the earlier citizenry of the Greek and Roman republics,Americans could and did take issue with the abuses of the rich andpowerful . Voters could even expect, in some matters, to bring the upperclasses to heel. That was part of what republicanism was all facets of democracy, however, made wealth in the early UnitedStates less controversial. Those from poor backgrounds had a chance,some- Page 5 THE EIGHTEENTH & NINETEENTH CENTURIES times a better one, to share, asalong Cornelius Vanderbilt's scrappy, cutthroat New York waterfront orin John Jacob Astor's rough-and-tumble frontier fur business.

8 Self-mademen were the best-known standardbearers of wealth. A humble immigrantcould become the richest man in America, because two did-French-bornStephen Girard, who came to Philadelphia as a merchant ship officer, andAstor, son of a poor German butcher. The egalitarian-minded workingclasses of New York and Philadelphia , as we will see, quickly ralliedagainst the Federalist merchants and financiers of the 1790s, with theirpredilection for British manners and contempt for the common of these self-made businessmen had such vulnerabilities: Girard,besides being a supporter of the antiaristocratic French Revolution, wasugly; Astor was uncouth, with relatively little social pretense.

9 Most ofthe Frenchman's clerks dressed better than he did, and Astor and his sonhandled and "beat" their own furs well into their second decade ofbusiness. Neither put on aristocratic airs or offended republicansensibilities. In such hands, riches symbolized the New World's promise,not some vague prospect of oppression. In contrast to stratified Europe,the more fluid society in America offered a double opportunity: both tomake money and to criticize its abuse by the rich, pointing out howexcess wealth and stratification undercut the democracy that hadnurtured them. How this duality evolved during the eighteenth,nineteenth, and twentieth centuries provides an essential backdrop tothe circumstances of the twenty-first.

10 And our saga can begin,fittingly, amid the distrust and suspicion rife in Philadelphia duringthe famous July of 1776, mere blocks from the very birth chambers of thenew nation, where hot and tired delegates were just putting thefinishing touches on the Declaration of Independence. Many of thedeclaration's signers were representatives of America's richestfamilies-a Massachusetts Hancock, a New York Livingston, a Carroll ofMaryland, a Lee of Virginia, and a South Carolina Rutledge. Theirs was arevolutionary document with respect to Britain, but not in mattersdomestic.