page_title: Elite
hierarchical_section_title: Elite
caption_attribution_description: English: A political cartoon parodying James G. Blaine. Wealthy and influential figures dine on dishes labeled "Lobby pudding", "Monopoly soup", "Navy contract", etc. while a poor family begs. Subtitles below the cartoon read: "Mammon's Homage", "Blaine Hobnobing with the Mighty Money Kings", "The Banquet in His Honor at Delmonico's Last Night", "Millionaires and Monopolists Seal Their Allegiance". Guests include: (left to right): Aspinwall [first name and occupation unknown]; J. F. Dillon, a former circuit court judge who rendered a decision favorable to Jay Gould; William Evarts, the Republican senatorial candidate in New York; Levi Morton, U.S. minister to France (and future vice president and New York governor); possibly Judge Scott Sloan of Wisconsin; financier Cyrus Field; businessman David Dows; financier Jay Gould; unknown; Blaine; New York Tribune editor Whitelaw Reid; financier William Henry Vanderbilt; Blaine campaign manager and coal baron Stephen Elkins; naval contractor John Roach; William Dowd, banker and unsuccessful Republican candidate for New York mayor in 1880; railroad mogul Chauncey Depew; Judge Noah Davis; businessman and Wall Street financier Rufus Hatch; banker Jesse Seligman; financier Russell Sage; and former congressman Anson McCook of New York. Illustrated by Walt McDougall and Valerian Gribayedoff.
context_page_description: In political and sociological theory, the elite are a small group of powerful people who hold a disproportionate amount of wealth, privilege, political power, or skill in a society. Defined by the Cambridge Dictionary, the "elite" are "those people or organizations that are considered the best or most powerful compared to others of a similar type."
  American sociologist C. Wright Mills states that the power elite members recognize other members' mutual exalted position in society. "As a rule, 'they accept one another, understand one another, marry one another, tend to work, and to think, if not together at least alike'." "It is a well-regulated existence where education plays a critical role. Youthful upper-class members attend prominent preparatory schools, which not only open doors to such elite universities as Harvard, Columbia, Dartmouth College, Yale, and Princeton, but also to the universities' highly exclusive clubs. These memberships in turn pave the way to the prominent social clubs located in all major cities and serving as sites for important business contacts".
context_section_description: In political and sociological theory, the elite (French élite, from Latin eligere, to select or to sort out) are a small group of powerful people who hold a disproportionate amount of wealth, privilege, political power, or skill in a society. Defined by the Cambridge Dictionary, the "elite" are "those people or organizations that are considered the best or most powerful compared to others of a similar type."
  American sociologist C. Wright Mills states that the power elite members recognize other members' mutual exalted position in society. "As a rule, 'they accept one another, understand one another, marry one another, tend to work, and to think, if not together at least alike'." "It is a well-regulated existence where education plays a critical role. Youthful upper-class members attend prominent preparatory schools, which not only open doors to such elite universities as Harvard, Columbia, Dartmouth College, Yale, and Princeton, but also to the universities' highly exclusive clubs. These memberships in turn pave the way to the prominent social clubs located in all major cities and serving as sites for important business contacts".
caption: Political cartoon from October 1884, showing wealthy plutocrats feasting at a table while a poor family begs beneath
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