These executives, who have risen to the top, have come to be responsible trustees, impartial umpires, and expert brokers for a plurality of economic interests, including those of all the millions of small property holders who hold stock in the great American enterprises, but also the wage workers and the consumers who benefit from the great flow of goods and services. These executives, it is held, are responsible for the refrigerator in the kitchen and the automobile in the garage — as well as all the planes and bombs that now guard Americans from instant peril. […] Full of the know-how that made America great; efficient, straightforward, honest, the chief executives, it is often said, ought really to be allowed to run the government, for if only such men were in charge there would be no waste, no corruption, no infiltration.

C. Wright Mills (1916-1962) American sociologist, academic, author [Charles Wright Mills]

The Power Elite, ch. 6 (1956)
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