The New Money Myth: The Churn of Prototypical Elites and the Persistence of the Upper Class in Oil Boom Dallas, 1925–1942

Abstract Upper-class people have long described near-total turnover from “old” to “new” money during major socioeconomic shifts, but quantitative measures of elite persistence often contradict their claims. Oil boom Dallas is one such case. Midcentury Dallas socialites consistently alleged that “new money” oil families replaced “old money” cotton families during the 1930s oil boom, but a dataset of the full upper class ( n = 12,353) and most wealthy oilmen ( n = 325) demonstrates that cotton families generally remained upper class, oilmen were mostly born upper class, and most upper-class people had both cotton men and oilmen somewhere in their family networks. What explains the disparity between upper-class perceptions and demographic reality? I argue that upper-class social worlds are often perceived and narrativized in terms of “prototypical elites,” who are especially wealthy and tied to regionally specific industries. Elite perceptions of total turnover reflect real churn among prototypical tycoons rather than churn among the upper class as a whole. Approaches to the study of elites and inequality that focus on ultra-rich individuals divorced from their relational contexts similarly overemphasize change and underemphasize persistence.