登陆注册
5243900000014

第14章 Chapter 3(3)

But the course of events has gone its own way, and about that time -- somewhere along in the middle half of the eighteenth century -- that type of employer began to be displaced in those staple industries which have since then set the pace and made the outcome for wages and conditions of work. So soon as the machine industry began to make headway, the industrial plant increased in size, and the number of workmen employed in each establishment grew continually larger; until in the course of time the large scale of organisation in industry has put any relation of man to man out of the question between employers and workmen in the leading industries. Indeed, it is not unusual to find that in an industrial plant of a large or middling size, a factory, mill, works, mine, shipyard or railway of the ordinary sort, very few of the workmen would be able, under oath, to identify their owner. At the same time, and owing to the same requirements of large-scale and mechanical organisation, the ownership of the works has also progressively been changing character; so that today, in the large and leading industries, the place of the personal employer-owner is taken by a composite business concern which represents a combination of owners, no one of whom is individually responsible for the concern's transactions. So true is this, that even where the ownership of a given industrial establishment still vests wholly or mainly in a single person, it has commonly been found expedient to throw the ownership into the corporate form, with limited liability.

The personal employer-owner has virtually disappeared from the great industries. His place is now filled by a list of corporation securities and a staff of corporation officials and employees who exercise a limited discretion. The personal note is no longer to be had in the wage relation, except in those backward, obscure and subsidiary industries in which the mechanical reorganisation of the new order has not taken effect.

So, even that contractual arrangement which defines the workman's relation to the establishment in which he is employed, and to the anonymous corporate ownership by which he is employed, now takes the shape of a statistical reckoning, in which virtually no trace of the relation of man to man is to be found. Yet the principles of the modern point of view governing this contractual relation, in current law and custom, are drawn on the assumption that wages and conditions of work are arranged for by free bargaining between man and man on a footing of personal understanding and equal opportunity.

That the facts of the New Order have in this way departed from the ground on which the constituent principles of the modern point of view are based, and on which therefore the votaries of the established system take their stand, -- this state of things can not be charged to anyone's personal account and made a subject of recrimination. In fact, it is not a case for personal discretion and responsibility in detail, but rather for concerted action looking to some practicable working arrangement.

The personal equation is no longer a material factor in the situation. Ownership, too, has been caught in the net of the New Order and has been depersonalised to a degree beyond what would have been conceivable a hundred years ago, especially so far as it has to do with the use of material resources and man power in the greater industries. Ownership has been "denatured" by the course of events; so that it no longer carries its earlier duties and responsibilities. It used to be true that personally responsible discretion in all details was the chief and abiding power conferred by ownership; but wherever it has to do with the machine industry and large-scale organisation, ownership now has virtually lost this essential part of its ordinary functions. It has taken the shape of an absentee ownership of anonymous corporate capital, and in the ordinary management of this corporate capital the greater proportion of the owners have no voice.

This impersonal corporate capital, which is taking the place of the personal employer-owner of earlier times, is the outcome of a mutation of the scheme of things in business enterprise, scarcely less profound than the change which has overtaken the material equipment in the shift from handicraft methods to the machine technology. In practical fact today, corporate capital is the capitalised earning capacity of the corporation considered as a going business concern; and the ownership of this capital therefore foots up to a claim on the earnings of the corporation.

Corporate capital of this kind is impersonal in more than one sense: it may be transferred piecemeal from one owner to another without visibly affecting the management or the rating of the concern whose securities change hands in this way; and the personal identity of the owner of any given block of this capital need not be known even to the concern itself, to its administrative officers, or to those persons whose daily work and needs are bound up with the daily transactions of the concern.

For most purposes and as regards the greater proportion of the investors who in this way own the corporation's capital, these owners are, in effect, anonymous creditors, whose sole effectual relation to the enter prise is that of a fixed "overhead charge"

on its operations. Such is the case even in point of form as regards the investors in corporate bonds and preferred stock. The ordinary investor is, in effect, an anonymous pensioner on the enterprise; his relation to industry is in the nature of a liability, and his share in the conduct of this industry is much like the share which the Old Man of the Sea once had in the promenades of Sinbad.

同类推荐
  • 生民之什

    生民之什

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • Yvette

    Yvette

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 道德经注释

    道德经注释

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 龙虎中丹诀

    龙虎中丹诀

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 柳宗元集

    柳宗元集

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
热门推荐
  • Playboy of the Western World

    Playboy of the Western World

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 天上掉下个金贤花

    天上掉下个金贤花

    他长得真不是一般的帅,金色的短发,棱角分明的俊脸,精致的锁骨,好像动漫里面的人物啊,不过搞笑的是,他竟然把歪歪遗失的裤子穿反了,还毫不留情的把她的上衣撕成条子,遮住了整个胸膛。他那双寒霜般的眸子递出探询的光芒。
  • Kansas Women in Literature

    Kansas Women in Literature

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 三指禅

    三指禅

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 群雄逐汉

    群雄逐汉

    挡我者,杀;辱我者,杀;阴我者,杀;不义者,杀;不忠者,杀;神也杀,魔也杀,杀杀杀杀杀杀杀,苦尽苍生好头颅,不杀不是大丈夫。争霸,逐鹿,血腥史罢了。
  • 海贼之百鬼夜行

    海贼之百鬼夜行

    二十五岁的大龄宅男陆良,在将名为某阴阳师的卡牌手游的所有式神收集完全的一刻,因为手机过热引发爆炸身亡。再次睁开双眼却发现自己来到了海贼王的世界,并且成为了滑头鬼之子----奴良鲤伴。然而不仅如此,随着陆良而来的还有着阴阳师手游中的无数式神,当没有阴阳师的束缚,式神们再度化为妖怪,又会在这片大海中卷起怎样的风浪。(新人新书,可能更新有些慢,不过萌新会尽可能的加快速度,如果各位看官感觉还能入眼,请多多收藏,你的收藏将会是萌新的无限动力)
  • 美女总裁的特种高手

    美女总裁的特种高手

    各路高手被打爆,美女权财我都要!龙王回都市,世界无宁日!这是一个修真妖孽的传奇故事。欢迎阅读洪七完本精品书《超级兵王在校园》,校园畅销神作
  • 宋徽宗御解道德真经

    宋徽宗御解道德真经

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 年华烟然

    年华烟然

    《年华烟然》讲述的是一位90后中学生的成长故事。主人公崔敬文一开始只是一个平凡、缺乏自制力的中学生。他和很多学生一样逛网吧、考试作弊,因为成绩退步而进入B班,后通过不断的自我调整逐渐成长为一名精英中学生。高中后的崔敬文过得如鱼得水,参加模拟联合国、接待外国中学生、打篮球、踢足球、学钢琴,最终通过自主招生考入名牌大学。小说重在对90后中学生的生活现状深入描摹,直指90后的内心深处,对中学生的很多困惑提出了哲理性的解答。主人公独特的学习方法、娱乐方法以及对待早恋的态度,值得90后学生借鉴。全书语言幽默机智,文字功底尤其突出,为90后文学难得的佳品。
  • 边缘

    边缘

    马原站在拉萨的大街上,终于松了一口气。唉,终于来到这里了!他四处张望了一下,觉得拉萨的街上车水马龙的情景还是与他以前想像的不太一样。对拉萨,马原早就抱着一种极其向往的心情的。他知道,西藏这片土地,是一个充满诱惑的地方。这里壮美的雪域风光,高耸的皑皑白雪,恢弘的自然造化,辽阔的高原牧场,迷人的名山名湖名水,众多的古刹古迹古风,独特的民族风情,多彩的民族文化,都无不让你感到心弛神往。而拉萨则更是高原上的一颗令他自己感到璀璨夺目的明珠,所以,在对自己目前的生存状况特别是工作状况不是很满意的情况下,他对拉萨的向往,可以说便也达到了一种异常强烈的地步。