Every limitation in the supply of
this low-skilled labour, every expansion of the alternatives offered by
emigration, access to free land, &c., will be effectual in crushing a
number of the sweating workshops, and favouring the large factory at
their expense.
Sec. 5. Irresponsibility of Employers.--The third view of the sweating
System lays stress upon its moral aspect, and finds its chief cause in
the irresponsibility of the employer. Now we have already seen that this
severance of the personal relation between employer and employed is a
necessary result of the establishment of the large factory as the
industrial unit, and of the ever-growing complexity of modern commerce.
It is not merely that the widening gap of social position between
employer and employed, and the increased number of the latter, make the
previous close relation impossible. Quite as important is the fact that
the real employer in modern industry is growing more "impersonal." What
we mean is this. The nominal employer or manager is not the real
employer. The real employer of labour is capital, and it is to the
owners of the capital in any business that we must chiefly look for the
exercise of such responsibility as rightly subsists between employer and
employed. Now, while it is calculated that one-eighth of the business of
England is in the hands of joint-stock companies, constituting far more
than one-eighth of the large businesses, in the great majority of other
cases, where business is conducted on a large scale, the head of the
business is to a great extent a mere manager of other people's capital.
Pages:
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127