Unit Twenty-three
Capital and Labour
In the last half of the nineteenth century capital and labour were enlarging and perfecting their rival organizations on modern lines. Many an old firm was displaced by a limited liability company with a bureaucracy of salaried managers. The change met the technical requirements of the new age by engaging a large professional element and prevented the decline in efficiency that so commonly spoiled the fortunes of family firms in the second and third generation after the energetic founders. It was moreover a step away from individual initiative, towards collectivism and municipal and state-owned business. The railway companies, though still private business managed for the benefit of shareholders, were very unlike old family business. At the same time the great municipalities went into business to supply lighting, trams and other services to the taxpayers.
The grown of the limited liability company and municipal business had important consequences. Such large, impersonal manipulation of capital and industry greatly increased the numbers and importance of shareholders as a class, an element in national life representing irresponsible wealth detached from the land and the duties of the landowners; and almost equally detached from the responsible management of business. All through the nineteenth century, America, Africa, India, Australia and parts of Europe were being developed by British capital, and British shareholders were thus enriched by the worlds movement towards industrialization. Towns like Bournemouth and Eastbourne sprang up to house large comfortable classes who had retired on their incomes, and who had no relation to the rest of the community except that of drawing dividends and occasionally attending a shareholders meeting to dectate their orders to the management. On the other hand shareholding meant leisure and freedom which was used by many of the later Victorians for the highest purpose of a great civilization.
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