should safeguard and direct the course of capital accumulation.

5.--The preceding discussion bears directly upon the next question to be
considered, namely, the present economic position of those who perform
the work of direction in industry. Only one or two aspects of this
subject require attention in this investigation.

It may be remarked, to begin with, that those who own the capital
invested in industrial enterprises thereby possess the most general
powers of control and direction over them. These powers they may
exercise personally or through their agents--but in either case, the
fact of ownership is the decisive influence in the settlement of these
questions in which the wage earners are most interested. The fact that
some of the capital invested in particular enterprises may not carry
with it any rights of control or direction--as for example, the capital
invested in railway bonds, or the temporary borrowings from the banks
contracted by most industrial concerns--does not affect this truth. It
is entirely conceivable that enterprises might be carried on wholly with
the use of such capital as gave no title to control over the conduct of
the enterprise; but at present, the opposite, generally speaking, is the
fact. And as is to be expected the work of direction is dominated
normally by the necessity of earning profit for the owners of the
enterprise--though many other sentiments and motives may and do mingle
with the motive of profit-making. These facts form the basis of two
suppositions, by the aid of which the argument of this book is carried
out.

The first one is to this effect: that if rent incomes (in the sense of
Ricardian rent) are left out of consideration, since they will not be
directly affected by the policy of wage settlement, the product of
industry is distributed in two major forms. These are to wit: that which
is received by workmen in direct return for their labor, which is called
wages; and that which goes to those who own, and therefore govern,
directly or indirectly, the operation of industrial enterprises, which
is called profits. It is hardly necessary to remark that the same
individual may be in receipt of both forms of income. The second form of
income "profits" is a mixed form of income which may be analyzed in
different instances, into very different quantities of the elements
which make it up. This mixed form of income, which goes to the owners of
industry by virtue of their dual co