n
industrial system with which the people must work in order to live. The
few who own and control the productive wealth have it in their power to
say to the many who neither own nor control,--"You may work or you may
not work." If the masses obtain work under these conditions the owners
can say to them further,--"You work, and toil and earn bread and we will
eat it." Thus the few, deriving their power from the means by which
their fellows must work for a living, own the jobs.

5. _The Mastery of Job-Ownership_

Job-ownership is the foundation of the latest and probably the most
complete system of mastery ever perfected. The slave was held only in
physical bondage. Behind serfdom there was land ownership and a
religious sanction. "Divine right" and "God's anointed," were terms used
to bulwark the position of the owning class, who made an effort to
dominate the consciences as well as the bodies of their serfs.
Job-ownership owes its effectiveness to a subtle, psychological power
that overwhelms the unconscious victim, making him a tool, at once easy
to handle and easy to discard.

The system of private ownership that succeeded Feudalism taught the
lesson of economic ambition so thoroughly that it has permeated the
whole world. The conditions of eighteenth century life have passed,
perhaps forever, but its psychology lingers everywhere.

The job-holder has been taught that he must "get ahead" in the world;
that if he practices the economic virtues,--thrift, honesty,
earnestness, persistence, efficiency--he will necessarily receive great
economic reward; that he must support his family on the standard set by
the community, and that to do all of these essential things, he must
take a job and hold on to it. Having taken the job, he finds that in
order to hold it, he must be faithful to the job-owner, even if that
involves faithlessness to his own ideas and ideals, to his health, his
manhood, and the lives of his wife and children.

The driving power in slavery was the lash. Under serfdom it was the
fear of hunger. The modern system of job-ownership owes its
effectiveness to the fact that it has been built upon two of the most
potent driving forces in all the world--hunger and ambition--the driving
force that comes from the empty stomach and the driving force that comes
from the desire for betterment. Thus job-owning, based upon an automatic
self-drive principle, enables the job-owner to exact a return in
faithful serv