ice that neither slavery nor serfdom ever made possible.
Job-owning is thus the most thorough-going form of mastery yet devised
by the ingenuity of man.

Unlike the slave owner and the Feudal lord the modern job-owner has no
responsibility to the job-holder. The slave owner must feed, clothe and
house his slave--otherwise he lost his property. The Feudal lord must
protect and assist his tenant. That was a part of his bargain with his
overlord. The modern job-owner is at liberty, at any time, to
"discharge" the job-holder, and by throwing him out of work take away
his chance of earning a living. While he keeps the job-holder on his
payroll, he may pay him impossibly low wages and overwork him under
conditions that are unfit for the maintenance of decent human life.
Barring the factory laws and the health laws, he is at liberty to impose
on the job-holder any form of treatment that the job-holder will
tolerate.

There is no limit to the amount of industrial property that one man may
own. Therefore, there is no limit to the number of jobs he may control.
It is possible (not immediately likely) that one coterie of men might
secure possession of enough industrial property to control the jobs of
all of the gainfully occupied people in American industry. If this
result could be achieved, these tens of millions would be able to earn a
living only in case the small coterie in control permitted them to do
so.

Job ownership is built, of necessity, on the ownership of land,
resources, capital, credit, franchises, and other special privileges.
But its power of control goes far beyond this mere physical ownership
into the realms of social psychology.

The early colonists, who fled from the economic, political, social and
religious tyranny of feudalism, believed that liberty and freedom from
unjust mastery lay in the private ownership of the job. They had no
thought of the modern industrial machine.

The abolitionists who fought slavery believed that freedom and liberty
could be obtained by unshackling the body. They did not foresee the
shackled mind.

The modern world, seeking freedom; yearning for liberty and justice;
aiming at the overthrow of the mastery that goes with irresponsible
power, finds to its dismay that the ownership of the job carries with
it, not only economic mastery, but political, social and even religious
mastery, as well.

6. _The Ownership of the Product_

The industrial overlord holds control of t