h drank blood
but scattered trembling at the voice of a man. To extinguish royalties
and urban ground-rents is merely to explode a superstition. It needs
as little--and as much--resolution as to put one's hand through any
other ghost. In all industries except the diminishing number in which
the capitalist is himself the manager, property in capital is almost
equally passive. Almost, but not quite. For, though the majority of
its owners do not themselves exercise any positive function, they
appoint those who do. It is true, of course, that the question of how
capital is to be owned is distinct from the question of how it is to be
administered, and that the former can be settled without prejudice to
the latter. To infer, because shareholders own capital which is
indispensable to industry, that therefore industry is dependent upon
the maintenance of capital in the hands of shareholders, to write, with
some economists, as though, if private property in capital were further
attenuated or abolished altogether, the constructive energy of the
managers who may own capital or may not, but rarely, in the more
important industries, own more than a small fraction of it, must
necessarily be impaired, is to be guilty of a robust _non-sequitur_ and
to ignore the most obvious facts of {92} contemporary industry. The
less the mere capitalist talks about the necessity for the consumer of
an efficient organization of industry, the better; for, whatever the
future of industry may be, an efficient organization is likely to have
no room for _him_. But though shareholders do not govern, they reign,
at least to the extent of saying once a year "_le roy le veult_." If
their rights are pared down or extinguished, the necessity for some
organ to exercise them will still remain. And the question of the
ownership of capital has this much in common with the question of
industrial organization, that the problem of the constitution under
which industry is to be conducted is common to both.

That constitution must be sought by considering how industry can be
organized to express most perfectly the principle of purpose. The
application to industry of the principle of purpose is simple, however
difficult it may be to give effect to it. It is to turn it into a
Profession. A Profession may be defined most simply as a trade which
is organized, incompletely, no doubt, but genuinely, for the
performance of function. It is not simply a collection