rms are concerned) on the industry as a whole, just that
transference of the control of production from the owner of capital to
those whose business is production, which we saw is necessary if
industry is to be organized for the performance of service, not for the
pecuniary advantage of those who hold proprietary rights. Their Report
is of the first importance as offering a policy for attenuating private
property in capital in the important group of industries in which
private ownership, in one form or another, is likely for some
considerable time to continue, and a valuable service would be rendered
by any one who would work out in detail the application of its
principle to other trades.

Not, of course, that this is the only way, or in highly capitalized
industries the most feasible way, in which the change can be brought
about. Had the movement against the control of production by property
taken place before the rise of limited companies, in which ownership is
separated from management, the transition to the organization of
industry as a profession might also have taken place, as the employers
and workmen in the building trade propose that it should, by limiting
the rights of private ownership without abolishing it. But that is not
what has actually happened, and therefore the proposals of the building
trade are not of universal application. It is possible to retain
private ownership in building and in industries like building, {110}
while changing its character, precisely because in building the
employer is normally not merely an owner, but something else as well.
He is a manager; that is, he is a workman. And because he is a
workman, whose interests, and still more whose professional spirit as a
workman may often outweigh his interests and merely financial spirit as
an owner, he can form part of the productive organization of the
industry, after his rights as an owner have been trimmed and limited.

But that dual position is abnormal, and in the highly organized
industries is becoming more abnormal every year. In coal, in cotton,
in ship-building, in many branches of engineering the owner of capital
is not, as he is in building, an organizer or manager. His connection
with the industry and interest in it is purely financial. He is an
owner and nothing more. And because his interest is merely financial,
so that his concern is dividends and production only as a means to
dividends, he cannot be worked into a