III
Not only by the showering of precepts, by the encouragement of individual effort, and by the dangling of more or less illusory prizes before the wistful multitude does the ruling class maintain its hold. It invites, to some extent, a participation in the harvest. The growth of the shareholding class, of which mention has already been made, is by no means wholly fortuitous. New companies of small initial capital, and with somewhat dubious chances in the great struggle, may be glad enough to market their shares wheresoever they can; but something of seigniorial grace and condescension, though not entirely unmixed with calculating foresight, is apparent in the opening of opportunities for small investment in the larger and more stable corporations. Mr. John B. C. Kershaw, in the Fortnightly Review for May, 1900, gives an interesting account of this fostering of share-investment in England. The industrial magnates, he says, saw that the best policy for preventing the growth of a public sentiment favoring the encroachments of labor would be to increase the number of bourgeoisie interested in industrial affairs. Accordingly they encouraged popular share-buying, with the result that “a large and increasing proportion of the general public is now financially involved in all industrial struggles, and our manufacturers feel assured that the danger lest the workers should be backed by a solid and enthusiastic public opinion in their demands for shorter hours or increased pay no longer exists.”
As in England, so also here. The movement toward corporate ownership is probably more pronounced in the United States than in the older country, and it has been equally encouraged from above. Joint-stock concerns increased in England from 9344 in 1885 to 25,267 in 1898. In Massachusetts, the State in which the preparation of statistics most nearly approaches the methods of science, corporations are reported to have increased during the years 1885-95 by more than 77 per cent. As for shareholders, the nine principal manufacturing industries of Massachusetts for the same period show percentages of increase ranging from 13.87 in tapestry to 637.74 in leather, saddles, and harness. The entire country has shown a marked growth in the number of this class, and it would seem that no one is too poor to hold a share in some corporation. Indeed, to read the arguments of the legal retainers of the magnates in the Income Tax case, and in the various trust cases that from time to time arise, one would think that the main body of the shareholders of the nation was composed of workingmen, widows, and orphans. In no time since the prophet Ezekiel’s day have there been uttered words of such tender consideration for the poor and needy, the widow and the orphan, and of such bitter denunciation for their would-be despoilers as were tearfully put forth in opposing the income tax.
A great number of shareholders in a particular company would seem, on first thought, to be something of a nuisance. Unquestionably they would represent a wide range of conflicting views and antagonistic purposes, all bearing upon the one problem of the proper operation of the company’s property; and would thus give salient instances of that unwisdom which is too often found in a multitude of counsellors. At least this is the seigniorial argument against national collectivism—an argument which one might naturally suppose to be quite as applicable to the particular collectivism of the stock company. But it does not so apply; the solid advantages of diffused shareholding in assuring general public sanction to the acts of the magnates outweigh the confusion and danger which are alleged to lie in public ownership.
The social and political effect of this general participation in the ownership of industries may be readily observed by all but the blind. “If the truth were known,” wrote that keen-witted financier, Mr. Russell Sage, in a magazine article published last May, “concentration of wealth is popular with the masses.” Partners in the great enterprises, the multitude of petty shareholders are led more and more to consider economic questions from the employers’ standpoint. In the controversies between labor and capital ten years ago the average citizen was but an onlooker, sometimes a weak partisan of capital, but very often a neutral, with a strong latent sympathy for the “under dog.” To-day, thanks to his holding of a single share in the steel corporation or of two or three shares in some street railway company, he is an employer, one of the men “to whom God, in His infinite wisdom, has given the control of the property interests of the country.” He sees, thinks, and feels as a member, however humble, of the employing class; and what the magnates think and do is to him all the law and the prophets. “Bound by gold chains about the feet” of his feudatory lords, he is at the same time a sharer in their responsibilities and a faithful retainer in their service.