Lord Kemms was thinking about Mr. Black and that gentleman’s proposals; Mr. Compton Raidsford was thinking, not merely about Mr. Black, but also about Lord Kemms, and wondering how that nobleman would decide.
If there were one thing the owner of Moorlands conceived ought to be put down with a strong hand and a stretched-out arm, that thing was bubble companies.
Even legitimate companies he disliked and distrusted.
A self-made man, he naturally regarded with suspicion the growth of any commercial system likely to render success dependent more upon capital than individual ability and exertion.
A business man, who had for his order much the same esprit de corps as an artist or a poet may be supposed to possess, he noted jealously the increasing tendency of the age to keep small capitalists or non-capitalists in the position of clerks and managers, to concentrate all manufactures in a few hands, and sweep modest master tradesmen off the face of the earth; to do away, in fact, with a business middle class at all, and to reduce the whole system to that of millionnaire and servant.
A thoughtful man, he foresaw that if the great incentive to labour, the prospect of independence, were withdrawn, the employed classes would soon become mere eye-servants, that it would be difficult to procure thoroughly trustworthy clerks and efficient managers.
Right well he knew that the best servant is he who hopes some day to become a master, that the man who obeys orders most implicitly is he who expects at a future period to have to give orders.
High wages and large salaries might be all very well; but Mr. Raidsford declared no salary which a company was justified in giving could compensate a man for the prospect of being some day on his “own account.”
“These companies will ruin our legitimate commerce, lead to jobbery of all sorts, and utterly ruin our working men. I consider limited liability, which is, after all, only the climax of concentration of capital, the greatest curse that ever fell upon England. It is all very well to talk of the rate of discount acting as a beneficial check. The rate of discount which only winds up a few companies, simply means ruin to hundreds and thousands of small traders. In fact, in these days, I do not see how, unless a man have a large capital or be a swindler, he is to get on at all.”
Holding these cheerful views, even concerning legitimate companies, it may readily be imagined how sternly Mr. Raidsford set his face against all ventures which would not, to use his own word, “wash;” how thoroughly he detested the whole system of “getting up” a board; with what rancour he would have pursued “promoters,” even through the purgatory of Basinghall Street.