Start with the total non-personal wealth of the country, subtract from it the share-values of the small stockholders; the values of all bonds, mortgages and notes; the property of the small tradesman and the small farmer; the value of homes—what remains? There are left the stocks in the hands of the big stockholders; the properties owned and directed by the owners and directors of important industries, public utilities, banks, trust companies and insurance companies. This wealth in the aggregate probably makes up less than 10 per cent of the total wealth of the country and yet the tiny fraction of the population which owns this wealth can exercise a dictatorial control over the economic policies that underlie American public life.
4. The Avenues of Mastery
While control rests back directly or indirectly upon some form of ownership, most owners exercise little or no control over economic affairs. Instead they are made the victims of a social system under which one group lives at the expense of another.
Against this tendency toward control by one group or class (usually a minority) over the lives of another group or class (usually a majority) the human spirit always has revolted. The United States in its earlier years was an embodiment of the spirit of that revolt. President Wilson characterized it excellently in 1916. Speaking of the American Flag, he said,—"That flag was originally stained in very precious blood, blood spilt, not for any dynasty, nor for any small controversies over national advantage, but in order that a little body of three million men in America might make sure that no man was their master."[40]
Against mastery lovers of liberty protest. Mastery means tyranny; mastery means slavery.
Mastery has always been based upon some form of ownership. There is in the United States a group, growing in size, of people who take more in keep than they give in service; people who own land; franchises; stocks and bonds and mortgages; real estate and other forms of investment property; people who are living without ever lifting a finger in toil, or giving anything in labor for an unceasing stream of necessaries, comforts and luxuries. These people, directly or indirectly, are the owners of the productive machinery of the United States.
Historically there have been a number of stages in the development of mastery. First, there was the ownership of the body. One man owned another man, as he might own a house or a pile of hides. At another stage, the owner of the land—the feudal baron or the landlord—said to the tenant, who worked on his land: "You stay on my land. You toil and work and make bread and I will eat it." The present system of mastery is based on the ownership by one group of people, of the productive wealth upon which depends the livelihood of all. The masters of present day economic society have in their possession the natural resources, the tools, the franchises, patents, and the other phases of the modern industrial system with which the people must work in order to live. The few who own and control the productive wealth have it in their power to say to the many who neither own nor control,—"You may work or you may not work." If the masses obtain work under these conditions the owners can say to them further,—"You work, and toil and earn bread and we will eat it." Thus the few, deriving their power from the means by which their fellows must work for a living, own the jobs.
5. The Mastery of Job-Ownership
Job-ownership is the foundation of the latest and probably the most complete system of mastery ever perfected. The slave was held only in physical bondage. Behind serfdom there was land ownership and a religious sanction. "Divine right" and "God's anointed," were terms used to bulwark the position of the owning class, who made an effort to dominate the consciences as well as the bodies of their serfs. Job-ownership owes its effectiveness to a subtle, psychological power that overwhelms the unconscious victim, making him a tool, at once easy to handle and easy to discard.
The system of private ownership that succeeded Feudalism taught the lesson of economic ambition so thoroughly that it has permeated the whole world. The conditions of eighteenth century life have passed, perhaps forever, but its psychology lingers everywhere.