Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 1.djvu/592

580 claims; "But the guardianship of minor children or the receivership of a corporation is a responsibility for other people's interests. The law necessarily limits the agent's liberty to delegate such responsibility. There is no proper parallel, however, between this relation and that of a great employer managing his own business. Consequently the analogy just alleged does not exist, and there is no such anomaly as that asserted in permitting gift bequest or inheritance of captaincies of industry, regardless of managerial fitness."

My rejoinder is that this demurrer represents the very lack of intelligence that I am pointing out with reference to the social significance of business management. The organizer or manager of a capitalistic enterprise is as truly a trustee of the interests of others—viz., both stockholders and employes—as is the guardian of an orphan, or the receiver of an insolvent corporation, or the master of a passenger steamship on the Atlantic. The business is created by the union of many men; it is the combined action of many men; it operates for many men. In short it is of, for, and by not one, but many. The organizer contributes much brain power, and perchance much wealth power and brawn power, to the combination; but after all, these are only factors, not the whole of the combination. Over against all the ownership rights which do and should accrue to such manager, social responsibilities on the part of the management arise and develop with every stage in the progress of the business. These responsibilities are obligations to coöperators in the business, and to the society more remotely affected by the business. These obligations fix the ethical limits of ownership, and define the duties incumbent on proprietorship.

Conceding, then, every item of justly acquired ownership on the part of the manager, when we turn to the obligation side of the ledger page we discover that with this ownership there has accrued a burden of responsibility for administrative labor, and that many persons have a moral lien upon the discharge of that responsibility. No mere owner of a part of the business, not even the legal owner of the whole stock, can obtain such discharge