Page:James Ramsay MacDonald - The Socialist Movement.pdf/51

 Rh wages now and formerly. The textile operative used to employ tools equivalent in price to but a few months of his labour, whilst in modern times there is a capital in plant of about £200 for each man, woman and child in a textile factory. The cost of a steam ship is equivalent to the price of the labour for ten years of those who work her, whilst the railway servants operate capital valued at perhaps twenty years of their wages. In 1845 Culloch estimated that the fixed capital in good cotton mills was no more than equal to two years' wages of an operative; Marshall’s figures work out at five years' wages.

This brings us to a new stage.

The increase in the amount of capital used led to a revolution in the ownership of it. Industrial capital used to be owned by those who used it. The employer was the capitalist. But obviously one man cannot own the Midland Railway, or one of the huge modern engineering concerns like Armstrong, Whitworth & Co. So it has inevitably happened that the capital required for these huge undertakings is procured from a wide area of capitalists. Thus the limited liability, or joint stock, company arose to mark a further stage in capitalist evolution.

The constitution of these companies ls quite familiar. Their capital is raised in the