The Acquisitive SocietyTawney, R. H. (Richard Henry)
Philosophy
The Acquisitive Society
Tawney, R. H. (Richard Henry)
Economics; Industries; Social problems
To complete the transformation all that is needed is that this new
class of officials, who fifty years ago were almost unknown, should
recognize that they, like the manual workers, are the victims of the
domination of property, and that both professional pride and economic
interest require that they should throw in their lot with the rest of
those who are engaged in constructive work. Their position to-day is
often, indeed, very far from being a happy one. Many of them, like
some mine managers, are miserably paid. Their tenure of their posts is
sometimes highly insecure. Their opportunities for promotion may be
few, and distributed with a singular capriciousness. They see the
prizes of industry awarded by favoritism, or by the nepotism which
results in the head of a business unloading upon it a family of sons
whom it would be economical to pay to keep out of it, and which,
indignantly denounced on the rare occasions on which it occurs in the
public service, is so much the rule in private industry that no one
even questions its propriety. During the war they have found that,
while the organized workers have secured advances, their own salaries
have often remained almost stationary, because they have been too
genteel to take part in trade unionism, and that to-day they are
sometimes paid less than the men for whose work they are supposed to be
responsible. Regarded by the workmen as the hangers-on of the masters,
and by their employers as one section among the rest of the "hands,"
they have the odium of capitalism without its power or its profits.
{163}
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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