For the purposes of a genetic inquiry into this modern business situation and its bearing on the sense of workmanship and on the technological phenomena in which that instinct comes to an expression, it is necessary summarily to recall certain current facts pertinent to the case: (_a_) It is a competitive system; that is to say it is a system of pecuniary rivalry and contention which proceeds on stable institutions of property and contract, under conditions of peace and order. (_b_) It is a price system, i. e., the competition runs in terms of money, and the money unit is the standard measure of efficiency and achievement; hence competition and efficiency are subject to a rigorous accountancy in terms of a (putatively) stable money unit, which is in all business traffic assumed to be invariable. (_c_) Technologically this situation is dominated by the mechanical industries; so much so that even the arts of husbandry have latterly taken on much of the character of the mechanic arts. Hence a somewhat thoroughgoing standardisation of processes and products in mechanical terms; which for business purposes has with a fair degree of success been made convertible into terms of price, and so made subject to accountancy in terms of price. (_d_) Hence consumption is also standardised, proximately in mechanical terms of consumable products but finally, through the mechanism of the market, in terms of price, and like other price phenomena consumption also is competitively subject to and enforced by the like accountancy in terms of the money unit. (_e_) The typical industries, which set the pace for productive work, for competitive gains, and through the standard rates of gain ultimately also for competitive consumption, are industries carried on on a large scale; that is to say they are such as to require a large material equipment, a wide recourse to technological insight and proficiency, and a large draught on the material resources of the community. (_f_) This material equipment--industrial plant and natural resources--is held in private ownership, with negligible exceptions; the noteworthy exceptions to this rule, as e. g., harbours, highways, and the like, serving chiefly as accessory means of industry and so come in chiefly as a gratuitous supplement to the industrial equipment held in private ownership and used for competitive gain. (_g_) Technological knowledge and proficiency is in the main held and transmitted pervasively by the community at large, but it is also held in part--more obviously because exceptionally--by specially trained classes and individual workmen. Relatively little, in effect a negligible proportion, of this technological knowledge and skill is in any special sense held by the owners of the industrial equipment, more particularly not by the owners of the typical large-scale industries. That is to say, the technologically proficient workmen do not in the typical case