And that is not all. When an employer turns his business into a joint stock company he becomes an employee. He may be the head employee who orders all the other employees about, engaging and dismissing them as he thinks fit; but still he is an employee, and can be dismissed by the shareholders and replaced by another manager if they think he is taking too much for his services. Against this possibility he usually protects himself by selling his establishment to the company at first for a number of shares sufficient to enable him to outvote all the discontented shareholders (each share carries a vote); and in any case his position as the established head who has made a success of the business, or at least persuaded the shareholders that he has, is a strong one. But he does not live for ever. When he dies or retires, a new manager must be found; and this successor is not his heir, but a stranger entering as a removable employee, managing the concern for a salary and perhaps a percentage of the profits. Now an able employee-manager can command a high salary, and have a good deal of power, because he is felt to be indispensable until he is worn out. But he can never be as indispensable as the old employers who invented their own methods, and clung to their “trade secrets” jealously. Their methods necessarily resolved themselves into an office routine which could be picked up, however unintelligently, by those employed in it. The only trade secret that really counted was the new machinery, which was not secret at all; for all the great mechanical inventions are soon communized by law: that is, instead of the inventor of a machine being allowed to keep it as his private property for ever and make all the employers who use it pay him a royalty, he is allowed to monopolize it in this way under a patent for fourteen years only, after which it is at everybody’s disposal.