capitalist employer. Instead of selling the products of their capital
and labour to merchants or consumers, they were compelled to sell their
labour-power to the employer as the only means of earning a livelihood.
Again, the social relations between the wealthy employer and his "hands"
were quite different from those intimate personal relations which had
subsisted between the small master and his assistants. The very size of
the factory made such a social change inevitable, the personal relation
which marked medieval industry was no longer possible. Machinery then
did two things. On the one hand, it destroyed the position of the
workman as a self-sufficing industrial unit, and made him dependent on a
capitalist for employment and the means of supporting life. On the other
hand, it weakened the sense of responsibility in the employer towards
his workmen in proportion as the dependence of the latter became more
absolute.

With each step in the growth of the factory system the workman became
more dependent, and the employer more irresponsible. Thus we note the
first industrial effect of machinery in the formation of two definite
industrial classes--the dependent workman, and the irresponsible
employer. The term "irresponsible" is not designed to convey any moral
stigma. The industrial employer can no more be blamed for being
irresponsible than the workman for being dependent. The terms merely
express the nature of the schism which naturally followed the triumph of
machinery. Prophets like Carlyle and Ruskin, slighting the economic
causes of the change, clamoured for "Captains of Industry," employers
who should realize a moral responsibility, and reviving a dead feudalism
should assume unasked the protectorate of their employés. The whole army
of theoretic and practical reformers might indeed be divided into two
classes, according as they seek to impose responsibility on employers,
or to establish a larger independence in the employed. But this is not