As the scale of
industrial enterprise grows larger, pecuniary management comes to
bear less of the character of chicanery and shrewd competition in
detail. That is to say, for an ever-increasing proportion of the
persons who come in contact with this phase of economic life,
business reduces itself to a routine in which there is less
immediate suggestion of overreaching or exploiting a competitor.
The consequent exemption from predatory habits extends chiefly to
subordinates employed in business. The duties of ownership and
administration are virtually untouched by this qualification.
The case is different as regards those individuals or classes who
are immediately occupied with the technique and manual operations
of production. Their daily life is not in the same degree a
course of habituation to the emulative and invidious motives and
maneuvers of the pecuniary side of industry. They are
consistently held to the apprehension and coordination of
mechanical facts and sequences, and to their appreciation and
utilization for the purposes of human life. So far as concerns
this portion of the population, the educative and selective
action of the industrial process with which they are immediately
in contact acts to adapt their habits of thought to the
non-invidious purposes of the collective life.
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