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The slave owner must feed, clothe and house his slave otherwise he lost his property. The Feudal lord must protect and assist his tenant. That was a part of his bargain with his overlord. The modern job-owner is at liberty, at any time, to "discharge" the job-holder, and by throwing him out of work take away his chance of earning a living.
Having taken the job, he finds that in order to hold it, he must be faithful to the job-owner, even if that involves faithlessness to his own ideas and ideals, to his health, his manhood, and the lives of his wife and children. The driving power in slavery was the lash. Under serfdom it was the fear of hunger.
Thus job-owning, based upon an automatic self-drive principle, enables the job-owner to exact a return in faithful service that neither slavery nor serfdom ever made possible. Job-owning is thus the most thorough-going form of mastery yet devised by the ingenuity of man. Unlike the slave owner and the Feudal lord the modern job-owner has no responsibility to the job-holder.
To-day, through combinations and consolidations, industry has ceased to be competitive, and the exploiting power of the job-owner is extended through his ownership of the product. The modern town-dweller is almost wholly in the hands of the private owners of the products upon which he depends.
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