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BOOKS 381 management all that it can make itself worth. Labor, having this paid management for its service and capital for the use of industrial facilities, must then in fixing its own wage, which fixes the market price of its product, have due regard for the public which is all of the other labor groups, including transportation, agriculture, professional and other services." (pp. 17-8).* The sum and substance of this excerpt, aside from its unparalleled stupidity is that the working class should look on without bitterness while American capitalism piles up huge profits and should accept the wage cuts that American capitalism wants to force on it in order to carry out an ever sharper competitive struggle on the domestic and world markets. This interpretation, according to Brookings, is finding an ever wider acceptation. The proletariat knows that it is among its enemies-A. F. of L. bureaucrats, social democrats, and Musteites-that this "interpretation," this attack on the working class is finding acceptance. Brookings reveals that trustification and the elimination of the small retailer by chain stores brings forth the "socialized corporation, owned by all the people." He does not bother to substantiate this assertion as do most of his ilk. There has been a drive to get a few shares of stock into the hands of workers and consumers during the past few years. A few corporations have tried to stifle the unrest among their workers by selling a few shares of stock to them on the installment plan. Among the white collar slave drivers the sale of the corporations stock was carried on to spur them on to driving the proletariat ever more mercilessly. The great public utility corporations have sold a small proportion of their stocks among the petty bourgeois consumers as one means of stilling their opposition to higher public service rates. There must also be mentioned in this summary of "stocks" owned by all the people that which the petty bourgeoisie, etc., had its hands on for a time prior to the stock market crash and by which it expected to reap the hundreds and thousands of dollars that are its utmost joy. White collar slaves, teachers, doctors, the labor aristocracy, professionals of a hundred categories, shopkeepers, the whole miserable lot found in the speculative frenzy of the stock market boom an exhilaration such as it had not known for a decade and a hope, yea a promise, ------ * This gem of Mr. R. S. B. first occurred in his "Industrial Ownership" and is repeated in the present volume by him probably because it reveals his unique analytical ability. We quote it at some length to let the reader witness for himself to what depths bourgeois economics can sink. The academicians who write bourgeois economics tell their story less childishly but none the less with a grasp of the significance of capitalism quite comparable to that of Mr. Robert S. Brookings.
