102

POLITICAL  ECONOMY

by  entering  the  ranks  of  those  who  exercise
the  employing  function.  Moreover,  in  consequence ­
  of  the  greater  safety  assured  to
the  capital  of  investors  when  a  business
is  clothed  in  the  legal  company  forms,
it  has  drawn  increasing  proportions  of
the  savings  of  the  community  into  the
industrial  field,  and  induced  a  higher  degree
of  saving  than  would  have  taken  place
otherwise.
To  say  that  the  earnings  of  employers  are
settled  by  demand  and  supply  is  not  to
demonstrate  that  it  is  open  to  everybody  who
is  prepared  to  undertake  the  burden,  and  is
capable  of  doing  the  work,  to  make  the
employer’s  income.  It  is  still  necessary  in
almost  all  circumstances,  that  a  person
should  be  possessed  of  some  substantial
resources  if  he  is  to  thrust  himself  into  the
employing  class.  Moreover,  it  is  generally
requisite  that  he  should  have  received  a
certain  kind  of  training,  and  be  in  certain
relations  with  particular  sections  of  the
business  world,  to  enable  him  to  make  a  start
with  fair  prospects  of  success.  Consequently,
to  all  but  the  most  exceptional  of  those  who
are  born  in  the  lower  economic  ranks,  the
scaling  of  the  industrial  ladder  is  hard  in
the  absence  of  unusually  good  fortune.  It