A great number of shareholders in a particular company would seem, on first thought, to be something of a nuisance. Unquestionably they would represent a wide range of conflicting views and antagonistic purposes, all bearing upon the one problem of the proper operation of the company’s property; and would thus give salient instances of that unwisdom which is too often found in a multitude of counsellors. At least this is the seigniorial argument against national collectivism--an argument which one might naturally suppose to be quite as applicable to the particular collectivism of the stock company. But it does not so apply; the solid advantages of diffused shareholding in assuring general public sanction to the acts of the magnates outweigh the confusion and danger which are alleged to lie in public ownership.
The social and political effect of this general participation in the ownership of industries may be readily observed by all but the blind. “If the truth were known,” wrote that keen-witted financier, Mr. Russell Sage, in a magazine article published last May, “concentration of wealth is popular with the masses.” Partners in the great enterprises, the multitude of petty shareholders are led more and more to consider economic questions from the employers’ standpoint. In the controversies between labor and capital ten years ago the average citizen was but an onlooker, sometimes a weak partisan of capital, but very often a neutral, with a strong latent sympathy for the “under dog.” To-day, thanks to his holding of a single share in the steel corporation or of two or three shares in some street railway company, he is an employer, one of the men “to whom God, in His infinite wisdom, has given the control of the property interests of the country.” He sees, thinks, and feels as a member, however humble, of the employing class; and what the magnates think and do is to him all the law and the prophets. “Bound by gold chains about the feet” of his feudatory lords, he is at the same time a sharer in their responsibilities and a faithful retainer in their service.