nd, notoriously, subsidiary to the immaterial equipment of skill,
dexterity and judgment embodied in the person of the craftsman. The body
of information, or general knowledge, requisite to a workmanlike
proficiency as handicraftsman was sufficiently slight and simple to fall
within the ordinary reach of the working class, without special
schooling; and the material equipment necessary to the work, in the way
of tools and appliances, was also slight enough, ordinarily, to bring it
within the reach of the common man. The stress fell on the acquirement
of that special personal skill, dexterity and judgment that would
constitute the workman a master of his craft. Given a reasonable measure
of pertinacity, the common man would be able to compass the material
equipment needful to the pursuit of his craft, and so could make his way
to a livelihood; and the inviolable right of ownership would then serve
to secure him the product of his own industry, in provision for his own
old-age and for a fair start in behalf of his children. At least in the
popular conception, and presumably in some degree also in fact, the
right of property so served as a guarantee of personal liberty and a
basis of equality. And so its apologists still look on the institution.

In a very appreciable degree this complexion of things and of popular
conceptions has changed since then; although, as would be expected, the
change in popular conceptions has not kept pace with the changing
circumstances. In all the characteristic and controlling lines of
industry the modern machine technology calls for a very considerable
material equipment; so large an equipment, indeed, that this plant, as
it is called, always represents a formidable amount of invested wealth;
and also so large that it will, typically, employ a considerable number
of workmen per unit of plant. On the transition to the machine
technology the plant became the unit of operation, instead of the
workman, as had previously been the case; and with the further
development of this modern technology, during the past hundred and fifty
years or so, the unit of operation and control has increasingly come to
be not the individual or isolated plant but rather an articulated group
of such plants working together as a balanced system and keeping pace in
common, under a collective business management; and coincidently the
individual workman has been falling into the position of an auxiliary
factor, nearly into t