cantile puTBuits or in the conduct of an industrial concern. The point of the inquiry is that characteristically modem business that is coextensive with the machine process described above and is occupied with the large mechanical industry. The aim is a theory of such business enterprise in outline sufficiently full to show in what manner busi-| ness methods and business principles, in conjunction with the mechanical industry, influence the modem cultural situation. To save space and tedium, therefore, features of business traffic that are not of a broad character and not peculiar to this modem situation are left on one side, as being already sufficiently familiar for the purpose in hand.
In early modern times, before the regime of the machine industry set in, business enterprise on any appreciable scale commonly took the form of commercial business — some form of merchandising or banking. Shipping was the only considerable line of business which involved an investment in or management of extensive mechanical appliances and processes, comparable with the facts of the modern mechanical industry.' And shipping was
' It is eigciflcaDt that joint-atocb methoda of orgaciialioa uid numBgement — that is to eay. iinpersonall; eapitaliHtic methoda — are traceable, for their origin and early formnlatioD, to the shipping compimies of early modem llmeB. Cf. K. Lehmann, Dir geschicMlielu SntmUkelung den Aktienreehts bti turn Code de Commeree. The like view is spoken for by Ehrenberg, ZeitaUer der Fwjger ; aee vol. II pp. 335 e( wg.