English domestic industry of the eighteenth century. It was under the conditions of this inchoate phase of the machine age that the earlier generation of economists worked out their theory of the business man's part in industry. It was then still true, in great measure, that the undertaker was the owner of the industrial equipment, and that he kept an Immediate oversight of the mechanical processes as well as of the pecuniary transactions in which his enterprise was engaged ; and it was also true, with relatively infrequent exceptions, that an unsophisticated productive efficiency was the prime element of business success.' A further featiu'e of that precapitalistic business situation is that business, whether handicraft or
' a. Cnntillon, Ssiai aurlf Cf-mmrrrt. ]' partle, ch. III., VI., IX., XIV., XV. ; Wealth of JVad'oM, bk. I. ; BUchar. Entlf.hung der VolkfUrfrficAci/I (3d ed.), ch. IV. aad V. ; Sonbart, Kapitalitmua, VoL 1 bk.L
trade, was cuetomarily managed with a view to earning a livelihood rather than with a view to profits on investment.'
In proportion as the machine industry gained ground, and as the modem concatenation of industrial processes and of markets developed, the conjunctures of business grew more varied and of larger scope at the same time that they became more amenable to shrewd manipulation. The pecuniary side of the enterprise came to require more unremitting attention, as the chances for gain or loss through business relations simply, aside from mere industrial efBciency, grew greater in number and magnitude. The same circumstances also provoked a spirit of business enterprise, and brought on a systematic investment for gain. With a fuller development of the modern closeknit and comprehensive industrial system, the point of chief attention for the business man has shifted from the old-fashioned surveillance and regulation of a given