Thorstein Veblen
ABSENTEE OWNERSHIP AND BUSINESS ENTERPRISE IN RECENT TIMES. THE CASE OF AMERICA.

(New York, N.Y.: B. W. Huebsch, 1923, 445 p.)
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In case of U.S. copyright laws, we can only give you Veblen's 'Preface',
the 'Contents' and a part of the 'introductory' to read. You can get a brief 
overview of what is the main goal of that book.

NOTES from Britannica (1911) to understand Veblen's theme:

"ABSENTEEISM, a term used primarily of landed proprietors who absent themselves from their estates, and live and spend their incomes elsewhere; in its more extended meaning it includes all those (in addition to landlords) who live out of a country or locality but derive their income from some source within it. Absenteeism is a question which has been much debated, and from both the economic and moral point of view there is little doubt that it has a prejudicial effect. To it has been attributed in a great measure the unprosperous condition of the rural districts of France before the Revolution, when it was unusual for the great nobles to live on their estates unless compelled to do so by a sentence involving their "exile" from Paris. It has also been an especial evil in Ireland, and many attempts were made to combat it. As early as 1727 a tax of four shillings in the pound was imposed on all persons holding offices and employments in Ireland and residing in England. This tax was discontinued in 1753, but was re-imposed in 1769. In 1774 the tax was reduced to two shillings in the pound, but was dropped after some years. It was revived by the Independent Parliament in 1782 and for some ten years brought in a substantial amount to the revenue, yielding in 1790 as much as 63,089.
AUTHORITIES. For a discussion of absenteeism from the economic point of view see N. W. Senior, Lectures on the Rate of Wages, Political Economy, J. S. Mill, Political Economy; J. R. McCulloch, Treatises and Essays on Money, &c., article "Absenteeism "; A. T. Hadley, Economics; on absenteeism in Ireland see A. Young, Toiir in Ireland (1780); T. Prior, List of Absentees (1729); E. Wakefield, Account of Ireland (1812); W. E. H. Lecky, Ireland in the 18th Century (1892); A. E. Murray, History of the Commercial and Financial Relations between England and Ireland (1903); Parliamentary Papers, Ireland, 1830, vii., ditto, 1845, xix.-xxii.; in France, A. de Monchretien, Traité de L'economie politique (1615); A. de Tocqueville, L'Ancien Règime (1857); H. Taine, Les Origines de la France contemporaine, L'ancien Règime (1876)"
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PREFACE
The following essay is an inquiry into the economic situation as it has taken 
shape during this (twentieth) century, particularly as exemplified in the case 
of America. Its aim is an objective, theoretical analysis and formulation of the 
main drift, as determined by the material circumstances of the case, including 
the industrial arts, and by the dominant institution of absentee ownership, 
including the use of credit. This analysis and formulation occupies Part II of 
the essay. It makes little use of the received theories of Political Economy; 
not as departing from the received theories or discrediting them, but because 
the inquiry is concerned chiefly with economic forces and phenomena which are of 
later date than the received doctrines.
Part I of the essay is occupied with a summary description of that range of 
economic circumstances and that sequence of economic growth and change which 
have led up through the nineteenth century and have come to a head in the 
situation of the past two decades; regard being had chiefly to the case of 
England for the earlier decades of the century and chiefly to the case of 
America for the later years. It makes no use of recondite information and makes 
no attempt to penetrate beyond the workday facts which are already familiar to 
students of these matters.
March 1923

CONTENTS
PART I
Chapter
I INTRODUCTORY                                          3
II THE GROWTH AND VALUE OF NATIONAL INTEGRITY          11
III LAW AND CUSTOM IN RECENT TIMES:
i. HANDICRAFT AND NATURAL RIGHTS                       40
ii. THE NATURAL RIGHT OF INVESTMENT                 50-69
IV THE ERA OF FREE COMPETITION                         69
V THE RISE OF THE CORPORATION                          82
VI THE CAPTAIN OF INDUSTRY                            101
VII THE CASE OF AMERICA:
i. THE SELF-MADE MAN                                  119
ii. THE INDEPENDENT FARMER                            129
iii. THE COUNTRY TOWN                                 142
iv. THE NEW GOLD                                      165
v. THE TIMBER LANDS AND THE OIL FIELDS                186
PART II
Chapter VIII THE NEW ORDER OF BUSINESS                205
Chapter IX THE INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM OF THE NEW ORDER     229
Chapter X THE TECHNOLOGY OF PHYSICS AND CHEMISTRY     251
Chapter XI MANUFACTURES AND SALESMANSHIP              284
Chapter XII THE LARGER USE OF CREDIT                  326
Chapter XIII THE SECULAR TREND                    398-445

[1]
ABSENTEE OWNERSHIP AND BUSINESS ENTERPRISE IN RECENT TIMES
PART I
[2] [3]
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY
In recent times absentee ownership has come to be the main and immediate 
controlling interest in the life of civilised men. It is the paramount issue 
between the civilised nations, and guides the conduct of their affairs at home 
and abroad. The Great War arose out of a conflict of absentee interests and the 
Peace was negotiated with a view to stabilise them.
This state of things is not precisely new, nor has it come on suddenly. It is a 
growth out of the past, but it has reached something like a culmination during 
these opening decades of the century; and it is an outcome of cumulative changes 
which have been directed to no such end. The years of the Great War and the 
Armistice have brought many things to a head, and among other things they have 
also thrown this factor into the foreground of the situation. And the experience 
of the War and after has stirred men to a crude and uneasy realisation of this 
state of things. Under one form of words or another, issues which arise out of 
the sovereign rights of absentee ownership are stirring the popular sentiment 
and engaging the attention of the officials with an ever increasing urgency. 
These issues are the substance of all those desperate perplexities that beset 
the constituted authorities and they underlie all those dissensions that 
continually trouble the nation's industry and business. With the result that 
popular attention and sentiment are [4] gathering about the issues of absentee 
ownership more and more directly and consciously with each further move, - 
questions of its aims and uses, its necessary limitations, its continued 
security, its rightful claims, and its possible eventual abridgment or 
disallowance.
It is true, this particular form of words - "Absentee Ownership" - has not been 
commonly employed to describe this peculiar institution which now engrosses 
public policy and about which controversy is beginning to gather. But that only 
marks a deficiency of speech. It is only within the last few decades, and only 
by degrees, that the facts in the case have been changing in such a way as to 
call for the habitual use of such a phrase as "absentee ownership." It is only 
within the last few decades, and only by degrees, that absentee ownership has 
visibly come to be the main controlling factor in the established order of 
things. Yet it is no less true that this peculiar institution which this form of 
words is fit to describe has now plainly come to be the prime institutional 
factor that underlies and governs the established order of society. At the same 
time and in the same degree it has, as a matter of course, become the chief 
concern of the constituted authorities in all the civilised nations to safeguard 
the security and gainfulness of absentee ownership. This state of things is now 
plain to be seen, and it is therefore beginning to cloud the sentiments of the 
underlying population at whose cost this security and gainfulness are 
maintained.
So, by degrees the drift of changing conditions has been heading up in a new 
alignment of economic forces and of economic classes. So that the dominant 
considerations which now govern the material fortunes of the community are no 
longer the same as they have been in the recent past; nor indeed such as they 
are alleged to [5] be in the present. These matters are still spoken of in terms 
handed down from the past, and law and custom still run in terms that are fit to 
describe a past situation and conform to the logic of a bygone alignment of 
forces. As always, the language employed and the principles acted on lag behind 
the facts. But when, as now, the facts have been changing at an unexampled rate 
the language and the principles will lag behind the facts by an unexampled 
interval. Yet under the urgent pressure of new material conditions some degree 
of adjustment or derangement of these ancient principles is due to follow. 
Continued "lag, leak and friction" is bound to count for something in the 
outcome. Continued irritation and defeat begot of a system of law and custom 
that no longer fits the material conditions of life will necessarily be an 
agency of unrest, particularly as touches the frame of mind of that fraction of 
the community on whom the irritation and defeat continue chiefly to fall.
Therefore these time-worn principles of ownership and control, which are now 
coming to a head in a system of absentee ownership and control, are beginning to 
come in for an uneasy and reluctant reconsideration; particularly at the hands 
of that underlying population who have no absentee ownership to safeguard. Their 
questioning of these matters habitually takes the shape of personal 
recrimination and special pleading, but the drift of it all is no less evident. 
Those traditions that underlie the established order and that guide legal and 
administrative policy, proceed on an assumed community of class interests, a 
national solidarity of interests, and an international conflict of interests; 
none of which is borne out by material facts. Therefore these traditional 
policies that still govern the conduct of affairs, civil and political, legal 
and administrative, are also falling under suspicion [6] of being incompetent, 
irrelevant and impertinent, if not downright mischievous. The losers under these 
rules of the game are beginning to see that law and politics, too, serve the 
needs of the absentee owners at the cost of the underlying population.
So, popular interest and sentiment no longer cluster about these respectable 
heirlooms of civil liberty and national rivalry with the same enthusiastic 
bigotry as in the recent past. Among these unblest classes who have to pay its 
cost, patriotic animosity is no longer so unreflectingly self-sufficient as it 
once was, and as perhaps it always should be. Among these classes of the 
underlying population the new alignment of material interests is beginning to 
threaten the continued life of the patriotic spirit. The effectual division of 
interest and sentiment is beginning visibly to run on class lines, between the 
absentee owners and the underlying population. In material effect, the national 
frontiers no longer divide anything but national groups of special interests, 
and these special interests are quite uniformly interests of absentee owners. 
National rivalries are useful to these special interests; hence the feverish 
urgency with which the constituted authorities and the substantial citizens are 
concerned to foment national animosity and to penalise backsliders.
Of course these matters are not currently spoken of in these terms. The new 
alignment of interest and sentiment is not formally recognised, not yet. A 
decent respect for the obsolete amenities of Natural Liberty forbids it, and 
there is always the human propensity to hold fast that which once was good. And 
more particularly, the bygone issues of national ambition still continue to hold 
the affections of the substantial citizens, and the spirit of national rivalry 
still continues to serve the needs of the special interests. Therefore national 
ambitions [7] must and shall be preserved and all conflict of class interests 
must and shall be ignored.
...

This summary description of things as they are may seem overdrawn. But it is 
intended to describe the present drift of things, rather than the accomplished 
facts hitherto. It is drawn from current observation rather than from the 
historical records; so that it aims to describe the current facts rather than 
the current talk about these facts. Of course there is no intention to intimate 
that the ancient and honorable habits of national conceit and patriotic 
intolerance have been forgotten or even that they are by way of becoming 
inoperative; nor is it that the rightful claims of absentee ownership are being 
neglected or being formally questioned and required to show cause why. Those 
cardinal realities of the established order have not gone out of date or out of 
mind, neither the one [8] nor the other. Nor is there an effectual resolution 
anywhere being taken to put either of them away; not yet But these ancient and 
honorable pillars of the old order are by way of becoming holdovers, both the 
one and the other; and the spokesmen of both are beginning to find themselves on 
the defensive. As witness the Treaty of Peace, which foots up to little if 
anything else than a plan of defense for the vested interests, concerted between 
the several custodians of the old order, at any cost to the world's peace or to 
the underlying population. As witness also the later conferences of the Powers 
at Genoa, at The Hague, and at Lausanne, which have turned on little else than 
measures designed to stabilise the rightful claims of absentee owners as against 
the defection of the Russians and other recusants, together with the equitable 
distribution of absentee perquisites among the several groups of vested 
interests represented by the several governments concerned.
In effect, and notoriously, it has been the chief and engrossing business of all 
the statesmen of the Armistice and the Treaty, on the winning and the losing 
side alike, to safeguard these two essential holdovers that go to make up the 
status quo ante. National rivalry is a necessary means of making things safe and 
profitable for the absentee owners, as will appear more in detail in the further 
argument. All this is a traditional matter of course and has consequently 
aroused no particular discussion. Indeed, it is so much a matter of course as to 
be taken for granted. But the defensive measures concerted by these statesmen, 
and their continued manoeuvres for the stabilisation of absentee interests, go to 
show which way the cleavage of interests runs. Statesmen do not resort to 
counsels of desperation, such as underlie the Treaty and the later negotiations 
concerning partition of colonies and [9] military establishments, except to save 
a precarious situation. And the same defensive purpose, it must be admitted, 
runs through that desperate recourse to the strong arm of repression which today 
engages the energies of the civilised governments, all and several, with the 
clamorous approval of their substantial citizens whose pecuniary interests are 
sought to be safeguarded by these measures.
...