quote unquote: British liberal theorist Leonard T. Hobhouse on the Titans of Industry

The organizer of industry who thinks he has 'made' himself and his business has found a whole social system ready to his hand in skilled workers, machinery, a market, peace and order -- a vast apparatus and a pervasive atmosphere, the joint creation of millions of men and scores of generations. Take away the whole social factor, and we have not Robinson Crusoe with his salvage from the wreck and his acquired knowledge, but the native savage living on roots, berries and vermin. - L. T. Hobhouse

Extra credit: excerpts of Liberalism (1911) by L.T. Hobhouse