White Collar by C. Wright Mills — Read

Examining the statistics that indicate the sad condition, the heavy rate of failure, and yet the curious survival of tiny businesses and farms, one is reminded of Balzac's unkind remark made in another connection: ‘insignificant folk cannot be crushed, they lie too flat beneath the foot. ' If we may speak of a ‘lumpen-proletariat,' set off from other wage workers, we may also speak of a ‘lumpen-bourgeoisie,' set off from other middle-class elements. For the bottom of the entrepreneurial world is so different from the top that it is doubtful whether the two should be classified together.

In the city the lumpen-bourgeoisie is composed of a multitude of firms with a high death rate, which do a fraction of the total business done in their lines and engage a considerably larger proportion of people than their quota of business. Thus, ten years ago over half of the retail stores did only 9 per cent of the business but engaged 21 per cent of all the people in retail trade. The true lumpen-bourgeoisie, however, employ no workers at all: the proprietors and their family members do the work, frequently sweating themselves night and day. At the bottom of the depression, the ‘proprietor's withdrawal' was liberally estimated at $9.00 a week for stores with sales under $10,000. Here, at the bottom of the twentieth-century business world, lies the owner-operator who, in the classic image, is the independent man in the city.