 In this lesson, we will be addressing that period from the founding of the United States to the early 1900s when we started formal performance studies as one reaction to the chaos encountered in the Industrial Revolution. Our national revolution from English authority and rejection of many of the remnants of feudal privilege that were part of England provided us with the backdrop for dealing with massive growth changes that would paralyze more traditional nations. The very stability of the European nations worked to impair their reaction to the chaos that just spurred development in the United States. This was a time of great change and huge development affecting every aspect of civilization. We had the establishment of the United States, we had the civil war with the near destruction of the United States, and finally we had the Industrial Revolution that worked to replace the family business with a new and very different corporate structure. We had the development of the concept of employment where there were suddenly more people working for someone else than owned their own businesses. Common citizens were working for pay instead of directly sitting to family purposes. It is necessary to recognize the source of early American law. It was derived from the English common law which had its start in feudal times. Back then honoring that law was a way for the King and Barons to see that peasants were protected in their peaceful enjoyment of their society and that they would continue to be productive. The very purpose of privilege was in harvesting from the peasants and common citizens. By protecting what they accomplished by their efforts, by protecting the peace and supporting low-level commerce that commoners would continue to perform at a level that could support the privileged aristocracy. It was a good unfairness and peaceful enjoyment of citizen pursuits. The early feudal leaders honored the common law but only so long as it did not interfere with the aristocratic privilege or wealth. The focus on effective business was given greater emphasis than even family. People who had duties to perform under the contract would have the government support in assuring good faith performance of their agreements. It had some very challenging aspects that were not supported in American society. One of the most challenging was the idea that children belonged to their parents, that parents could at need sell their children into labor to others or could even arrange for them to be bond servants. This was especially challenging for those who had come to the colonies under indenture. The law permitted those who held the bond to collect payment even if the indentured servant died. If he or she had family, the children could be conscripted to pay that bond. The sampling of freedom afforded in the Americas had this leaving a bad taste in the mouth of Americans. They handled property differently than family. The child was a very special type of property. American law would recognize children as potential citizens and accordingly entitled to protection even from parental owner misuses. While the American law recognized the concept of personal debt, the people took issue with inheriting debt. It was repugnant. They soon treated property of all sorts as being passed to the next generation, but denied debts not covered by existing property. The one who created the debt had to pay it off. In this case, the law's supporting commerce took a back seat to citizen concerns for the welfare of the family. Parents were soon discouraged from treating their children as beasts of burden. They were people in America. This has become law in the United States and is part of the law of inheritance. Debt's are personal for those who incur the debt. When the debtor dies, the estate is closed. All debts are considered to be fully and completely satisfied, even if fair value was not returned to the debt holder in accord with when the debt was incurred. For the most part, though, the American common law is like that of England, with the one general exception of government privilege to override it. A good part of this change was recognizing children as citizens rather than simply being the property of their parents. While our government only originally recognized males of voting age to be effective citizens, the potential for youth was recognized and children were to receive official recognition of their potentials. There were adult citizen matters such as voting in elections or serving in the military, but children were still citizens. It would be inappropriate to have parents voting for each child they had, multiplying their vote. The Constitution was written to allow only one vote for the family, and that by the male adult leader, the man of the house. Children were still the responsibility of their parents and the law recognized children to be incompetent to make decisions that seemed inappropriate to their age and maturity. Parents were to make those decisions on their behalf, not because they were property, but because they were immature. Selling child labor, even as selling the children themselves, was eventually criminalized. It was just too offensive to allow it to continue. The treatment of slaves as property was also part of the English common law. It was able to promote the performance that supported the aristocracy. There were judicial decisions challenging the practice of slavery as early as 1772 and was probably significant pressure in the United States to interfere with the practice in England even before the Revolutionary War. This was legislative interference with the English common law. In the Americas, there was a sympathetic movement toward banning the practice, but this was carefully avoided in the writing of the new constitution. Children also being treated as property were provided with new protections. Economics of people being property was taken to be far less important than under feudal principles. When it comes to the character of human maturity, performance provides a general approach based on what can be accomplished. To give this another conceptual base, one more in tune with performance. We need to see childhood in terms of slavery. A slave is someone who has no personal choices and does not get decision to purchase what they receive. These choices are given to a master. Each of us is born a slave. The newborn has no personal decisions and what they do is evaluated by parents. They have neither choices nor consequences. As children mature, they learn to deal with their family environment and learn to do what seems to be appreciated and that earns valued results. It is a process where adults continue to direct action and issue reward or punishment by their own determinations. School-aged children have learned basic language on how to maintain themselves in day-to-day functions. They are intellectually ready to learn new lessons and get new rewards in the classroom environment. Young children do not get to determine if or when they go to school. That decision is given to adults. They then also answer to teachers as authorities. A physical reality reflected in laws in local parentus authority that is Latin for in place of parents. Young teens generally start to recognize that they have the capacity to make independent choices and it is off to the races. The intoxication of freedom starts to take on meaning and their choices start to earn rewards and rebukes becoming part of their education. As later teens, this effect is expanded until they are presumed to be young adults and capable of deciding actions for themselves. We have to note that there are rights of passage for those who come to be recognized as young adults. The passage under our legal system is generally at 18th birthday. The passage in Jewish tradition has been the bar mitzvah or bat mitzvah. Another more general passage is seen in graduation from high schools. However, noted, the result is personal recognition of passage from a child to a young adult but is limited to the specific population that grants the passage. Full adult authorities and responsibilities are legally assumed to attach at age 18. For college students, high school graduation is received as a halfway transition. They continue as students but they are given far more charge of the direction and content of their studies. Even the right of marriage can be seen as an example of such a passage. The adult child of the family is seen as moving into the adult world in tandem with the local family. It becomes new freedom and new responsibilities. For our purposes, there is a common understanding of slavery and it is a human experience. We all start out with others, commonly parents being our effective masters. We all value the freedom of getting control of our lives. We all chafe at having other people try to make our decisions for us. This is important because it is essentially universal as part of humanity. It is shared. It opens a potential for agreement that promotes freedom or that might reject some special people exercising mastery over us. We will take a pause here for questions and comments. Ownership of land played a major part in American history. It was part of the reason that people came to and founded the American colonies. It was the profitable use of the vast territory of the American continent. The English citizens living in the American colonies were free Englishmen. Our colonial ancestors were not some second or third class English citizens but simply Englishmen living in the American colonies. One of the main draws for people coming to America was the ownership of land that had not become encumbered by various government agencies. With the substantial travel distance from England, even the land grants given to the likes of William Penn were largely ignored. A man could stake out property and effectively own it, free of most of the regulatory and taxation requirements on land in other parts of the British Empire. France also had American colonies and had their own claims on land in America. These were in conflict with the land claims of England and their conflict opened into military action. It was a start to a major international conflict that soon involved a large part of Europe. It was known as a Seven Years War. The American portion of the war was over sometime before the larger conflict. It was only after seven years of military action that the conflict was settled by treaty between England and France. England claims victory but has a terrible war debt to pay for its activities. One direction for solution was to seek payment by taxing its American colonies. They were, after all, beneficiaries of the conflict by clearing the way for colonial expansion. The physical separation of America from England with the associated lack of good communication raised the issue of British taxation being without giving a large number of English citizens in the Americas a voice in governance. Parliament demonstrated that it considered this to be far less important than its need for income and attempted a series of taxes known as the Townshend Acts of goods and materials that had to be important to the American colonies from England. Attempts to enforce these tax laws served as the spark for revolutionary demonstrations such as the Boston Tea Party. British attempts to bring this under control by military action led to further confrontation and the popularizing of the revolution. The people in the American colonies were essentially free of direct British rule already. The effect of attempting to treat these people as a subservient state discovered that they had already claimed the benefits of freedom and were not willing to give up what they had come to the colonies to have. The British purpose was gaining income to pay a war debt. The result of their attempt to do so was a new war. This time against their own people living in America, instead of earning it was becoming a cost. Britain could have won the Revolutionary War, they had the military might to accomplish that, but then nobody ever really wins a war. It would have been a new and greater expense and collecting that cost from the colonists after they had been defeated would be most unlikely. Granting American colonists' notice of their independence appeared to be as much an economic as a political decision. The first political effort of the freed colonies was to declare themselves to be states in the model of European states. They expanded on their existing local governance bodies as the true political authorities over the former British subjects in the Americas. With the new state, the people were approached as state citizens. As in Europe, these new states tried to form working relations with their neighboring states. As the people had become free and were enjoying that, the governments of these states were on somewhat shaky ground. Their strength would be all but denied unless they learned to work with each other. As a solution, they confederated. They created a political body where they could deal with outside agencies as an effective unit, even though they were very much oriented to state-level independence. The challenge of their ultimate independence still proved to be more of a problem than a benefit. Confederation just did not do what they wanted. It was insufficient to meet their need. I would point out that it didn't work any better for them than it had in Europe. And so they tried something else. And it came back as a proposal with a shocking recommendation of change. The purpose of the resulting convention seems unclear. Some thought it to be to update and correct the articles of confederation, others to define its replacement. The latter prevailed and they fashioned a proposed constitution for a new and unified government of former colonies. It just started with the recognition of citizens as owners, as free people living in the various states. It called upon we the people as the basis for a new government. The incredible level of change was that it denied the authoritarian order of government in favor of one that served the people. It not only ignored the very concept of aristocracy, but effectively redefined sovereignty as something derived from agreement among people. It was presented as a representative government, a leap of great magnitude beyond the British Magna Carta. Instead of constraining the powers of rulers and recognizing citizen rights, it dealt with people granting authority to govern, shifting the people's volunteered authority to publicly elected leaders. This new government was presented as a contract document, an agreement by and among those who were only defined as we the people, those who would run this government on behalf of the people, were to be the effective agents for the purpose stated, and to be organized and assigned duties as indicated in this new constituting document. I know that this document is called a constitution in its statement of purpose, but is not titled as such. Its departure from British and other European governments was abrupt and fundamental. The signatures affixed on behalf of we the people, were by the states as their territorial representatives, rather than as sovereign states that signed to their own name. Legally, under the common law basis for such agreements, the people owned the newly formed government, and had authority over it through their planned voting influence on its senior officers. By oath of office, those serving in this government were to be the agents of the citizens, empowered by their agreement by and among other citizens. As basic law principles, the only people affected by an agreement are those who are signatories on it. This new government was not a signatory. It did not even exist until the document was effectively signed. It received no authority except that specifically granted. As another common law principle, a contract could only grant authorities that the people who signed it were able to grant to it. They could not do some specific act. They could not empower someone else to do it through contract language. The novelty proved far too great for immediate application. The people were not prepared to be owners, but had always seen themselves as national subjects. Those elected were empowered to act on behalf of the people, but were also accepted as a new sort of aristocracy that had privileges of rule granted through election. That was what people generally accepted. The deeper purpose of the change was not supported by agreement among the people in what they valued. Some change was allowed based on the documented authority limits. The full scope of political change was not fully realized. This is most obvious by the nature of governance. The document was self-stated to be for the purpose of unity, and it structured a government that would function for the benefit of a unified people. Foot leaders implemented was a government of checks and balances where the powers of sovereign rule were limited only by being divided against themselves. There is no less effective way to attempt anything then to divide into competing efforts that would constrain each other. Performance is served by people who value working together. It is aristocracy that insists on an us and them privilege of rule. It is the very nature of signed agreements that the writing of the agreement encompasses the scope and content of what is agreed. If a citizen affixes his signature to a written document, it is presumed that he has agreed to what is written. The only legal challenges are a further agreement among the signatories that the agreement had some provision and error that they all intended to sign something different. Specifically, there is no basis for a judge determining what they agreed that is in any way different than what was written. That would be judicial misconduct. There is no authority in government to interpret or modify the agreement by act of governance. That is denial of the authority that created our government. What a contract says in its writing is a matter of fact, not one of law. There is no authority to clarify what was written. There is no authority to expand upon it so that application can be made in new situations. The rule is that if the writing is confusing or unclear, then it would not be a matter of agreement. There is no legal power in our government to conclude that people actually agreed with something different or more extensive than what is in the writing they sign. Where the signatories are not agreed, the provision is void. There are basic principles in common law, principles under which our government is granted its authority to exist and continue. We can take a break at this point to answer questions and concerns that arise from our historical foundation. There is much to be seen here as to performance attempted and accomplished. There is much to be seen here as to our own potential as citizen owners of this nation. Another major upheaval was the American Civil War. There is little good that can be said about it from a performance standpoint. It was a demonstration of the worst sort of governmental misconduct from beginning to aftermath. From our performance perspective, value for us is in recognizing just how bad it was so that we can avoid ever doing anything like it in the future. It is a valuable example of the most incredible nation level waste. Nobody ever wins a war. Both sides take damage. We the people were on both the losing sides. Everything expended upon it damaged us as a people. The entire conflict was a waste. One of the more advanced lessons from this is that privileged leadership is willing to waste the organization's resources for the good of the organization. The stated constitutional purpose of creating a more perfect union was totally ignored. Slaves were the legal property belonging to others. The requirement for government seizure of private property was violated by direct intent of legislation and then declared by legislation to be proper. The goals and objectives of political leadership interfered with our constitution's organizational purpose and as aftermath, treating the South as a congregation was just wrong. And to top off this mess, it did not free the slaves. Just ask their descendants if they are free today. Privilege in leadership is not based on owner purpose. We are witness to something very different in our civil war. It is so different that modern teaching often looks at killing off those of a good percentage of American citizens was somehow a right and proper result of government action. Outside of assuring division, this internal conflict had little effect on the larger subject of performance. It is hard to find any actual value that got delivered to we the people of the United States and we the people are the only party in interest. And as a final note, our culture presents this as a valued action freeing people from bondage. For us, it is to be a valuable learning experience. It provides an opportunity for we the people to define and implement actions with results that we can value. This brings us to the next huge change, which we generally call industrial revolution. It all starts with mechanical power. It is most notably seen with power transportation. And the society that had been built upon the family suffered immediate and irreparable damage. People who traveled by boat up the Erie Canal could rather suddenly take the train. And that trade would carry people to a lot of other places a whole lot more quickly and conveniently. The family that prepared leather goods for sale as its business was in competition with others who would market their wares over much wider territories. Ready transportation by steam powered vehicles allowed businesses to expand in whole new ways. Competition was found where there had been little before. People could gather potent new powered business resources for their commercial use. Both human and animal labor was greatly reduced in favor of burning wood and using heat to power things. Of even greater impact, the size and complexity of business grew greatly. Where a family business might have a few apprentices raise their children to operate the business in their turn. There was quite suddenly an ability to increase family potency through bringing subordinates into the family business. The family business grew in size but rapidly shrank in number. The former owner families were converted into worker families. The family business moved toward management and the rest toward becoming wage earners. But there is still more as business grew still larger to take advantage of business size. The family leader who had been in charge when it was fairly just family members had to give management authority to other members of the family overseeing the work of many others who became employees. And it just continued to the point where family had to hire subordinate bosses to oversee the workers as it was beyond the capacity and the interests of the family members to boss all that was being done. And so we come to a new culture shock and we call it employment. From long before the time of feudal rule, the performance unit of civilization had been the family. It had taken on others to do tasks to apprentice or the like, but the focus was on the family purpose in owning and operating the business. Quite suddenly there was an influx of new people coming into the family business. It was no longer just us family and them customers. We had a new social division of people who were employed. These people did not have a family business. They sold their labor for others to direct and that was their business. They rented themselves out as business resources. And even more shocking for the time, they did not work for their own family purpose. They worked for what they could earn. The very purpose of business was changing. And there were soon more employees than there were family owners. Businesses were hiring servants by the hour. It was not a new concept, but having it become common was an incredible change in social relations. Quite suddenly there were more non-family workers than family owners. They were tearing up the playbook for business. And even more on point, these workers did not work for the business purpose. They worked for themselves and their families. They became the units of production, the hired resources that family businesses rented out for the purpose of ensuring that the work of the business was performed. The workers were not like apprentices who supported the family business. They were independents who worked for pay. If they got paid, they were successful. Performance was no longer the basis for their activities. Beyond that, they were paid as individuals for the work that each could perform for the business. They were set in the charge of hired bosses who also lacked family purpose and worked for pay. Business was becoming decidedly impersonal. The personal welfare of the workers was losing focus for the family who owned the business. It was more a matter of getting the work output that the workers were paid to provide. In another viewpoint, the workers had more interest in one another's welfare than the welfare of the family that hired them. They worked daily in the presence of other workers under the watchful eye of the boss who probably did some work of the owners but otherwise was independent. They valued their pay and had this in common with other workers. They acted to support each other in their dealings with the owners. The impersonal nature of their relationship to the business had social impacts. And then we have to address the impacts on performance and what was being accomplished. The growth of business was driven by the ability to compete, the ability of leadership to maintain itself through operating their business. Family was losing relevance as more and more people were selling labor instead of owning and operating their own family businesses. The direction of effort was also affected by the same challenges that quarantine performance thinking and the production environment and that enhanced the acceptance of the privilege in government leadership. The us and them approach was reflected in a new direction in corporation of business. Corporate leaders had the privilege of setting policies and rules in place and enforcing these when and how it seemed appropriate. They were allowed to restrict the owners who might constrain them to a business owner's purposes. I note that the ability to establish corporate people was assumed by the various states which made the authority of the corporations diverse. There was no way to manage these except state by state. Also there was an international concept of incorporation where various governments of states and nations accept one another's authority to create and maintain the corporate people. Privilege in business has become a worldwide phenomenon with the blessings of those in government who considered their own leadership to be privileged. The laws of incorporation were established to support privilege in business leaders. They were also encouraged to act for the good of the organization instead of concerning themselves with the purposes for their being an incorporated business. In corporate form business leaders were the barons of industry who ruled over their businesses as a feud that would address employees as commoners during their hours of employment. An additional challenge is found in the use of corporations to represent themselves. Instead of having to represent business owners where the corporations become sources for government funds, they also became effective sources of political resources. The challenge of creating corporate persons is not just in business. Granting citizen-like powers to corporations had impacts on the relation between government and citizens. These corporations were granted a voice in government that is different than the voices of the people who owned them, different than the voices of the people who worked in them, or even the privileged leaders who directed corporate funds to public purposes. The leaders who directed funds for the good of the corporation pretty much promote whatever they wanted to promote and benefit who in government they thought most supportive of their efforts. In short, they began to buy and sell influence. The lack of family in charge had significant effects. The most notable was the business did not have a natural family purpose. This was replaced by a general understanding that the corporate purpose was driven by profit. There was soon a natural confusion with family purposes. The corporate leadership set itself aside as a sort of a family of us above a glass wall and them below that glass wall. Delivery of profit to corporate owners was taken as a duty, not as a purpose. Gaining investment was seen as part of management for the good of the corporation, pandering to those owners as if they were customers. Return on investment was whatever leadership decided to provide to assure that the business would have resources to run and sufficient capital to function. In a very real sense, this involved removing the real corporate owners from their privilege as owners and assuming rule over the operation of the business as a function. And then there is stock trading and the business of investment. That also intruded between the owner investors and their property. It added an intervening purpose that further separated the corporation from its owners. There was no good venue for these owner investors to come together to act as owners. As a first warning sign that something was wrong, we have private citizens incorporating their businesses as a way to secure them from potential creditors. How is it that created corporate persons have better legal protections than citizens? The corporation has given such privileges and potencies that it can protect itself from citizens and these are the citizens for whose benefit government supposedly exists. As noted, doing something about the nature of the modern corporation is not going to be a civil process. It will have to be done state by state in an environment where there will be challenges raised by reciprocity with other nations and other states. If citizens take back authority as owners in one state, will the corporations simply abandon that state and set their headquarters elsewhere, depriving the offending state of both jobs and tax income? It is a question without any consistent answer. An additional challenge arises with corporate decisions to see to the welfare of the corporation through doing business in foreign nations. The obvious challenge is that this is anti-public as a direction of action, one that does not serve the interests of the public whose authority has been used to grant existence to the corporation.