The publishers were like syndicates. For instance, the guys that DC hired in 1936, those guys were still working there years later.
Quotes about syndicates (5 Quotes)
Texas cannot stand idly by when the safety and security of our people is threatened by multi-national criminal syndicates that seek to spread fear and do harm, ... This border security plan will improve law enforcement coordination, increase our law enforcement presence, and better prepare us to respond to a catastrophe along the border. It will lead to a safer America because it focuses not only on what happens at our ports of entry, but also between them as well.
The first two months led up to the party page (today), then it will follow the Bumsteads on their anniversary trip to Hawaii, where they'll be gone a month, ... All the different (comics) syndicates are doing crossover story lines where they refer to the anniversary. The whole community of cartoonists. It's really a lot of fun.
The syndicates take the strip and sell it to newspapers and split the income with the cartoonists. Syndicates are essentially agents. Now, can you imagine a novelist giving his literary agent the ownership of his characters and all reprint, television, and movie rights before the agent takes the manuscript to a publisher Obviously, an author would have to be a raving lunatic to agree to such a deal, but virtually every cartoonist does exactly that when a syndicate demands ownership before agreeing to sell the strip to newspapers.
There is, therefore, no solution possible other than an economy directed by the workers through their organisations of control-through the workers' syndicates.