Arizona republican., 1908-11-09

taking up their residences abroad are less troubled by the federal statutes
 than by the mass of legislation passed
 by the legislatures of nearly all the
 states which threatens to interfere
 seriously with some of their favorite ! methods of handling their business
 and incidentally the business of their 1 competitors.
 Naturally enough the managers of | corporations contemplating such a
 step as this are not eager to have their intentions made known to the public ! Within the past few days it has been
 admitted, however, by prominent ! corporation lawyer who has figured in
 a number of cases as attorney for the l combination of meat packers, more fa- miliarly known as the beef trust, that | these interests at least have been dis | cussing the project of foreign incor- | poration.
 Tt is true that the matter has been | discussed and that steps have been | taken to determine the practicability of incorporating company abroad to | handle certain branches of the pack
 ing business" said this lawyer The | object is not to evade the laws of this 1
 the companies can carry on their busi- | ness without coming into conflict with | the statutes of the various states. | Some of these are so rigorous that | they make it practically impossible to | do business in accordance with them since any agreement not only in rela- l tion to prices, but also in regard to methods of handling sales becomes ! T
 the present time. however. nothing is being done toward actually moving | the headquarters of the big packing | interests to Europe. and there is no | likelihood that anything of the kind
 will occur in the immediate future" A Wall Street man who is familiar | with most of the activities of the big | trust magnates explained the scheme | in more detail and with greater frank | ness. The plan in nind,' hesaid, "is | to form patent company with offices | in London or some other British city
 and to have the various companies transacting business in the different | states entirely independent of one an | other. These companies would then ! report direct to the home affice abroad and all correspondence and accounts
 would be kept there. In most of the suits brought against big corpora tions under the various state anti | trust laws the principal evidence has
 been obtained by the enforced produc
 tion of books and letters. This was
 the case in the suit recently decided | in California against the Western Meat company which is generally un- | destOod to be controlled by the big l Chicago interests. It is the opinion of
 a number of experienced corporation | lawyers who have been consulted on ! this subject that in the case of a company incorporated abroad and | having it's headquarters there it would l be much more difficult for state prose- i cutors to obtain convictions and that ! the companies probably would avoid much expensive litigation"
 This statement fits more closely
 than the first one, the Wall Street view
 of the matter. which is that it is not
 so much the importance of the Cali
 fornia decision in itself that has caus-
 ed the packing combination to con
 sider repatriation as it is the fact
 that nearly every state has laws for
 bidding combinations and trade agree l
 in New York, suits on similar lines
 have been begun or threatened. If all l of these were pushed to conclusion
 the trust might find itself in worse
 position than the Standard oil com
 pany with it's celebrated fine. The
 same thing applies, of course, to other
 corporations doing business in all or
 most of the different states.
 While the opinion of leading cor | poratiOn lawyers seems to incline to 1 the belief that corporation interests ! might escape conviction under state | laws by removing their headquarters | to Enrope, even if they did not escape ! the suits themselves, there are others 1 who hold that such action could be | checkmated by the states without any great difficulty. A lawyer whose of 1 flee is crowded with iron boxes bear | ing the names of well-known corpora
 tions. said:
 Incorporation abroad might help | temporarily, but l am afraid that it ! could be met by the states by the
 adoption of laws forbidding foreign | corporations to transact business
 within their borders unless they kept
 full set of books and accounts in-
 side the state limits"
 | The attorney general of New York, | William s. Jackson. who has been en- gagged for several months in collecting
 evidence to be used in a suit against the beef trust, gives it as his opinion that not even action by the state leg
 islature would be necessary to cope
 with any move on the part of corpora tions to avoid successful prosecution | by incorporation in Great Britain.
 In such a case" he said, we would
 ask the British government to turn the
 books over to us. Such a request
 probably would be complied with, and then where would the trust be?'
 None of the trusts is likely to re- nounce its American citizenship until the corporation lawyers who are now studying the possibilities of foreign charters have assured them that 1t will mean a greater degree of safety from convictions and fines at the hands of heartless state prosecutors 1 If the opinion of these experts is fa- vorable. and particularly if the experi- ! ment contemplated by the beef trust | is found to work successfully, New |