Newark evening star and Newark advertiser. [volume] (Newark, N.J.) 1909-1916, 1910-09-01
WOODROW WILSON
URGES PRISON FOR
BUSINESS CROOKS
Princeton Head Makes Annual
Address Before American
Bar Association.

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn, Sept. L.
That corporation officers should serve
terms behind the bars when convicted
of violations of the law was the con-
tention of President Woodrow Wilson,
of Princeton University, in making the
annual address before the American Bar
Association. in session here, last night.
His subject was 1.-THE Lawyer and the
Community"
President Wilson said in part:
Meanwhile, look what legal questions
are to be settled, how ~stupendous they are,
how far-rsaching, and how impossible 1t
will be to settle them without the advice
of learned and experienced lawyers! The
country must find lawyers OF the right sort
and of the old spirit to advise 1t, or 1t
must stumble through a very chaos of
blind experiment. 1t never needed law
yerS who nre also statesmen more than
1t needs them now-needs them In its
courts, in its legislatures, in its seats of
executive authority-lawyers who can think
in the termg of society itself. mediate be-
tween interests, accommodate right to
right, establish equity, and bring the peace
that will come with genuine n hearty
cooperation, and will come In no other
way.
The present task of the law is nothing
less than to rehabilitate the individual
IlOI 10 IDdht Tic 6uDOIulildlc lllutD6ultllt
of the superior, not to turn corporations
into debating societies, not to disintegrate
what we have been at such pains to piece
together II che organization of modern IN
dustrial enterprise, but to undo enough of
what we rave done in the development
of our law of corporations to give the law
direct access again to the individual-to
every individual in all its functions.
Corporations Indispensable.
1 regard the corporation as Indispensable
to modern business enterprise. / am not
Jealous of its size or might, IL you will
but abandon at the right points the fatu-
Gus, Anticipated and quite unnecessary fic-
ton which treats 1t as a legal person; IL
you will but cease to deai with 1t by
means of your law as If It were a single
individual not only, but also-what every
child may perceive 1t is not-a responsible
individual. Such fictions and analogies
were innocent and convenient enough so
long as corporations were comparatively
mall and only one Of many quite as i'm
portant instrumentalities used In business,
only a minor item in the onom order
of society. But 1t is another matter now.
7 hey span society, and the responsibilities
action must be analysed by the law as the
responsibilities of society itself. in all its
other aspects, have been.
And these nge Industrial organizations
we continue to treat as legal persons, as
individuals, which we must not think of
as consisting of persons. within which we
despair of enabling the law to pick ont
anybody in particular to put either its
restraint or its command upon, 1t is child
ish, 1t is futile, it is r%idiculousi
We can have corporations, can retain
them In unimpaired efficiency. without de-
priving law of its ancient searching
efficacy. its inexorable mandate that men,
not societies, must suffer for wrongs done.
The major premise of all law is moral
responsibility of individuals for their acts
and conspiracies; and no other foundation
can any man lay upon which a stable
fabric of equitable, justice. can be reared.
We have allowed ourselves to be ridic-
ulously limited and embarrassed by the
theory that a corporation is an indivisible
person not only, but that nobody outside
of il. no matter how intimate his use and
control, may be brought into the suit by
any genteel lawyer bred in the orthodox
school Of law. A corporation is merely a
convenient instrument of business and we
may regulate its use as we please, and
those who use 1t.
You will say in many instances it is not
fair to pick out for punishment the par
ttcular officer who ordered q thing done,