The Princeton union. [volume] (Princeton, Minn.) 1876-1976, 1911-04-06

The corporation which has taken
over so many American industries and
Investments has developed wholly
new phase of usefulness. The legisla-
ture Of New York has been asked tn
grant charter for the incorporation
OF family interests, under which the
whole Dam family or Jones family or
VanderWagen family can pool all it's
financial issues and buy, sell and trade
as corporation, with it's varied fnan-
clal and industrial activities RESPONSE
BILE to the stockholders and their duly
constituted directors.
Few stages in the modern evolution
OF business have so piqued the atten-
ton OF wealthy society people or so
awakened curiosity and speculation as
to the possibilities and the probabili-
ties Of a novel plan. Il
The Pioneer Charter.
The New York pioneer charter aims
to keep the family united, to relieve
want among the members, to pro-
mote sociability, to pay sick and 9TH
er benefits, to provide accident, life
and fire insurance and to conduct such
business enterprises as may be consid-
cred likely to prove profitable for the
stockholders.
The granting of such a charter
should practically open the way to, The
conduct of any legitimate Industrial
or commercial or financial enterprise
on the basis Of a family corporation,
with the holding of such stock limited
strictly to those who own kinship to
the parent family.
Whether it would infa1libly promote
sociability is an altogether doubtful
question, for it would be- a mighty
poor brand Of sociability that could be
promoted on the basis Of the, late Cor
nelius Vanderbilt's division of his i'm
mense fortune between his sons, where
the elder got only million because
he insisted on marrying the woman he
loved and the younger got all the rest.
On the other hand, the large Thaw
fortune, crippled as it has been by the
unhappy marriage Of an heiress to a
noble blackguard and the desperate
struggle to save another member from
the electric chair, might have stood a
far stronger chance Of escaping deple-
ton.
The Gould family, with it's system of
trustees planned by Jay Gould, whose
wisdom was greater than the serpent's,
has come nearer to the family corpora
ton in practice than most of the other
clans holding such immense possess
sions in the United States. The limi-
tatiens enforceable by the trustee
when the well being of an individual
was threatened, even with the individ-
ual's eager desire expressed to whoop:
1t up along the road to ruin, were en-
phatically shown during the latter
years Of Anna Gould's married life
with Boni de Castellane. The countess
was only too willing to go broke for
the sake of her picturesque profigate.
But her brothers and sisters held the
checkrein and We're almost as power
full for her welfare as if they had been
able to vote Bonis extravaganza into
the wastebasket at directors meet
ing.
What Might Have Been.
Yet the corporation principle, ap-
piled to George Gould's freedom Of
action as to the holdings of Union Pa
cific, might have affected the plans of
one of the most important railroad
systems Of the world, quite apart from
the consequences that must have at
tached to his own life and his inalien-
able right to the pursuit Of liberty and
happiness.
Another powerful railroad family,
the Harrimans, might have been in
jected as a corporation into the trans
portation systems that stretch from
coast to coast, while finance could
| await with anxiety the extension Of
Hetty Green's personal bank into a
close corporation such as her genius
for finance could enable her to- con
struct. The only rival Of the Green
family corporation, in shrewd invest
ment by reason of the experience OF
its founder, would have been that
which Russell Sage might have found.
ed. But he died. with his generous
wife alone surviving, and the care Of
her prosperity was taken in a way
that rendered incorporation needless.