Warren sheaf. [volume] (Warren, Marshall County, Minn.) 1880-current, 1911-04-27
PUBLICITY AND PUBLIC CONTROL i
OF CORPORATIONS DESIRED

PUBLICITY AND PUBLIC CONTROL!
OF CORPORATIONS DESIRED
ST. Paul, Mimi James ]. Fill, the
Great Northern-N Northern Pacific rail-
road magnate, sees in publicity Of cor
poration matters and intelligent |uub.
lie control Of the corporations them.
selves, long step towards the solu
ton of the present era of business
stagnation # 81
And the United States needs a sa-
vior," says Mr.. Hill. "The people have
demanded not only the best brit an
improvement on the best. and they
will now have to pay accordingly. II
they don't pay in money, they must
pay in prosperity. The business Of
the country increases Is per cent evs
cry year; the facilities for handling
this new business increases only one
sixth of that. The difference, in tkt
ratio is too great and a balance must
be struck, sometime, else there will
be complete breakdown of service
or prosperity.
1Why don't the facilities for hand
ling business increase more rapidly /?
Because the men behind those facili-
ties are afraid to spend their money
for extensions and improvements
Mr.. Hill has long been an exponent
of publicity of corporation affairs and
looks upon that as one of the means
of bringing corporation and public to-
gether.
The people are entitled to know
what the public service corporations
are doing and the conditions under
which they transact business he
says. II have believed in, and have
advocated, publicity of corporation
reports for many years. When the
public becomes conversant with cor
poration affairs and is convinced that
it is seeing from the inside, much of
the feeling against the great business
concerns will pass away. That will
be one of the effects of publicity"
In the matter of public control OF
quasi-public concerns, Mr.. Hill is d
firm advocate, but he wants that cont
troll to be intelligent; he wants only
trained men in the places of control!
"A corporation is a piece of pape1
bearing the stamp and seal Of the
state, s. he says It's life is created
by the people and naturally the peo-
pie should have some word in making
the rules under which it transacts
business. That proposition is one l
have preached for years and now l
am glad to see it making headway
among common carrier corporations.
Last week President Nudge of Rock
Island railroad declared for public
control Of railroads; George NJ. Rey-
nolds. president Continental and Com
mercial National Bank of Chicago did
the same thing the week before; T.
N. Vail, president American Tele-
phone and Telegraph recently made
an official report to his board of di-
rcctors in which he took a firm stand
for both publicity and public control.
"But that. control must be intelli.
gently administered. Public control
simply because it is control by the
public, is not all. It must be intelli
gent, as have always contended. III
telligent people will ask and expect
nothing more. Vail, Reynolds and
the others are right in advocating
publicity and public control. Both
are things which eventually will go
far towards making a good feeling be-
tween the corporations and the peo-
pie, and will assist in settling much
of the antagonism which now seems
to prevail"