Year: 1879

| place tQthe multiplication OF business cor


poratons among its distinctive features,


and nowhere in the world is this feature SO


distinctive of modern civilization as in the


United States. The immense extent OF our


territory has required corresponding ag-


gregations of capital to build and manage


lines of transportation. The long credits


prevailing in trade, and due mainly to the


same cause, have demanded others for or


dinary banking. Still others scarcely less


vast are due to the ingenuity with whlch


the people of the Northeastern, Middle and


Pacific States have engaged in manufac-


lures or mining, and fourth variety of
these grand aggregations pertains to the


business of savings banks and life insur-
ance companies. Unless capital had been
amassed for all these purposes our country
would have been indefinitely retarded in
development. No individuals wealth, nor
that of any number of individuals acting
Independently or under the usual obliga-
tions of partnership, could have laced the
land with railroads, moved Western grain
and Southern cotton to the seaboard and
anticipated the proceeds of their sale,
opened the coal fields and iron mines of
Pennsylvania and the silver veins of Nevada
and Colorado, sprinkled New England with
factories, and provided productive reposi-
tories for the surplus earnings of the work
ingman and security to his family against
the misfortunes pertaining to his disability
or premature death. Agencies indepen-
dent of the vicissitudes of personality
and partnership, endowed with the fac
ulty of perpetual succession, and capable
of welding under o single direction masses
of capital such as few individuals ever have
possessed, were needed for oil these pur-
poses. The law of the land responded to
the need and provided them in the shape
of business corporations. To some of these
it delegated it's own tremendous power of
eminent domain, or of appropriating pri-
vate property as to public uses. To most
of them it relaxed the liability of the stock
holders in their private property for the
corporate debts. AT first it conferred the
charters by special grants. Now they can
be obtained in many of the States under
general laws. They are numbered by thou
sands and tens of thousands. The best
talent of the country is serving in their
employment. A rapidly increasing pro-
portion of the earnings of the people is
deposited in their funds or invested in
their stock and bonds. It is not too much
to say that the business prosperity of the
United States has been mainly achieved
through corporate enterprises, and grows
more and more dependent upon them
every year. This is fair picture, and as
true as it is fair. But there is reverse to
it.


The managers of corporations through
out the whole land, as class, are wilfully
blind if they do not perceive the growth of
late of a genuine, deep and dangerous
popular discomfort with their manner Of
exercising their vast powers. which is find


ing vent in politics. 1t has displayed itself
| in the granger movement in the North


western States. 1t underlies hostility to
| the national banks. 1t bursts into strikes


in the manufacturing centres of Massa-
| chusetts. 1t comes to light in the investl-
| cations to which the Legislature of New
| York has been melted into the manage





panies and railroads. 70 what extent it is
we'll justified and to what extent it arises
from error and is fomented by demagog-
ism it is unnecessary for our present pur-
pose to express an opinion. Suffice 1t to
say that it certainly has some foundation;
that there cannot be so much smoke with
out some fire. That purpose is to
earnestly warn corporate managers as
class against the peril of dealing
with it contemptuously or arrogantly. The
style of some of the recent testimony and
arguments before an investigating COM
mittee in this city and at Saratoga fully
authorizes this warning. Some of the wit
nesses and counsel have treated the inquiry
as if it were an unlawful effort to pry into
the secrets of private business. They for
get or ignore that the business of no COR
poration whatsoever is private toward the
State government. The power, coupled
with duty of official supervision by the
State, accompanies every grant of q charter.
1t may be harassingly exercised, but it is
not unlawful. The grantees, by accepting
an act of incorporation, hold themselves
subject at all times to official inquisition
into the manner of their dealing with the
franchise. No matter how injudicious the
inquisition may seem to them they are not
the lawful judges OF its propriety. Subjec-
ton to it at the discretion of the Legisla-
ture is an implied clause of their original
contract with the State. They cannot
avoid it with impunity, still continuing to
enjoy their corporate privileges OF perpetual
succession, limited liability and eminent
domain. They cannot enjoy the privileges
peculiar to a corporation in their relations
to the community and at the same time