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Corporations, classes, individuals, were everywhere severally mentioned by name; the poetry of political polemics, shut out from the Roman stage, was the true element and life-breath of the Lucilian poems, which by the power of the most pungent wit illustrated with the richest imagery a power which still entrances us even in the remains that survive pierce and crush their adversary "as by a drawn sword."
The theories of state regulation of corporations and the obligations of public carriers, extending even to the compensation of workmen in case of accident, were developed to a considerable degree in this turnpike era; but, on the other hand, the principle of permitting fair profit to corporations upon public examination of their accounts was also recognized.
A policy must be adopted of converting them into express economic agents of the whole community, and of gradually appropriating for the benefit of the community the substantial economic advantages which these corporations had succeeded in acquiring.
You must not get the impression from this long list of American business calamity that all our endeavour has failed in France. Those few great American corporations who have planted the flag of our commercial enterprise wherever the trade winds blow, have long and successfully held up their end throughout the Republic. So, too, with some individuals.
It had been tried before and had ended disastrously, but that did not prove it impossible. There were in the United States six or eight companies that produced the bulk of the ore. Two or three, like the Tecolote, were closed corporations, where the stock was held by a few; but the rest were on the market, the football of The Street, their stock owned by anybody and everybody.
The vast wealth of the clergy had led to enactments for keeping it within bounds, like the statute of mortmain in England forbidding the giving of land to religious bodies without license from the king. The word mortmain meant dead hand, and was applied to possessors of land, especially ecclesiastical corporations, that could not alienate it.
Theoretically, stockholders direct the policies of corporations, and, therefore, each holder of 5 or 10 shares of corporate stock would play a part in deciding economic affairs. Practically, the small stockholder has no part in business control. The small farmer the small business man of largest numerical consequence has been exploited by the great interests for two generations.
Our Huns began to arrive, their Attilas unrecognized among them: to drive our honest Americans and Irish and Germans out of the mills by "lowering the standard of living." Still according to the learned economists in our universities, enlightened self-interest triumphed. Had not the honest Americans and Germans become foremen and even presidents of corporations?
Corporations or confraternities formed for the purpose of leading a particular form of life are among the most widespread manifestations, if not of primitive worship, at any rate of that stage in which it passes into something which can be called personal religion and at least three causes contribute to their formation.
The principle applies in the case of the death of a State in the Union. The laws of the State are territorial, till abrogated by competent authority, remain the lex loci, and are in full force. All that would be vacated would be the public rights of the State, and in no case the private rights of citizens, corporations, or laws affecting them. But the same conclusion is reached in another way.
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