A Company

“ Another reason is the opportunity which membership of a Company affords of being of some little use in one’s own day and generation. There is great scope for this in the wise and prudent management of the affairs of a great Company. The sick have to be tended, the poor to be relieved, the schools to be governed, the exhibitions and prizes to be awarded, the estates to be managed, worthy institutions to be selected for support, all the multifarious matters connected with the ownership of property and the dispensation of charity to be controlled. ”

“ A company incorporated with such ample rights and privileges, did not fail to draw upon it the attention of the speculative, or to enlist the aid of the enterprising capitalists of the French metropolis. ”

“ The English East India Company, for instance, which was founded in 1600 as a regulated company, was made over into a joint stock company by degrees, and could not be regarded as permanently established on this basis for over fifty years. Generations of bitter experience were required to teach people the possible dangers as well as the possible benefits of this form of association. ”

“ In the short space of four years a crowd of companies, every one of which confidently held out to subscribers the hope of immense gains, sprang into existence—the Insurance Company, the Paper Company, the Lutestring Company, the Pearl Fishery Company, the Glass Bottle Company, the Alum Company, the Blythe Coal Company, the Swordblade Company. ”

“ Besides the above arrangements you can go into partnership with some moneyed man, or interest, and finally a good plan, where a large amount of capital is required to build a plant and start a business, is to form a company, or corporation as it is called. ”

“ As one of many illustrative cases, the Rubber Goods Manufacturing Company may be taken as a typical instance of a corporation organized in a conservative but up-to-date manner for permanent success and stable value. ”

“ Such are of the livery or clothing as have attained to the dignity to wear gowns and parti-colored hoods or tippets, according to the rules and ancient customs of their respective companies.
“A company is a brotherhood of tradesmen professing the same art, governed according to their charter by a master and wardens. ”

“ George’s Company is a society established to carry out certain charitable objects, towards which it invites, and thankfully will receive, help from any persons caring to give it, either in money, labour, or any kind of gift. But the Company itself consists of persons who agree in certain general principles of action, and objects of pursuit, and who can, therefore, act together in effective and constant unison. ”

“ They who suggested it were moved by the success of those great enterprises which every day develops around us, and which, by the magic word 'Company,' assume vitality and consistence; they speculated on immense profits just as they could compute a problem in arithmetic. ”

“ Every corporation is composed of four parties: the stockholders, who supply the money with which to build the plant, pay the wages, and operate the business; the directors, whose duty it is to select executive [Pg 50] officers carefully and wisely, plan the larger and more important policies, and generally see to it that the company is prudently administered; the officers, who conduct the current operations; and the employees, who contribute their skill and their work. ”

“ As most of our other great corporations—the Steel Trust, the Harvester Company, the Tobacco Company, and the like—have passed through similar ordeals, all the information the student could ask concerning them exists in the same form. ”

“ Management.—The persons who contribute to the capital of the corporation, or company, receive certificates of stock, that is, pieces of paper certifying that said persons own so many shares in the company. ”

“ The company never went into outside ventures, but kept to the enormous task of perfecting its own organization. We educated our own men; we trained many of them from boyhood; we strove to keep them loyal by providing them full scope for their ability; they were given opportunities to buy stock, and the company itself helped them to finance their purchases. ”

“ To go a step further, how ridiculous would it seem should a joint-stock company, with ample capital, an able direction, and active and intelligent agents, decline the undertaking they had proposed to themselves, upon discovering that they must expect an unprecedented demand for the objects of their operations. ”

“ More or less, they crowd upon and overlap each other, but without losing their identity, and so, while we cannot say that a joint stock company is a corporation, we can say * * * that the joint stock company is a partnership with some of the powers of a corporation. ”

“ The acts regulating business corporations generally provide that the persons proposing to form a corporation shall sign and acknowledge an instrument called the articles of association, setting forth the name of the corporation, the object for which it is to be formed, the principal place of business, the amount of its capital stock, and the number of shares into which it is to be divided, and the duration of its corporate existence. ”

“ Let me observe, in the first place, that company which is really good is very rare and very shy. But you have surmounted this difficulty, and procured him the best letters of recommendation to the most eminent and respectable in every capital. ”

“ Do I grossly exaggerate in saying that this company, candidly, quite excitedly self-conscious, as all companies not commercial, in America, may be pleasantly noted as being, formed, for the time of its persistence, an almost unprecedented small body—unprecedented in American conditions ”

“ The typical business corporation of the last century, owned by a small group of individuals, managed by their owners, and limited in size by their personal wealth, is being supplanted by huge concerns in which the lives of tens or hundreds of thousands of employees and the property of tens or hundreds of thousands of investors are subjected, through the corporate mechanism, to the control of a few men. ”

“ The utility of this institution soon appeared, and many more desiring to be admitted than we thought convenient for one company, they were advised to form another, which was accordingly done; and this went on, one new company being formed after another, till they became so numerous as to include most of the inhabitants who were men of property ”

“ Shares are of various kinds—ordinary, preference, deferred, founders’ and management. Into what classes of shares the original capital of the company shall be divided, what shall be the amount of each class, and their respective rights, privileges and priorities, are matters for the consideration of the promoters of the company, and must depend on its special circumstances and requirements. ”

“ The argument supposes the corporation to have been originated for the management of an individual concern, to be founded upon contract between individuals, having private trade and private profit for its great end and principal object. ”

“ The aggregation known as the joint-stock company, everybody is willing now to admit, was absolutely necessary in order to secure the machinery, that is to say, the tools, the raw stock, the buildings, and to provide for the permanence of the venture. ”

“ On the one hand, the approved methods of corporation finance may in some measure be resorted to by a private firm, Without formal conversion of the concern into the corporate form; and on the other hand, an incorporated company may continue to carry on its business after the manner usual with privately owned concerns. ”

“ Corporate organization. American industry of today is carried on for the most part, therefore, by corporations or companies. An industrial corporation or company is a group of persons, each of whom contributes a portion of the capital needed to carry on the business. These contributors receive shares in the corporation proportionate to the amounts of money which they invest. The man who contributes one hundred dollars becomes the owner of one share; the man who invests a thousand dollars receives ten shares. ”

“ None of the original members have left the company, save by death, and, it being a close corporation, they keep their financial statements, their books, their profits, and affairs to themselves; and the outer world, compelled to guess at things, puts a fabulous estimate upon the sum annually divided among the stockholders. ”

“ Three if not four of the charters are dead by limitation, one company sold its franchise to another, one is slumbering with an occasional show of life, another is leading a questionable life and two are producing and selling power. ”

“ Rise of Great Corporations.%—That mechanical progress so astonishing should powerfully affect the business and industrial world was inevitable. Trades, occupations, industries of all sorts, began to concentrate and combine, and corporations took the place of individuals and small companies. In place of the forty little telegraph companies of 1856, there was the great Western Union Company. In place of many petty railroads, there were a few trunk lines. ”

“ The Trading Company.—English pioneers in exploration found an instrument for colonization in companies of merchant adventurers, which had long been employed in carrying on commerce with foreign countries. Such a corporation was composed of many persons of different ranks of society—noblemen, merchants, and gentlemen—who banded together for a particular undertaking, each contributing a sum of money and sharing in the profits of the venture. ”

“ In England a corporation is a public company or limited liability company. The term corporation, over there, is commonly applied only to the mayor, aldermen and sheriffs of a city, as in the London corporation. ”

“ The company should be composed of practical persons-- Agriculturists, Mechanics, and Artisans, as nearly equal in pecuniary condition and intelligence as circumstances will admit, and it would be very important for the most useful and necessary arts to be well represented. ”

“ That two companies of Ringers be appointed—each company being equal in number to the Bells—the one company being the regular Ringers, performing and being responsible for all regular duty, and enjoying all emoluments—the other being a supplemental company, out of which any vacancy which may occur in the first company shall be filled up, and any member of which may be employed by any member of the first company to supply his place during any necessary absence. ”

“ The choses in action of a corporation, its rolling stock, and personal property, according to the principles of the common law, have their situs at the domicile or place of business of the company. Mayor, etc., of Gallatin v. ”

“ The Company provided an agency for assembling adventure capital and supplying able management to enterprises of great moment. It offered an invitation to the industrious to participate in the growing wealth and expanding power of the great English middle class. ”

“ The essential properties of corporate existence are quite distinct from the franchises of the corporation. The franchise of being a corporation belongs to the corporators,while the powers and privileges vested in and to be exercised by the corporate body as such, are the franchises of the corporation. ”

“ It is at war with the notions which we derive from the English law with regard to the nature of corporate bodies. A corporation is a distinct entity. Its affairs are necessarily managed by officers and agents, it is true ”

“ An economic arrangement between companies performing similar functions in the production or sale of comparable goods or services is characterized as 'horizontal.' The effect on competition of such an arrangement depends, of course, upon its character and scope. ”

“ Originally a commercial agent; the executive head of a factory. Till some 55 years ago the Factors formed the third of the four classes into which the covenanted civil servants of the Company were theoretically divided, viz. Senior Merchants, Junior Merchants, factors and writers. ”

“ "My idea of good company, Mr Elliot, is the company of clever, well-informed people, who have a great deal of conversation; that is what I call good company." ”

“ We may compare the French state to a modern industrial corporation, which has a large capital invested in a valuable plant, and has good business openings; but in which the business is wrecked by quarrels among the stockholders, and by such a poor organization that president and directors can disregard the interests of the stockholders, can conduct affairs for their selfish profit, and can waste the company’s resources in enterprises that do not pay. ”

“ That a joint stock company should be able to carry on successfully any branch of foreign trade, when private adventurers can come into any sort of open and fair competition with them, seems contrary to all experience. ”

“ It is in the industrial corporations that this capitalization of good-will is seen to the best advantage - including, under the term "industrial corporations," railway companies, iron and steel concerns, mines, etc., as well as what are known in the stock market specifically as "industrials." The corporation is, of course, not the only form of business concern in the industrial field, but it is the typical, characteristic form of business organization for the management of industry in modern times, and the peculiarities of modern capital are therefore best seen in these modern corporations. ”

“ Unlike private enterprise which quickly modifies its actions to meet emergencies—unlike the shopkeeper who promptly finds the wherewith to satisfy a sudden demand—unlike the railway company which doubles its trains to carry a special influx of passengers; the law-made instrumentality lumbers on under all varieties of circumstances through its ordained routine at its habitual rate. By its very nature it is fitted only for average requirements, and inevitably fails under unusual requirements. ”