American company

“ The political or semi-public powers of the company, according to the charter, were very extensive: it could form alliances and make war, so long as the war was defensive or retaliatory, could build forts, maintain troops, appoint officers, capture prizes, and arrest offenders on the high seas.
6. By way of subsidy the company was given one million florins, the use of sixteen government ships and four yachts, and exemption from all tolls and license dues on its ships. ”

“ An exactly typical chartered commercial company, which combined all the characteristics of such companies, of course did not exist. The countries with which they expected to trade ranged all the way from India to Canada; the political services which their governments imposed upon them varied from the production of tar, pitch, and turpentine to the weakening of naval rivals; while the personal qualities of the founders of the companies, and the sovereigns or ministers who gave the charters differed widely. ”

“ The Bethlehem Steel Corporation and the American Smelting and Refining Company go outside of the United States for the resources upon which their industries depend. Their fabricating industries are carried on inside of the country. There are a number of the great industries of the country that have gone outside of the United States to do their manufacturing and to organize the marketing of their products. ”

“ A corporation which derived its profits from public franchises, or from a business transacted in many different states, found the purchase of a local or state machine well within its means and well according to its interests. ”

“ Manufacturing in Corporations and Associations.—Back of all organization and legislation lies a real [307] national unity, through which the nation exercises indirectly an economic function. In spite of a popular jealousy of big business in the last decade, there is a pride in the ability of American business men to create a profitable world commerce, and middle-class people in well-to-do circumstances subscribe to the purchase of stocks and bonds in trusted corporations. Without this general interest and participation such a rapid extension of industrial enterprise could not have taken place. ”

“ Certain individuals controlling certain corporations were enabled to obtain a decided advantage in supplying certain services and products to the enormously increasing American market; and once those individuals and corporations had obtained dominant positions, it was in their interest to strengthen one another's hands in every possible way. One big corporation has as a rule preferred to do business with another big corporation. ”

“ Many corporations have upon their boards of directors the leading business men, merchants, bankers and financiers. In this way, the investing public has the assurance that the enterprise will be conducted along business lines, while the business men on the board have an opportunity to get in on the "ground floor."
The corporation has a permanence, a stability, and a breadth of financial support that are quite impossible in the case of the private venture or of the partnership. It does for business organization what the machine did for production. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Recently a careful study was made of the concentration of business in the United States. It showed that our economic life was dominated by some six hundred odd corporations who controlled two-thirds of American industry. ”

“ 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. ”

“ So far as the Constitution of the United States is concerned, a state may, indeed, create a corporation, define its powers, prescribe the amount of its stock and the mode in which it may be transferred. ”

“ Out of that fact sprang traditions that have moulded the destiny and that conserve the character of one of the most gigantic, most powerful, most prosperous, and most public-spirited corporations in the world. It is sometimes said that a joint stock company has no soul to be saved and no hindquarters to be kicked. ”

“ There were many cases where the majority of the stock of a German corporation was owned by an English corporation and the majority of the stock of the English corporation, in turn, owned by an American corporation or by Americans. ”

“ And corporations, manufacturing and other, responded loyally for the most part. A few, a very few, put profit above patriotism and haggled over prices and percentages, but the great mass of American business men showed by their actions that they regarded themselves as soldiers of the United States and put their resources and their organizations without question at the service of the Government. ”

“ The Corporation has always taken a keen interest in matters affecting conditions of labor. It has lent its influence, its money, and the time of its officials to better these conditions, to provide more attractive homes and more sanitary and healthful conditions for its men, better educational facilities for their children, and wholesome amusement for all. For itself, the big company expects the benefit from the resultant increased efficiency and loyalty. For the worker, the most important gain is added self-respect. ”

“ Before speaking of the plan of industrial representation to which our president has referred, I want to say just a few words outlining my views as to what different interests constitute a company or corporation.
Every corporation is made up of four parties: Stockholders, directors, officers and employees. ”

“ We should, moreover, recognize in cordial and ample fashion the immense good effected by corporate agencies in a country such as ours, and the wealth of intellect, energy, and fidelity devoted to their service, and therefore normally to the service of the public, by their officers and directors. The corporation has come to stay, just as the trade union has come to stay. Each can do and has done great good. Each should be favored so long as it does good. ”

“ Under the name of private corporations organizations have grown up, not for the perpetuation of a great charity, like a college or hospital, not to enable a company of citizens more conveniently to carry on a private industry, but a class of corporations unknown to the early law writers has arisen, and to them have been committed the vast powers of the railroad and the telegraph, the great instruments by which modern communities live, move, and have their being. ”

“ 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 corporation employing thousands of men and supplying millions of people with some necessary service or commodity may reduce the cost of production only for its own profit. The state may use its great authority chiefly for the benefit of special interests. ”

“ Large corporations, which can afford the best machinery; which control abundant capital, and which can plan with scrupulous economy all the details of producing and selling an important product or service, are actually able to reduce the cost of production to a minimum; and in the cases of certain American corporations such results have actually been achieved. The new organization of American industry has created an economic mechanism which is capable of being wonderfully and indefinitely serviceable to the American people. ”

“ Through the doors of the different rooms passed an endless procession; men from the front with the marks of the desert sun on their faces—engineers, superintendents, bosses, messengers, agents—servants of the Company; laborers of every sort and nationality came in answer to the cry: "Men wanted!"; special salesmen from foundry, factory and shop drawn by prospective large sales of machinery, implements and supplies; land-hungry men from everywhere seeking information and opportunity for investment. ”

“ 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. ”

“ On the contrary, the number of manufactories and the amount of capital invested in them is steadily and rapidly increasing, affording gratifying proofs that American enterprise and skill employed in this branch of domestic industry, with no other advantages than those fairly and incidentally accruing from a just System of revenue duties, are abundantly able to meet successfully all competition from abroad and still derive fair and remunerating profits. ”

“ During the past thirty years the work of organization has made enormous strides; and it has been much accelerated by the increasing industrial power of huge corporations. The mechanic and the laborer have come to believe that they must meet organization with organization, and discipline with discipline. Their object in forming trade associations has been militant. Their purpose has been to conquer a larger share of the economic product by aggressive associated action. ”

“ With the passing years, the railways, mills, mines, and other business concerns were transferred from individual owners to corporations. At the end of the nineteenth century, the whole face of American business was changed. Three-fourths of the output from industries came from factories under corporate management and only one-fourth from individual and partnership undertakings. ”

“ Serge Koussevitsky who began in 1924, and his term as conductor has extended far beyond any single term of the ten previous conductors. The long association of such an orchestra with such a leader is eloquently justified by the results. The great Russian conductor has brought new beauties to the Boston Symphony Orchestra, a fresh importance and distinction reflected in the greatly enlarged public. The festivals and special choral concerts, the broadened repertory, new and old, of the regular concerts and the quality of each performance are as indefinable as the genius which directs them. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Machinery revolutionized the methods of production and, to keep pace with the possibilities, changed the mode of ownership. The old time partnership became a corporation; thus permitting the conduct of business on a broader scale and placing the management of large enterprises in the hands of men specially gifted or trained for the task. Ownership and control were separated and today we find many of the great industrial institutions directed and managed by men, who have no other interest in them than their splendid salaries. ”

“ The Boston you see around you today is the capital city of the great Commonwealth of Massachusetts, with a population, in its Greater Boston area, of 2,307,897, and it covers 1022.6 square miles. The town was settled over three hundred years ago by a God-loving people of rugged character, industry and vision. ”

“ The corporation problem in this country is still new and unsolved, but it has assumed immense national importance through the growth of the large industrial Trusts during the last twenty years. Before that they were unknown, and they have to a large extent revolutionized business and business methods in the United States. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Leaving the State House, walk straight down Beacon Street with the Boston Common on your left. Cross Charles Street and enter the
Public Gardens
This is about one-half the size of the Common and contains an artificial pond of irregular shape, the beauty of which is enhanced by the graceful swan boats which glide over its surface. A monument commemorating the discovery of ether is erected at one side of the Gardens; thousands of men and women visit this shrine yearly. ”

“ The general power to perform all corporate acts refers to the ordinary business transactions of the corporation, and does not extend to a reconstruction of the body itself, or to an enlargement of its capital stock. A corporation, like a partnership, is an association of natural persons who contribute a joint capital for a common purpose, and although the shares may be assigned to new individuals in perpetual succession, yet the number of shares and amount of capital cannot be increased, except in the manner expressly authorized by the charter or articles of association. ”