C Company

“ 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 attitude of the Corporation’s management in the matter of publicity, it seems to the writer, is simply that the company’s vast size and the number of its stockholders, as well as the army of men it employs and its influence upon industrial conditions generally, render it in a sense a public institution, one in which there is an enormous amount of warranted public interest, and that this interest should be satisfied. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ George’s Company other than a voluntary association of persons which the law will not recognize as a corporation.
“The Companions of St. George will be capable of holding land, but not as the St. George’s Company,—that is, not as a corporation. Land must be held by or for them as individuals. You may have a piece of land conveyed to, say two hundred Companions; naming each of them; but for the sake of convenience [233] you would have it conveyed to two or three who should hold it upon trust for the Companions generally. ”

“ No officer or agent of any corporation, join-stock company, or association, and no member or agent of any firm, or person directly or indirectly interested in the pecuniary profits or contracts of such corporation, joint-stock company, association, or firm, shall be employed or shall act as an officer or agent of the United States for the transaction of business with such corporation, joint-stock company, association, or firm. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A stock company must be incorporated, [139] that is legally formed, under the laws of a State and different States have different laws. A copy of the corporation laws of any State may be had free of charge by applying to the Secretary of State.
Fig. 83. CERTIFICATE OF INCORPORATION How a Stock Company is Organized.—Suppose, now, you and two other, or more persons want to organize a stock company under the laws of the State of New York for say $10,000, although the value which [140] you, and those interested with you, place on your invention and patent may be a great deal more. ”

“ When any person takes stock in a railroad corporation, he has entered into a contract with the company, that his interests shall be subject to the direction and control of the proper authorities of the corporation to accomplish the object for which the company was organized. ”

“ There are several factories in Lowell, each of which belongs to what we should term a Company of Proprietors, but what they call in America a Corporation. I went over several of these; such as a woollen factory, a carpet factory, and a cotton factory: examined them in every part; and saw them in their ordinary working aspect, with no preparation of any kind, or departure from their ordinary everyday proceedings. I may add that I am well acquainted with our manufacturing towns in England, and have visited many mills in Manchester and elsewhere in the same manner. ”

“ Most of those who were for a New Company thought that the New Company ought, like the Old Company, to trade on a joint stock. But there were some who held that our commerce with India would be best carried on by means of what is called a regulated Company. ”

“ They have the power of defining how and when and in what shape and under what supervision it shall start into existence and begin to act as a trading corporation.” Such a control over the destinies of the company involves correlative obligations towards it, and one of these obligations is that the promoter must not take advantage of the company’s helplessness. ”

“ Another of the dangers that beset the path of the new Corporation lay in the fact that it was not an operating company with a number of plants controlled by one central management, but a holding company controlling by stock ownership a number of industrial units which had previously been owned by utterly conflicting interests and each of which continued necessarily to operate under a separate management. ”

“ Ere the new company was formed, Mr. Field (13th September, 1855) addressed Lord Clarendon, requesting aid, and protection and privileges, and on the 20th November received a reply from the Secretary to the Treasury, engaging to furnish ships for soundings, and to consider favourably any request for help in laying the Cable, to pay 14,000l. (4 per cent. on capital) as remuneration for Government messages, till the net profits were 6 per cent., when the payment was to become 10,000l. for twenty-five years, and the Royal assent was given to the Act of Incorporation of the Company July 27th, 1857. ”

“ In July, 1900, the corporations, as represented in the paper company, fourteen in all, entered into contracts with it, making it their exclusive selling agent; that each constituent manufacturing company was represented by one of its principal officers upon the board of directors of the paper company, and the number of directors have been increased as other corporations have made the paper company their selling agent. A table of the constituent companies was given and the times the companies became members of the paper company. ”

“ Whether it be the East India Company, or the Hudson's Bay Company, or the British South Africa Company, there is always a Rhodes at the heart of it. And half of its success in the end depends on agents who take their own counsel and work by themselves, thereby extending their company's power, as the company extends the nation's. ”

“ Said corporation is formed for the purpose of conducting a general cotton business, and may buy and sell cotton, and may transact a cotton factorage business, may advance money or supplies for the purpose of controlling shipments of cotton, may take and receive mortgages or deeds of trust upon property to secure said advances, and generally may have all powers conferred by chapter 25 of the Annotated Code of 1892 necessary and requisite to carry out the purpose of said corporation. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ They were empowered to raise among themselves £86,000, in eight hundred and sixty shares of £100 each, with further power to raise a further sum of £40,000, if necessary. The affairs of the company are managed by twenty proprietors, who form a committee, and who are under the control of the general meetings of the company. ”

“ To consult the workmen of the company on technical questions within the range of their regular employment is one thing; to consider the commercial and fiscal policy of the company in its relation with competing companies, and with the consuming public, in a general conclave of all the establishment, would be quite another thing. ”

“ That no corporation engaged in commerce shall acquire, directly or indirectly, the whole or any part of the stock or other share capital of another corporation engaged also in commerce, where the effect of such acquisition may be to substantially lessen competition between the corporation whose stock is so acquired and the corporation making the acquisition, or to restrain such commerce in any section or community, or tend to create a monopoly of any line of commerce. ”

“ Having once decided to finance the formation of the new company he thought it might as well be comprehensive in its products, and so negotiations were immediately set on foot with the controlling interests in the leading concerns making wire, tubes, tin plate, etc., with a view to bringing them all into the consolidation. ”

“ At first, corporations could be formed under the general laws only for a limited number of purposes-usually those which required a relatively large fixed capital, like transportation, banking, and insurance, and mechanical, mining, and manufacturing enterprises. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The company, while it was a mining and manufacturing company and nothing else, voted 'to authorize the building of a railroad . . . for the transportation of coal and other productions to market. . . .
'That a sum . . . be raised for the purpose of building and equipping said railroad, and afford facilities for transportation to market for the mineral and other productions of the company's property; . . . to issue bonds . ”

“ Its books are kept separate. All transactions between the two corporations are represented by appropriate entries in their respective books in the same way as if the two were wholly independent corporations. ”

“ In so divesting itself of such capital stocks respondent shall not sell or transfer, either directly or indirectly, any of such capital stocks to any officer, director, stockholder, employe or agent of respondent, or to any person under the control of respondent, or to any partnership or corporation either directly or indirectly owned or controlled by respondent. ”

“ 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. ”