Corporatism

“ Day after day we hear of corporation tyranny, corporation lawlessness, or corporation greed, but what recognition do we give to corporations that obey the laws, whose operations are above censure and who add immeasurably to the wealth of the country and to the prosperity of every citizen in it? ”

“ It cannot even hold its glebe tenaciously enough to prevent the freehold falling into abeyance whenever a parson dies.
When we turn from this mere ghost of a fiction to a true corporation, a corporation aggregate, surely the main phenomenon that requires explanation, that sets us talking of personality and, it may be, of fictitious personality, is this, that we can conceive and do conceive that legal transactions, or acts in the law, can take place and do often take place between the corporation of the one part and some or all of the corporators of the other part. ”

“ Innumerable corporations are acting on the presumption that the public is a mine, to be worked for all it is worth till the lead runs out. A change of public opinion is unlikely, therefore, until there is an evident change of front in corporate management. ”

“ There is no manager of a corporation who knows his business and is fit for his place who will not sooner lose millions in resisting a strike than save something in yielding to one.” — “All mercantile corporations (including railroad and telegraph companies) exist for the purpose of making profits; to impose upon them conditions incompatible with profits is to convert them, against the will of their members, into philanthropic organizations — something which neither law nor public opinion has any right to do.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ Like all progress the corporation was resisted, because in the divine scheme of things the radicals never long outnumber the conservatives. Like all real progress the corporation idea won because it was needed. The corporation, whether governmental, religious, industrial or commercial, marks a distinct advance from feudalism by protecting the rights of the many against the caprice of the few. ”

“ Today's opinion then continues: "Although some closely held corporations, just as some publicly held ones, may not have accumulated significant amounts of wealth, they receive from the State the special benefits conferred by the corporate structure and present the potential for distorting the political process. ”

“ Why do stockholders in banks and large corporations meet once a year and elect high-salaried officials to conduct the business, and a board of directors to sit in oversight, then drop the matter, satisfied that they have done their best for good dividends? That is representative government. It is the only way in which the affairs of a corporation or a nation can be successfully conducted. ”

“ If you are logical, you will admit that no man or woman who owns stock in a modern corporation is, according to your definition, Christian, and, to use your own phrase, can enter the Kingdom of God. I can tell you, as one who knows, that there is no corporation in this country which, in the struggle to maintain itself, is not forced to adopt the natural law of the survival of the fittest, which you condemn. Your own salary, while you had it, came from men who had made the money in corporations. Business is business, and admits of no sentimental considerations. ”

“ We are passing through the benevolent despot stage of corporate development—that is, so far as the despots are benevolent. The imminent social task in this connection is to convert corporate power to the service of benevolent democracy. ”

“ As we view the achievements of aggregated capital, we discover the existence of trusts, combinations, and monopolies, while the citizen is struggling far in the rear or is trampled to death beneath an iron heel. Corporations, which should be the carefully restrained creatures of the law and the servants of the people, are fast becoming the people's masters. ”

“ In another State, a single corporation held it, and yet again, it was often held by a corporate group acting together. In many States one individual dominated public affairs and more often for good than for evil. ”

“ We see, then, what this company ought to be, what any corporation ought to be: a concern that is square, and always on the level, with every man doing his part. You do not need to take my word for it, you see from the illustration of the table that the interest of every man is sacrificed when any other principle governs. ”

“ The feast of the flagon is by much the more ancient; it is characteristic of the whole genus of corporation men; and it is because they have a much greater propensity to feed the flesh than either to cultivate or to exercise the understanding, that corporations are every where denominated bodies,—as much as to say, that though they may have souls, these are not worth taking into the account. ”

“ Thus the passage of a century has witnessed a complete revolution in the form of organizing and directing business enterprise.
The corporation, as a form of business organization is immensely superior to individual management and to the partnership.
1. The corporation has perpetual life. In the eyes of the law, it is a person that lives for the term of its charter. Individuals die; partnerships are dissolved; but the corporation with its unbroken existence, possesses a continuity and a permanence that are impossible of attainment under the earlier forms of business organization. ”

“ We have already seen that there are five essential and eternal corporations—the family—the church—the state—the guild, and the school. These great corporations have each their several and subordinate institutions or corporations, which are accidental and transitory by nature, and consequently vary with time, place, and circumstances. ”

“ Moreover, when they understand the mechanism of production and exchange better, when they know exactly what conditions obtain in manufacture generally and in their industry in particular, what its markets are, what capital is invested in it and how much more capital could be profitably employed in its development, then these men, free, organised, and well educated as they will be, will by the very nature of things begin to be admitted as members of the boards of directors of the great corporations, and afterwards, little by little, to the management of ordinary business concerns. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is equally true that combinations of capital are bound to continue and to grow, and this need not alarm even the most timid if the corporation, or the series of corporations, is properly conducted with due regard for the rights of others. The day of individual competition in large affairs is past and gone—you might just as well argue that we should go back to hand labour and throw away our efficient machines—and the sober good sense of the people will accept this fact when they have studied and tried it out. ”

“ Indeed, in many cases artificial whirlpools and abysses are stirred up for the express purposes of engulfing these little capitalists. The corporation also brings together the small sums invested in shares into a powerful property completely controlled by the masters of high finance who rule these corporations. The corporation finally makes it possible for great individual financiers, individual millionaires, and great banks, to bring numerous industries under their control much more quickly, and to unite them in a common organization before gaining complete possession. ”

“ If elements of self-perpetuation are prime essentials of good organization, the Pharisee family are certainly entitled to bid in the preferred runs.
The corporation was evolved to supply a demand of society. Life, property, material, moral and spiritual welfare could not be left to depend upon the uncertain earthly existence of the leader or trustee. So, both rationally and empirically, by reason and by costly experiment, came the corporation to beat Death at his own game. ”

“ The purpose was of course not to destroy those corporations nor to deprive the business of the nation of the advantages which manifestly might be realized from the conduct of affairs upon so extensive a scale, but to curb and check the abuses to which they were subject and to demonstrate the amenability of the largest and richest corporation to the law equally with the humblest and poorest individual. ”

“ But, a corporation of the nature of ours cannot rest on its oars; we must reach out for greater and better things, and to accomplish this we must have more capital. The fact is, a proposition has just been put to us, the nature of which I am not just now at liberty to divulge, but it is a sure winner. ”

“ First and foremost, the thing at which the "practical" men smile, which professional "reformers" sneer at as an evasion of the issue, viz., teach the fundamental principles of corporate and state relationship to all sorts and conditions of men. ”

“ The corporation aggregate, which is but a mode of substituted service, is one of the great forces of civilization. It is the prevailing form of the associated energies, the money, enterprise, and intelligence of society. It is particularly adapted to those branches of business like salvage and wrecking, which require a permanent organization, costly appliances, trained services, and considerable capital, which is content with slow or uncertain returns. ”

“ After an impressive pause, during which the speaker gazed in his face, he finished: "Suddenly the war of the corporation against the people is 210 on us, and you find you are the paid tool of the corporation, and that the people are distrustful of you, and that you are practically helpless." ”

“ THE MODERN CORPORATION
Beyond question there is a suspicion of corporations. There may be reason for such suspicion very often; for a corporation may be moral or immoral, just as a man may be moral or the reverse; but it is folly to condemn all corporations because some are bad, or even to be unduly suspicious of all, because some are bad. But the corporation in form and character has come to stay—that is a thing that may be depended upon. Even small firms are becoming corporations, because it is a convenient form of partnership. ”

“ It is an inevitable tendency of all organizations, whatever be their purpose, be it political or industrial, to consolidate and strengthen their power. [5] As long as the corporations of the arts and trades remained voluntary organizations, meeting wants that could be provided for in no other way, they played an important and indispensable part in the machinery of feudal society. It was in the interest of order and industry that they established monopolies, collected fees and dues, and sold privileges. ”

“ It is all-important to anything like correct thinking on the subject of corporations, that this distinction between the members as constituents of an organized body, and as unorganized individuals, should never be lost sight of. The principle is inflexible that in a corporation all the parts are not the whole. ”

“ As Herbert Spencer remarked in dealing with this same subject in England a quarter of a century ago, “corporations have no souls.” A combination of men will stoop to acts which the conscience of no one of them would sanction as an individual act. So, too, a man will deal with the rights and property of a corporation as he would never think of dealing with those of an individual. ”

“ The process of industrial organization should be allowed to work itself out. Whenever the smaller competitor of the large corporation is unable to keep his head above water with his own exertions, he should be allowed to drown. ”

“ The line of demarcation we draw must always be on conduct, not upon wealth; our objection to any given corporation must be, not that it is big, but that it behaves badly. Perfectly simple again, my friends, but not always heeded by some of those who would strive to teach us how to act toward big corporations. Treat the head of the corporation as you would treat all other men. If he does well stand by him. You will occasionally find the head of a big corporation who objects to that treatment ”

“ A further aggravating feature of this problem is the increasing tendency of capital to associated action. What little knowledge of his employees or sympathy with them the individual manufacturer might have is wholly lost in the case of the corporation. To the stockholders of a great joint-stock company, many of whom are never on the spot, the hundreds of laborers employed by the company are simply "hands"—as to whose possession of hearts or minds or souls the by-laws rarely take cognizance. ”