Express company

“ We cannot close our eyes to the nature of their business. They carry small parcels, easily lost or mislaid, and not easily traced. They carry them in great numbers. Express companies are modern conveniences, and notoriously they are very largely employed. ”

“ We have here to consider not the case of an individual shipper or passenger dealing, at a disadvantage, with a powerful corporation, but that of a permanent arrangement between two corporations embracing within its sphere of operation a large part of the transportation business of the entire country. We need not, in this inquiry, examine the nature of the business of an express company, or rehearse the particular services it renders the public. ”

“ An express company receives a package of money for which it receipts and becomes responsible and agrees to deliver to the owner at some distant point. For this service it receives compensation in accordance with the amount of service. If the conditions are dangerous and the distance great the charge is large. ”

“ In many cases they are corporations chartered for the promotion of the public convenience. They have possession of the railroads, canals, and means of transportation on the rivers. They can and they do carry at much cheaper rates than those which private carriers must of necessity demand. ”

“ There is accordingly every reason a priori to assume that the Government would render more valuable service than that rendered by the express companies in the remaining section of the express field unoccupied by it and still occupied only by the express companies. ”

“ The express companies of the United States are unique organisms, and have no counterparts in any country outside of North America. In Europe, their services are performed by the parcel-posts or by the railroads themselves, often in conjunction with collecting and delivering companies. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Railroad corporations balance accounts against each other by exchange of tickets issued by the different roads. Large combinations of dealers in implements or other goods find a similar service available where they can work together [pg 151] with confidence. Express companies sharing in a common service divide the final proceeds upon the same principle. So evident is the advantage that the growth has been rapid during recent years, and seems likely to extend still further. ”

“ 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 regulated companies for foreign commerce which at present subsist in Great Britain, are the ancient merchant-adventurers company, now commonly called the Hamburgh company, the Russia company, the Eastland company, the Turkey company, and the African company. ”

“ All who are engaged in commercial pursuits form a corporation united by the strongest of all bonds, common interest; and commercial correspondence frequently presents a fertile field for observation, and affords much valuable information, which often escapes the inquiries of Government agents.
I resolved to form a connection with some of the mercantile houses which maintained extensive and frequent communications with the Northern States. I knew that by obtaining their confidence I might gain a knowledge of all that was going on in Russia, Sweden, England, and Austria. ”

“ 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 business of the company must necessarily be enormous to support and justify such an expense. It consists of forwarding freight, money, and valuables of all descriptions by the fastest passenger trains, in charge of special messengers. As forwarders of money, bonds, and valuables, they successfully compete with the government mail service. ”

“ Good organization is the trend of modern business, and this is good organization—saving two or three handlings, truckage, some bookkeeping, et cetera.
II. The Manufacturers. Next to the country merchant, the manufacturer will be the largest beneficiary of the postal parcels delivery. Take, for instance, the hardware business. The manufacturer is obliged, under the existing conditions of trade, to maintain large stocks in an endless number of cities scattered over the country, or do what is the equivalent of directly maintaining the stocks—that is, to give extended credit. ”

“ When it is remembered that express is much quicker and more convenient than freight, although more expensive, and that the industrial processes of the United States have long been and still are characterized by a keener demand for speed and convenience, irrespective of cost, than the industrial processes of other countries, the above table becomes eloquent with significance. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Of course, carriers are not the only public-service corporations; electric light companies or gas companies or water companies are other illustrations; but common carriers, and especially railroads, are the most prominent public-service corporations. ”

“ No officer of agent of any corporation, joint-stock company, or association, and no member or agent of any firm, or preson 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. ”

“ Trading, manufacturing, and railroad corporations are all engaged in the transaction of business with regard to articles of trade and commerce, each in its special sphere,-either in manufacturing or trading in commodities, or in their transportation by rail. ”

“ Telegraph companies resemble railroad companies and other common carriers, in that they are instruments of commerce, and in that they exercise a public employment, and are therefore bound to serve all customers alike, without discrimination. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The shares in existing companies rose in value, a number of new companies were formed, and companies already operating projected branches in defence of their own interests against threatened competition. ”

“ When the syndicate commenced operations in the second commodity, a large New York firm, with foreign branches, in order to conceal its operations requested us to act for it as a selling agency on the Exchange, all the business being done in our name. ”

“ While the ownership of a single retail or wholesale store resting in an individual, or in a partnership composed of individuals who make this business their means of livelihood, or in a group of investors in the form of a corporation, may be considered the normal unit, gradual integration is going on both from the producers' and consumers' ends of the distribution chain. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Our mutual friends, the English general merchant, the independent grocer, and the small retailer, have been almost completely relegated to a parsimonious living by co-operation, mail-order retailing, the carrier or forwarding agent, and last but not least, by cheap excursions to the cities. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Peninsular and Oriental Company accompanied their tender by an offer to pay over to the Government any earnings or profits they might receive beyond a maximum dividend of ten per cent. to the shareholders, after the customary allowances have been deducted for repairs, wear and tear, and sea risk of the vessels and property; and as a security, they offered to submit, from time to time, the accounts of all their transactions connected with the mail service, to the inspection of such competent persons as the Government may appoint. ”

“ The consumers’ theory maintains that all profit on price is abstracted from the consumer, and must be returned to him; while to him should also belong all capital and control, subject to such regulations as the state and the trade unions enforce. This theory is fully exemplified in the English Wholesale Society, and in some of the smaller federations for production, which employ workmen, whether co-operators or not, for wages only, and admit no individual, but only co-operative societies, to membership. ”

“ The corporation, as a means of organizing and directing business enterprise is a product of the last hundred years. A century ago the business of the United States was carried on by individuals, partnerships, and a few joint stock companies. At the time of the last Census, more than four-fifths of the manufactured products were turned out under corporate direction; most of the important mining enterprises were corporate, and the railroads, public utilities, banks and insurance companies were virtually all under the corporate form of organization. ”

“ Since the sale of the building there has been organized a new corporation, composed of Alliance members representing the trust fund; and this new corporation, known as the Farmers' Alliance Commercial Agency, has purchased the Exchange building, and designs carrying on a general buying and selling agency. It is to be hoped that the new enterprise will be more successful than the old one was. ”

“ Nothing is better settled than that the franchise of a private corporation—which, in its application to a railroad, is the privilege of running it and taking fare and freight—is property, and of the most valuable kind, as it cannot be taken for public use even, without compensation. ”

“ Many of these corporations have grown out of partnerships and firms previously existing, and such is still the genesis of many of the corporations that come forward from time to time. In such a case of conversion from partnership or firm to corporation the rule is that the new corporation takes over a body of good-will, under one form and name or another, previously pertaining to the partnership which it displaces. ”

“ We give from the argument on behalf of the United States a statement of the corporate defendants to the bill, some of whom had become parties to the alleged illegal combination by subsidiary agreement or agreements made at a later date than the original contract.
1. 'The Allan Line Steamship Company, Limited, hereafter called the 'Allan Line,' a British corporation, operating from Portland, Boston, and Philadelphia to London, Liverpool, and Glasgow and return. ”