570 IV. THE NINETEENTH CENTURY ness, have engrossed the important industries of the world. Different countries are competing for the privilege of endowing these associations with legal existence. Corporations are formed in one state to act in all other states or in some one other state, or (it may be) anywhere in the world except in the state which gave them being ; and so in the last fifty years an elaborate law of foreign corporations has grown up all over the civilized world. But the corporation is only one form of business combination which has become impor- tant. Greater combinations of capital have been formed, that is, the so-called trusts ; great combinations of laboring men have been formed, the so-called unions ; and the enor- mous power wielded by such combinations has been exercised through monopolies, strikes, and boycotts. All these com- binations have been formed under the law as it has been devel- oped, and all are legal. Furthermore, the great business operations have come to depend more and more upon facil- ities for transportation, and great railroads and other com- mon carriers have come to be Bqual factors with the trusts and the unions in the operations of modern business. The first effect, then, of the ideas of the present age upon the law is its development in the direction of forming great com- mercial associations into legal entities wielding enormous commercial power. If such associations had been formed seventy-five years ago, the spirit of the age would have left them free to act as they pleased. Freedom from restraint being the spirit of the times, it would have been thought unwise to restrain that freedom in the case of a powerful monopoly as much as in the case of a poor slave. But at the present time we are more anxious for the pubHc welfare than for the welfare of any individual, even of so powerful a one as a labor union or trust, and in accordance with the genius of our age the law has developed and is now developing in the direction of restraint upon the freedom of action of these great com- binations, so far as such restraint is necessary to serve the public interest. For centuries innkeepers and carriers have been subject to such restraint, though little control was in fact exercised until within the last fifty years. To-day the
