54
The Green Bag
As both Judge Lindsay and Mr. Schouler appear to concur in the public belief that these corporations must con tinue to abide with us, we may seek and find relief from gloomy forebodings in the more genial utterance of President Butler in September, 1908, before the University of Copenhagen :— The large corporations are both a legitimate and a necessary outgrowth of modern econ omic conditions as these exist in the United States, and the balance of advantage and disadvantage is largely in their favor, pro vided only that they be restrained from using their great strength inequitably or from damaging some other or more important in terest. A corporation is co-operative and co-operation is the best use any individual can make of his individuality. (The Amer ican As He Is, 53.) Judge Lindsay is entitled to high respect, but I would venture to question whether in and of itself the corporate form of organization is the specific germ of the ills depicted or predicted by him. The dislike and popular resentment of that extraordinarily successful business known as the Standard Oil Trust even tuated prior to the incorporation of the holders of the trust certificates; the phenomenal development of the great Carnegie Steel business was through a partnership whose forty-four members preceded and formed the corporation of 1899: the greatest financial transactions are conducted not by corporations but by unincorporated bankers and syndi cates: even the New York Stock Ex change personified under the name of "Wall Street" is not a corporation. The distrust expressed in such utterances as that of Judge Lindsay implies really a distrust of the power possessed by any combination or association of wealth, irrespective of the form in which the combination may choose to constitute itself. Mr. John Graham Brooks quotes a Massachusetts leader as saying, "The
great interest which unites us all is the dangerous business and political influ ence which the money power has at last got in this country." This would indicate that protection against the dreaded evils is not cer tainly to be found in more legislation against corporations. Undoubtedly there will be further experiments in legisla tion, both state and federal, to the continued repression of business enter prise; but this result, though regret table, is not to be avoided by any con cession to unmoral methods. What is wanted is not legislation so much as the "righteousness which alone exalteth a nation." This is not self-righteousness, nor is it that sentimental righteousness that lacks a sense of justice. In a popular government this may involve popular tyranny and spoiliation of indi vidual rights. On the other hand relief is hardly to be secured through the relentless enforcement of strictly legal rights, tending to popular outbreaks like the anti-rent war of 1844- 1846. The righteousness that alone exalteth a nation cannot disregard the meum and tuum, nor will it ignore those inter ests of humanity which challenge the rights of property. Very recently it has been declared by Mr. Justice Moody, speaking with authority in the Knoxville Water Case, that: "Our social system rests largely upon the sanctity of private property, and that state or community which seeks to invade it will soon discover the error in the disaster which follows." True though it is that without respect for the rights of property there can be no progressive civilization, it is no less true that something more is necessary to the highest civilization. Accordingly business combinations fash ioned primarily and solely with reference to property rights, have failed to meet the expectation of the general public,
