The business corporation is worse than in appropriate. It endangers the chief benefit for which the public is indebted to trade unions. It is to trade unions that the public is indebted for restraint upon the vast power of combinations of capitalists. Yes, it is a fact, that to workmen, more than to econo mists or to statesmen, the public is thus far indebted for this great and necessary ser vice. The trade unions, doubtless, have been seeking their own ends; but both be cause workmen are so numerous that their welfare is of great importance to the whole community, and because the curbing of the power of combinations of capitalists as to workmen is necessarily a curbing of that power in every direction, the fight of the workmen has been a fight for each and every one of us. A converse benefit received by the public at the hands of capitalists—in sistence that workmen must obey the law— has also been dependent upon the thoroughly sincere opposition of workmen and capital ists. If incorporated trade unions, instead of being the exception, became the rule, would this opposition continue? Notice the change that would take place in conditions. When trade unions are incor porated as business enterprises, they will be much more easily and permanently controlled by one group or by one man than while they remain mere voluntary associations. The controlling power can easily be ascertained and consulted by employers. Between the trade union corporation and the employers it is perfectly feasible to effect an alliance, defensive and offensive. Unquestionably the alliance would mean an increase in wages; and unquestionably it would mean a still greater increase in prices. Already it is said that employers would recognize incorporated trade unions, and would be willing to make long contracts with them as to the rate of wages. In short, the danger is that trade unions incorporated for business purposes will combine with capitalists, and that the
resultant combination will be managed largely in the interest of capitalists and in disregard of the interest of the public. Such a combination of workmen and capitalists would be able to defy the law, and, in fact, would be, in the disgraceful sense pointed out near the beginning of this discussion, irre sponsible. It is true that one cannot predict this re sult with certainty; but!t is a possible result, and it would be disastrous, and the danger is quite imminent enough to overbalance the slight advantages that might be brought about by turning trade unions into business corporations. Here, then, is an occasion for declining to encourage the wholesale creation of artificial persons vith dangerous powers. Doubtless an artificial person may be benevolent and beneficent; but doubtless such a creature 'may be morally irresponsible and practically uncontrollable. There is wisdom as well as imagination in Mrs. Shelley's romance of Frankenstein, picturing an artificial creature made by man, with human form as nearly as might be,—a creature strangely powerful, but without moral sense and beyond the control either of its creator or of itself. The whole argument against incorpora tion cannot be presented by any one person, and still less the arguments on both sides. What has been attempted has been to present from the point of view of the public so many of the more important considerations as to show that incorporation should not be fav ored hastily. As has been pointed out, in any case the presumption is against creating an artificial person—a corporation—and the presumption is the stronger in this case, where the suggestion comes not from work men, but from capitalists, and somewhat sud denly; and the reason given, namely that in corporation would cause new and valuable responsibility, largely fails, even though the corporation should have -capital stock and business purposes; and the structure of a
