CORRESPONDENCE
253
C ORRESPONDENCE IMPRISONMENT OF CORPORATIONS
CHICAGO, ILL., March, 1906. To THE EDITOR OF THE GREEN BAG: — In view of recent decisions one may con sider the legal proposition fairly well settled that a corporation can commit a crime. How ever much the strict logician may invey against the argument that a thing without soul, hands, or mouth may be guilty of criminal intent and criminal action the fact is before us that this contention has prevailed in the highest court of the land. To take advantage of false logic and authoritative mistake is one of the high functions of the opportunist. Therefore the suggestion should not come amiss that this illogical construction, placed on the corporate status, should be carried to its illogically logical conclusion whereby it may become a weapon in the hands of those whom it was designed to undo. -To relieve the really guilty law-breakers, the corporate officers, the trend of late rulings has been to place all the blame on the inanimate, be trayed corporation. The reason is plain: the corporation can pay, as a fine, a small per cent of its unlawful spoils, whereas the in dividual malefactor, if convicted, must needs suffer the degradation of wearing stripes. Let us say, in deference to the reputations of our judiciary, that capital commands the keenest gray matter and the keenest gray matter produces the argument which gives birth to the law. This letter is not a brief on behalf of any client. It is not written for the convincement of any court. It is intended merely as a suggestion as to how justice may be bred from injustice. Xo authorities will be cited or decisions construed. The layman may assume that the conclusions herein con tained are based on good law. The lawyer will know that in the present state of cor porate law all things are possible and that the theory here advanced is as near in accord with the trend of judicial reasoning as any other theory which may be evolved. The first postulate is: A corporation may commit a crime. The second postulate is: A corporation may be punished for a criminal offense.
The third postulate is: A corporation may be punished by a fine. A fourth common error (certainly not a logical conclusion from the three preceding postulates) is: A corporation cannot be im prisoned. The prisons of the United States should voice the unanimous interrogatory: "Why?" A man with a shaven head, wearing clothes that are a brand of shame, could argue thus: "I took $1000 that did not belong to me. The state has taken away my liberty, my earning power, and my material ambitions for a period of five years. This corporation took $500,000 a year that did not belong to it. Its officers have been held guiltless. They are free on the streets to-day. The corpora tion has been adjudged guilty. What right has that guilty corporation to its liberty, its earning power, and its material ambi tions, while I am confined and denied all three?" The snug man of finance would say: "What are you going to do about it?" The convict would answer: "If I were on the Bench ruling on cases as the law is to day, without a single statutory change, I would instruct a jury to bring in a verdict against the guilty corporation exactly as if that corporation were what it claims to be — a person." The questioner would continue: "How would you execute the sentence?" The convict would answer: "I would com mit the corporation to jail. If the corpora tion does not consist of the men who own and manage it — there is only one other con sistency which it can have. It is not a thing of air or it could not commit a crime. It must be a material something. It must be composed of its capital stock and all its as sets, tangible and intangible. The state has deprived me, a human being, who committed a crime, of liberty, earning power, and mate rial ambitions. It could not touch my soul. So it confined my erring flesh, inanimate without my soul, yet containing the soul. "To do justice to one and all, the state should confine the assets, inanimate but con
