LAWYERS AND CORPORATE CAPITALIZATION more than that its net assets and business are divided into 14,040,000 equal parts held by its owners, some holding more, some less. The 320,125 shares of the Boston & Maine Railroad, which, for some reason which we outsiders do not understand, seems to be a more notorious entity in New Hamp shire than in either Boston or Maine, would signify nothing more to any one than that its net property, franchises, and business are, for convenience, divided into 320,125 parts. The advantage of the change may be summed up, therefore, in that one word, which generally signifies the nearest ap proach to a cure of public evils: Truthful ness. The reform would not affect the wholesome public indignation which runs against some corporations because they tend to monopoly or because, as is said of some of them and sometimes truly, that they secure public franchises in ways that are unfit or without giving full value. That indignation might even, with this reform in force, be more effective and intelligently directed. Monopoly and the theft of public franchises are two momentous chapters in the modern history of corporations, chapters far from being closed. The reform would, however, affect the wide-spread and justly powerful public sentiment against their over-capitalization and other misleading or deceitful features. If the chapter with which I am dealing be not as momentous as the other two, it is, nevertheless, genuinely and largely important. If the owners of modern American corporations and the lawyers who advise them can successfully enforce the duty of truthfulness, if they can secure laws and an administration of laws which enforce that duty, legitimate cor porations are far less likely to inflict injus tice upon others, or to suffer injustice in collisions which they may have with public sentiment. The older I grow and the larger my observation of public affairs and of cor porate and other administration, the more
I am convinced of the safety and the cardinal and almost supreme advantage of truth and publicity in all businesses. Great creative geniuses in corporate business, men if you please, like the first Cornelius Vanderbilt or Collis P. Huntington, no doubt reaped profit from the old system of capital ization, perhaps from its very abuses. I do not believe, however, that the net advan tages to them for their inventive, creative, soundly adventurous work which they did, would, in the long run, be any less, but greater, if they and all who compete with them were forbidden the fictitious advantage of nominal capitalization. It is the public interest and, in the long run, I believe it to be the personal interest and profit of the great capitalists who so largely organize modern material life, to shut them out from every artificial advantage and to leave them unrestrictedly to the full enjoyment of their just compensation, however large or enor mous it may be, for actual and beneficent service rendered to the commonwealth. They would be safer from that menace of demagogy or socialism which to-day corrodes the happiness of so many rich men. I beg to point out to those who own or are concerned for corporations that in the long run the safety of their stockholders depends upon a complete publicity. In spite of the great flood of reckless talk and of ill con sidered and cheap thinking to which to-day we must listen, I do not believe that there is any permanent unwillingness or real reluctance on the part of the American people to award great profits for great busi ness or economic services — vast profits, if you please, for vast services of that charac ter. I am far from agreeing with that superficial philosopher, Mallock, in his as signment to the small number of geniuses in discovery or invention or administration or economy, all or nearly all of the vast and widely diffused modern increase in wealth. But to those geniuses beyond any doubt a large part of such increase is due; and it is
