Many of the large
railway and industrial corporations have reached their present size
partly by an evasion or a defiance of the law. Their organizers took
advantage of the American system of local self-government and the
American disposition to reduce the functions of the Federal government
to a minimum--they took advantage of these legal conditions and
political ideas to organize an industrial machinery which cannot be
effectively reached by local statutes and officials. The favorable
corporation laws of some states have been used as a means of preying
upon the whole country; and the unfavorable corporation laws of other
states have been practically nullified. The big corporations have proved
to be too big and powerful for the laws and officials to which the
American political system has subjected them; and their equivocal legal
position has resulted in the corruption of American public life and in
the serious deterioration of our system of local government.
The net result of the industrial expansion of the United States since
the Civil War has been the establishment in the heart of the American
economic and social system of certain glaring inequalities of condition
and power.
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