power to the States, at least so far as it may be necessary to enable
them to regulate or prohibit the actions of combinations in the
States, even when engaged In interstate commerce; or, second,
by perfecting the present dual system and establishing Federal
supervision over State corporations engaged in interstate commerce by
way of license and control; or, third, the most radical remedy of all,
apparently adopted by the present administration, of surrendering
entirely the State power over corporations to the Federal government,
at least as to such corporations as might choose to take advantage of
such legislation. This would result in a centralization of nearly all
business under the control of the Federal government, as well as the
removal of the great bulk of litigation from State to Federal courts.
If not carefully guarded it would deprive the States not only of their
power to tax corporations, but of their ordinary police powers over
their administration. Such a radical step was unanimously opposed by
the United States Industrial Commission in 1900, and by nearly all
their expert witnesses, and was then, at least, only favored by the
heads of the great trusts, Mr. Archbold, Mr. Rockefeller, and Mr.
Havemeyer.[1] But whichever way we look at it, there is no question
that the problem of the modern trust is that of the corporation, both
as to what laws shall regulate such a corporation, and whether they
shall be acts of Congress, or State statutes, or both.

[Footnote 1: For the full arguments on this most important question,
the reader may be referred to the article by Horace L. Wilgus in the
_Michigan Law Review_, February and April, 1904, and to the writer's
debate with Judge Grosscup, printed in the _Inter-Nation Magazine_ for
March, 1907.]

X

CORPORATIONS

The earliest trading or business corporation in the modern sense now
extant seems to have been chartered in England about the year 1600,
though Holt in the monopoly case dates the Muscovy Company from 1401,
and, despite the Roman civic corporations, has really no actual
precedent in economic history; that is to say, as a phenomenon under
which the greater part of business affairs was in fact conducted.
Whether derived historically from the guild or the monastic
corporation of the Middle Ages is a question merely of academic
importance, for the business corporation rapidly became a very
different thing from either; and, indeed, its most importan