o profits by the abuse thereof, than with
a real desire to apply intelligent and practicable remedies to the
situation. Thus, until very recently, if now, there has been no
legislation along this great line of preventing the holding and
governing of corporations by such a system of Chinese boxes; nor has
there been up to date any legislation whatever along the other great
line of excluding objectionable corporations from doing business in
the State, which any State has, except as to interstate commerce
corporations, the unquestioned right to do. This right will, of
course, disappear entirely if the recommendation of the present
administration for a general Federal corporation law be adopted. The
invention of the corporate share enables a clever few to control the
many; a small minority to control the vast bulk of the real interest
of all property in the country; the problem has obviously proved too
great for popular intelligence, for so far little real legislation in
the people's interest has been effected. Like most ancient popular
prejudices, however, the blind instinct against corporations, common
among our Populists, has a strong historical basis; it comes directly
down from the prejudice against Mortmain, the dead hand, and from that
against the Roman law; for corporations were unknown to the common
law, and legislation against Mortmain dates from Magna Charta
itself.[1]

[Footnote 1: The legislation against trusts, as it existed up to 1900,
will be found at the back of vol. II of the "Reports of the United
States Industrial Commission."]

It would perhaps be possible for Congress to pass an act forbidding
any corporation to carry on its business outside of the State where it
is chartered, unless, of course, it got charters from other States;
certainly the States themselves might do so. This remedy also has
never been tried, and hardly, in Congress, at least, been suggested.
Yet it were a more constitutional and far safer thing to do than
to cut the Gordian knot by a Federal incorporation act, which will
forever securely intrench the trusts against State power. Even if New
Jersey or the Island of Guam goes on with its lax corporation laws,
permitting its creatures to do business all over the land without
proper regulation, this power could thus be instantly taken away from
it by such an act of Congress, even if the States themselves remained
unready or unwilling to act. Then no corporation could be "chartered
in