e production,
marketed the products and financed both operations.

The corporation, as a means of organizing and directing business
enterprise is a product of the last hundred years. A century ago the
business of the United States was carried on by individuals,
partnerships, and a few joint stock companies. At the time of the last
Census, more than four-fifths of the manufactured products were turned
out under corporate direction; most of the important mining enterprises
were corporate, and the railroads, public utilities, banks and insurance
companies were virtually all under the corporate form of organization.
Thus the passage of a century has witnessed a complete revolution in the
form of organizing and directing business enterprise.

The corporation, as a form of business organization is immensely
superior to individual management and to the partnership.

1. The corporation has perpetual life. In the eyes of the law, it is a
person that lives for the term of its charter. Individuals die;
partnerships are dissolved; but the corporation with its unbroken
existence, possesses a continuity and a permanence that are impossible
of attainment under the earlier forms of business organization.

2. Liability, under the corporation, is limited by the amount of the
investment. The liability of an individual or a partner engaged in
business was as great as his ability to pay. The investor in a
corporation cannot lose a sum larger than that represented by his
investment.

3. The corporation, through the issuing of stocks and bonds, makes it
possible to subdivide the total amount invested in one enterprise into
many small units.[37] These chances for small investment mean that a
large number of persons may join in subscribing the capital for a
business enterprise. They also mean that one well-to-do person may
invest his wealth in a score or a hundred enterprises, thus reducing the
risk of heavy losses to a minimum.

4. The corporation is not, as were the earlier forms of organization,
necessarily a "one man" concern. Many corporations have upon their
boards of directors the leading business men, merchants, bankers and
financiers. In this way, the investing public has the assurance that the
enterprise will be conducted along business lines, while the business
men on the board have an opportunity to get in on the "ground floor."

The corporation has a permanence, a stability, and a breadth of
financial support that are quite