who are parts of corporations and who
break laws, just as there is a certain small proportion of law-breakers
in every section of every community. But that fact carries with it
no reflection upon corporations as such, and when our sensational
publications and politicians use the word "corporation" as though it
were an alternative term for brigand or pirate they are simply assuming
a public ignorance that may exist outside, but that certainly ought not
to be found within a university. They are taking advantage of a nearly
universal disposition to believe one's self injured and are appealing
not only to ignorance, but to a low form of cupidity and of mob greed.
They would have no success in their crusade against corporations as such
if there were any general understanding of the meaning of terms or if
it were generally recognized that there are thousands of corporations
in this State, and thousands in every State against whom no whisper
of wrong-doing has ever been raised and who are doing a useful work,
of which every individual among us is a beneficiary, directly or
indirectly. Now it is not only in our definitions that we need to be
precise and to think clearly. We have already seen the need of a better
discrimination between the very few corporations that are accused of
breaking the laws and the vastly greater number that we never hear of at
all and that do their business as quietly and honestly as the baker or
the butcher. If lawbreaking is to be found in the business of some
corporations, it is incumbent upon us to determine just in what way the
law is being broken, why it is being broken, what sort of law it is
that is being broken, and how much moral turpitude or public wrong is
involved. All these factors would be determined by a judge upon the
bench before passing sentence upon the meanest malefactor, and yet we
find that the public is constantly urged by the newspapers to pass
sentences of ruin and confiscation upon corporations as a whole, with
their tens of thousands of innocent stockholders, without any kind of
inquiry and under the influence of uninformed passion.

There is no department of ethics more disputed than the meaning of
abstract right and wrong, and as I am not talking either on philosophy
or ethics I will ask you to accept just such commonsense definitions as
can be applied to the business world and that may be usefully employed
as a working basis. Commercial morality and honesty are determined b