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25 Pol. Sci. Q. 1 (1910)

handle is hein.journals/pclscceqry25 and id is 1 raw text is: Volume XXV] M POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY THE ATTITUDE OF PRIVATE CONSCIENCE TOWARD CORPORATE RIGHT A DISTINGUISHED German scholar, writing recently of the characteristic phases of American life, remarks that the most distinctive phenomenon which he has observed in our people is the unwillingness of anyone to champion the unpopular side.' The rule of the majority has become so com- plete that its number automatically silences every protest and frequently causes our scruples to hide themselves. In no regard is this criticism more true than in our point of view of the in- dustrial corporation, or the corporation having a capital stock. Corporate abuses have been the frequent subject of magazine essays; newspaper tirades are vented ever and again upon this well-worn topic; and agitators and reformers find in this subject an inexhaustible theme for popular lectures and for literary clubs. Political campaigns always inspire in the partisan plat- forms sonorous paragraphs insisting upon the regulation of cor- porate abuses, and in the sessions of the state and national legislatures committees devote long hours and sometimes a modicum of candid consideration to the same perennial theme. Meanwhile, in the midst of almost universal condemnation, industry is rapidly and surely assuming corporate form and for- saking the old-time direction of the individual owner of the enterprise. Few undertakings which involve a business of a million dollars a year are now managed in any way but by a legally organized private corporation; and numerous smaller enterprises, involving sometimes not more than five thousand or 'Hugo MUnsterberg, in McClure's Magazine, August, 1908, p. 438. I March, rplo [Number I