DEVELOPMENT DURING PAST CENTURY 479 



provement since 1850. Married women have obtained few further 

 rights, principally because there were few left for them to acquire, 

 and while we have freed our slaves, we have encouraged trade- 

 unionism. In short, the humanitarian movement of two genera- 

 tions ago, which profoundly affected the law of the civilized world 

 for fifty years, has ceased to influence the course of jurisprudence. 



VII. Association 



The most characteristic development of the law during the last 

 fifty years has been in the direction of business combination and 

 association. A few great trading companies had existed in the 

 Middle Ages; the Hanse merchants, the Italian, Dutch, and English 

 companies wielded great power. They were exceptional organ- 

 izations and almost all had ceased to act by 1860. The modern form 

 of business association, the private corporation with limited liability, 

 is a recent invention. Such corporations were created by special 

 action of sovereign or legislature, in small though increasing numbers, 

 all through the last century; but during the last generation every 

 civilized country has provided general laws under which they might 

 be formed by mere agreement of the individuals associated. Now 

 the anonymous societies of the Continent, the joint-stock companies 

 of England and her colonies, and the corporations of the United 

 States, all different forms of the limited liability association for 

 business, have engrossed the important industries of the world. 

 Different countries are competing for the privilege of endowing these 

 associations with legal existence. Corporations are formed in one 

 state to act in all other states or in some one other state; or it may 

 be anywhere in the world except in the state which gave them being; 

 and so in the last fifty years an elaborate law of foreign corporations 

 has grown up all over the civilized world. But the corporation is 

 only one form of business combination which has become important. 

 Greater combinations of capital have been formed, that is, the so- 

 called trusts ; great combinations of laboring men have been formed, 

 the so-called unions; and the enormous power wielded by such com- 

 binations has been exercised through monopolies, strikes and boy- 

 cotts. All these combinations have been formed under the law as 

 it has been developed, and all are legal. Furthermore, the great 

 business operations have come to depend more and more upon 

 facilities for transportation, and great railroads and other common 

 carriers have come to be equal factors with the trusts and the unions 

 in the operations of modern business. The first effect, then, of the 

 ideals of the present age upon the law is its development in the direc- 

 tion of forming great commercial associations into legal entities 

 wielding enormous commercial power. 



