33 o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



not or would not control their subordinates. Part of this alleged 

 powerlessness is no doubt assumed that the head may escape re- 

 sponsibility for the action of the members, but part of it is quite 

 certainly genuine. The development in bulk of the ponderous 

 artificial beings has exceeded the development of their nervous sys- 

 tems, and the monsters can only sprawl and plunge instead of go- 

 ing forward to a definite end. This condition, however, is progress- 

 ively cured by automatic processes. We have as yet no economic 

 treatise on corporation by-laws in general, but well-recognized 

 rules are developing for the organization of specific classes of cor- 

 porations. 



In the narrower view the relation of the corporation to its em- 

 ploye's is merely a question of wages, of strikes, and lock-outs, and 

 of relative losses from these disturbances to employers and em- 

 ployed. The statistics of strikes and lock-outs collected by our 

 National Bureau of Labor show that almost the only industry in 

 which the losses inflicted by strikes are heavier on the employers 

 than on the men is that of transportation. The undetermined 

 losses inflicted upon the general public by this class of strikes 

 must be also especially large. Two ways of dealing with these 

 evils have been tried in Europe, either of which seems to be a par- 

 tial remedy, but neither of which seems likely to commend itself 

 to Americans. The first is to impose a heavy per diem fine or 

 even forfeiture of charter upon any corporation that fails to per- 

 form its public functions. This forces the company to make terms 

 of some kind with the strikers. When strikers in this country 

 have tried to secure the forfeiture of charters through the courts, 

 on the ground that the companies did not discharge their public 

 functions, they have met with little success, though in some cases 

 a street-car company has thought it necessary to insist on running 

 a single car each day in order to secure its charter against at- 

 tack on this ground. The second European method of guarding 

 the public against the loss of strikes is to make it a misdemeanor 

 for any employe* to quit work without giving (say) five days' no- 

 tice. The trial of this method has been advocated in this country, 

 but it may be doubted if our system of police could be relied on 

 to enforce such a law, or if, at the critical time, public opinion 

 would indorse it. That the great corporations see the necessity 

 of acting in the matter, so as to avert the danger that continually 

 hangs over them and the public, is seen in the rapid development 

 of relief associations and other devices for making the position 

 of the employe* more stable than it has ever yet been in this coun- 

 try. The President of the Union Pacific Road has advocated the 

 withholding from subordinate officials of the arbitrary power of 

 dismissing the men, the object being to make the men an integral 

 part of the corporation, and to give them security in their posi- 



