CONCERNING CORPORATION LAW. 331 



tions during good conduct, and a prospect of promotion if espe- 

 cially efficient. The problems that our Government must con- 

 front in the matter of civil-service reform are also to be dealt with 

 by our corporations, and the conditions are enough alike so that 

 the experience of each may serve for the guidance of both. 



4. Adequate publicity of corporate transactions. The need of 

 thorough publicity of corporation accounts has been already 

 dwelt on at some length. Nearly all the abuses to which corpo- 

 rate management of property is liable originate and wax mighty 

 only when concealed. On the other hand, secrecy, even when it 

 does not cloak abuses, is commonly suspected of doing so. Most 

 of the unreasoning and unreasonable attacks on corporations have 

 been made when those in charge of the corporations insisted on 

 the privilege of keeping their affairs entirely to themselves. The 

 advantages of business secrecy to the individual business man 

 who practices it are abundantly manifest, but its advantages to 

 the public at large, while also manifest, are countervailed by very 

 serious disadvantages. Experience seems to have demonstrated 

 quite conclusively that a being at once so vulnerable and so pow- 

 erful as a corporation can not afford to keep its affairs entirely to 

 itself, and if it could afford to do so the public can not afford to 

 let it. There is said to be a strong tendency toward " socialism " 

 in this wresting of business secrets from the great managers of 

 the world's industries, and bringing the most private of business 

 transactions to the bar of public opinion. Many will no doubt 

 answer that " the charge is true, and we glory in its truth." Many 

 more will be inclined to say, with the present writer, that, while 

 this objection should be given its due force, it has not nearly 

 force enough to overrule the strong necessities of the case. The 

 chief danger that legitimate enterprises have to fear from com- 

 plete publicity is that of overtaxation. The wealth of the cor- 

 porations lying fully exposed to public view, it is so easy for the 

 politician to fill the public coffers from that source that we 

 already find certain classes of corporations driven out of certain 

 States by excessive taxation. But it may be doubted whether tax- 

 ation is as likely to be excessive when the state of a company's ac- 

 counts is definitely known, as when the politician and his constitu- 

 ents are free to draw upon their imaginations for the amount of 

 wealth in the corporate coffers. In other words, it seems probable 

 that in this country, as yet, we have less to fear from willful injus- 

 tice than from mutual misunderstandings begotten of secrecy on 

 the one hand, and suspicion on the other. European countries are 

 distinctly ahead of us in this matter. They have by no means 

 solved all the problems connected with the corporate manage- 

 ment of property, but they have at least collected more of the 

 data that will make a solution possible. 



