140 



CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



the law as it now stands, the party seeking to 

 remove his cause may do so before or at the 

 time at which said cause would be tried and 

 before the trial thereof. This bill proposes to 

 amend the law so that the defendant only may 

 remove his cause, and he may remove it at any 

 time before the defendant is required, by the 

 law of the State and the rule of the State court 

 in which said suit is brought, to answer or 

 plead to the declaration or complaint. In 

 other words, the time has been changed from 

 any time before the trial to the time when 

 under the State laws the defendant is required 

 to plead to the declaration. 



" The chief amendment, however, to section 

 3 is from line 126 to line 140 of the bill. That 

 amendment proposes to take away original 

 jurisdiction or removal of causes between a 

 corporation organized or created by or under 

 the laws of any State and a citizen of a State 

 in which said corporation is doing business, 

 except in cases where the subject matter au- 

 thorizes such jurisdiction or removal in suits 

 between citizens of the same State, to wit, 

 when it is a matter of a treaty or a land grant 

 from different States. 



" Mr. Speaker, this amendment is a radical 

 change of existing law. Under the decision of 

 the Supreme Court, a corporation is held to be 

 a citizen of the State in which it is organized 

 or created. The result is that in every State 

 in which it does business, aside from the one 

 in which it is created, the present law author- 

 izes the removal of any case, involving the 

 requisite amount, in which it is a party, from 

 the State to the Federal courts. This amend- 

 ment cuts off that right, arid remits the cor- 

 poration to the State court alone. The evils 

 arising from the existing practice have for a 

 long time been manifest and the subject of 

 great complaint. There seems to be no valid 

 reason why a corporation that competes with 

 local corporations, that goes into every hamlet 

 and almost every household in the land, should 

 not be the subject of State control in that 

 business, and should have the right to remove 

 its causes to a distant court for reasons that 

 differ in no essential degree from the reasons 

 that obtain in other cases. Insurance companies 

 are persistent in seeking risks and money from 

 our citizens ; yet in case of loss are hasty in 

 taking their causes to the United States courts, 

 perhaps hundreds of miles away, the expense 

 of which is a practical denial of justice, and 

 the threat of which is used as a basis of an 

 unjust compromise. The proposed amendment 

 cuts this evil up by the roots and remands the 

 parties to the community in which the liabil- 

 ity was incurred and in which it was known 

 it would be incurred when the contract was 

 made. 



" It will be observed that one notable fea- 

 ture in the proposed amendment is the cur- 

 tailing of the use of the United States courts 

 by corporations. It is astonishing to see the 

 amount of time and labor devoted by these 



courts to the interests of corporations, to the 

 exclusion of the interests of individual citizens. 



" Again, a citizen in his individual contests 

 with corporations is turned over to the ten- 

 der mercies of a litigation which it is ruin for 

 him to incur, but which these corporations 

 with their accumulated capital can sustain. 

 The United States courts have grown to be 

 largely corporation mills, in which the tolls are 

 largely taken from the individual citizen, and 

 generally amount to his whole interest in the 

 grist. So that it has become the fact that the 

 only party or entity which in the United States 

 represents the old feudal system of property 

 tenure, so unanimously opposed by our fathers, 

 transmitted from generation to generation in 

 increasing value and influence, has sought ref- 

 uge behind the judicial system of a government 

 that boasts it has no primogeniture, and that 

 large estates are divided up by the natural 

 order of things in one or two generations. As 

 a rule this system of transmitting tenure is 

 strong enough if remanded to the State courts ; 

 and the expense of individual litigation will be 

 sufficiently onerous in any event. It seems to 

 me a healthy thing to call a halt in the ten- 

 dency of accumulating legislation, especially of 

 this kind, in the United States courts." 



Mr. Weaver, of Iowa: " Since the passage of 

 the act of 1789, corporations of every descrip- 

 tion have sprung up throughout the entire 

 country. Their name is legion. The tendency 

 of the wealth of the country is toward associ- 

 ated capital. Colossal insurance companies, 

 gigantic railroad enterprises, and other and 

 multifarious corporate organizations exist in 

 every locality and permeate every avenue of 

 business life. 



" Take for illustration a railroad corporation. 

 It is organized, perhaps, under the law of Mas- 

 sachusetts. It stretches its iron arms westward 

 until it reaches the Missouri River, passing 

 through the great States of New York, Penn- 

 sylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, and 

 perhaps others. It enters these States, and by 

 the right of eminent domain condemns the 

 property of the citizen, proceeds to build and 

 lay the foundation of a colossal fortune. It 

 builds its roads and occupies the territory, and 

 proposes to occupy for all future time. 



"Now, in contemplation of law this corpo- 

 ration should be held to be a citizen of the 

 State or States, respectively, where it is carry- 

 ing on or operating its business. They come 

 into a State for the purpose of making money, 

 carrying on transactions with citizens of the 

 State, and why should they not be compelled 

 to go into the State courts, there to adjudicate 

 matters arising between themselves and citi- 

 zens of the State? They are citizens of the 

 State for all other practical purposes; but, 

 when a controversy arises under the law as it 

 now stands, the corporation has only to go into 

 the State court and there set forth the fact 

 that it is a foreign corporation, organized un- 

 der the law of Massachusetts or of some other 



