

And State Papers 1 1 5 



it operates entirely outside of the creator's juris 

 diction. 



It is of course a mere truism to say that the cor 

 poration is the creature of the State, that the State 

 is sovereign. There should be a real and not a 

 nominal sovereign, some one sovereign to which the 

 corporation shall be really and not nominally re 

 sponsible. At present if we pass laws nobody can 

 tell whether they will amount to anything. That 

 has two bad effects. In the first place, the corpora 

 tion becomes indifferent to the law-making body; 

 and in the next place, the law-making body gets 

 into that most pernicious custom of passing a law 

 not with reference to what will be done under it, 

 but with reference to its effects upon the opinions 

 of the voters. That is a bad thing. When any 

 body of law-makers passes a law, not simply with 

 reference to whether that law will do good or ill, 

 but with the knowledge that not much will come of 

 it, and yet that perhaps the people as a whole will 

 like to see it on the statute books it does not speak 

 well for the law-makers, and it does not speak well 

 for the people, either. What I hope to see is power 

 given to the National Legislature which shall make 

 the control real. It would be an excellent thing if 

 you could have all the States act on somewhat sim 

 ilar lines so that you would make it unnecessary 

 for the national government to act; but all of you 

 know perfectly well that the States will not act on 

 similar lines. No advance whatever has been made 

 in the direction of intelligent dealing by the States 



