1903.) _  PATTERSON—-THE PROBLEM OF THE TRUSTS. 27 
While the corporation is a legal entity, distinct from the bond- 
holders and shareholders who contribute its capital,’ nevertheless 
the fact remains that the bondholders and shareholders are the per- 
sons, or the successors of the persons, whose contributions in 
money or in property, real or personal, constitute the capital of 
the corporation, and it is they, or their successors in title, who are 
benefited by the prosperity of the corporation or injured by 
its adversity. In the days of the ‘‘greenback’’ agitation, the 
‘bloated bondholder’’ was the object of fierce denunciation, but 
when the facts were investigated it was found that the ‘‘ bloated 
bondholders’’ were the saving funds, with whom were deposited 
the accumulated earnings of labor, the insurance companies, to 
whom every provident man looked for the future protection of his 
dependent wife and children from want in case of his death, and the 
banks, with whom all business men, great and small, deposited the 
money which they needed for daily personal and business use. 
Again, when the banks were assailed as heartless money lenders and 
oppressors, it was seen that the profits of banking accrued to the 
men, women, and children, who were the shareholders. Again, 
when Mr. Bryan, in 1896 and in 1900, denounced the holders of 
‘fixed investments’? and ‘‘the idle owners of idle capital, ’’ 
intelligent people knew that those whose interests he threatened 
with destruction were the depositors in saving funds, the share- 
holders in banks, and the holders of policies of life insurance. It 
will likewise be found to-day that those whose interests will be 
injured by unwise legislative restraints upon trade and industry 
will be the workingmen to whom the Trusts offer employment, and 
the hundreds of thousands of individuals who are, directly or 
indirectly, the owners of the securities of the Trusts. The leaders 
of public opinion will do well to remember that, as Mr. Lecky has 
said,? it is an inexorable condition that all ‘‘ legislation which 
seriously diminishes profits, increases risks or even unduly multi- 
plies humiliating restrictions, will drive capital away and 
ultimately contract the field of employment.’’ 
1 Regina v. Arnoud, g Q. B. 806, 58 E. C. L.; Van Allen uv. The Assessors, 3 
Wall., 573. 
2 Democracy and Liberty, Vol. I1, page 463. 
