C. E. DUTTON ECONOMICS OF CONCENTRATED CAPITAL. 
19 
ever property fell into trust or escrow, its chances of finding its rightful 
owner were discouraging. It was no uncommon thing for the crown it- 
self to appoint trustees or receivers to property, and the understanding 
was that this was equivalent to giving them the property outright, and 
generally trusts ended in the absorption of the property by the trustee. 
By the time of the great revolution (1688) this practice had become in- 
tolerable, and Heneage Finch, Earl of Nottingham, after a labor of eight 
years, succeeded in carrying through Parliament a series of laws which 
effected a great reform in this matter. They settled the general prin- 
ciples of legal trusteeship, and with the improvements which have since 
been made, the laws relating to the administration of private trusts are 
as satisfactory as we could reasonably expect. 
Many attempts have been made to bring the responsibility and fidelity 
of corporate management under similar limitations, supervision and con- 
trol. Along some lines this has been done. The savings banks and the 
national banks of our country are instances of it. There is still much to 
be desired in this, respect, but so far the effect has been most salutary. 
But there are many kinds of corporations concerning whose responsibil- 
ity and powers the statutes are still very indefinite. It seems as if im- 
provement in this line ought to be earnestly sought, but the practical 
measures by which it may be made are questions for jurists and the most 
enlightened and prudent legislators. Into their province it would be pre~ 
sumptious in me <to seek to enter. But the general nature of the remedy 
that is needed seems clear. It is some more effectual guarantees that the 
trust which is reposed by the State in corporate directors and managers 
every time it grants a charter, and the trust reposed in them by their stock 
and bondholders whenever they place their property in their hands, shall 
be strictly limited to the purposes intended and shall be administered in 
all honesty and fidelity. 
If in dwelling so long upon these matters I have in any way conveyed 
the idea that there is a low standard of morality among corporate direct- 
ors as a class, such an inference is wholly wrong, and nothing could be 
farther from my intention. On the contrary, no higher sense of honor, 
duty, and responsibility can be found among classes of men than that 
which exists among corporate directors and managers as a class. If all 
men were as just, honorable and punctilious as the overwhelming ma- 
jority of thd managers of concentrated capital, it would be an immense 
advance, equivalent to a moral revolution. 
I have dwelt upon the darker phases of the subject for two reasons: 
first, because of the vast interests involved in the faithful management 
of concentrated capital, which make moral delinquency, however excep- 
tional it may be, so powerful a factor for evil, both in the economic and 
purely social relations of men with each other. The second reason is that 
