18 TRANSACTIONS OF THE TEXAS ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 
progress. This progress is, indeed, not all that we could wish to see, hut 
it has been something, and in truth much. It has been slow, hut it has 
been sure. Much of the aversion and indignation with which immoral 
business practices are regarded arises from the fact that they are judged 
by a higher and better moral standard than in former times. Practices 
which, in former generations or decades, escaped criticism, or barely 
squeezed through it, can do so no longer. In this progress, the economist 
finds much comfort and reassurance. 
Are these evils any necessary part or accompaniment of concentrated 
capital and its employment? No more than of any other economic ac- 
tions of men. In the marvelous progress and swift changes of the nine- 
teenth century, though they have been overwhelmingly for good, it is 
not surprising that among its numberless inventions some new ways 
should he found for doing wrong, by methods unknown to the law. If 
these become formidable, it is then a fair question whether statutes can 
be devised and enacted which shall prevent them, and this without doing 
more harm than good. 
It appears that most of these wrongs are perpetrated by men who man- 
age the property of others and generally in a corporate capacity. In the 
eye of the law they are not strictly speaking trustees, hut agents acting 
in a fiduciary relation. And what is their responsibility? 
Not many years ago, in some classes of corporations, it was just about 
what the consciences and personal honor of the corporate officers chose to 
make it. They gave no bonds, they rendered no full accounts with vouch- 
ers to the stockholders, their hooks were not open to qualified inspection, 
they could shroud their actions in a secrecy which even the courts found 
difficult and sometimes impossible to penetrate. Their powers were as 
indefinite as their responsibilty, and there was no code either statutory or 
conventional fixing the limits within which these powers might he ex- 
ercised. 
One of the most pernicious and objectionable prerogatives, and one 
which far more than any other furnished the opportunities for delin- 
quency was that of making contracts in their corporate capacity with 
themselves as the representative of distinct and often parasite corpora- 
tions or as natural persons. It is an old proverb that “it takes two to 
make a bargain.” But here it seems that only one is necessary. In truth, 
the wonder is not that we have scandals in corporate management, hut 
that we have so few of them. 
RESPONSIBILITY OF TRUSTS. 
During the reigns of the Tudors and Stewarts English law relating to 
private trusteeship was in a very crude and primitive condition. When- 
