by special act of the legislature.

No other event has had so practical a bearing on our politics and
our economic and social life as the advent of the corporate
device for owning and manipulating private business. For it links
the omnipotence of the State to the limitations of private
ownership; it thrusts the interests of private business into
every legislature that grants charters or passes regulating acts;
it diminishes, on the other hand, that stimulus to honesty and
correct dealing which a private individual discerns to be his
greatest asset in trade, for it replaces individual
responsibility with group responsibility and scatters ownership
among so large a number of persons that sinister manipulation is
possible.

But if the private corporation, through its interest in broad
charter privileges and liberal corporation laws and its devotion
to the tariff and to conservative financial policies, found it
convenient to do business with the politician and his
organization, the quasi-public corporations, especially the steam
railroads and street railways, found it almost essential to their
existence. They received not only their franchises but frequently
large bonuses from the public treasury. The Pacific roads alone
were endowed with an empire of 145,000,000 acres of public land.
States, counties, and cities freely loaned their credit and gave
ample charters to new railway lines which were to stimulate
prosperity.

City councils, legislatures, mayors, governors, Congress, and
presidents were drawn into the maelstrom of commercialism. It is