280 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
loyalty, enthusiasm, and fellowship, of all concerned in this great community of interests."
"Conscience is surely, if slowly, establishing its sovereignity over competition, ethics its jurisdiction over economics." That the common good is promoted by self- interest is an assumption and not a fact ; for, have not men all along exempted their inner circles of associates from their competitive operations, and is it not our industrial system developing a federation of giants with avowed neutrality ? " Mixed as have been the economic results of the competitive system of industry with splendid achieve- ments and dire disasters, with a progress in which all have shared much, fewer have reaped hitherto unheard of^ wealth, and an ever increasing multitude have suffered a poverty such as only the civilizatfonof this system knows ; its effects upon morals have been insidiously and fundamentally, if not wholly, evil."
Competition cannot forever remain as potent a factor among the active social forces, that it is today ; for, " to take advantage of human necessity by selling in the dearest and buying in the cheapest market, cannot long continue to be considered consistent or compatible with a moral, not to say a Christian, life." PROFESSOR GRAHAM TAYLOR, Chicago Commons, September 1896 to July 1897.
The Nature of Corporations, "All men sustain social relations to all other men. The effect of social relations growth, stagnation, or decay is a product of two factors, the content (function) of the human activity and the organization (form) within which it is exerted. The existence of each factor implies the existence of the other. Social functions are exercised only through the machinery of social forms ; yet the forms are continually suffering modification to meet the demands of new or altered functions."
The corporation is a form of organization through which certain classes of social functions are exercised. It gives rise to associate activity and comprehends both the interrelations of the associated numbers and their relations with other organs of society. This corporate form or sum of peculiar relations is a creation by the state. The assump- tion of the corporate form is voluntary, as is also the acceptance of membership therein ; but when the corporate form has once assumed, it is compulsory from the side of state upon all its members. Within the limits of this particular corporate form and func- tion imposed or granted by the state, the corporation possesses complete autonomy, self-sufficiency as far as concerns ability to exercise effectively the particular powers granted to it and to perform the duties imposed upon it, and the rights of self-renova- tion or authority to renew its membership. It acts and is acted upon as a compulsory unit, and has its motive in private interest whether that be political, social, religious or economic. The functions it performs are conducive to the welfare of society in gen- eral and are more advantageously performed by associate than by individual activity.
More concisely : "A corporation is a body of persons upon whom the state has con- ferred such voluntarily accepted, but compulsorily maintained relations to one another and to all others that, as an autonomous, self-sufficient and self -renewing body, they may determine and enforce their common will ; and in the pursuit of their private interest may exercise more efficiently social functions both specifically conducive to public welfare and most appropriately exercised by associated persons." JOHN P. DAVIS, Political Science Quarterly, June 1897.
