not or would not control their subordinates. Part of this alleged powerlessness is no doubt assumed that the head may escape responsibility for the action of the members, but part of it is quite certainly genuine. The development in bulk of the ponderous artificial beings has exceeded the development of their nervous systems, and the monsters can only sprawl and plunge instead of going forward to a definite end. This condition, however, is progressively cured by automatic processes. We have as yet no economic treatise on corporation by-laws in general, but well-recognized rules are developing for the organization of specific classes of corporations.
In the narrower view the relation of the corporation to its employe's is merely a question of wages, of strikes, and lock-outs, and of relative losses from these disturbances to employers and employed. The statistics of strikes and lock-outs collected by our National Bureau of Labor show that almost the only industry in which the losses inflicted by strikes are heavier on the employers than on the men is that of transportation. The undetermined losses inflicted upon the general public by this class of strikes must be also especially large. Two ways of dealing with these evils have been tried in Europe, either of which seems to be a partial remedy, but neither of which seems likely to commend itself to Americans. The first is to impose a heavy per diem fine or even forfeiture of charter upon any corporation that fails to perform its public functions. This forces the company to make terms of some kind with the strikers. When strikers in this country have tried to secure the forfeiture of charters through the courts, on the ground that the companies did not discharge their public functions, they have met with little success, though in some cases a street-car company has thought it necessary to insist on running a single car each day in order to secure its charter against attack on this ground. The second European method of guarding the public against the loss of strikes is to make it a misdemeanor for any employé to quit work without giving (say) five days' notice. The trial of this method has been advocated in this country, but it may be doubted if our system of police could be relied on to enforce such a law, or if, at the critical time, public opinion would indorse it. That the great corporations see the necessity of acting in the matter, so as to avert the danger that continually hangs over them and the public, is seen in the rapid development of relief associations and other devices for making the position of the employé more stable than it has ever yet been in this country. The President of the Union Pacific Road has advocated the withholding from subordinate officials of the arbitrary power of dismissing the men, the object being to make the men an integral part of the corporation, and to give them security in their posi-
