APPENDIX
this privilege of extension, which is entirely within the control of the companies and is subject to no supervision. If a railroad be incorporated twenty miles in length it must, under the act of April 4, 1868, have a capital stock of $10,000 per mile. If it be incorporated with a length of five miles and then be extended to twenty miles, under the act of May 21, 1881, it is only required to have a capital stock of $5,000 per mile. The principle upon which the grant of franchises to corporations is supported is that there are business operations important to the community which are beyond the financial strength of the individual, and that by the union of the resources of many persons, may be accomplished and thus the public be benefited. As a compensation for the benefits so conferred, liability is transferred from the individual to the artificial person created by the law. We have been gradually losing sight of the public good involved in the arrangement, and reducing the number of corporators until now any three persons may secure incorporation for profit. In other words, a man wishing to start any business venture by giving a share of stock to his clerk and another to his messenger may escape individual liability for the indebtedness incurred. But one step remains and that is the reductio ad absurdum of making a single person a corporation for profit. Most of such corporations now secure under our laws grants in perpetuity. There ought to be a reasonable time limit in every charter, say one hundred years, at the expiration of which the grant terminates so that some control may be maintained and the future not burdened with consequences which cannot be foreseen. The mountains shall sink into the sea, in time the sun shall disappear from the heavens, and no charter should purport to endure forever. The question of requiring railroads, railways and pipe lines to file with their applications maps of the proposed routes may be considered, and the rights of telephone, electric light and natural gas companies in furnishing their facilities, raising difficult problems, ought to be defined.
In my inaugural address of January 20, 1903, and in my message giving the objections to the act authorizing railroads to take dwellings by condemnation proceedings (see Address, page 3, and Vetoes, page 125), I called attention to the principle that only public necessity could justify the taking of private property by eminent domain, and suggested the propriety of the ascertainment by the state of such need before any franchise is granted, including this right. Without going over these propositions
again, I renew the suggestion and refer you to what was there