Litmus
Verified User
The corporations of the early days of the republic were very different beasts than those of today. They seem to have been creatures of government — or at least of politicians — right?
A: That’s right. Americans inherited the legal form of the corporation from Britain, where it was bestowed as a royal privilege on certain institutions or, more often, used to organize municipal governments. Just after the Revolution, new state legislators had to decide what to do about these charters. They could abolish them entirely, or find a way to democratize them and make them compatible with the spirit of independence and the structure of the federal republic. They chose the latter. So the first American corporations end up being cities and schools, along with some charitable organizations.
We don’t really begin to see economic enterprises chartered as corporations until the 1790s. Some are banks, others are companies that were going to build canals, turnpikes, and bridges — infrastructure projects that states did not have the money to build themselves. Citizens petitioned legislators for a corporate charter, and if a critical mass of political pressure could build in a capital, they got an act of incorporation. It specified their capitalization limitations, limited their lifespan, and dictated the boundaries of their operations and functions.
I should add, too, that as part of this effort to democratize corporations, state charters specifically spelled out how shareholder elections were to be conducted to choose directors. Corporations were supposed to resemble small republics, with directors balancing interests among shareholders. When they printed material or conducted correspondence, it was usually in the name of the “President, Directors, and Shareholders of the X Company.”
A couple months ago the Supreme Court ruled that restricting corporate political spending amounted to restricting free speech. In this view, corporations are pretty much equivalent to people. Would that have seemed reasonable to the Founding Fathers?
In a word, no.
hbr.org
A: That’s right. Americans inherited the legal form of the corporation from Britain, where it was bestowed as a royal privilege on certain institutions or, more often, used to organize municipal governments. Just after the Revolution, new state legislators had to decide what to do about these charters. They could abolish them entirely, or find a way to democratize them and make them compatible with the spirit of independence and the structure of the federal republic. They chose the latter. So the first American corporations end up being cities and schools, along with some charitable organizations.
We don’t really begin to see economic enterprises chartered as corporations until the 1790s. Some are banks, others are companies that were going to build canals, turnpikes, and bridges — infrastructure projects that states did not have the money to build themselves. Citizens petitioned legislators for a corporate charter, and if a critical mass of political pressure could build in a capital, they got an act of incorporation. It specified their capitalization limitations, limited their lifespan, and dictated the boundaries of their operations and functions.
I should add, too, that as part of this effort to democratize corporations, state charters specifically spelled out how shareholder elections were to be conducted to choose directors. Corporations were supposed to resemble small republics, with directors balancing interests among shareholders. When they printed material or conducted correspondence, it was usually in the name of the “President, Directors, and Shareholders of the X Company.”
A couple months ago the Supreme Court ruled that restricting corporate political spending amounted to restricting free speech. In this view, corporations are pretty much equivalent to people. Would that have seemed reasonable to the Founding Fathers?
In a word, no.
What the Founding Fathers Really Thought About Corporations
Brian Murphy, a history professor at Baruch College in New York, knows a whole lot about corporations in the early days of the American republic. When the Supreme Court struck down restrictions on political spending by corporations in January, the ruling (pdf!) struck him as dramatically at odds...
hbr.org
