The corporation officials are elected by those holding the majority of
the stock and can keep office only by having behind them the good-will
of these majority stockholders. They are not entitled to the slightest
pity if they deliberately choose to resign into the hands of great
wrongdoers the control of the corporations in which they own the stock.
Of course innocent people have become involved in these big corporations
and suffer because of the misdeeds of their criminal associates. Let
these innocent people be careful not to invest in corporations where
those in control are not men of probity, men who respect the laws; above
all let them avoid the men who make it their one effort to evade or defy
the laws. But if these honest innocent people are in the majority in
any corporation they can immediately resume control and throw out of
the directory the men who misrepresent them. Does any man for a moment
suppose that the majority stockholders of the Standard Oil are others
than Mr. Rockefeller and his associates themselves and the beneficiaries
of their wrongdoing? When the stock is watered so that the innocent
investors suffer, a grave wrong is indeed done to these innocent
investors as well as to the public; but the public men, lawyers and
editors, to whom I refer, do not under these circumstances express
sympathy for the innocent; on the contrary they are the first to protest
with frantic vehemence against our efforts by law to put a stop to
over-capitalization and stock-watering.
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