wise; to-day they are desirous of such regulation under Federal
charters, for the purpose of escaping the more multifarious and
radical law-making of the forty-six different States. Before the
Industrial Commission in 1897-1900, all the heads of the great
"trusts"--Rockefeller, Archbold, Havemeyer--testified in favor of
Federal incorporation; almost all other witnesses, except one or two
New York or New Jersey corporation lawyers, against it.

In the article in the _Harvard Law Review_, above referred to, the
writer suggested that the evil might be cured by compelling trusts to
organize as corporations, thereby bringing them under the regulation
and control that the State exercises over corporations. That has come
to pass, but the remedy has not seemed adequate. In the early Sugar
Trust case, the New York Supreme Court decided that combinations to
sell through a common agent, thereby, of course, fixing the price,
with other common devices for controlling the market and preventing
competition, were illegal at the common law; and also that a
corporation which, in order to bring about such a combination, put
all its stock in the hands of trustees or a holding company, thereby
forfeited its charter, the only result of which decision was to drive
the Sugar Trust from its New York charters to a legal organization in
the State of New Jersey. It is noteworthy that one or two of the
most obvious remedies for this condition of things have never been
employed, possibly because they would be too effective. That is to
say, there might be legislation that a corporation should not act out
of the State chartering it--that a New Jersey corporation, holding no
property and doing no business in New Jersey, should not be used to
carry on business in New York. We also might have legislated, going
back to the strict principles of the common law, to forbid any
corporation, any artificial body, from holding shares in another
corporation. It is doubtful, to-day, whether this can be done under
the common law, and the authors of the Massachusetts corporation law
refused expressly to provide for it; on the other hand the proposed
Federal Incorporation Act expressly validates it. We do, however,
begin to see some legislation on this line of approach, notably in the
case of competing companies, several Western States at least having
statutes forbidding a corporation from holding stock in such
companies; and it was one of the recommendations of Presi