The truth is, we are all caught in a great economic system which is heartless.  The modern corporation is not engaged in business as an individual.  When we deal with it we deal with an impersonal element, a material piece of society.  A modern corporation is a means of cooperation in the conduct of an enterprise which is so big that no one can conduct it, and which the resources of no one man are sufficient to finance.  A company is formed; that company puts out a prospectus; the promoters expect to raise a certain fund as capital stock.  Well, how are they going to raise it?  They are going to raise it from the public in general, some of whom will buy their stock.  The moment that begins, there is formed—­what?  A joint-stock corporation.  Men begin to pool their earnings, little piles, big piles.  A certain number of men are elected by the stockholders to be directors, and these directors elect a president.  This president is the head of the undertaking, and the directors are its managers.

Now, do the working men employed by that stock corporation deal with that president and those directors?  Not at all.  Does the public deal with that president and that board of directors?  It does not.  Can anybody bring them to account?  It is next to impossible to do so.  If you undertake it you will find it a game of hide and seek, with the objects of your search taking refuge now behind the tree of their individual personality, now behind that of their corporate irresponsibility.

And do our laws take note of this curious state of things?  Do they even attempt to distinguish between a man’s act as a corporation director and as an individual?  They do not.  Our laws still deal with us on the basis of the old system.  The law is still living in the dead past which we have left behind.  This is evident, for instance, with regard to the matter of employers’ liability for working men’s injuries.  Suppose that a superintendent wants a workman to use a certain piece of machinery which it is not safe for him to use, and that the workman is injured by that piece of machinery.  Our courts have held that the superintendent is a fellow servant, or, as the law states it, a fellow employee, and that, therefore, the man can not recover damages for his injury.  The superintendent who probably engaged the man is not his employer.  Who is his employer?  And whose negligence could conceivably come in there?  The board of directors did not tell the employee to use that piece of machinery; and the president of the corporation did not tell him to use that piece of machinery.  And so forth.  Don’t you see by that theory that a man never can get redress for negligence on the part of the employer?  When I hear judges reason upon the analogy of the relationships that used to exist between workmen and their employers a generation ago, I wonder if they have not opened their eyes to the modern world.  You know, we have a right to expect that judges will have their eyes open, even though the law which they administer hasn’t awakened.