Sec. 1.  Rise of the corporation concept.  Sec. 2.  The modern era of corporations.  Sec. 3.  Beginning of corporation problems.  Sec. 4.  The era of canals.  Sec. 5.  Rapid building of American railroads.  Sec. 6.  Reasons for governmental aid.  Sec. 7.  Kinds of governmental aid.  Sec. 8.  Emergence of the railroad problem.  Sec. 9.  Discrimination as to goods.  Sec. 10.  Local discrimination.  Sec. 11.  Personal discrimination.  Sec. 12.  Economic power of railroad managers.  Sec. 13.  Political power of railroad managers, Sec. 14.  Consolidation of railroads.  Sec. 15.  State railroad commissions.  Sec. 16.  Passage of the Interstate Commerce Act.  Sec. 17.  Working of the Act.  Sec. 18.  Public nature of the railroad franchise.  Sec. 19.  Other peculiar privileges of railroads.  Sec. 20.  Private and public interests to be harmonized.

Sec. 1. #Rise of the corporation concept#.  In the legal systems of primitive people and long afterward, only natural persons had legal rights, could make contracts, have property, and carry on a business.  But in a number of cases, very early, groups of men came to have certain interests in common and certain possessions.  Gradually some such groups gained more or less of legal recognition, with certain political and economic rights as a body and not as individuals.  Thus evolved the conception of a “corporation” (body) having men as “members,” an artificial person, yet not the same as any one or as all the individuals together, and legally distinct from the individuals.  A group of burghers obtaining a charter from the lord of the realm became a municipal corporation; a group of teachers, a collegium, became the corporation of the college or a university (a number of persons united into one association); a group of craftsman became a gild-corporation.  Each corporation had certain rights, privileges, and immunities, and used a corporate seal as a signature.  All of the early corporations had some economic features that were incidental to the main purposes, which were political, ecclesiastical, educational, and fraternal.  Toward the end of the Middle Ages groups of traders obtained charters to act as corporations permanently for business purposes, such as foreign trade, colonization, and banking.  These increased in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and in the eighteenth century this form of organization was adopted also and parliamentary charters obtained, by groups of men for building turnpikes and canals and for carrying on other kinds of business.

Sec. 2. #The modern era of corporations#.  The great era of the corporations did not begin, however, until well on in the second quarter of the nineteenth century.  Then, both in Europe and in America, the corporate form of organization was extended to a greater number, and to other kinds, of enterprises.  It proved itself to be well adapted to enterprises for the construction and operation of canals and railroads,