How many of the eighty-eight thousand stockholders in the Pennsylvania Railroad, for instance, have ever attended a meeting?  For that matter, how many of them have ever studied the report of the railroad?  Not one in ten could spare the time to read it, perhaps not one in a hundred could master it.  The report may be read in a few hours; it would take as many months, if not years to verify it.  Very nearly half these stockholders are women; the average holding is 120 shares, (par $50), and one-sixth of the stockholders own less than 10 shares each.  Ten thousand of them are abroad.  Much stock is held by trustees, whose beneficiaries are probably very numerous, and totally incompetent to understand railroad management.  There are also more than twenty thousand holders of stock in subsidiary corporations controlled by the Pennsylvania Railroad.  No one can tell the number of bondholders; perhaps there are as many as there are employees, making an aggregate of almost half a million.

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Sometimes trustees abuse their office; but on the whole they have done pretty well, and whether they have or not, there is no other way in which large capitals can be managed.  All civilization rests on confidence.  Such a vast fabric could not be built on confidence unless confidence was deserved.  As a matter of fact, a man invests his money just as he invests in a surgeon.  He does not think of directing the surgeon how to operate.  If the operation does not succeed, he tries another surgeon next time—­if there is a next time.

Of course all this applies chiefly to the large corporations.  There are many thousands of small ones, having few stockholders, who reside where the business is established.  These stockholders know more or less of the details of the business; they can judge to some extent how it is carried on, they are often acquainted with the managers, or are the managers themselves, and if not, they are able sometimes to combine and change the management.  And I will anticipate a little and say here that the property of such a corporation located in a small town is often to some extent not politically disfranchised, because the people of the town understand that they are directly interested in the prosperity of the business.  But it seems almost impossible for the stockholders to change the management of a large corporation.  It has been done a few times.  Mr. Harriman notoriously did it by using the money of one concern to buy the stock of another, and that is almost the only way in which it has been done.  No doubt there has been an immense deal of combination which has resulted in change of management, but this has not been because the stockholders combined to oust their trustees, but because they thought they saw a good chance to sell their stock to those who would pay high for the control, or to participate in these combinations.  There have been a good many cases where an enterprising speculator has managed to get hold of a majority of the stock and change the control, and powerful bankers can sometimes get proxies enough to put a stop to bad management; but spontaneous movements of this kind on the part of the mass of the stockholders are extremely rare.