Under these circumstances, there appeared the anomalous condition of states actually advertising in the newspapers and bidding against each other in offering the corporations special opportunities and low fees for the privilege of incorporating. If the conscience of one state became enlightened and a strict corporation law was enacted, the result was simply to drive the irregular concerns into some other state which was willing to sell its privileges for the small fee of incorporation, and ask no questions. As might have been expected, every variety of practice existed in the forty-eight jurisdictions in which corporations might be located. Not only was there the greatest diversity in these practices, but special discriminations were often made in particular states against concerns incorporated in other states; and on top of all this there was a vast mass of anti-trust legislation, frequently drastic in character or loose and futile. Often it was the product of a popular clamor against large business undertakings, and often it was the result of the effort of legislators to "strike" at corporations. Whatever the underlying motive, it was generally characterized at the outset by lack of uniformity and absence of any large view of public policy, and then it was glossed over by judicial decisions, state and Federal, until it was a fortunate corporation official, indeed, who knew either his rights or his duties under the law. Moreover, it was a particularly obtuse attorney who could not lead his client unscathed through this wonderland of legal confusion.