Now let me say a word about the corporations of which we hear so much in the newspapers and magazines and that are so persistently represented as enemies of the community and as vampires that are sucking the life-blood of the nation. I think there may be plenty of room here for clarification of our views, and, indeed, we should all be better for it if we could give more precision to our thinking and free ourselves from the imputations that have been allowed to cluster around certain terms. You may be sure that I am under no inclination to defend criminality or wrong-doing or to deny their existence wherever they are actually to be found. There are criminal corporations just as there are criminal doctors, and lawyers, and clergymen. Wherever men are gathered together there you will find a certain number who are disposed to seek their personal advantage in reprehensible ways, but because some doctors and some lawyers and some clergymen are criminals we do not attach an imputation to their respective professions. We are content to say that there are black sheep in every flock and so pass on. But the newspapers and the magazines have seen fit to concentrate their attention upon the criminal or the illegal acts of certain individuals who belong to corporations and to explain those acts in a manner which often leads their readers to assume that the acts are an essential part of corporation business. As a result, the very word "corporation" has taken on a sinister meaning, and we are asked to look upon the corporations very much as the Rhine peasants used to look upon the robber barons who were accustomed to swoop down upon them and carry off their flocks. A corporation is absolutely nothing more than a partnership of individuals who prefer to do business under certain regulations imposed by the government. There is no difference between the corporate and the individual ways of doing business except a piece of stamped paper issued by the Secretary of State. The corporation is made up of individuals who have just the same ideas of honor as you have yourselves, who have just as much integrity, just as great a love of fair play. A man does not change his nature just because he turns his business into a corporation any more than he changes his nature because he moves from one street to another or from the first floor to the second. A corporation then is a combination of men that has been formed under the sanction of law to carry out certain projects that it would be difficult or even impossible to carry out in any other way. The men forming those corporations are just such men as we meet in daily life, no better and no worse, and therefore with all those normal inclinations toward honesty that we are conscious of possessing ourselves and that we are in the habit of finding in others. The fact that these men have formed themselves into a corporation is no more significant of evil than a combination or a partnership among doctors or laborers.