It is a part of the spirit of the age, an age that is called upon to do great things, to develop vast natural resources, to feed and clothe great centers of population, and to undertake a hundred other enterprises too large for the strength of the individual. I should like you to think over the real meaning of this term "corporation" in order that you may understand that it has no sinister significance whatever, that it is nothing more than a partnership that has registered itself under certain legal conditions for purposes that are laudable and honest. If you will do this, you will understand at once how senseless is the outcry against corporations as such and how absurd it is that any stigma of dishonesty should be placed upon a particular form of doing business that is exactly like other forms of doing business, with the addition of a legal registration. As I have already said, there are some corporations that break laws, or rather certain individuals who are parts of corporations and who break laws, just as there is a certain small proportion of law-breakers in every section of every community. But that fact carries with it no reflection upon corporations as such, and when our sensational publications and politicians use the word "corporation" as though it were an alternative term for brigand or pirate they are simply assuming a public ignorance that may exist outside, but that certainly ought not to be found within a university. They are taking advantage of a nearly universal disposition to believe one's self injured and are appealing not only to ignorance, but to a low form of cupidity and of mob greed. They would have no success in their crusade against corporations as such if there were any general understanding of the meaning of terms or if it were generally recognized that there are thousands of corporations in this State, and thousands in every State against whom no whisper of wrong-doing has ever been raised and who are doing a useful work, of which every individual among us is a beneficiary, directly or indirectly. Now it is not only in our definitions that we need to be precise and to think clearly. We have already seen the need of a better discrimination between the very few corporations that are accused of breaking the laws and the vastly greater number that we never hear of at all and that do their business as quietly and honestly as the baker or the butcher. If lawbreaking is to be found in the business of some corporations, it is incumbent upon us to determine just in what way the law is being broken, why it is being broken, what sort of law it is that is being broken, and how much moral turpitude or public wrong is involved. All these factors would be determined by a judge upon the bench before passing sentence upon the meanest malefactor, and yet we find that the public is constantly urged by the newspapers to pass sentences of ruin and confiscation upon corporations as a whole, with