Its capital stock can be expanded or “watered” at liberty; it can change its name and location at pleasure; can go anywhere and do almost anything. It is not a Pennsylvania corporation only; it can, so far as these enactments are valid, or are confirmed by other Legislatures, operate in any state or territory; its directors must be only citizens of the United States—not necessarily of Pennsylvania. It is responsible to no one; its stockholders are only liable to the amount of their stock in it; its directors, when wielding all the princely powers of the corporation, are also responsible only to the amount of their stock in it; it may control the business of the continent and hold and transfer millions of property, and yet be rotten to the core. It is responsible to no one; makes no reports of its acts or financial condition; its records and deliberations are secret; its capital illimitable; its object unknown. It can be here to-day, to-morrow away. Its domain is the whole country; its business everything. Now it is petroleum it grasps and monopolises; next year it may be iron, coal, cotton, or breadstuffs. They are landsmen granted perpetual letters of marque to prey upon all commerce everywhere. When the course of this charter through the Pennsylvania Legislature came to be traced, it was found to be devious and uncertain. The company had been incorporated in 1871, and vested with all the “powers, privileges, duties and obligations” of an earlier company—incorporated in April, 1870—the Pennsylvania Company; both of them were children of that interesting body known as the “Tom Scott Legislature.” The act incorporating the company was not published until after the oil war; its sponsor was never known, and no votes on it are recorded. The origin of the South Improvement Company has always remained in darkness. It was one of several “improvement” companies chartered in Pennsylvania at about the same time, and enjoying the same commercial _carte blanche_.