Origins of the American Business Corporation

The concentration of business enterprise in corporate structures at the end of the last century called the attention of scholars to the history of the business corporation, the chartered joint-stock company. Even those who agreed that “the honour of originally inventing these political constitutions entirely belongs to the Romans” realized that their modern economic functions were relatively recent and demanded explanation. In this country, Williston's brilliant essay, the studies of Simeon Baldwin, and a number of other investigations probed into the origin and nature of the institution at about the period when it became a pressing social issue.