Early nineteenth-century Americans feared corporations as soulless and immortal concentrations of greed.

Evidence

Corporations were “soulless,” as the phrase went. Of course, as everybody knew, human beings ran corporations. But, unlike people, corporations did not necessarily die. There was no limit to their size, or their greed. They could aggregate the worst impulses of the men who ran them. Profit was their only emotion. — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 1072

Categorization

• DEFINE: Captures the cultural image of corporate personhood circulating in the early republic, a useful foil to the modern legal fiction.
• XREF: connects to: Commercial failure lost moral stigma in nineteenth-century America’s growth economy. — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 1600; Mass markets forced consumers to trust unseen strangers and corporations — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 2631

Broader Connections

• Mass markets forced consumers to trust unseen strangers and corporations #complicates (0.82) — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 2631
• Commercial failure lost moral stigma in nineteenth-century America’s growth economy. #expands (0.75) — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 1600