Comment by autoexec
1 day ago
Incorporation was a special privilege the government granted, not a right, so anyone who wanted to form a corporation had to convince the government to pass a law just for them allowing them to do it. Saying "I want to make as much money as possible, to hell with everyone and everything that stands in my way" wasn't going to cut it. Basically every corporation was doing some kind of public service. Maybe they didn't have any values beyond stuffing their pockets with cash, but they had to at least convincingly portray themselves as having broader goals and keep up that act well enough that the government didn't take their charter from them.
Many early corporations were ordinary profit-seeking businesses. Manufacturing, in particular, were increasingly incorporated simply to conduct private enterprise, and states began passing general incorporation statutes for manufacturers quite early in the 19th century.
The special-charter system wasn't some golden age of corporations being held accountable to society. One of the reasons states abandoned special chartering was because it became associated with favouritism, lobbying, monopoly privileges and corruption. Legislators had something valuable to hand out, so connected businesses could seek preferential charters. General incorporation laws were partly an anti-corruption reform.