FURTHER VISTAS OF THE FIELD FORTUNE
But if only to give at the outset a translucent example of Field's method's in the management of industrial corporations, it is well to advert here to the operations of one of his many properties—the Pullman Company, otherwise called the "Palace Car Trust." This is a necessary part of the exposition in order to bring out more of the methods by which Field was enabled to fling together his vast fortune.
The artificial creation of the law called the corporation was so devised that it was comparatively easy for the men who controlled it to evade personal, moral, and often legal, responsibility for their acts. Governed as the corporation was by a body of directors, those acts became collective and not individual; if one of the directors were assailed he could plausibly take refuge in the claim that he was merely one of a number of controllers; that he could not be held specifically responsible. Thus the culpability was shifted, until it rested on the corporation, which was a bloodless thing, not a person.
FIELD'S PULLMAN WORKS.
In the case of the Pullman Co., however, much of the moral responsibility could be directly placed upon Field, inasmuch as he, although under cover, was virtually the dictator of that corporation. According to the inventory of the executors of his will, he owned 8,000 shares of Pullman stock, valued at $800,000. It was asserted (in 1901) that Field was the largest owner of Pullman stock. "In the popular mind," wrote a puffer, probably inspired by Field himself, "George M. Pullman has ever been deemed the dominant factor in that vast and profitable