He also expounded the evidence that the Great Depression was caused by disparities of income and wealth brought about by the corporation, which he likened to Frankenstein's monster.

The majority of the Supreme Court, with the opinion delivered by Roberts J, held that § 5 of the Florida Act, which increased tax if stores were present in more than one county, was unreasonable and arbitrary and violated the equal protection clause.

At first, corporations could be formed under the general laws only for a limited number of purposes — usually those which required a relatively large fixed capital, like transportation, banking, and insurance, and mechanical, mining, and manufacturing enterprises.

[2] Permission to incorporate for "any lawful purpose"[3] was not common until 1875; and until that time the duration of corporate franchises was generally limited to a period of 20, 30, or 50 years.

Lesser States, eager for the revenue[8] derived from the traffic in charters, had removed safeguards from their own incorporation laws.

Of the seven largest trusts existing in 1904, with an aggregate capitalization of over two and a half billion dollars, all were organized under New Jersey law; and three of these were formed in 1899.

The typical business corporation of the last century, owned by a small group of individuals, managed by their owners, and limited in size by their personal wealth, is being supplanted by huge concerns in which the lives of tens or hundreds of thousands of employees and the property of tens or hundreds of thousands of investors are subjected, through the corporate mechanism, to the control of a few men.

[26] The data submitted in support of these conclusions indicate that in the United States the process of absorption has already advanced so far that perhaps two-thirds of our industrial wealth has passed from individual possession to the ownership of large corporations whose shares are dealt in on the stock exchange;[27] that 200 non-banking corporations, each with assets in excess of $90,000,000, control directly about one-fourth of all our national wealth, and that their influence extends far beyond the assets under their direct control;[28] that these 200 corporations, while nominally controlled by about 2,000 directors, are actually dominated by a few hundred persons[29] — the negation of industrial democracy.

Other writers have shown that, coincident with the growth of these giant corporations, there has occurred a marked concentration of individual wealth;[30] and that the resulting disparity in incomes is a major cause of the existing depression.

The citizens of the State, considering themselves vitally interested in this seemingly unequal struggle, have undertaken to aid the individual retailers by subjecting the owners of multiple stores to the handicap of higher license fees.

They may have believed that the chain store, by furthering the concentration of wealth and of power and by promoting absentee ownership, is thwarting American ideals; that it is making impossible equality of opportunity; that it is converting independent tradesmen into clerks; and that it is sapping the resources, the vigor and the hope of the smaller cities and towns.