| Research Abstract |
This study tried to prove the centrality of business corporation in American culture from the early period in terms of the collective and cooperative activity. And it has been playing an important role both in economic development and in the general advancement of social welfare, in spite of the fact that an American version of the welfare state emerged during the New Deal.
As J.R.Commons once suggested, it was only Henry C.Carey (1793-1879) who could manage to contrive the workable form of voluntary associations as business corporation with limited liability, neither Tocqueville nor Marx. Carey, known as a foremost exponent of protectionist theory, argued for the enactment of a general incorporation act in Pennsylvania state, as early as in 1838, in the second volume of his Principles of Political Economy. It was ten years after that J.S.Mill followed in Carey's steps in his own Principles.
For Carey and, in part, Mill, such an enactment with limited liability would make possible for the common people to invest their small savings in local industries and, consequently, to enhance their welfare and their social standings.
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