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Show 'United States Express company hare been managed by tho Piatt famlly.and If this disgruntled stockholder can get at the books it Is not at all Improbable Im-probable that another great scandal In corporation finance may result. MODERN BUSINESS VICES. A stockholder of the United States Express company has asked that a receiver re-ceiver be appointed for the concern, not because It is in any way financially financial-ly embarrassed, but because the of. flclals, by action apparently within their legal authority, are diverting its profits to themselves. There are various va-rious ways of doing that, 6ays the San Francisco Chronicle. One is by mak-lug mak-lug improvident contracts with other concerns in which the interest of the officials is greater. Another is by voting to themselves enormous salaries sal-aries for services whose performance requires no special ability. Still another an-other is by the use of corporate funds in speculation. All these and perhaps other abuses are charged by a stock- j holder in the United Slates Express company, who states, moreover, that there has not born a stockholders' meeting for the election of officers for forty-six years. What merit there may be In tho claims of this stockholder, stock-holder, we, of course, do not know, but the allegations of the complaint state abuses which are believed to bo very common in the management of corpo rations. Former President Roosevelt used frequently to declare that the most serious se-rious corporate abuses were those in which corporation directors and officials of-ficials poflted improperly at the expense ex-pense of tho stockholders. And it Is probably true that the public suffers far less from corporate abuses than Is imagined and the stockholders- far more. Presidents and managers 0f water companies, power companies, banks and many private corporations often receive salaries far abovo thoso necessarily paid for equally good management, man-agement, far abovo those which they could get from any institution whlc'a they did not control, and far abovo what is paid In other countries to men occupying similar positions. The campaign cam-paign for publicity In corporate affairs af-fairs which Mr. Roosevelt so persistently persist-ently promoted was avowed by him to bo mainly In the interest, not of the public, but of stockholders. For more fjan a generation the affairs of tho |