Plates

Figures 1, 2, and 3: The first three ages of the corporation: at first the merchant trading company established by royal charter to undertake voyages of discovery and promote commerce around the world. Then the public corporation created by Acts of Parliament to engage in major public works and the building of canals and railways. Then with freedom of incorporation in the 19th century came the private corporation—the seedbed of the industrial revolution and the manufacturing corporation. (From Chapter 1)

Figure 1. Three East India Company Ships and a French Squadron, 9 March 1757.

Source: Caird Collection, National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London. © National Maritime Museum, London

Figure 2. Manchester Ship Canal Construction Excavation Trench.

Source: Powys Digital Project History

Figure 3. Messrs Fairbairn and Sons of Manchester, The Official Illustrated Guide to the Great Western Railway, 1860.

Figures 4, 5, and 6: On 14 December 1900 George Cadbury, standing in front of the Friends Meeting House on the idyllic village green of Bournville near Birmingham with 370 cottages and five hundred acres of land around him, declared that he was giving away his wealth to the Bournville Village Trust. The aim of the Trust was ‘the amelioration of the conditions of the working class and labouring population’. Meanwhile a less wholesome aspect of chocolate production was taking place off the coast of West Africa: ‘it is the monstrous trade in human flesh and blood against which the Quaker and Radical ancestors of Mr Cadbury thundered in the better days of England’ The Standard, 26 September 1908. (From Chapter 4)

Figure 4. A street in Bournville Village near Birmingham, a new town founded by chocolate manufacturer and social reformer George Cadbury, July 1909.

Source: Topical Press Agency/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Figure 5. Cadbury’s Cocoa Advert.

Source: Mary Evans/Retrograph Collection

Figure 6. c1900: Workers sort the cocoa crop in the Congo, Africa.

Source: Leopold Mercier/Roger Viollet/Getty Images

Figures 7, 8, and 9: Thomas Midgley was an American mechanical engineer and chemist who was the recipient of a glittering array of prestigious awards and prizes in recognition for the work that he did leading teams of researchers at General Motors that made two major and highly profitable inventions. But those very same inventions were also the cause of the release of large quantities of brain damaging lead and ozone depleting CFCs into the atmosphere that have afflicted the lives of generations of people around the world ever since. (From Chapter 6)

Figure 7. Thomas Midgley.

Source: © CORBIS / Corbis via Getty Images

Figure 8. Thomas Midgley working with the Delco laboratory test engine during World War 1 on “knocking” in petrol engines.

Source: Science Photo Library

Figure 9. Ethyl Advert.

Source: Chronicle / Alamy Stock Photo

Figures 10, 11, and 12: On 19th August 2004, Google came to the NASDAQ stock market at a share price of $85 per share in an initial public offering that valued the company at more than $23bn. Today the founders Sergei Brin and Larry Page are each valued by Forbes at more than $40bn. But Google not only exemplifies the extraordinary concentration of wealth that the mindful corporation is creating, which by comparison puts the tens of millions of dollars of annual income earned by investment bankers into the poverty category, it also illustrates another form of concentration: concentration of power. (From Chapter 1)

Figure 10. Google IPO, August 19, 2004.

Source: Chris Hondros / Getty Images

Figure 11. Google / Alphabet Share Price and S&P 500 Index 2004 to 2018.

Figure 12. Search Engines Global Market Share, 2000 to 2013.

Source: Netmarketshare, Market Watch, webpronews, clickz, OneStat, and Websidestory