'Corporations Are People' Is Built on a 19th-Century Lie - The AtlanticA 1907 caricature of the railroad baron Edward H. Harriman swallowing America’s train lines. (Luther Bradley / Library of Congress / Corbis / Getty) Somewhat counterintuitively, American corporations today enjoy many of the same rights as American citizens. Both, for instance, are entitled to the freedom of speech and the freedom of religion. How exactly did corporations come to be understood as “
