The historic and almost revolutionary emergence in the last century and a half of previously amorphous social strata has revealed problems vitally affecting the economic organization of society, which would not seem to yield unitary solution. But the novel conditions of the present time demand radical changes in the legal institutions which have hitherto regulated the economic aspects of life, and in fact a new complex economic instrument has evolved, which is gradually yoking private enterprise with community interest and is in the process destroying the methodological distinction between the private and public domain. This new instrument is built upon old structure, modified by an adaptive reshaping of its fabric, by the addition of new foundations and accommodating itself to new demands, and is in this manner in direct historical continuity. But although this instrument derives from and is fashioned upon earlier legal patterns, it reflects a profound economic and social change as projected on the legal plane. The instrument is the institution we term the “enterprise”.